I have the ultimate authority. President Donald Trump, April 13, 2020 Mt. Trump was built with a shovel. It started with “rapists and thieves,” which was quickly followed by “I like people who weren’t captured.” The dirt pile became a hill and grew into an overwhelming peak. “I got a beautiful letter.” “Mexico is gonna […]
Archives
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The President and the Pandemic
15 Apr 2020
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What is a Model? Data and Covid-19
10 Apr 2020
**This is a follow-up on a previous post about Covid-19 and innumeracy** So, what’s a model? I was not much into model cars or planes as a kid, but I made a few. I had a phase that included extra glue, rubber cement, paints, and brushes. Done well, models are shiny and attractive. Expensive model […]
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Covid-19 & the Costs of Innumeracy
26 Mar 2020
To avoid panic, understand numbers. As we hunker down for the foreseeable future, many Americans are using their newly found free time to scour the world for news of Covid-19. As a story, the pandemic has many prongs, but most of them, at least outside the immediacy and tragedy of struggling patients and medical workers, […]
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Big Tuesday Looms for Democrats
10 Mar 2020
This has been a remarkable fortnight. Between February 29 and March 10, Democratic elites and voters shifted from a large, fluid field toward a frontrunner who appears destined to win the nomination. Joe Biden has emerged as the consensus candidate as he surged ahead in national polling, high profile endorsements, and the delegate count. Bernie […]
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Super Tuesday: Democracy vs. Elitism
03 Mar 2020
Bernie Sanders stands on the edge of seizing the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Facing him down, and loaded for bear, is the Party’s leaders–officers, elected officials, donors, and even former nominees and opponents. These forces now take the form of Joe Biden, upon whom they have finally foisted their mantle. Super Tuesday is the battleground, […]
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The Democrats Go Hard in Vegas
20 Feb 2020
Here are a few scattered thoughts about last night’s entertaining Democratic Debate. There is always a balance between electability and issue or ideological purity. Democrats are confronting it now. In my mind, Sanders and Warren are not electable. Klobuchar and Buttigieg could be. We will know about Bloomberg in the next week. Bloomberg would have […]
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I hope and pray we have heard the death knell of the pre-eminence of the Iowa Caucus, but, for now, it still happened and may be exercising an influence on the New Hampshire Primary, which takes place today. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg tied, at least statistically, in Iowa. Politically, Buttigieg probably won, while Joe […]
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**Over several posts, I hope to look at 1) what the Constitution says about impeachment, 2) presidential impeachments in history, and 3) how President Trump’s actions should be judged in light of the Constitution, history, and other standards frequently brought to bear.** The third presidential impeachment trial unfolds before us. Our Senators will soon cast […]
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**Over several posts, I hope to look at 1) what the Constitution says about impeachment, 2) presidential impeachments in history, and 3) how President Trump’s actions should be judged in light of the Constitution, history, and other standards frequently brought to bear.** Impeachment is often described as the nuclear weapon of the legislative arsenal. Though […]
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President Trump’s impeachment and trial, like everything else with his administration, defies dispassionate analysis. The partisan trenches are deep and the tenets of objectivity bring few rewards. Social media encourages extreme opinions, and more traditional media outlets narrowcast to their ideological adherents. Academia is also a mixed bag of reliability. I can hardly claim to […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach