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Monthly Archives: June 2015

Justice Roberts (and Kennedy too) gives the Republicans a gift

Today’s Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare subsidies was precisely what most Congressional Republicans wanted, except for the precious few true believers among them. They now have the best of both worlds. They can complain bitterly about the decision, thus pleasing their base, without any risk of electoral fallout at the hands of those who would […]

Bowdoin man makes good

The folks at the National Review, who specialize in giving racism a (very thin) veneer of intellectual respectability, have set their sights on DeRay McKesson. Here’s the intro: Meet DeRay McKesson: Bowdoin ’07, a former Minneapolis-area school administrator — and now the public face of “Black Lives Matter.” Imagine Al Sharpton, circa the Crown Heights […]

A corollary

Upton Sinclair once said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Self evidently true. I believe I have discovered an equally obvious corollary to Sinclair’s observation: It is easy to get a man to believe something, when his salary depends on his believing […]

History rhymes

Read this article before proceeding. If you find it a bit complicated or opaque, I think I can help by defining a few terms and giving a simple explanation of what’s going on here. “Regulatory Capital Relief” refers to a method currently utilized by banks to skirt the Dodd-Frank requirement that they keep enough real […]

The rich are different than you and me

Polling proves it, just check out this article on Kos. Now, what is interesting about this is that on almost every question, the rich truly are different from you and me (considering you and me collectively). It would not be a stretch to say that they are more selfish and self-centered, with all that leavened […]

Having their cake, and eating it too

In this day and age, many a time honored adage has been proven untrue, among them that referred to in the title of this post. Against all reason, it appears that Hank Greenberg, the guy who drove AIG into the ground, will be getting a multi-billion dollar payday, because the American government bailed out his […]

Word for the day: Sphexishness

If you’re a Paul Krugman fan, you have no doubt read more than one column or blog post about the fact that the right refuses to learn from experience. I think the latest example he cited is the failure of Sam Brownback’s Kansas “experiment”. That experiment has decidedly failed, but Sam and the rest of […]

Hillary tips her hand

Hillary Clinton and the other Democratic candidates are vying for the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers. The fix is probably in, because the leader of the AFT is a Hillary supporter, but questions remain. Per usual, no one actually knows where Hillary stands on issues critical to teachers, such as the charter school […]

Friday Night Rant

For one reason or another I’ve had no time for blogging this week, so the links to various items of interest (to me, at least) have stacked up on my Pinboard, awaiting comment. So, this post will be devoted to various and disparate hobbyhorses of mine. First up, the folks at Disney are following in […]

A novel idea: give the people what they want

So, it seems that Jeb Bush doesn’t know how many years the lower 99 have to work before getting their share of crumbs from the table, though he knows he wants to increase the number of years and decrease the number of crumbs: If you missed Face the Nation on Sunday, you missed Jeb Bush […]