Author Archives: Jeff Porten

Tell me again how all Wharton grads are experts at macroeconomics. A Small Yet Soul-Crushing Illustration of Donald Trump’s Utter Economic Illiteracy

BREAKING: After 18 hours in office, Chief of Staff Kelly is publicly announced as a Trump enemy. Donald J. Trump on Twitter

If this is true, it’s actually rather disturbing. It means: 1) Life is literally everywhere we look. 2) Either intelligent life is so rare as to be nearly impossible, or the Great Filter isn’t a sieve, it’s a brick wall.

Life Is Inevitable Consequence Of Physics, According To New Research

GOP: The healing potion is 5,000 gold pieces.
PC: But we don’t have that much gold.
GOP: No, but you have ACCESS to health potions.#GOPDnD www.distractify.com

“The point is not necessarily that wealth is intrinsically and everywhere evil, but that it is dangerous — that it should be eyed with caution and suspicion, and definitely not pursued as an end in itself; that great riches pose great risks to their owners; and that societies are right to stigmatize the storing up of untold wealth.” Perspective | Being rich wrecks your soul. We used to know that.

This story discusses how Scaramucci is bringing sociopathic behavior from Wall Street to the White House. Which makes me wonder: if Wall Street is so vital to the country (like Wall Street keeps insisting it is), do we really want them acting like sociopaths, either? Perspective | Scaramucci learned his press tactics from Wall Street. They’ll only get uglier.

Read this, then come back to this comment….

The problem with this idea is that there is a huge right-wing machine painting every Democrat as extremist. Nominating a moderate Democrat to suppress Republican turnout only works in the absence of a machine maximizing that turnout already. And this can additionally be counted upon to demoralize your own base.

Democrats have been seeking centers since 1992. We’ve seen three explosions in enthusiasm: 2008, when Obama campaigned to the left of where he eventually governed; 2016, with the rise of Bernie and the candidacy of Hillary (to the left of where she was in the 90s), and now in opposition. We don’t need to seek centers. We don’t need to win over soft Republicans. We need a strong principled stance, and let’s see if *that* wins over anyone who left us because we didn’t seem to stand for anything. Analysis | Extreme candidates lose because they boost the other party’s turnout, research finds

“It goes much further than their repugnant and disastrous effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but all the contemporary GOP’s pathologies could be seen there: their outright malice toward ordinary people, their indifference to the suffering of their fellow citizens, their blazing incompetence, their contempt for democratic norms, their shameless hypocrisy, their gleeful ignorance about policy, their utter dishonesty and bad faith, their pure cynicism, and their complete inability to perform anything that resembles governing.” Opinion | This is what you get when you elect Republicans

Anthony Scaramucci is batshit. He’s been in office *one week*. “Cuomo did not ask why he compared the White House to a sinking ship.” Also an amusing Paterno aside. Scaramucci: ‘If Reince wants to explain that he’s not a leaker, let him do that’

Amazing story about what the Department of Energy does, what it has done, what we rely on it to do, and how it might be going away. Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming from Inside the White House

Chuck Schumer, tomorrow: “We look forward to coming together with our Republican colleagues in a bipartisan fashion to work on renewable scapegoat technologies that will allow them to continue blaming everyone else.” Trump Administration Worried President Burning Through Minority Scapegoats At Unsustainable Rate

Impossible to win. Impossible to fix. Impossible to leave. Analysis | What would happen if the United States totally disengaged from Afghanistan?

In the context of free speech on campus, this university president raises the same distinction I’ve been making contrasting conservativism and right-wing ideology (with differing terms).

“I am prepared to insist upon the seriousness of conservative ideas. It would be far easier to do so if conservatives resumed taking those ideas seriously.” Perspective | It’s not liberals on campus crushing Republican ideas. It’s conservatives.

?”I saw 50 Republicans streaming past the wall, near a mountain that looked like an arrowhead.”? Amy Siskind on Twitter