Book review of “Corruptible” as authored by Brian Klaas and reviewed by The one-handed economist, David Zetland on his blog. Brian Klaas published this book in late 2021, which was too early to discuss Putin’s second invasion of Ukraine but not too late to discuss Trump’s first term — let alone his first day. Those oversights do not matter because Klaas discusses the essential features of corrupt “leaders” in a way that helps us understand...
Read More »New Deal democrat’s Weekly Indicators July 15 – 19 2024
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. While several of the monthly updates I’ve discussed here in the past week have tiptoed in the direction of yellow caution flags, that’s not apparent at all in the high frequency data that is updated every week, much of which comes from private sources. In fact, this week for the first time in a long time, not a single coincident indicators was negative. A majority...
Read More »Why do we need carbon capture?
Yesterday, I posted about geoengineering the oceans as a promising form of carbon capture. But why do we need carbon capture at all? Can’t we just conserve our way out of global warming?No.Here are a couple of reasons why the *only* way to avert climate disaster is to start removing carbon from the atmosphere:1. The half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is ca. 120 years. What that means is that if all sources of CO2—man-made, forest fires, vulcanism,...
Read More »Retail Shoplifting
I believe I have seen one boy walk out of a Frys with something in his arms. He did not pass through the cashier line but waited for the gates to open to the store and walked through the opposite way. Did the need whatever he had? I don’t know. The only thing this false narrative does is change the priorities from working on real issues to false issues. The author is correct. Stores should have more staff on hand to help customers, stock...
Read More »Global Tech Outage
Angry Bear (I) found this in my in box this Friday morning. Not much of a scoop now as the world knows about the issue. Let’s talk about why this tech outage occurred. There does not appear to be a backup for failure of systems when one of significance fails. This baffles me as we always had a backup system in the past even if it was a manual lookup and a paper transaction. It appears we are too dependent on one layer of information and have...
Read More »When you Leave, Please Put Out the Lights . . .
We live in a mixed community. I think we are the oldest couple in the area. We did not want to go to an older adult-type of setting. This community is bad enough with its HOA. On one side we have a young couple with a baby. They come to our house with their baby to enjoy dinner. Relaxing in our family room allows the baby to move around and her coming to me to sit in my lap . . . “up, up in her limited English.” So up she comes to my lap. She...
Read More »Today’s Housing Supply Policies Hurting Tomorrow’s Housing Supply
Another take on Housing and Supply of Housing by Skanda Amarnath at the well-known Employ America. This follows or leads what New Deal democrat has been discussing at Angry Bear blog here, here, and here. When we bought into our single-family home, I was able to lock in a 2.6% 30 year mortgage. At this point in time 50% of my mortgage payment goes to principal. The city we live-in is building apartments like they never existed before. The housing...
Read More »What’s So Hard About This?
Tom has it correct. I am not so sure I would want to be associated with the jackasses engaging in ageism. I am not far behind Biden in age. The initial debate was a shocker. A shocker where one person can speak lie after lie in front of millions of people and stand there looking justified in doing so. And those who support him and such behavior are no better. Tom Sullivan at HuLLaBaLoo, July 17, 2024 They’re both old. The Republican is a...
Read More »Manafort Returns and Walks the Floor of the Republican National Convention
If you have not been watching, Manafort returns to Trump’s side. Forty-seven months in prison was too short for Manafort. And Trump reveals his ways by having him there. Convicted criminals’ side by side. And Democrats are in disarray over Biden or . . . “July 18, 2024,” Walking the floor of the Republican National Convention by Prof. Heather Cox Richardson Letters from and American Paul Manafort walking onto the floor of the...
Read More »Geoengineering and the global climate crisis
Global heating continues unabated. While decarbonizing our energy sources is certainly important, it is too late to prevent global disaster. Coastal flooding, desertification, wildfires will continue to increase, driving vulnerable populations to migrate and igniting resource wars for fresh water and arable land. It’s already driving migration and violence in the Middle East and Central America.We must find a way to decarbonize the atmosphere on a...
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