Tag Archives: Hot Topics

A projection was made by Fair Vote Org as to what will happen in the 2018 Congressional Elections based upon a series of variables such as whether a candidate is an incumbent, the geographical location or rural versus city, the underlying partisan lean of a district etc. If we apply those variables to this election; the likelihood of a House takeover even with a Blue Wave of angry Democrats going to the poll will not yield us what we hope to achieve. It...

[embedded content] An articulate president who reads books and tells things in a manner which does not demean. Huge change from Obama to Trump.

This is mostly a C&P as taken from Justin Frantz’s article One of the World’s Largest Steam Locomotives Is About to Make a Triumphant Return It is a fun post with a tad of economics tied to it. It was not seventy years ago and may be more like sixty years ago when I took the train with my father out to Buffalo New York. I remember seeing the old steam driven locomotives in Chicago. I do not think one of them made the pull to Buffalo. It would have...

The Fed just let Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs off the hook after both failed the required stress tests under Dodd-Frank. The stress test is supposed to predict whether banks and so-called banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs can weather a financial crisis. This is not an instance of if you remember in 2008, who could forget? Few TBTF had set aside the necessary reserves to back the tranched MBS and the more risky CDS/naked CDS. These were the...

In his editorial “Say Hello to Your Boy. A Special Guy,” Josh Marshall at TPM had this to say: “When I first read the Times story I wasn’t sure whether the younger Kennedy (Justin), whose title was Managing Director and Global Head of Real Estate Capital Markets, would have been someone to actually make loans to someone like Trump as opposed to overseeing more complex or synthetic efforts like mortgage backed securities and such. But it turns out he...

“I have rarely seen so much inconsistency and even hypocrisy from the Supreme Court as in its decision to uphold President Trump’s travel ban.” On the Colorado SCOTUS Decision A few weeks ago, the court found that members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had expressed impermissible hostility to religion because of relatively mild statements that every business in Colorado should serve all customers regardless of the owner’s religion, and that...

The ACLU’s Ría Tabacco Mar reviewed a recent SCOTUS decision in the NYT. South Dakota is being allowed to murder a man rather than commit him to a life time of hell in a natural life sentence . Charles Rhines was convicted of murdering a man while robbing a Dunkin Donut store he used to work at and was fired from a couple of weeks earlier. The jury in deciding Charles Rhines fate in deliberation sent questions to the judge asking; Would Rhines have a...

It appears that the US government has separated mothers and their children and doesn’t know how to get them back together again. In particular, this is extremely difficult if the children are under 2 and don’t know their family name (looking for someone identified only as “mommy” or “mia madre” is challenging. I think a data company with some need to apologize to the world can make itself useful. It is not too hard to match 3000 children who are too...

“Deeply Disturbing” It’s not a crime if you brag about it on T.V. In fact, it’s hardly worth mentioning. What is this about? “We don’t know the answer, but we hope the inspector general will find out.”

Cartoonist Rob Rogers was fired from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for refusing to do cartoons extolling the virtues and accomplishments of Trump. According to The Association of American Cartoonists; “Rob Rogers is one of the best in the country and his cartoons have been a wildly popular feature of the Post-Gazette. Readers looked forward each morning to opening their papers to see Rogers’ latest pointed commentary.” Things changed for Rob when the...