Tag Archives: Hot Topics

What Kurt Eichenwald says – Saving the Republic When I’m not reading and writing about the economy, I do occasionally comment elsewhere on political topics. So it was on Thursday when, in response to this post asserting that Democrats were powerless to do anything – (including enforcing THEIR OWN GODDAM SUBPOENAS!) – and that it was “green lantern-ism” to believe otherwise, I decided I had had enough (see comment #25), for which I was called a “kook” and...

[embedded content]Not a Human, but a Dance, Atlantic Daily, Ed Yong, September 19, 2019 I do not know about you when you receive a magazine you subscribe to; but when I get mine, I read it from cover to cover. I also send a copy to one who is incarcerated to read and it makes the rounds amongst the inmates. Since I chased prisoners in the service, it is not unusual for me to look after some of them. Me: This bird has more rhythm than I do. Not a Human,...

Country Music I have been watching Ken Burns’s “Country Music”  series on PBS.  May not watch too much more of it as I am not that interested in more recent country music, although I like some of it. So the big story of this series is how much of supposedly “white music” is of African-American origin.  I had long been aware of how the banjo was of African origin, the core country instrument beside the “fiddle,” aka “violin,” which is of European...

Eighty year old retired salesman John Garver the morning of March 28, 1979 remembers the acrid odor permeating Harrisburg as he walked out of a restaurant in Pennsylvania’s capital city. “We had this smell in the air, wondering what it was. Well it didn’t take us long to find out … that the accident started.” Fourteen miles away, the “accident” was unfolding in Unit 2 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, triggering panic, confusion, and within...

The Strike On Saudi Oil Facilities This is going to be a tentative post because there is much that remains unclear. What I am going to do is to make it clear that stories that are being told by US authorities and largely repeated by the MSM with little critical commentary is highly questionable. As it is, it looks like the economic impact of the knocking out of about 60 percent of Saudi oil processing capacity by an attack by 20 drones will not amount to...

The other night, ten Democratic presidential, hopeful, nominees took stage and debated their plans for America’s future. There never was a mention beyond a few garbled words hastily thrown together about an issue which is plaguing many young voters ing to raise families and one which has surfaced in my community, the shortage of affordable homes. Senator Elizabeth Warren knows of the issue as she has discussed it in one of her talks, “The Two Income...

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) by Robert Waldmann Has 21st century conservatism contributed anything useful at all ? This is a question I haven’t asked myself. I have long looked for reasonable and reasonably honest conservatives. It is frustrating, because I have found many, but few are still conservative. I don’t want to get distracted from my distraction; but there is a pattern of me finding a conservative whom I consider...

It’s That Day again. I mostly stayed off Facebook (except for birthday greetings) and Twitter, but even LinkedIn has posts of now-yellowed newspaper articles of survivors–and probably some of those who didn’t. In another ten years, it will be as far from 11 Sep 2001 as that date was from 11 Sep 1973. At least now, most people know what a sh*t Rudy Giuliani was, both in setting up the firefighters for disaster and moving the NYC Office of Emergency...

“Cigna gets major boost from Express Scripts in Q2,” Robert King, FierceHealthcare, August 1, 2019 And some claim PBMs do not matter in the cost of healthcare? Cigna healthcare insurance generated ~ $38 billion in revenue the second quarter 2019 and a major increase due mostly to a merger with pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) Express Scripts. According to company financial results released Thursday, Cigna’s pharmacy services business generated $23.5...

For seven years from 2012 to 2018 the monthly payroll employment showed a solid trend of around 200,000 gains each and every month.  If it was much above or below this trend, analysts found some excuse to explain the difference and expected the off-trend observation to be quickly reversed.  So far this year most analysts continued to act as if this pattern was being repeated. However, in August the Bureau of labor Statistics (BLS) rebenchmarked the data...