Podcast subscriptions, April 2020

Here is my list of podcast subscriptions as of April 2020:

Backstage Journal with Rhett Shull
The Bob Murphy Show
Bound by Oath
The Brion McClanahan Show
Cato Daily Podcast
Contra Krugman
Daily Audio Bible
Grammar Girl
Lexicon Valley
The Libertarian Podcast
Make No Law
Part-Time Genius
RadioLab Presents: More Perfect
Serial
Short Circuit
This American Life
The Tom Woods Show
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Week in Review at Abbeville Institute

Tax Day Rant

When people tell me, "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society," do you mean the society where:

• the President, without even consulting with Congress, much less getting authorization from them, launches 66 Tomahawk cruise missiles and 19 JASSM-ER's at a cost of $119M at a country that does not threaten the national security of the United States?
• the government uses civil asset forfeiture to seize property of people who are never convicted or even charged with a crime?
• the government continues to lock people up for minor drug offenses, then prevents them from getting a job or from voting because they have a felony on their record?
• the government is projected to spend a TRILLION more dollars than it collects just this year?
• unelected bureaucrats in administrative agencies write regulations, enforce those regulations, and then rule on those same regulations?
• the government (through the Federal Reserve) steals from you every day through inflation of the currency--a dollar in 1913 has lost over 96% of its value?

This is the same government that enforced the Fugitive Slave Act until the Civil War. This is the same government that rounded up Japanese American citizens during WW2 and a Supreme Court of the same government who said it was constitutional. A Supreme Court who also legitimized compulsory sterilization with the most infamous of words, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

When you tell me taxes pay for a "civilized society," those are the things I think of. What about you? I don't want any part of it. I'm sure you can come up with a list of all the great things government does for you. But if you want to claim those things you also get the baggage of mine.

Podcast subscriptions, February 2018

Here is my list of podcast subscriptions as of February 2018:

Arms Control Wonk Podcast
The Brion McClanahan Show
Cato Daily Podcast
Contra Krugman
EconTalk
Grammar Girl
The Libertarian Podcast
Quality Policing Podcast
RadioLab Presents: More Perfect
Serial
Tech Policy Podcast
This American Life
The Tom Woods Show
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Week in Review at Abbeville Institute

Podcast subscriptions, December 2017

Here is my list of podcast subscriptions as of December 2017:

Arms Control Wonk Podcast
Cato Daily Podcast
Contra Krugman
EconTalk
Emperors of Rome Podcast
Grammar Girl
The Libertarian Podcast
RadioLab Presents: More Perfect
Serial
Tech Policy Podcast
The Brion McClanahan Show
The Tom Woods Show
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Week in Review at Abbeville Institute
This American Life

FYI: I recently switched to Pocket Casts for podcasts and some audiobooks.

Podcast subscriptions, February 2017

Here is my list of podcast subscriptions as of February 2017:

The Brion McClanahan Show
Cato Daily Podcast
Contra Krugman
EconTalk
Emperors of Rome Podcast (new addition)
Grammar Girl
The History of Rome Podcast (new addition)
The Lara Murphy Report
The Libertarian Podcast
RadioLab Presents: More Perfect
Serial
Tech Policy Podcast
The Tom Woods Show
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

FYI: I use Doggcatcher for podcasts and some audiobooks.

Rethinking 84 Lumber's Super Bowl ad

If you've been alive over the last few days, you've undoubtedly heard about 84 Lumber's Super Bowl ad. The original ad was nixed by Fox for being too controversial. A lot of debate has surrounded around the politicization of Super Bowl ads; and this ad in particular has been discussed as anti-Trump. The conventional wisdom is that conservatives and Trump supporters would think poorly of this ad; and progressives and liberals would see the ad positively in opposition to the President's immigration policies (and specifically the wall).

 But let's dig a little deeper.

First, if you haven't seen the full ad, you owe it to yourself to watch it now:

The first part of ad, without the ending, seemed to glorify illegal immigration as a noble, if difficult journey. Absent from the ad are the reality of such journeys, including violence, drug trafficking, and human trafficking.

Yet as I watched the full ad, I have to admit: it was clever (undoubtedly, this was the ad-maker's intent in not explicitly showing what the workers were building). The workers were not building the wall, but a large door in the wall. And as 84 Lumber has said itself, the ad was about a symbolic journey. Interesting.

