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

“Preserve Our Post Office, Before It’s Too Late”

The Postal Service is under assault and it is time to do everything we can to protect the integrity of one of our greatest national assets. Retired U.S. Postmaster Mark Jamison writes at Save The Post Office Blog . Mark serves as an advisor, resident guru, and regular contributor to “Save the Post Office.” His […]

Privatization

Fear and Loathing On the 17 July 2020, episode of Counterspin, Fair’s Janine Jackson interviewed True North Research’s Lisa Graves about attacks on the US Postal Service. ‘A Combination of Forces Puts Our Postal Service at Grave Risk‘ Jackson leads off talking about the recent appointment of Louis DeJoy, a big Trump donor, to be […]

Just Some Conversation

“Republicans finally get “death panels,” Hullabaloo, Tom Sullivan, July, 26, 2020 Dr. Jose Vasquez, the health officer for Starr County, Texas located on the US-Mexico border “The situation is desperate.” At the only hospital in the county, over 50% of patients are testing positive for the COVID-19 virus — 40 new coronavirus cases were reported […]

Managing A Zoom Conference

Managing A Zoom Conference As of the end of this week, I completed chairing the 30th annual international conference of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences, with 54 participants from around the world.  It basically went well, and it was kind of cool to make introductory remarks at 8 AM during […]

School openings need….

Via Diana Ravitch’s blog on a Time magazine article What the U.S. Can Learn from 3 Countries About Reopening: TIME Magazine just published a story about school reopening in Denmark, South Korea, and Israel, with lessons for the U.S. Lesson #1 from Denmark: Get the virus under control before reopening schools. Unlike Denmark, the United States is bungling […]

Improvement slows in initial claims; expect recent job growth to slow as well

Improvement slows in initial claims; expect recent job growth to slow as well   A preliminary note: this morning’s report on housing permits and starts showed improvement across the board in June, although the absolute levels are no better than the low points of 2017 and late 2018-early 2019: I’ll have more at Seeking Alpha […]

Suppose the Democrats win the Presidency and the Senate in 2020 . . .

Given the state of the race, people are starting to ask what this would mean for the future of progressive politics in America. James Kwak is gloomy: I think the policy solutions are obvious . . . The problem, of course, is the politics—not just President Trump and the Republicans, but a Democratic Party controlled […]

Weird News

Blacks Should Be More Afraid Of Other Blacks Than Cops Rudy Giuliani joined Fox and Friends to trash Mayor de Blasio and decree that Black men should be more afraid of other Black men than of his cop buddies murdering black men with racist intent. Echoing Trump’s “law and order” idiocy and hatred of the […]

“Speechless – Trump White House is now muzzling, bypassing, and kneecapping the CDC,”

Epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding . . . “No other ways to spin this.” Common Dreams, “Warnings of Possible Cover-Up in Progress” I was hoping I could get the clip of Doctor Wen discussing what the Trump administration has done in its end run around the CDC. I couldn’t C&P the embed code as it is […]

Americans should “adapt”

to coronavirus, like the famous pioneers who “had to turn to cannibalism” Rush Limbaugh, Media Matters for America, July 14, 2020 Something to sleep on tonight by our faithful idiot Rush. “In the Spanish flu — ’17, ’18, ’19, 1917, ’18 — much death. Do you know that there was not one mention of it […]