“Letters From An American,” September 22, 2021, Professor Heather Cox-Richardson Continuing Professor Heather Cox – Richardson’s detailing the events before and after President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. It gets more interesting as a Federalist lawyer details instructions for Vice President Pence to follow and dissolve, reject, etc. the Electoral Vote Certification on January 6, 2021. How does an attorney advocate the...
Read More »Understanding Why Breakthrough Covid Occurs
This article (MedPage Today) popped up in my In-Box and I believe it is a good average – person on the street (high school education?) read if you want to understand “why,” why getting vaccinated is not a failsafe solution, You still have to socially distance, stay out of bars even if the owner is an ass, wear facemasks amongst other people, etc. so as not to catch Covid. The MedPage Today article explains why you should be vaccinated even if the...
Read More »We’ve been over this before . . .
I have found Ten Bears in our comments section from time to time. I also followed the link to his blog “Homeless on the High Desert” and read a few of his posts. In “We’ve been over this before . . . ,” Ten Bears makes the point of migrants, people leaving their homeland to find better land in which to live will continue to go to other lands to live. They will go for food, water, safety, etc. Much of their leaving or all of it is due to pollution...
Read More »Yes, the covid epidemic is undermining trust in government . . . just not for the reason you may think
Disasters and threats tend to be politically unifying. Public approval of George W. Bush jumped after the 9/11 attacks, and trust in government increased. Donald Trump’s approval rating was highly stable due to increasing polarization, but even he enjoyed a small increase in approval at the start of the covid epidemic, and trust in government edged up slightly. With covid, however, the rally-around-the-flag effect was short-lived. For many...
Read More »So, Whatever Happened To The Arizona Fraudit?
So, Whatever Happened To The Arizona Fraudit? Even though these “audits” are now apparently spreading to other states, notably Pennsylvania and maybe Wisconsin, efforts to somehow find election fraud in the presidential elections in those states in 2020, there is an odd thing that has happened that has basically dropped off the media radar screen. That is what the outcome of the initial one of these is, the “fraudit” in Arizona, authorized and...
Read More »U.S. Seeks to Block Bankruptcy Plan That Would Free Sacklers From Opioid Claims
“The Justice Department moved on Thursday to block a bankruptcy plan that grants broad legal immunity to the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, whose drug OxyContin has been at the heart of the nation’s opioid epidemic. William K. Harrington, the U.S. trustee for the Justice Department, filed a motion in federal court to halt confirmation of the settlement while the department appeals the judge’s decision to approve the deal. In writing...
Read More »Debt Ceiling Nonsense Yet Again – A Catch 22?
Debt Ceiling Nonsense Yet Again – A Catch 22? Of course, there should be no debt ceiling. The US is the only nation to have one for absolute amounts of money (some other nations have ones tied to percents of budgets, and so forth). Even though it is nonsensical and absurd, it has been around for over a century, a recrudescence of a deal to get funding approved by Congress for WW I in the wake of the passage in 1913 of the new amendment allowing...
Read More »Letters From An American – September 14, 2021
The events are akin to the film Seven Days In May with a role reversal detailing a rogue General instead of President. Seven Days in May begins with a riot in front of the White House. It’s the late 1960s and U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) has recently signed a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Now, demonstrators for and against the treaty are coming to blows. The populace is afraid. The military-industrial complex...
Read More »The anti-democratic tenor of the criticism of Australian policy is troubling
In prior posts, I argued that Australia’s covid policy can be criticized, but that it cannot simply be dismissed on the grounds that it is “authoritarian”. Here I will argue that some criticism of Australian covid policy has a distinct and troubling anti-democracy flavor to it. Tyler Cowen argues that Australia should be investing in rapid testing and pushing harder on vaccines and treatments. Fair enough, especially on vaccines. But then he...
Read More »Polluting the Atmosphere for Free
Coming to a Close?, Quartz, Michael J. Coren & Clarisa Diaz Quartz has an article up on Carbon emissions which I found interesting. It is explaining why natural gas prices are increasing. Taking from the Quartz article, a few segments. The price of carbon has never been higher. In April, a metric ton of carbon in Europe traded above $50 for the first time, kept rising, and smashed through the ceiling set over the last decade. Global carbon...
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