More (and this is where the ad really helps to come into focus): Maggie Hardy Magerko, 84 Lumber’s president and owner, voted for Trump; and the imagery of the door in the wall came explicitly from Trump himself:

In this light, it's difficult to see 84 Lumber's ad as anti-Trump. If anything, it's entirely consistent with Trump's campaign rhetoric, right down to a visual representation of the door in the wall as symbolic of legal, not illegal immigration. According to Steve Radick (a former colleague of mine at Booz Allen), vice president and director of public relations at Brunner, the agency that created the ad and provides support to 84 Lumber. “It was meant to be topical – it was not meant to take any political side.”


To be clear, what I am looking at here are the politics of the ad. Whether it is a good ad or not is an entirely different question. Sometimes ads are too clever for their own good. I think that is where this one may go.

Perhaps it's too late to prevent people from digging in to the convention wisdom about how one should see this ad. But if it's not, maybe this ad is instructive to us about meeting our rivals somewhere in the middle and having a real conversation, instead of sniping for political gain.

2016 election in review

Well, perhaps I should stop making election predictions! I thought Hillary Clinton would win, but I'm not at all surprised that Donald Trump won. 

In the end, this election turned on the ability of Trump to break through Hillary's "blue wall" in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Along with Indiana and Ohio, the rust belt was the difference in this election.

It's worth taking one more look at Trump's closing ad. I think this ad will go down as the defining ad of the campaign. Take a look and see what you think.

2016 election prediction

I misread the polls badly in 2012 and thought Romney would win a close election. It turned out it wasn't that close. For all of the reasons I discounted the polls in 2012, times 100, I really don't know what to think of the polls this time around. All of the convention wisdom has been busted this election cycle. Undoubtedly, the race has tightened considerably within the last two weeks. Is it enough to push Trump over the edge? Possible. Most of the prediction sites have given Trump something like a 35% chance, which is up from the teens just a few weeks ago. We're definitely in margin of error territory. A Brexit-like result is certainly not impossible here.

Still, though, despite all of the winds in Trump's favor, a few strands remain. First, Hillary Clinton has likely banked many millions of early votes. This is likely to preserve a small number of votes that might have left her within the last week. Second, the surge to Trump appears to have come not from undecided voters, but from Republican-leaning independents who are coming back to the base (from candidates like Gary Johnson). Third, the path to electoral victory is strategically easier for Hillary as compared to Trump. There are simply many more options. Trump has to basically run the table on all of the swing states.

I think Hillary Clinton will win this election. Here is my predicted electoral vote map:

The closest states on this map (in order of decreasing electoral votes) are: Florida (29), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4). RCP's "no toss up" map has Nevada and New Hampshire currently leaning toward Trump, but I think they'll ultimately end up on the Clinton side.

Now, with that being said, here is Trump's best chance of winning. As you can see, it comes by the narrowest of margins, but isn't all that far-fetched--in fact, all I did was start with RCP's "no toss up" map on Saturday, November 5th (Clinton 297, Trump 241) and flip Florida's 29 electoral votes to Trump. Florida is so close that this single flip (which is entirely possible) would change the outcome of the election. These predictions show just how close the election might possibly be:

Again, I think Hillary Clinton is likely to win. But if Trump can pull it off, the map will likely look like this one above.

Did Hillary Clinton win last night's debate?

If we were able to conjure up a completely objective standard by which to judge last night's debate, I don't think any reasonable person would conclude otherwise. But as I have said elsewhere, politics is about perception. Politics is not really about facts--it never really has been. The media, and the Clinton campaign, are obsessed with fact-checking. My timeline is filled with "gotcha" fact-checking of both candidates' statements.

Regardless, the obsessive fact-checking reflects a media that is (in my opinion), actually trying to be objective (even if they're failing at that, too). Nonetheless, it also shows that the media is also woefully out-of-touch with a significant portion of the electorate. The people telling you Hillary decisively won the debate are the same people who told you Trump was consistently losing the Republican debates. The people telling you Hillary decisively won the debate are the same people who told you Trump could never win the nomination. Politics is, in fact, highly subjective in a way that the media can probably never capture. What a Hillary supporter sees as her careful dismantling of Trump's previous statements comes off to a Trump supporter as a rehearsed talking point delivered with a fake, cringe-worthy smile. In some cases, what the candidates say matters less than how they say it. This is particularly true with Trump.

