Sesame Street’s Big Bird Gets a Covid Vaccination After Sesame Street’s Big Bird tweeted that he received the COVID-19 vaccine, Sen. Ted Cruz and other right-wing media figures criticized the character for promoting “propaganda” to children. Sesame Street launched a promotional campaign during the past week after the COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for ages 5-11, […]

Anti-Racism and Democracy in Our Schools  It’s generally conceded that Terry McAuliffe’s statement “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” was a big blunder that contributed to his defeat last week.  The context was a debate with his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, who had used his party’s playbook on Critical […]

Appears that Parents’ Rights is the Republican Party’s latest wedge issue. My how they do love wedge issues. And, this one goes so well with their States Rights. Lot in common, the two. States’ Rights allowed a state to keep doing the same old. Parents’ Rights give parents the right to appropriate their child’s life. […]

Dan Little has a post up at Understanding Society on what authoritarianism might look like in the United States.  The whole thing is well worth reading, but here is one part: This seems about right, though of course speculative, but I have doubts about the big business piece.  Yes, some business interests will be close […]

If you will What if Jimmy Carter had been reelected in 1980; Walter Mondale had been elected in 1984 and reelected in 1988; and, Al Gore elected in 2000 and reelected in 2004? We would be at least twenty years ahead of where we are now in re Climate Change. Central America would not be […]

Political declaration of independence (reprise), Infidel753, Blogger and Commenter I know Infidel from Crooks and Liars where he would moderate Mike’s Blog Round Up and feature Angry Bear from time to time. Infidel writes some pretty darn good posts on his own site of the same name. This particular post is about the Virginia election […]

“Constitutional Sheriffs” and “Posse Comitatus,” Econospeak, Barkley Rosser  In the mid-1970s when I was finishing my Ph.D. diss and also working for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in its Water Quality Bureau, where I was mostly dealing with sewer systems issues, the Wisconsin branch of the Posse Comitatus was attacking and “arresting” individuals from […]

Layoffs, wages, and labor costs: three measures of the labor Boom, New Deal democrat Initial claims declined another 14,000 this week to 269,000, and the 4 week average declined 15,000 to 284,750, both new pandemic lows: For the past 50 years, initial claims have only been at these levels briefly at the peak of the […]

There were two pieces of good news yesterday:  the big job gains in October, perhaps due to the waning of the delta-fueled covid-spike, and the new Pfizer covid pill, which is reported to be 89% effective at preventing severe illness and death. Coming after the demoralizing mid-term election, this is indeed very welcome.  But welcome […]

September Trade Deficit Rises 11.2% to a Record High on Lower Exports of Precious Metals, Oil & Oil Products and Capital Goods, MarketWatch 666, Commenter and Blogger RJS Our trade deficit rose by 11.2% in September as the value of our exports decreased and value of our imports increased…the Commerce Dept report on our international trade […]