Tag Archives: politics

December 17, 2023, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson It seems that former president Donald Trump is aligning his supporters with a global far-right movement to destroy democracy.  On Saturday, in Durham, New Hampshire, Trump echoed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s attacks on immigrants, saying they are “poisoning the blood of our country”—although two of his three wives were immigrants—and quoted Russian president Vladimir...

J.P. at J.P. McJefferson blog took up a rather interesting conversation with AI/ChatGPT. J.P. McJefferson: Chatting With AI On Better Government, jpmcjefferson.blogspot.com. ME What ideas do you have for improving U.S. governmental decision-making? ChatGPT Improving U.S. governmental decision-making is a multifaceted challenge that involves addressing various aspects of the political process. Here are some ideas that could contribute...

Open Threads are created for people to have conversations which may not fit in with topical posts . . . a comment which may be off topic. I usually offer up one topic to start a conversation. Many think it is ok to abandon a nation threatened by a global threat in the form of Russia. Or it could be a threatening China, etc. intimidating other countries. J.P. Jefferson sums it up rather well. The absurdity of mixing three distinctively different...

Controversial? My Background? XMarine Sergeant E5 served 68-71. Not an 0311. Was made a Sergeant a couple of months into my third year. Excellent shot with M14. Served during the Vietnam years when we were doing most of the fighting. US pulls out and South Vietnam collapses. US assists Afghanistan in fighting. Does most of the fighting and trains their military. Trump plans a pullout and Biden does it. Afghanistan collapses. Russia attacks...

Jobless claims: good news all around  – by New Deal democrat This was one of the best weeks as to jobless claims all year. Initial claims declined -17,000 to 202,000, a tie for the 2nd lowest number in 10 months. The four week average declined -7,750 to 213,250. With the usual one week delay, continuing claims rose 20,000 to 1.876 million: Even more importantly for forecasting purposes, the YoY% changes both for the weekly number and the...

Having lived in Michigan for twenty-seven plus years, we became aware of PFAS in the surrounding water and land towards the later part of the time period. Much of it was due to the closure or abandonment of businesses in and around the area. Some of the lakes nearby were impacted by land runoff from these sites. Warnings were posted about not eating the fish caught from these lakes. Fortunately, our well was not impacted by it. Michigan is number...

In “2022 Overpayment to Medicare Advantage? Somewhere between 22% and 35%,” Angry Bear, we featured Kip Sullivan’s article, “Medicare Advantage is a money grab by big insurers,” Minnesota Reformer. Besides his own words on the topic, he also used data from MA Overpayment Report, Physicians for a National Health Plan report. Joel led me to this article which I am going to tackle again MA Overpayment Report (pnhp.org) in greater detail and brokn...

Eugenics is the practice of arranging reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Setting aside who gets to decide which human traits are desirable and undesirable, we simply don’t know enough about the genetic basis for things like industriousness, fidelity, thrift, honesty and countless other human behaviors to pursue a selective breeding program to enhance the frequency of...

I am probably going to anger some, a few I hope, as to my stance on the Kate’s rights to determine what she needs to do given the baby she is carrying will die. Kate has already gone to Texas court to gain permission to abort. A permission she should not need in the first place. As the Texas Tribune (December 7, 2023) cites: “For the first time in at least 50 years, a judge has intervened to allow an adult woman to terminate her pregnancy.”...

Infidel753, Don’t worry about the polls — yet, Infidel753 Blog I’ve previously discussed (scroll down a bit) why disagreeable poll results about next year’s election are not grounds for despair about the likely outcome.  In brief, while polling averages are usually a good indicator of what the public is thinking at a given moment, they don’t have much predictive value this far in advance of the election. As I mentioned in that post, given the...