Tag Archives: politics

The disastrous German Emperor who was a doppelganger to Donald Trump: Kaiser Wilhelm You know the drill. It’s Sunday, so I write about whatever else is on my mind. I am presently reading Miranda Carter’s “George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm,” her 2009 biography of the three grandchildren of Queen Victoria who were respectively, the King of England, Tsar of Russia, and Kaiser of Germany at the time of the outbreak of World War 1. I was gobsmacked by her...

This post “America’s allies should respond to steel tariffs with targeted sanctions on the Trump Organization” by Matthew Yglesias is brilliant (even though he is mainly agreeing with the prior brilliant article by Scott Gilmore “Trade sanctions against America won’t work. Sanctioning Trump himself might.” The proposal is so brilliant and the case for it so clear, that, I think, each title is enough to convey the idea. Yglesias elaborates while quoting...

When Big Sur Met Silicon Valley: Remembering The Santa Cruz Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Collective I spent Memorial Day weekend with extended family members in Santa Cruz, near where many of them live, but with none of them right there  It was most pleasant, but explaining the nature of the place and the University of California branch there led me to think more deeply about the place.  I am not aware of anybody else saying this before, but it struck me...

Updated This past weekend, I was in North Adams, Ma.  We did some exploring of the area and came across a company started in 1837 that still exists today in Buckland.   It no longer produces there, as it has moved to Westfield, Ma.  It’s only move in 178 years.   However, it has not survived the trend of Capital Investment companies.  Though, their being purchased does not appear to be a bad thing based on their website. This picture I took is why I am...

Carlo Cottarelli was asked to try to form an Italian government by President Sergio Mattarella. There is no chance that Cottarelli will obtain the confidence of Parliament (parties including a majority of deputies have brought up the possibility of impeaching Mattarella for nominating Cottarelli). Mattarella is using his extraordinary powers to fight populist nationalists who disrespected the Euro. Cottarelli is an odd choice for an anti-anti-globalist —...

(literally the surrender of Conte but a reference to The Big Gundown). updated to comply with the Italian criminal code (which forbids vilifying the President of the Republic) I have to write about Italian politics, because everyone is (and I live in Rome) but you don’t have to read it. I will try one paragraph of background. In the last election angry Italians gave a very thin majority to two extremist parties the movimento 5 stell and La Lega Nord is...

Memorial Day 2018 For all those, of whatever race, creed, color, or nationality, who gave their lives so that government of the People, by the People, and for the People shall not perish from the Earth: < Gettysburg National Cemetery Antietam National Cemetery Arlington National Cemetery May they rest in peace.

Regulation: A Gut Check How do we get the word out that our underlying conception of how regulations should be designed and enforced needs to change? The New York Times has an ominous article about the overuse of antibiotics by the livestock industry and its risks for animal health and ours.  Flooding our digestive system with these drugs damages the gut microbiome we depend on for nutrition and waste processing, and it promotes the evolution of...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Charles Gaba reviews the three leg stool necessary to support Healthcare and why each of those legs are necessaryfor healthcare to be important today. Charles reviews Enrollee Responsibility, Career Responsibility, and Government Responsibly (the three legs) necessary to support Healthcare in the US, explains how each Republican bill has or would have impacted the ACA, […]

Iran Responds to Plan B Juan Cole reports that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini has responded to Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and Pompeo’s Plan B 12 demands with 6 demands for Europe: 1) condemn the US withdrawal, 2) stop pressing Iran on missile development, 3) criticize any further US boycotts, 4) undo damage to Iran economy of boycotts especially to buy any oil not able to be exported because of them, 5) support financing of Iran...