Tag Archives: politics

Of Memorial Day and Confederate statues Memorial Day is a particularly fitting time to write about the issue of Confederate monuments. That’s because Memorial Day originated as a day set aside to honor the Civil War dead, not just those who fought for the Union, but those on both sides, including those who died in service of the Confederacy.  It was part of the process of magnanimous victory which enabled the country to heal, perhaps epitomized nowhere better...

Some Saudi-US History Given Donald Trump’s new commitment to support military adventurism by Saudi Arabia in Yemen and more generally against Iran, it might be worth reconsidering how this alliance developed. The beginning for Saudi Arabia was in 1744 when a wandering radical cleric, Mohammed bin Abdel-Wahhab met up with a local chieftain, Mohammed bin Saud in the village of Diriyah, whose ruins are now located in the suburbs of the current Saudi Arabian...

I didn’t think they could shock me. Then I read that the Trump OMB made a $2,000,000,000,000 arithmetic mistake Jon Chait explains “One of the ways Donald Trump’s budget claims to balance the budget over a decade, without cutting defense or retirement spending, is to assume a $2 trillion increase in revenue through economic growth. This is the magic of the still-to-be-designed Trump tax cuts. But wait — if you recall, the magic of the Trump tax cuts is also...

Dan here…I noticed several articles in the NYT (here is one forcasting Trump/Mulvaneys’ Budget Proposal 2017, contrasting safety net program cuts with the Medicare/Social Security deficit busting programs. In an aside no less. Here we go again…as if deficit spending reduction was important to Republicans, and Social Security was one of the chief problems. I am reposting Bruce’s last piece on Budget and deficit from 2014. Also see this post Social Security:...

Allan Collinge is the founder of the Student Loan Justice Organization a grassroots citizen’s organization dedicated to returning standard consumer protections to student loans. The group was started in March of 2005 and has focused primarily on research, media outreach, and grassroots lobbying initiatives. located in Washington DC. From time to time Angry Bear has publicized Allan efforts to restore bankruptcy protection for student loan. In a rare...

by Barkley Rosser “It’s The Economy, Stupid!”: The Iranian Presidential Election “It’s the economy, stupid!” quoth James Carville back in 1992, adviser to Bill Clinton during his successful presidential election campaign then. And so quoth Stella Morgana in an informative piece written a few days ago prior to and about the Iranian presidential election as linked to by Juan Cole The Iranian Election: It’s the Economy, Stupid!. For those who have not seen it...

I assume the reader is familiar with the recent violence at the Turkish embassy & Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington DC. “Body guards” (really thugs) brought by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan attacked peaceful demonstrators. It is clear how the fight started, a rather thin not too tall man in a suit attacked. He has a receeding hairline, a mustache and wore a black suit and a dark blue tie. Phillip Bump (of the Washington Post) says...

In the comments section of an earlier post (1/3 of Medicare is Wasted), Maggie Mahar had stated to everyone; “Medicare Does Not Pay for Itself.” This is what I meant by that comment: “For more than a decade the the federal government has borrowed to pay for the rising cost of Medicare. Debt-financing of Medicare will increase sharply as the population over 65 doubles from 2010 to 2030 and the number of beneficiaries over 85—with the greatest medical...

This was initially posted at Angry Bear September 14, 2014 by Maggie Mahar of Health Beat A little history: Dan and I invited Maggie Mahar to write at Angry Bear Blog as I was covering much of the Healthcare debate and Maggie could add much more in-depth knowledge and analysis of healthcare than I could. This is an important post as it gets down to the nitty-gritty of Medicare-For-All, things we need to know, and why it may not work. Maggie Mahar in answer...

Who thinks that Trump is “in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion” ? That is the very hottest quote in the must read Phllip Rucker “analysis” of what is very wrong with the President. I immediately tried to guess who had told Rucker that. The source is “One GOP figure close to the White House “. My first guess was Newt Gingrich (who can be relied upon to stab everyone close to him in the back). However, I now think Rucker made it very clear who...