Tag Archives: politics

Meet Brad Raffensperger. Take a moment and listen to all three clips. The first is at Crooks and Liars. In an interview with 11Alive reporter Brendan Keefe, the reporter asked Raffensperger directly: “If the president hadn’t tweeted, and tweeted something that was false, would we have ever heard that call recording?”Brad: “No, it was a private conversation as far as I was concerned. He broke privacy when he put out a tweet, but then his tweet...

I am not sure what AB Commenters and readers see on TV, in the news, or on the blogosphere. The news I am reading is surreal. I keep hoping we wakeup from this nightmare and things are normal again. Then too, what is normal? One more event date to experience past January 6th, the inauguration. Will trump even attend, will he leave quietly, or will we still experience more raucous behavior? Trump going golfing on inauguration day would be nice....

During the call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger , Trump cited a number of voting fraud – conspiracy theories. The State of Georgia Voting System Implementation manager, Gabriel Sterling debunked each theory as being inaccurate or false on Monday afternoon, January 4th. Its Monday and speaking in front of a poster that had many of the debunked claims Trump mentioned, Sterling starts off; “It’s whack-a-mole again, it’s...

Because it had always been that way, none could think differently. From time immortal, labor was that what did much of the work of production. There is now a generation, maybe two, on this earth, most of whom will never know labor; will seldom see it performed. The energy for their world will not come from the sweat of the back’s of coal miners. So, if it wasn’t (production = material + labor) what was the real equation for production? The input was...

History Professor Heather Cox Richardson at Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, Boston College writes a daily(?) news letter (Letters from an American) which she describes as; “a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.”...

Who Has Been Warring Against Christmas?  Where I am the Third Day of Christmas is just finishing with the news that Grinch Trump has ended his own brief War on Christmas and is signing the Covid-19 relief bill, thereby reinstating unemployment benefits for 14 million people although they’ll miss a week of payments, as well as preventing millions more from being evicted from their rental housing units, along with the Omnibus spending bill so the...

Trump As The Grinch Who Stole Christmas  So the Congress struggled for months after the House passed a $3.3 trillion followup Covid relief bill, which Senate Majority Leader McConnell blocked and kept blocking.  House Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin kept negotiating and coming up with this or that proposal, only to mostly have McConnell shoot it down, or sometimes Pres. Trump himself doing so.  Finally after the election, and with...

Here is a simple thought experiment on the use of scarce vaccine supplies.Suppose that we had tested the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines with one dose per person and discovered that they were 85% effective at preventing covid-19. However, due to an administrative error, we gave some people two doses, and when we analyzed the data it turned out that a two-dose regimen was 95% effective at preventing covid-19. Only 200 million doses of vaccine will be...

As a bit of a comparison, the 2018 Distribution of Federal Payroll and Income Taxes shows 761,000 household taxpayers making up 4 tenths of 1% of all taxpayers having the highest income in the US. I am not sure if we can get it as finite as what India shows in wealth. With a population of ~1.3 billion, the wealth of 831 individuals amounts to 25% of the nation’s GDP. The 831 are calling the shots for farmers in India and the nation. “Millions of...

MacRumors: Apple’s New Privacy-Focused Tracking Prompt Begins Appearing for iOS 14 Users As a privacy measure for their customers, Apple will be requiring developers of iPhone and iPad “apps” to request permission from users to track their activity across other apps and websites for personalized advertising purposes starting early next year. iOS 14.4 should be publicly released in January or February. Facebook pulled out the usual canard; “They...