The Angry Bear

How To Get Distracted From What Is Most Important Of course as the midterm elections are nearly upon us, there is a rising cacophony of issues bubbling up, especially as Donald Trump attempts to excite his extremist base with base fears, while trying to distract most voters from threats by GOPs in Congress to cut the social safety net.  But some of the the new issues bubbling up are really more important than others. So we are now going to have a...

[embedded content] If you have not seen this yet, take a moment and listen. It kind of makes you feel good about being a Democrat. 7th District Virginia’s Elissa Slotkin, Abigail Spanberger. Like Esquire’s Charles Pierce tells us, it kind of reminds you of the Ali-Terrell fight—What’s my name, motherf***er? Abigail took teabagger Dave Brat to the wood shed and just tore him apart. It is a great take down. HT to EMichael...

HuffPost Politics: New York Times columnist Economist Paul Krugman fears that President Donald Trump’s insistent complaints of “voter fraud” are a setup to deny the legitimacy of a Democratic majority in the House should the party win in the midterm elections. Those who don’t believe such a scenario is possible “haven’t been paying attention,” the Nobel laureate warned. Trump has complained, without evidence, that as many as 5 million people voted...

September existing home sales: yet another poor housing report While existing home sales are roughly 90% of the entire housing market, they are much less important as an economic indicator because they do not have the knock-on effects of construction improvements, and less of the landscaping and indoor improvements, that new homes do. But they certainly do help us track the trend. And like housing permits and starts, and new home sales, the trend has...

Kevin Hassett and Irwin Steltzer Join in on the Fiscal Dishonesty Brad DeLong is annoyed at the latest from Irwin Stelzer: Hassett and others in the administration point out that despite a hefty reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, government revenues rose by $3.3 trillion in the fiscal year just ended. In part this is because the economy is growing at around a 4 percent rate in response to the tax cuts and to a revival of...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 15 – 19 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Between them, high interest rates and tariffs are affecting the readings in all three timeframes. As usual, clicking on the link and reading the post puts a little coin in my pocket, as well as giving you an up-to-today read on the economy.

September JOLTS report: a jobs market moving from thriving to hot Tuesday’s JOLTS report once again confirmed the very good employment report from one month ago, with two series making all-time highs and one an expansion high: Quits ust below their all-time high set one month ago Hires made a new all-time high Total separations made another new expansion high Layoffs and discharges spiked back to average levels for this expansion Job openings made yet...

Jargon is a heck of a drug: If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. The discourse of global warming/climate change is lousy with jargon. This rampant obfuscation gives science deniers rhetorical leverage and induces hallucinations about “Green New Deals” and “Environmental Kuznets Curves.” “Decoupling,” “rebound...

Or not enough. Nate Silver has long performed fairly complicated calculations with (lots of) raw data. Even back when he was Poblano at DailyKos this was highly controversial. Now that he leads a huge team at fivethirtyeight.com, it is almost necessary just to decide whether to trust them, because it is very time consuming to read their explanations of their algorithms. In particular, obsessive poll watchers such as your humble correspondent, have noted...