by Cactusman What Happened to the Political Price for Lying? (Part one of two) James Comey’s recent interview on ABC has resurrected questions about the importance of honesty in public officials. One of the key themes of Comey’s interview, and apparently his soon-to-be-released book, is that Donald Trump is “morally unfit” to be president because, […]
Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office blog also reviewed the WSJ/Citigroup analysis of the Amazon – USPS agreement in the second half of his article, “Fake News, Flawed Analysis, and Bogus Tweets,” April 8 on Angry Bear. As noted in the first half on Steve’s article presented at Angry Bear; Trump’s tweet about the […]
Is the US economy booming? April 2018 update Back in January, I asked if the economy was “booming.” There’s no official definition, but based on my recollection of the two periods I have lived through that felt like booms, the1960s and late 1990s, the two times in my life that the feel of an economic […]
(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Thoughts on Capehart on Kagan I ì’m reading the Washington Post and note one very outstanding op-ed by Catharine Rampell which you should just read. She links to excellent summaries of social science research and notes that Republicans don’t listen to experts and aren’t reality based.But I want to write about […]
February 2018 JOLTS report: positive trend revised away Last month I wrote that the January JOLTS report reflected very positive trends. Today they got revised away. As a refresher, unlike the jobs report, which tabulates the net gain or loss of hiring over firing, the JOLTS report breaks the labor market down into openings, hirings, […]
The OM Wiener award goes to House Speaker Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan can’t just leave, go home, and check with Oscar Mayer to see if he can still drive the OM Wiener Mobile again like he did as a college student. Naaaw, instead he is threating baby boomers with making them pay again for their […]
A thought for Sunday: The Abyss always looks back, Presidential polling edition A point I have made about economic forecasting a number of times is that one can be an excellent forecaster, so long as one is a bug on the wall. Once a significant number of people begin to follow *and act upon* the […]
A Teachable Moment: The Importance of Meta-Learning Today’s New York Times has a fine article by Manil Suri about math education and the development of reasoning skills. Its concluding point is that, while the general contribution of the first to the second is weaker than you might think, math instruction can be improved by bringing the math-reasoning […]
The REAL Trump pee-tape was a urine sampling pyramid scheme. “Whatever happened to Trump neckties?” asks Zane Anthony, Kathryn Sanders and David A. Fahrenthold at the Washington Post, “They’re over. So is most of Trump’s merchandising empire.” Among the products that Trump lent his name to, for a fee, was a vitamin supplement, supposedly custom formulated based […]