The first frog story is one everyone knows. Put a frog in a ten quartz sauce pan with slippery sides. Pour in about two quarts of water. The sides of the pan are too tall and steep for the frog to jump out, unless it’s absolutely desperate and panic-stricken; and…
Dear Mr. Rosenstein: I had never heard of you before your nomination to be Deputy Attorney General. That’s probably a good sign for your reputation, going in: when it comes to politics, I only know what I read in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and kindred…
Democrats have spent a long time as the party advocating tax increases, a position that used to be derided as “root canal Republican.” It’s not much of an election platform (ask Walter Mondale). The instinctive Democratic reaction to Trump’s ridiculous tax plan is to decry it as a “giveaway to…
The marginal voter for Trump—the people who took him over the top in the Electoral College—is understood to be a rural, older, white, male voter in a depressed Rust Belt state. Furthermore, I take the core Trump voter, the one most committed, to be an economically marginalized voter in a…
Neil Irwin of the New York Times has a nice column along the lines of “Stocks for the long run, come hell or high water.” Long story short: it’s a shout out to investors of a Democratic persuasion, on why not to sell stocks, no matter how negatively you view…
Keep in mind that although all right-thinking people might appear to agree with you, at best that’s 60 percent of the American electorate. There’s another 40% that doesn’t see the world the way you do. Plus, our 60% +/- of right-thinking folks is not evenly spread through the Electoral College;…
I know something about spin. I was a Marketing professor for thirty years. But I never had to spin professionally; I was an academic. So I don’t know anywhere near as much about spin as a Kellyanne Conway; and far less than a successful branding entrepreneur, such as Mr. Frump.…
Trump famously said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” And as the election results showed, he was right. None of his howlers or offenses kept him from winning. But now he takes office with slightly more than 50% of…
Soon Donald Frump will be President. Soon the Republican Party will control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Cue the exultation and the schadenfreude. Soon the Republican juggernaut will roll, crushing all in its path, remaking the nation to a new vision. Wealthy businessmen, empowered as Cabinet Secretaries, will…
Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. The media made Trump. There has been much gnashing of teeth among liberal commentators on this score. You’ve heard the charges. The media let themselves be used by Trump. He jerks them around with his midnight tweets. The media and…