Tag Archives: politics

Steve Hutkins at Save the Post Office Another federal court has ruled against the Postal Service. The United States Postal Service is now 0 for 6. In the case of Richardson v Trump, Judge Emmet Sullivan has ordered a preliminary injunction putting limits on postal operations in the run-up to the election. (Sullivan had also issued a preliminary injunction in Vote Forward v DeJoy.)  In his Opinion Sullivan writes, “The Court shall grant Plaintiffs’...

When did Israel Become “America’s Best Ally”?  In the recent US Vice Presidential debate, the current US VP, Mike Pence dropped a throwaway line that until nobody has noticed until now. He labeled Israel as America’s “best ally,” or a term meaning the same thing. I think that from at least 1917 the “best ally” of the US was either Canada or the UK. Under Trump, both of those alliances were downgraded, although they were loyal to us for all that time. So...

“The New England Journal of Medicine Breaks two centuries of precedent to take an electoral stand,” Medpage Today, Shannon Firth, October 9, 2020 Angry Bear Readers: I am stealing the NEJM’s title as it states all of the issues we are faced with today with the Covid Pandemic. “Dying in a Leaderless Vacuum.” The NEJM is not known for being political. Yet today, the NEJM is taking a stand on what is happening in the United States for the first time in 200...

Voting in a Time of Covid: A Question about Judicial “Originalism” The originalist theory of legal interpretation holds that judges, in reviewing the implementation of a statute, should be guided by the “plain meaning” of its language at the time it was adopted.  This is in opposition to the notion of a “living law”, whose interpretation should evolve as the conditions it addresses evolves.  For instance, originalists are appalled by Supreme Court...

Regeneron Seeks Emergency Approval per trump’s miracle recovery and subsequent endorsement. Biotech company Regeneron moved Wednesday to apply for emergency approval for an experimental antibody treatment praised by President Trump. “Subsequent to our discussions with regulatory authorities, we have submitted a request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for our REGN-COV2 investigational antibody combination...

Le dénialité est trop cher. Denial isn’t specific to Americans, though we do seem to be better at it than most. We are now at least 30 years into severe climate change, yet 30-40% of Americans are in denial; assumedly, still looking for, waiting for, a return to normal. Not only are we not going back to the way it was 30 years ago; under the best of scenarios, no one of the next 5 generations will see the weather and climate of 1990 again. Under less than...

Administration Health Care Executive Order, Health Affairs Blog, Katie Keith, September 2020 Trump believes he took action on Healthcare with an Executive Order protecting people with pre-existing conditions and also by eliminating surprise billing. He did not.  On September 24, 2020, D.J. Trump issued a health care executive order (EO) focusing on protecting people with preexisting conditions and eliminating surprise medical bills. The Executive Order...

In 2020, the “Blue Wall” is holding At 10 a.m. Eastern time we’ll get the JOLTS report for August. I plan on posting on that later today, but in the meantime here’s an update on the Midwest “Blue Wall” that failed in the 2016 election. Below are the smoothed poll results for Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin through yesterday: Figure 1 Despite the wide margins in all 4 States, Nate Silver gives Trump an 11% chance of winning...

I am one of those losers and suckers who was in the military from 1968 to 1974. As my wife of 49 years would tell you, I came out of the Corp nuts so bad I told her never to get back in bed with me unless you wake me up first. I lost friends like most of us did then. It still bothers me from time to time, I was not there for them. To have this president belittle the loss of them plagues me. They were good people. This is worth listening to and I hope you...

In economics we have the concept of “revealed preference” that simply states that you do not pay attention to what an individual claims to prefer. Rather, you pay attention to what they actually do. President Trump just elected to go to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment of his COVID-19 symptoms. He could have elected to go to any hospital in the country, but he choose to go to the most purely socialist medical center in the...