So I’ve been doing some COVID math — the sort that isn’t really good enough to put myself forth as an expert but which I want to write down, in a bloggy fashion. It starts with this: two weeks ago, in a CNN interview, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said that for “every 20 vaccinated people, one or two of them could get a breakthrough infection.” A White House staffer said, “If 10 vaccinated people walk into a room full of... Read more
Let’s start with a one-paragraph review of the Reconstruction Era, shall we? In the period immediately following the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, former Vice President Andrew Johnson favored leniency toward the rebellious states, but the Radical Republican faction gained control over Congress in 1866 and pushed for civil rights, protections, and social-welfare efforts for the freed slaves, overriding Johnson’s vetoes. In 1868, President Ulysses S. Grant replaced Johnson and continued the Radical Republicans’ policies, including combatting... Read more
Yeah, this is another one of my little blog posts in which I write based on memory rather than pulling up links, but here’s the question: what is Juneteenth about? Yes, the date commemorates the arrival of the Union Army in Texas proclaiming the liberation of the slaves, on June 19, 1865, some two months after the surrender of Lee and the end of the Civil War, and some two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. And I’ve been reading a... Read more
I don’t write as much at this blog as I used to, with other things occupying my time and with other outlets for writing. But my father passed away yesterday (as I started writing this) and I wanted to share a little bit about him. He was a member of the so-called “silent generation,” born in 1939, on a small farm just outside Denver, Colorado, where his parents had moved from their own farms in Nebraska. His dad worked at... Read more
Remember the George Bush immigration reform proposal in 2006, when he claimed that he would “solve” the issue of future illegal immigration by granting a new form of work visa, the “blue card”? Because, you see, people came to the US illegally because of our plentiful low-skill jobs which “Americans don’t want,” the idea was that employers would be allowed to recruit, legally, abroad, for any job at all, so long as they paid minimum wage. So there would still... Read more
Remember back last summer when the Supreme Court determined that, by parsing the Civil Rights Act as literally as possible, it protected homosexual and transgender workers? At the time I said, “hey, the sky is not falling, Gorsuch actually affirmed a biological definition of ‘sex,’ and the ruling is fairly narrow.” Indeed, the premise of finding that a transgender person’s employment rights are protected was, when it comes down to it (though he didn’t use this phrasing) “you can’t prohibit... Read more
On January 6, the Babylon Bee posted an article with the headline: “Absolute Legend: Trump Walks Away From Republican Party Without Even Looking Back At Explosion.” Here’s as much of the article as seems appropriate to share without violating fair use norms: In an awesome display of action movie MAGA-greatness, Trump walked away from the exploding Republican Party like an absolute legend, without looking back or even flinching. Witnesses say they saw Trump power-walking in slow motion away from... Read more
Let’s start with immigration. Remember the “path to citizenship” and “earned legalization” promises? — that is, the claim that a mass legalization program would not be “amnesty” because there would be hoops to jump through rather than an automatic process and because the prospective new citizens would have to prove their worthiness? Turns out, the requirements for future residents will be few in the new Biden proposal. According to the Biden website, the only requirement for “undocumented individuals” to apply... Read more
No, not an election postmortem — I don’t believe there is appropriate data that could help identify whether, for instance, droves of Republicans really did stay home by getting suckered into the belief that this somehow made sense as a way of fighting against lizard people, at least not at this point in time. A GRE postmortem because one of my projects over the past month has been applying to graduate school. Yes, again. Readers who pay careful attention will... Read more
So there was a dust-up over the weekend about a Wall Street Journal opinion piece criticizing Jill Biden and her supporters for her/their wish/demand/insistence that she be called “Dr. Jill Biden,” because of her academic degree. Is Jill Biden a doctor? Not in the ordinary American usage of the term. Does she merit being addressed with the title, “Dr. Biden”? Under some circumstances, by some people, yes. Is that customary usage actually reasonable? No, not really. Let’s start from the... Read more
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