I have tried to resist Fisking this op-ed by Ross Douthat, but I can’t resist. Whole post after the jump to avoid lowering AngryBear relevance index.

by Mike Kimel “Naskh” I think it was sometime in the late 90s when I first heard someone say that Reagan could never be elected to anything at the time as a Republican. This was because the Republican Party had tacked so far to the right in a decade that many who worshipped Reagan would […]

Nancy Altman reminds us that Social Security is NOT off the table for Republicans via this post Republicans Are Killing Social Security One Tiny Service Cut at a Time at Slate: Republicans have made no secret of their long-standing desire to destroy Social Security as we know it. Indeed, Sen. Marco Rubio revealed just before Christmas that congressional Republicans […]

Trade was a significant factor in the weak GDP report today and as usual when this happens you see many comments that do not understand why imports are a negative in calculating GDP. We do not directly calculate GDP.  Rather, we calculate consumption and adjust that for trade and inventories to obtain GDP indirectly.  To […]

Parsing the Poland Problem Paradox: Local Versus National Outcomes As argued in numerous posts here, we have seen an apparently emerging disconnect between economic conditions and political outcomes in a variety of nations, with anti-immigrant or more generally nationalist or populist parties with authoritarian tendencies gaining strength in many nations despite apparently improving or even […]

A note on December existing home sales First of all, sorry for the light posting this week.  There’s not much news until tomorrow and Friday, and yesterday was a travel day.  So….. While existing home sales are about 90% of the entire housing market, they are the least important economically, because of their much more […]

Is Trump’s Washing Machine Tariff To Punish South Korea For Being Too Friendly With North Korea? I have seen nobody claim this, and this may simply be a matter of collateral damage, as Trump has officially approved of the recent openings related to the forthcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea, especially since South Korean President […]

Recent increased interest rates probably won’t derail housing In the last couple of weeks, long term interest rates have moved significantly higher.  As of yesterday, the 10 year bond closed at roughly 2.66%, its highest yield in 3 1/2 years.  If this move is sustained for a few months, I expect it to have an […]

McConnell is a weasel. He has sold out his own by making promises and then reneging on them like he did with Collins. He makes promises to Democrats and then reverses his stance laying the blame on them. Over at Washington Monthly, the writers think Schumer needs to up his game. Lets ask the question […]