What this ultimately means is that the candidates have to be judged through a different lens. The standard by which each candidate needed to meet was and is different. Trump didn't need to "win" this debate. He is not a typical candidate (in this very not-typical 2016) and really, only needed to clear a series of relatively low hurdles: Don't make a major gaffe; don't say something patently offensive. No doubt, there are some among you who will argue that he couldn't even do this. Nonetheless, you're looking through the wrong glasses. If nothing Trump has done within the last year derailed his candidacy, surely nothing he did last night will do that, either. Anything he said or did last night was minor. Hillary Clinton is judged against the usual presidential debate standards, and in that regard, she too did nothing which would signal a significant change in the race. You may think that I'm setting the bar too low for Trump. I don't think I'm setting the bar at all, I'm just telling you where I think it is.

As someone who will not vote for either of these two candidates, but acknowledging that I'm not exactly unbiased (as none of us are), I thought Trump did as well as he could have expected for about the first 30 minutes. He came across as forceful and no-nonsense, and had Hillary on her heels. She was defensive, rehearsed, and wooden. During the second half, Hillary was much stronger, and Trump (quite ironically), lost his debate stamina and lost any focus he had. The blows he tried to land missed widely.

In the end, listening to the talking heads was hilarious. They've been wrong every time for the last year and they expect us to listen to their analysis now. Quite frankly, nothing last night will change the current state of the race. No amount of fact checking matters at this point. We're stuck in a very close race where Hillary likely has a small lead. To be continued...

Ten post-hoc rationalizations for holding a new EU referendum

1. Since turnout was 70%, the 52% that voted to Leave didn't actually represent a majority of voters. [This is not how this works. This is not how any of this has ever worked.]

2. 52% is in the margin of error. [Polls have margins of error. Elections and referendums count actual votes. There is no margin of error.] See also: people lied to the pollsters.

3. A woman was interviewed on TV and said she had regrets about voting to Leave! [So? Voter regret has never been a valid reason for having a new election or referendum. This is not how this works. This is not how any of this has ever worked.]

4. 106 people on Twitter said something mean or racist! They're no different than Trump voters! [So?]

5. The stock market went down! [Yes, it did. You also noticed, perhaps, that the market was steadily increasing before the vote in the expectation of a Remain win. In fact, the FTSE is 10% higher than it was in February and higher than it was when the referendum was announced.]

6. Old people voted to take away the rights of the younger generation! [Generally, votes are not weighted according to age. Did you know many of those older people were the same ones who voted in 1975 to join the EU? You probably weren't alive then, or if you were, you probably couldn't vote then. If you did, you're one of those old people. Exactly how much should your vote be worth?]

7. 2 million people signed a petition! [Yes, 2 million online people did. Most of those two million people were probably among the many millions who already voted to Remain the first time. Many more of those people weren't eligible to vote anyways, or were trolls. Even so, the petition is worthless and is now being investigated for fraud. Even if 100,000 actual voters sign it, Parliament will debate the EU relationship starting today, which should be plenty to satisfy you.]

8. But Nigel Farage promised money to the NHS! [Yes, he did make a vague promise of returning money pledged to the EU; and yes, the Leave camp took this and ran with it and plastered it on the side of a bus; and yes, Farage later said he couldn't guarantee it. For reference, Farage represents UKIP, which has exactly 1 MP. Either way, if elections and referendums could be invalidated because of broken promises by politicians...]

9. Technically, the referendum wasn't binding! [Yes, you're right. How willingly would you embrace this argument if you were on the other side? If the people had voted to Remain yet Parliament voted to Leave?]

10. The UK government should renegotiate a new deal with the EU and then put it up for another referendum! [Have you been following the news? This was the basis for the first referendum. Anyways, the EU has said it won't deal again.]

Unspoken 11th post-hoc rationalization for holding a new EU referendum: We are enlightened and know better than the (pick one or more of the following:) old/racist/uneducated/ people who voted to Leave. Therefore we will do whatever it takes to undermine the legitimacy of the vote and do whatever it takes to justify overriding the will of the people; see #'s 1 through 10.

