Once again, in an essential election, African Americans came to the rescue. In the Virginia election earlier this month, whites were 67% of all voters but only 42% of whites voted for Ralph Northam for governor. Even though he seldom invoked Trump’s name, Ed Gillespie, the Republican, ran on a Trumpian platform, and 57% of … [Read more…]
In case you missed conservative George Will’s column yesterday, here are a couple of excerpts. Evangelical Christians who embrace Moore are serving the public good by making ridiculous their pose as uniquely moral Americans, and by revealing their leaders to be especially grotesque specimens of the vanity—vanity about virtue—that is curdling politics. Another public benefit … [Read more…]
President Trump is making the federal judiciary more right-wing and less qualified. Trump may not be getting much legislation passed; however, he is adversely affecting the course of American history with his appointment of federal judges. In addition to flagrantly blocking President Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, the Republicans in the Senate blocked … [Read more…]
Have you ever had the feeling that people care more for animals than other human beings? Well, your feelings were correct. A couple of studies have demonstrated that humans love dogs more than people. To test this point researchers in England printed two advertisements, with both posing the same question, “Would you give six dollars … [Read more…]
“Voodoo Economics” is what George H.W. Bush called Ronald Reagan’s economic plan when he was running against Reagan for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1980. What Bush called voodoo economics is more commonly called “trickle-down economics.” Trickle-down economics is based on the unproven theory that benefits for the wealthy trickle down to everyone … [Read more…]
I recorded but have not yet watched the recent television series by Ken Burns, The Vietnam War, therefore I did not see the way this film equated the shootings at Jackson State University with the shootings at Kent State University. At the time Kent State was considered a national tragedy, but Jackson State was not … [Read more…]
In case you have wondered about the psychological well-being of President Donald Trump, answers have been provided in a new book just published last week, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. In this book, 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assess the president. From the summary of the book: Since the start of Donald … [Read more…]
Richard Thaler, an American economist and founder of the field of behavioral economics, just won the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Committee awarded him the prize for his research using psychology and economics to understand how people make economic decisions. For generations, mainstream economics had used rational choice theory, which assumes that people make decisions that … [Read more…]
The NRA has won. For years the American public wanted gun control and could not get it, apparently because the National Rifle Association (NRA), the arm of the gun industry owned congress. According to a Pew Research Center Report, in the year 2000, only 29% of the public felt it was more important to protect … [Read more…]
A reader of Diana Ravitch’s blog, GregB, offered this commentary on “the perversion of the Second Amendment”: Today’s event prompted me to look through some old notes I made after reading Henry Adams’ “History of the United States During the Madison Administration” a few years ago: Adam’s account is dominated by a history of the … [Read more…]