“There’s many a fly got stuck in there.” Who is Charlie Kirk? He is the 24-year old executive director and founder of Turning Point USA. Jane Meyer profiled the organization in the New Yorker in December: Based outside of Chicago, Turning Point’s aim is to foment a political revolution on America’s college campuses, in part by funneling money into student government elections across the country to elect right-leaning candidates. But it is secretive about...
Read More »The Risk of Opioid Addiction
I have been writing on healthcare for a while now and started to look at various topics with regard to pharmaceuticals. In my researching other topics, I found this particular correspondence to the Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. Illuminating, if one might call it such? “A 1980 Letter on the Risk of Opioid Addiction” The NEJM published 1980 letter: Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics Recently, we examined our current files to...
Read More »GOP’s “I See “Secret Societies” Meme
Along the line in the movie “The Sixth Sense, I see dead people. They don’t know they’re dead.” Repubs; “I see Secret Societies, others do not know they exist. They are everywhere.” Daily Beast’s Rick Wilson; “The story was falling apart even before the Moron Caucus beclowned themselves with the ‘Secret Society’ theme, because the memo obviously hadn’t done enough to reduce the Republicans in stature and seriousness. Seizing on a single, obviously joking...
Read More »Glenn Greenwald & the Nunes memo
I’m not sure this is of general interest, but I would like to argue (again) with Glenn Greenwald. In this tweet, he asks an interesting and important question The FBI, and many Democrats, insisted vehemently that release of the Nunes Memo would endanger national security. Now that we’ve all read it, is there anyone who believes that this argument was even remotely true or honest? Yes. This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions....
Read More »Distractions, Distractions
Distractions, Distractions Wow! We have a great controversy! A squib of a memo by the House Intel Comm has completely devoured the media. A constitutional crisis! Egad! In two weeks, or maybe two months, it will be nothing. But for now, well, very very very serious. At a minimum it has distracted everybody from Trump’s gloriously successful State of the Union speech, which was so well received until this distraction that he thinks will bring about...
Read More »The Dispensibility of Steven Miller
I have tried to resist Fisking this op-ed by Ross Douthat, but I can’t resist. Whole post after the jump to avoid lowering AngryBear relevance index. “The Necessity of Stephen Miller” (title chosen by an editor not Douthat) He writes negotiations “have mostly taken place between people who are fundamentally in agreement on immigration,” who favor both amnesty for illegal immigrants and reforms that would probably increase immigration rates. The problem...
Read More »Does Senator Schumer Really Need to Up His Game with Republicans?
McConnell is a weasel. He has sold out his own by making promises and then reneging on them like he did with Collins. He makes promises to Democrats and then reverses his stance laying the blame on them. Over at Washington Monthly, the writers think Schumer needs to up his game. Lets ask the question of whether the Democrats really caused the military not to be paid and shut down the government. Click on the link or view the Youtube. With three “I...
Read More »Carbon footprint conundrum
Carbon footprint conundrum would be my title. Personal involvement is important (macro is too but not the point here), but this list points to involvements well beyond many our imaginations to implement as individuals. Personal decisions are much harder for the top activities mentioned, and from personal contacts not much on the radar of people’s decision making. How do you go about connecting to the things “in our own control” on these points?...
Read More »Democrats Are Silent Again
I do not understand the silence of the Democrats when it comes to dealing with the issues of this country such as student debt, the attacks by Trump and Republicans on the ACA, the Republican and Trump tax reform plan giving $billions to the 1% of the taxpayers making greater than $500,000 annually, the more recent plan allowing states to invoke job requirements and premiums upon those on Medicaid, etc. Then there is the latest utterance from the White...
Read More »(88% of a Sample of) Republicans Helpfully Make it Clear That They Don’t Care About Accuracy
Jason Schwartz buries the lede in this genuinely alarming article in Politico “Study: Americans view media negatively, can’t agree on meaning of ‘fake news'” I attempt to excavate it. The study — the 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation Survey on Trust, Media and Democracy, based on mailed-in responses from more than 19,000 Americans age 18 or older — asked people to rate whether four categories of information were “Always,” “Sometimes” or “Never” fake news....
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