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

Ceci n’est pas une pipe

Death Valley is not experiencing a drought. Neither is the Mojave, the Sahara, nor the Gobi. A drought is an unusually extended period between the occurrence of a regularly occurring event; an anomaly. For example, when it usually rains on a regular basis, then but doesn’t rain for an unusually long period; that period during […]

How Close?

Justices Barrett, Alito, and Thomas have been panhandling. Begging for respect. Turns out that without respect; a Justice is nothing. All six imagined it to be right up there next to Moses, Joseph Smith and those guys; maybe even higher. Didn’t understand that any respect came down from their predecessors, from the legitimacy of their […]

By Any Other Name

Leaders like Lukashenko, Duterte, Erdoğan, Bolsonaro, Orbán, and Trump*; do they indeed represent a global move toward authoritarianism? Or, is there perhaps another explanation? Was there something specific that brought these once titular democracies to such a state of state; a common underlying reason for this lots rise to power? Did the world change, or, […]

Disinformation and the Manipulable

Politicians, preachers, and other charlatans have long known people were manipulable. They had achieved their mastery of the craft of manipulation by observation and practice. By craft, they were con artists. In another sense, they were psychologists before there was such. Before 1860, psychology was a branch of philosophy. A German, Wilhelm Wundt, was one […]

The Case of The Creeping Crud

In her 2020 book ‘Waste’, Catherine Flowers speaks to the practice in Alabama – throughout the South – of keeping the poor and ignorant poor and ignorant so that there would always be a cheap source of labor on hand. In a September 2021 House Budget Committee hearing, a member from neighboring Georgia patiently explained […]

And the Winner is?

Always on the back burner, since 2015 on the front, the battle for most ignorant state is being fought across America; well, across a lot of America. If full-scale war should break out, for the most part, the competing armies will not have far to go.

Lodestar

Time was when the future could be and was read from the tea leaves of the past. Elders, old-timers, and other records could tell us what to expect in the way of weather. That wasn’t so long ago. Today, all we have to go on is the scientific models. The past no longer applies when […]

The Red List

On January 6, 2021, the Honorable Mo Brooks admonished Trump’s ‘Stop The Steal’ crowd to, “… start taking names and kicking ass.” ‘Open Sesame’, Mo; just for you. Beginning with Alabama’s own little theocrat, Kay Ivey; then, Mississippi’s Tate Reeves; then, Tennessee’s Bill Lee, then Missouri’s Mike Parson; then, Texas’s Greg Abbott; then, Florida’s Ron […]

The Recently Disposed

In their testimony before the Committee, all four of the witnesses described the rioters as being supporters of the Recently Disposed one (t·R·D·o). More than one of the four said that many in the crowd told them, the police, that they had come to DC at the invitation of t·R·D·o to stop the steal; and, […]