EconoSpeak

 Several months ago I forecast that "He who wins Prairie du Chien wins the White House."  I also argued more generally that SW Wisconsin would determine Wisconsin.As of right now Trump is leading by about 2% in Wisconsin, and he seems to be ahead in most of the counties of SW Wisconsin, although Milwaukee has not yet come in.  And the county Prairie du Chien is in, Crawford Trump is leading 4620 to 3953.But, for what it is worth, in the City of Prairie du Chien itself Biden is ahead 1303 to...

 My favorite ; A hand-made sign a few blocks away from my house:ONE DAY, LIKE A MIRACLE, HE'LL BE GONEAmen to that!

 I made it through episode 5 of The Queen’s Gambit last night, but I doubt I will finish it.  A noticeable deterioration takes place on all fronts as the story proceeds: weak dialog, dull cinematography, clumsy editing.  It’s as if the creative folks behind the project had done what they set out to do and were now just playing out the endgame.But here I want to focus on the chess, the way the game is portrayed in the Netflix series.  I have some experience at this, since I was a “promising...

 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 they are more competent that that. The Chinese I think are maybe less practiced at...

My friends, If you post endless copies of off-topic news articles and list of corona virus statistics to my substantive posts, I will simply hide all comments on that post. DO NOT DO IT! Effectively, all you do with those "comments" is to prevent conversation. If that is your intention, you are trolls. One way or the other it is SPAM. You are welcome to post whatever you want on an "Open Thread." 

We took a trip this weekend, driving 180 miles each way on I-5 through Oregon and Washington State.  We kept our eyes peeled for bumper stickers relating to the upcoming election but counted only three for Trump and an amazing zero for Biden.I’ve never seen anything like this before in the US.  (In Europe bumper stickers don’t seem to exist at all.)  Just four years ago you could see Clinton and Trump plastered on cars everywhere.Is this your experience too?And what does it mean?  This...

 It has long been a truism of economics that high interest rates were favored by wealthy capitalist lenders against poor borrowers, with such a view lying behind the populist demands of the late 19th century.  We are used to applauding Keynes's forecast of the "euthanasia of the rentiers." But now that such a situation is upon us of increasingly likely very low interest rates for a long time ahead, this euthanasia does not seem so much like something poorer people should be all that happy...

 A sign that this entity should be abolished, and I mean really gone, done in, not with its parts redistributed to other entities, is that it is an an entity defined by its director, not itself.  In preparing to write this post I checked on it, and I thought it was the ONI, the Office of National Intelligence. But, no, it is the ODNI, spelled out as above, really. And it should go.Why was it ever created in the first place, this unnecessary entity?  It was created in 2005 as a reaction to...

Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon join a long list of people Donald Trump doesn't know about.Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas"I don't know those gentleman. Now, it's possible I have a picture with them because I have a picture with everybody. I don't know them, I don't know about them, I don't know what they do."Jeffrey Epstein"I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him, I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you."Michael Flynn"It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before...

 I have just read that jazz pianist Keith Jarrett will not be performing live any more, indeed has not done so for some time.  He had two strokes back in 2018, the last year he released an album, and apparently he is simply not able to use one hand.  He does not wish to perform with only one hand.I saw him once live, in 1967 in the Memorial Union theater at UW-Madison, when he was playing in the Charles Lloyd Quartet.  He got attention then for reaching over and directly playing strings on...