Usually, lies are told for purpose. So, in most cases, if we can determine whose purpose is being served, we will know who is behind the lie. Whose interests were being served by the Confederacy during the American Civil War? Sure as heck wasn’t those of the yeomen farmers who did most of the fighting […]
Household debt and the pandemic This is something I used to pay a lot more attention to back around the time of the Great Recession. How stretched were American households in paying their monthly bills? The Federal Reserve publishes a quarterly update tracking this issue. Two of the metrics in that quarterly update are debt […]
Is There No Hope for “Muslim Social Democracy”? Probably not I am afraid. Indeed, this label is a recently cooked up one, to replace an earlier one that used “Islamist” instead of “Muslim.” The group claiming this apparently failing and declining label is the Ennadha Party of Tuinisia, founded in 1981 and still led by […]
Another big event is on the United States horizon, in Alabama, and its occurrence portends a potential seismic shift in the contours of our political parties. Amazon workers at an in Bessemer, Alabama facility are going to vote on unionization. And of course, Amazon opposes unionization. Amazon has a lot at stake if the Bessemer […]
I am going to comment on two smart guys who believe that they disagree about the optimal political strategy for Democrats. Brian Beutler wrote an interesting essay criticizing what he calls “issue polling essentialism”. It includes the text The topic occurred to me after I recorded last week’s Rubicon with my friend Matt Yglesias, where we took different […]
How Do COVID-19 Vaccines Compare?, Kristina Fiore, MedPage Today MedPage Today has a good article detailing each of the approved Covid drugs as of today. The information includes company name, vaccine name, efficacy, trial participation, type of vaccine, dosage, and patient side effects. There is other information which is not necessarily needed for a typical […]
Disposable people are indispensable. Who else would fight the wars? Who would preach? Who would short derivatives? Who would go to court and argue both sides? Who would legislate? Who would sell red hots at the old ball game? For too long disposable people have been misrepresented as destitute, homeless, unemployed, or at best precariously […]
I saw this bit of news on Steven Colbert’s show last night. Seems Nevada’s Democratic Governor thinks tech companies need to be their own town. The thinking is that this is a way to attract business development without spending money. What could go wrong? From the AP news: “Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan […]
Coronavirus dashboard for March 3: as good news on vaccinations accumulates, the Dakotas already appear to be shambling towards herd immunity There is more and more good news on the vaccination front. In addition to the fact that the single-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine has been approved, President Biden has made use of the Defense […]