FDR, faced with America’s worst economic crisis, didn’t know what to do. He threw spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick. Some ideas spawned by his “brain trust” were failures; others, like Social Security, were spectacular successes. Before the economy had recovered, [...]
Archive for August, 2020
August 7th, 2020 - 7:08 pm § in Politics
Joe Arpaio loses another election
Joe Arpaio, 88, the notorious Arizona ex-sheriff pardoned by President Trump, lost a comeback bid in Tuesday’s primary for his old job. Arpaio was voted out of that office in 2016. He ran for U.S. Senate in 2018, but was crushed in the GOP primary, getting only 19% of the vote to Martha McSall[...]
August 7th, 2020 - 6:02 pm § in Politics
GOP accuses Democrats of refusing to negotiate
“The White House is blaming Democrats on Capitol Hill for not reaching a compromise on a new relief package. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows appeared before reporters on short notice Friday morning. Meadows accused Democrats of refusing to negotiate,” Global News, a Canadian ne[...]
Jerry Falwell Jr. is in hot water
Speaking of heat (see preceding article), Jerry Falwell Jr. is taking plenty of it for the photo below, which he posted on social media. Falwell (who is married, at least for now) is taking “indefinite” leave from his job as president of Liberty University, a conservative evangelical col[...]
August 6th, 2020 - 6:51 pm § in Misc.
Sociologists: Trump’s appeal to racism is landing with a dull thud
A popular narrative that Republican voters’ support of Trump is motivated by racism isn’t true, two Columbia University sociologists who’ve studied the data wrote in an NBC News op-ed published on Aug. 6, 2020. And this, they say, also helps explain why Trump’s recently-adopt[...]
New York’s AG sues to dissolve NRA
New York State’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against the NRA in state court on Aug. 6, 2020, seeking to dissolve the gun-rights organization after investigating its finances for 18 months. Read story here. The state alleges top executives siphoned off millions of dollars for their persona[...]
August 5th, 2020 - 11:32 pm § in Donald Trump, Foreign Affairs
Nuclear Taboo in the era of Trump
The Nuclear Taboo is the title of a book by Nina Tannenwald, an academic who specializes in “global security issues, efforts to control weapons of mass destruction, and human rights and the laws of war,” according to her profile here. She works at Brown University. Other people like her [...]
August 5th, 2020 - 8:12 pm § in Misc.
BOOM!!!
With at least 137 dead, including an American, hundreds still missing, and more than 5,000 injured, the Beirut port terminal explosion of Aug. 5, 2020, grabbed the world’s attention. In September 2013, a cargo ship named MV Rhosus, owned by a Cyprus-based Russian businessman, sailed from the B[...]
Public health officials are quitting because of threats, harassment
From NBC’s Today Show, Aug. 5, 2020: [...]
August 5th, 2020 - 5:04 pm § in Economics
Higher grocery prices aren’t your imagination
“Grocery prices have skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic,” CNBC says (read story here). I’ll bet you’ve noticed. I have. I’m talking about grocery prices, not your total food spending, which may be less if you ate out a lot until Covid-19 closed [...]