On civility in political discourse

Part of the header on my blog says "promoter of civility in political discourse." I take that seriously. It's the standard I set for myself and it's what I expect of the people I associate with. This means forgoing the friendly confines of the echo chamber and engaging with people of all political persuasions. My list of friends and followers reflects that choice. I believe respectful discussion of issues from all different sides, especially sides we don't necessarily agree with, makes us all better because it exposes us to different perspectives and allows us to hone our own arguments. Underlying this exchange, of course, is civility.

The recent tragedy in Orlando has brought this approach into sharp focus. While most have continued to be civil, others have been less so. In particular, I am disappointed with incoherent attempts at arguments based solely in emotion, ignorant of history, circular in reasoning, and accentuated by ad hominem attacks. This does nothing to advance your position; it's quite the opposite. This does nothing to promote civility; it's quite the opposite. This does nothing to promote healing. It encourages the very echo chambers we ought to be avoiding. It does nothing to bring us together; it does everything to push us apart.

I welcome well-reasoned arguments in opposition. But please do so civilly. If you can't, I have no time for you.

Podcast subscriptions, May 2016

Here is my list of podcast subscriptions as of May 2016:

The Art of Manliness
Cato Daily Podcast
Contra Krugman
EconTalk
The Eric Metaxas Show (new addition)
Federalist Society SCOTUScast
Grammar Girl
The Lara Murphy Report
The Libertarian Podcast
Tech Policy Podcast
The Tom Woods Show
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

FYI: I use Doggcatcher for podcasts and some audiobooks.

Podcast subscriptions, April 2016

Here is my list of podcast subscriptions as of April 2016:

Cato Daily Podcast
Contra Krugman
EconTalk
Federalist Society SCOTUScast
Grammar Girl
Tech Policy Podcast
The Art of Manliness
The Lara Murphy Report
The Libertarian Podcast
The Tom Woods Show
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

FYI: I use Doggcatcher for podcasts and audiobooks.

"This goal of social justice is so important that if it takes a KGB to make it work, so be it"

At the CATO Institute's Daily Podcast for March 28, 2016, Political Philosophy for Voters Who Don’t Want It, this remarkable quote from guest Jason Brennan, recounting a story from a graduate class he attended.

At 4:52 of the podcast:

One of the law students said, "This goal of social justice is so important that if it takes a KGB to make it work, so be it--we just need to make sure the right people run the KGB."

An open letter to Hillary Clinton supporters

The Internet is filled with "advice" via open letters, like this, primarily to Trump voters, explaining why they are basically batshit crazy for supporting Trump. People love to link to these letters on Facebook and other social media, so that, instead of directly telling your friends that they're batshit crazy, you can use the advice letter as a proxy. You're sure to get lots of "likes" in your echo chamber as you pat each other on the back explaining how you "just don't understand how someone could vote for Trump."

I have similar thoughts about Hillary Clinton. In my opinion, she's a terrible candidate. She served in the Senate for eight years without as much as a single notable accomplishment. Can you name one? I can't. Her subsequent tenure as Secretary of State was marred by the Benghazi fiasco and, yes, those emails. Maybe you don't care about the emails, because "everyone did it" or some other lame excuse. The reality is that anyone who has held a security clearance and has a conscience knows what she did was wrong. They know anyone else would have, at a minimum, lost their job for what she did--and potentially much more. She has a serious problem with telling the truth and rails against hedge fund managers while accepting huge speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. I could go on, but there really is no need for overkill.

These reasons are more than enough for me to categorically state that I could not fathom a scenario in which I could ever consider voting for Hillary Clinton. It's off the table. It's a non-starter. I bet you have a similar laundry list of reasons why you won't vote for Donald Trump, or Ted Cruz, or maybe anyone with an R behind their name. I'm not particularly thrilled with Trump, and haven't committed my vote one way or another should he win the nomination.

The difference between me and many of the writers of these "advice" letters is that I don't think you're batshit crazy for voting for Hillary Clinton. I respect that you and I have differences of opinion, sometimes major differences in opinion, based on our values, circumstances, and what we consider important (or not).

This post isn't about the policy differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It's not about 35% tariffs, or what someone did or said, or Benghazi, or those emails. It's about you and me realizing that we can have honest disagreements about the way forward for our country while maintaining civility and avoiding demonizing our opponents. It's about opening up our echo chambers and re-establishing dialogue so that we can actually accomplish something of value, no matter who wins the election. I know many of you agree with me. I know we're not all as polarizing as we sometimes come across.

