Events

Gosh, where do we begin? What last night showed, as clearly as day following night, is that the Republican Party simply can't win on the merits. And they know it. Yesterday demonstrated how effective their multi-year anti-democratic efforts have been. Democratic candidates at each level in the aggregate won millions more votes than the Republican field. We lost three of our most vulnerable sitting Senators: Heidi Heidtkamp (D-ND), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Beto O'Rourke, the...

Before everything descends into 18 hours of post-election punditry and chaos, a quick update on the dog. Last week he developed an infection around the site of his April surgery, complete with oozing drainage channel just below his knee. After a couple days of antibiotics, he's stopped oozing. We met with his surgeon today, and she said that the infection is in retreat, so he probably won't need additional surgery to pull the plates out. We'll continue antibiotics for three more weeks and I'll keep an...

Adam Shepherd points out that this election will make things worse, not better, regardless of the result—at least for the next two years: Theoretically, divided government could lead to compromise, since Trump would need Democrats to pass legislation. With 2020 approaching, the thinking goes, he would be incentivized to make deals that show that he can get things done (on infrastructure, for instance). But Trump has shown no interest in this kind of politics. Yes, he has flirted with bipartisanship in...

Another day, another destiny, this never-ending road to Calvary... One has to wonder, regardless of the outcome tomorrow, will the president tone down his lying at all? Tomorrow should be interesting.

By now you may have heard that Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who oversees elections in Georgia, and who is running for governor of Georgia this coming Tuesday, claims the Democratic Party hacked the voter registration database. No. What happened is, when the state Democratic Party's voter protection director reached out to his office directly after being alerted to a gaping data vulnerability, he turned his own malfeasance into an attack on his opposition: By the time Democrats reached out to...

We're two days from the mid-terms, but naturally pundits are thinking about what the vote will tell us about the next presidential race: Trump’s eventual adversary confronts a daunting balancing act: He or she must be tougher than usual without being callous, mingle the right measure of pugilism with optimism, and avoid the self-examination and self-recrimination that never trap Trump. But for starters, Trump’s Democratic opponent must emerge. And that will be tricky in a field of prospective candidates...

It turns out, cemeteries provide really good observational data on climate change: [T]he value of this greenspace has only grown as the communities around them have densified and urbanized — leaving cemeteries as unique nature preserves. In the case of Mount Auburn, people have consciously planted diverse trees, shrubs, and flowers from all over the world and cared for them tenderly over decades or even centuries. In other cases, though, plants that might otherwise be replaced by foreign varietals can...

This morning's sunrise in Chicago, at 7:26, will be the latest until 6 November 2021. It is not the latest possible sunrise; that would be the one we'll have at 7:29 on 6 November 2027 (and had on 5 November 2016). I do not really understand the law passed in 2007 that moved our return to standard time from October to November. Who wants to wake up before dawn? Not me. Tomorrow the sun rises at 6:28. (I will probably do the same around 8.)

This morning we in the US got the news that the employment rebound that started under President Obama has continued, giving us the best employment picture in 50 years. Yet at the same time, despite robust wage growth in some places, families still feel squeezed. The Economist suggests this may come in part from business concentration depressing wages through the same mechanism through which monopsonies increase prices: In perfectly competitive markets, individual firms wishing to sell their widgets must...

When I moved three weeks ago, I switched a couple of bookshelves around and thought more consciously about where I put my books. For instance, I put all the books I haven't read in one place: The problem is, this bookshelf only contains books I haven't read yet. In fairness to myself, people gave me maybe 15% of them. And I'm pretty sure one or two are on loan. Still...no more books until I finish these! (Unless something really interesting comes out.)