Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Pence Makes Deciding Vote Allowing States to Defund Planned Parenthood

Second time Pence has cast the deciding vote in the Senate. Last VP to do so was Cheney in 2008. VP Pence has made it no secret he is opposed to allowing women the right to decide on having an abortions. While in Congress, Pence sponsored the first bill to defund Planned Parenthood in 2007 […]

Crazification Factor Smashed

Kung Fu Monkey has a sad. Paul Ryan has totally crushed his crazification factor h/t Kerry Eleveld This issue has made Paul Ryan into the most unpopular politician in the country. At the start of the Trump administration he had a 33% approval rating, with 43% of voters disapproving of him. Now his approval has […]

Working class and Dems

by Peter Dorman   (originally published at Econospeak) The Intersectionality that Dare Not Speak Its Name The New York Times ran a Nate Cohn piece today that epitomizes the way conventional liberals spin American politics.  On the one hand we have the turnout and voting preferences of people of color—blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans.  On the other […]

Blinded by the Right — Literally

Patrick Ruffini tweeted a graph showing a break in the trend of health care cost inflation with the ironic comment “The “Affordable” Care Act sure has bent the cost curve.” In the graph he posted, it is broken not bent. h/t @ChrisDeLong_ The trick is that the graph starts in 1996 & includes college tuition […]

How Much Crime Do Illegal Immigrants Commit?

You probably never heard of SCAAP, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.  But I expect it will be showing up in the news a lot pretty soon. This is what it does: The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, administers SCAAP, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of […]