If we can meet each other on an even playing field, respecting one another's views without disparaging them, maybe we can get something done. I think that's a good idea. Don't you?

Origins of the Flint water crisis

The Wikipedia page (and similar timelines) for the Flint water crisis indicates that the problem "started in April 2014" when the city's emergency manager sought to "save about $5 million over less than two years" by "switch[ing] from purchasing treated Lake Huron water from Detroit, as it had done for 50 years, to treating water from the Flint River..." until the [under-construction]  Karegnondi system was completed in 2016.

Similarly, Professor Robert Percival explains that "[t]he Flint tragedy originated with the appointment by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder of Darnell Earley as emergency manager for Flint. To save money Earley decided in April 2014 to shift the source of the city's water supply to the polluted Flint River."

These are both true and accurate statements. But they leave the reader wondering: why did Flint (and Detroit) have an appointed emergency manager in the first place? Because those cities were run into the ground. They were essentially bankrupt. And under the provisions of Michigan law, the governor appointed emergency managers to help those cities clean up their mess. Flint continued to flounder, electing two convicted felons (including one for murder) and two others with bankruptcies to its city council in 2013.

One can argue over the scope of powers given to appointed emergency managers (and the subsequent authority stripped from those local governments in receivership), but there is not any suggestion (at least not that I am aware of) that these emergency managers did anything outside the scope of their mandate. Perhaps the Michigan law needs to be amended so that emergency managers cannot change "policy simply to save costs without considering the impact on public health." But that doesn't address the underlying issue of crime-ridden, debt-laden, corrupt cities that will give birth to more tragedies like the Flint water crisis. This New York Times article about the "anger" over appointed emergency managers likewise fails to even address why such managers were appointed in the first place.

There is plenty of blame to go around here in regards to this individual incident: the city's emergency managers, including Earley, as well as Governor Snyder and Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and quite possibly the EPA. In a larger sense, the deeper blame for Flint's water crisis (and many of the ongoing problems in decaying urban cities) lies elsewhere: corrupt politicians, cronyism, disintegrating schools, and public-sector unions. The root cause for cities like Flint and Detroit is a failure of one-party government.

Is this man a terrorist?

Many people across my Facebook feed are quick to call Christian pastor Josh Feuerstein a terrorist for a video he posted to his Facebook page back in July:

In case the video gets taken down, here's what Feuerstein said:

Planned Parenthood has hunted down millions and millions of little innocent babies, stuck a knife into the uterus, cut them, pulled them out, crushed their skull with forceps, ripped their body apart, sold their tissue, and threw them bleeding into a trash bin.

I say, tonight, we punish Planned Parenthood. I think it’s time that abortion doctors should have to run and hide and be afraid for their life.

This is pretty detestable stuff. But I don't think Feuerstein is a terrorist. In fact, I think his speech is probably protected. Let's review a little history...

In 1966, the NAACP ran meetings in Mississippi to organize protests and boycotts against white-owned businesses. The NAACP "store watchers" wrote down names of blacks who violated these boycotts. Names of boycott violators were read aloud at meetings and published in a local black newspaper. At one meeting, Charles Evers, the Field Secretary of the NAACP, stated: "If we catch any of you going in any of them racist stores, we're gonna break your damn neck."

This was a direct threat aimed by an NAACP official toward specific blacks who had been named, listed, and published as boycott violators. This is a much more direct threat than Feuerstein's video posted above. Yet the Supreme Court found that the store watchers' actions, and Evers' speech, was protected.

Unless speech is directed to inciting, and is likely to incite, imminent lawless action, it's protected by the First Amendment. It would be very difficult to argue that a Facebook video (posted last July) meets this standard. The mere advocacy of violence is not enough. No, in my opinion, this is not terrorism. Rather, it's very possible that this is protected speech. And yes, I'd stand up for his right to say these abhorrent things. That doesn't mean I agree with him.

You can be outraged over the shooting, but your flag drama is meh

Reactive politics is easy. It's very popular now to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from flying over South Carolina's state house. Why wouldn't it be? It came in reaction to the terrible church shooting last week. But the Confederate flag is no more or lessoffensive now than it was last week, depending upon your point of view. The shooting doesn't somehow make it worse; unless you're willing to admit that you were OK with the flag last week.

