Notice what you do NOT see on the BLS website at present. There is no illegal (Hatch Act) blaming of the Democrats for the shutdown.

Former frequent Republican voter here ... People like Bernie and AOC are the ones with the guts to stand up to the GOP's naked attempts to reshape America in ways that remove basic health care and other rights from America's working class as they reinforce the dominance of billionaire oligarchs.

Only the best people. What did Hegseth offer the assembled leadership of the US military?" A lot of "verbal incontinence" from a "punk" who "hectored" them about military preparedness and tactics despite never mastering ranger school or getting past major and command of a company.

Who Hegseth thinks he is ... www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS5y...

I killed my online WaPo subscription when Bezos used specious "neutrality" claims to neuter his editorial board practically on election eve, showing who he worked for. I still got their whiny emails asking me to come back until today, when I finally hit unsubscribe. Saying "fuck off" felt good.

And this is on FOX news! If the Dems come to power, these attorneys likely will face career penalties including disbarment or worse if they pursue a spurious case. Following orders can have consequences. Refusing, and being dismissed, may be the best career choice on strictly self-interest grounds.

William & Mary Economics is hiring a tenured Associate or Full Professor to serve as the next Director of William & Mary’s Public Policy program. We invite established scholars with leaderships skills and interests to apply for this exciting position. www.wm.edu/as/economics/

I await the next presidential order barring the teaching of the subversive “theory” of evolution.

He is awesome at condensing important issues into a short clip, highlighting the main themes and the main players in the drama, and doing it in a way that motivates participation, helps people to see themselves in the narrative, and inspires hope. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZDW...

Yep, as I have been saying for months now. If the Democrats do come to power in 2026 and 2028, the abuses of this administration will be investigated, and people who have behaved in illegal and unethical ways will be held to account. This isn't a threat, it's a promise.

The GOP, America's party of efficient government ..... GSA walks back mass layoffs of its federal buildings workforce marylandmatters.org/2025/09/23/g...

How to unite instead of dividing.

Alexei says "play with me!" Happy #caturday ...

Little did I know that this was the same type of (vintage) rifle used in the assassination. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Can Virginia joint the Northeast Public Health Collaborative? Can @abigailspanberger.com build this into her campaign? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/n...

Why is this so rare in public life?

I saw that a Canadian journalist was fired from their public broadcaster for blathering about Jewish control using the standard tropes I remember from my childhood, back when Caligula was emperor. Among other stuff, she claimed that "Jews run the big cities, so I checked what cities have ...

In years gone by, if major medical societies and insurance groups told the American public to ignore the ignorant misinformation coming out of government health agencies, this would have been an immense election-swinging news event. This shows how much the Republican Party has degraded our politics.

A question to @abigailspanberger.com. When you are elected, could you re-post the deleted signs on STATE land at the entrance to the Manassas Battlefield Park? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/c...

Challenge to Democrats. Learn how to campaign like @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social Challenge to Democratic leadership. Get behind this guy or get out. In my own politics, I'm fairly centrist. But I can get behind this approach to politics. This is how to win, and how to win with your head held high.

A reminder: Republicans are the crazies about trade at present. To them, trade is a zero-sum global competition -- win/lose, not win/win. Ask Navarro. But in the past, the Democratic party was very parochial on trade. Kudos to the people who can identify the subjects in these old cartoons.

Yeah, spot on, several years ago. "World building" lies stay ahead of the truth on the Internet. This is not a bug. It's a feature.

NYTimes: But both sides do it! 🙄 Calling @nytpitchbot.bsky.social

Yet another vindication of my cancellation of my WaPo subscription back when Bezos commanded the paper to break recent precedent and not endorse a candidate in 2024. Another talented writer shakes the dust off of her sandals and departs. I don't need the billionaires' political filters on my news.

It's #caturday, and I made a tasty filet dinner for my spouse! Alexei approved! I cut a few small tidbits for him. He graciously accepted them.

If it turns out that the person who killed Charlie Kirk was radicalized even farther right than the MAGA norm, this offers us another example of why apostasy is often the most serious transgression within cults, religious or otherwise.

Well articulated. I do not teach either of my classes -- international trade, the economics of higher education -- (yeah, odd mix, I know) as an "every opinion equally valid" free for all. I structure the class content so students see where the serious debate is occurring.

This is not a news organization. These are not journalists. This is a tabloid of the most despicable and disreputable sort.

As good journalists, the WSJ will surely offer a public apology and a full retraction of their breathless story about LGBTQ symbols. I also expect that they will institute an internal audit of how that story progressed through the editorial process so that that kind of, ah, error won't happen again.

“Most pediatricians in the U.S. have never seen a child with SSPE because we’ve been vaccinating kids against measles for decades." We'll see more cases like this over the next decade as herd immunity vanishes and rising numbers of active measles cases expose children too young to be vaccinated.

For reasons that I can't fully explain, my subconscious brought up an old story my father told me about his time as a GI in Italy in 1944-45. I think it has something to do with hearing about a bolt action weapon that was used recently. The memory just flooded back. In April of '45, as the war was

Damn, he's good at speaking directly to an audience of lay people. He can also stop any reporter who wants to challenge him, but who lacks the background in economics and statistics to really press him. Instead, her challenge just allowed him to make his point more persuasively with another example.

Universities with resources should look to Texas and Florida for talented and mobile faculty and administrators!

The professional staff at the BLS have collectively laid down a marker.

This is how to campaign! 😅

I am cursed to live in ... interesting times. That's it. That's the post.

All the best people ...

Ukraine's strategic air war on Russian energy is generating a panicked response. I wonder if anyone in the Russian military has told Vlad that the Kremlin is well within the range of the Flamingo missiles that Ukraine is beginning to mass produce. Probably not. Dangerous to antagonize a dictator.

If only a public health scientist could overhear all the private conversations among Fox-addled Republican men ... www.statnews.com/2025/09/06/c...

Republicans really detest "public" health. Private choice is their lodestar .... except of course for women's reproductive rights. Then it's right from wrong again and individual choice goes out the window.

To our Republican friends out there, you cannot lecture us about merit or about patriotism.

I haven't yet read the studies, and my natural empirical-economist instincts worry about how easy it is to magnify non-causal relationships in big data sets. But ... ... it's not a heavy intellectual lift to imagine unintended POSITIVE effects of vaccination. The non-science GOP, meanwhile, ...

I don’t doubt that the farm sector ultimately will pay a price for the war on global markets launched by the Trump administration. And I can’t say I will feel very sorry for that sector. On the other hand, the overall producer price index for farm products substack.com/@reallyameri...

Facts and context are what Dunning-Kruger men like RFK will not even try to understand. They are motivated by their experience, which they all too freely generalize, and by their simple beliefs, which they mistake for insights.

Fun with morning bagel! Now it’s back to the office to play with German data and to grade papers!

Hopefully Lorena will give New Mexico a good amount of September precipitation.

Quiz for New Mexico folks. Where am I? 😀

The fish was THIS big! The WH doesn't even care that they're off by almost two orders of magnitude. $145B vs $8T, what's the difference? Says a lot about Republican voters that the WH can so obviously bullshit in the Harry Frankfurt sense of the term. Trump is a liar as well, of course.

Happy #caturday to those who celebrate. Alexei says hi. Look at those paws!

substack.com/@reallyameri... This pure specimen of Dunning Kruger is unhinged. Every republican is responsible for the fact this atrocious person is in charge of American healthcare. Their continued silence is ethically damning.