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

Khamenei Denounces Rouhani For Negotiating Nuclear Deal

Khamenei Denounces Rouhani For Negotiating Nuclear Deal This has been reported by Juan Cole.  Apparently Supreme Jurisprudent, Ali Khamenei of Iran in a speech to a large number of university students has seriously denounced President Rouhani for having negotiated the JCPOA nuclear agreement with the United States and other powers.  During the negotiations Khamenei played […]

SOCIAL SECURITY, a little bad news (sorta) and a little good news (sorta)

by Dale Coberly The bad news is that we have slipped past the day when we could have saved Social Security from ever reporting “short term actuarial insolvency” by raising the payroll tax one tenth of one percent per year (about a dollar per week). This is only sorta bad because it doesn’t really matter […]

Trump Claims Obstruction of Justice is an Official Duty of the White House

Trump Claims Obstruction of Justice is an Official Duty of the White House Tierney Sneed reports on Trump’s latest obstruction of justice: The Justice Department on Monday issued a legal opinion claiming that Congress could not compel former White House Counsel Don McGahn to testify about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. The opinion was released not […]

Nancy Pelosi is an able tactician, but a poor strategist. She will not save the Republic

Nancy Pelosi is an able tactician, but a poor strategist. She will not save the Republic A couple of years ago I read Andrew Roberts’ tome on Napoleon. As a schoolboy, Napoleon voraciously inhaled everything he could read about military conflict, including several then-recent books suggesting novel tactics. As a young general, he implemented those […]

Sanctions On Iran Are Hitting Hezbollah

Sanctions On Iran Are Hitting Hezbollah That is the top headline, upper right corner front page, of today’s Washington Post, a quite long article by Liz Sly and Suzan Haidamous.  WaPo has been much criticized by Trump and his supporters for alleged “fake news” critical of his leaving the Iran nuclear deal while Iran was […]

TDS vs ODS vs BDS

TDS vs ODS vs BDS This is motivated by running on in the econoblogosphere to Trump supporters who when confronted with hard facts they cannot refute revert to name calling that those stating actual facts are suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS).  I have recently seen it thrown out “liberally.”  What is going on here? […]

Larry Kotlikoff’s Social Security editorial in “The Hill”

by Dale Coberly KOTLICOFF ON THE HILL with Social Security Larry Kotlikoff wrote an editorial that appeared May 14 in “The Hill:”  “Social Security Just Ran a $9 Trillion Deficit and Nobody Noticed“ He cried, “Wolf! Wolf! Social Security ran a 9 Trillion Dollar Deficit last year and nobody noticed!” He went on to explain […]

Justice Stevens Shoots At Gun Decision

Justice Stevens Shoots At Gun Decision Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, now 99 years old, has written a book, The Making of a Justice: My First 94 Years. Apparently he considers the  District of Columbia versus Heller decision to be the worst of all those that was made during his time on the Supreme Court, that […]