If you didn't really spend any time prior to this week really caring about whether the Confederate flag flew over South Carolina's state house, then you're a participant in reactive politics. Great job standing up now. What about last week, last month, or last year (or before)?

Mississippi fans in stands with Confederate flags during a sporting event in 1993.Photo by Patrick Murphy-Racey/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

Reactive politics takes no courage. It's the mob mentality. This doesn't mean the act itself is worthless. If you want to get rid of the Confederate flag over South Carolina, go for it (although I hope you agree that legislators in South Carolina should make that decision). But don't delude yourself as if you're doing something brave by standing up against the flag.  Courage means perseverance despite difficulty and pain. Chances are you're not putting yourself in any danger by opposing the Confederate flag, especially from the confines of your desk chair.

Much the same is this Internet rant about a man and his neighbor's Confederate flag. He starts off:

While I was out jogging this morning, I passed a neighbor’s house that I have passed every day for almost three years. Usually I stroll right on by without giving it a second thought. Today, though… today was different. I stopped in my tracks and blankly stared until a car honked at me to move out of the way....This house flies a Confederate flag.

Of course. A man who claims to study culture admits that the flag didn't matter to him last week or any other time during the last three years. But it matters now. Reactive politics. How easy to rant. But really, this paragraph captures it for me:

And what about my neighbor? In a perfect world, I would ring his doorbell and have a reasonable discussion with him about how what he’s doing is offensive and ahistoric and I’d love to correct his understanding of the entire mess. But the sad fact is, he’s not alone, either.

So instead of trying to make the world a better place and engaging his neighbor in conversation, he turns to the Internet and calls the man (and presumably anyone else who flies the flag) a racist and a traitor. How courageous, friend! Great job standing up for...what? And way to go on wanting to "correct his understanding of the entire mess." As if the flag has only one exact, factual, historic meaning that he needs explained to him. And you're the one to do it! How convenient. How pompous. And the idea that you can label another man without actually talking to him about his views (when you admit that talking to him is the right thing to do) is not only weak, but it's anathema to constructive dialog.

I know what you might be thinking. Even though you might not have voiced your opinion on the Confederate flag before, you've always thought it was offensive. And the shooting gave you reason to voice your opinion. Fine, I have no problem with that. Whether you want to oppose the Confederate flag now is not my issue. I take aim at those who attach some magical self-importance to their view now that's newsworthy and convenient, as if they're doing something bold. Sorry, you're just not.

Bold are those who stand up for causes when they're not newsworthy or convenient. When it wasn't the outrage of the week. When it was a proactive position, not a reactive one.

By the way, have you ever read the words to Maryland's official state song? You wouldn't be the first one to raise an eyebrow at that one.

What will next week's faux outrage be?

Can corporations be (un)patriotic?

Much of the debate over Hobby Lobby was whether corporations could practice religion. Some like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) signed on to an amicus brief arguing that for-profit corporations could not practice religion.

This week, Burger King announced it was buying Canadian-based Tim Horton's in a move widely believed to precede BK's move to Canada. In response, some like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have argued that doing so would be a "completely unpatriotic move." He added that "[m]any of these corporations have absolutely no loyalty to the people of the United States or to our government."

If corporations cannot practice religion, can they be patriotic or unpatriotic? Can corporations exhibit loyalty to a country or its government? Can corporations have a conscious at all? And if so, where do we draw the line?

If corporations can exhibit traits like patriotism and loyalty, but cannot practice religion, what is the distinction?

Now add this wrinkle: A Brazilian global investment firm called 3G Capital owns 71% of Burger King. Is a Brazilian global investment firm owner supposed or expected to show patriotism and loyalty to the United States just because the company's headquarters is currently in the United States?

Something to think about.

Maryland partisan politics at a glance

No matter how you slice it, it's an uphill battle for Republicans to win statewide elections in Maryland. In the chart on the left, sorted by party performance, Maryland's five democratic counties (plus Baltimore City) equal 64% of the state's population. In the chart on the right, sorted by population, four of the five largest counties are democratic (plus Baltimore City). These five represent 60% of the population. For reference, the counties in the proposed Western Maryland Initiative are highlighted.