Random Notes from a Crank

I've been trying to catch up on my magazine reading, and the December issue of The Atlantic is quite good, an issue that is chocked full of interesting reads. 

I've thought about reading Tara Westover's memoir, Educated, and her short interview titled "Left Behind" in print is titled "The Places Where the Recession Never Ended" online and is quite illuminating. Since I live in a rural part of the Midwest, I tend to agree with a number of the contentions at the end of the interview, such as these areas tend to be the harbinger of the "old economy" and that the opioid epidemic is hitting rural areas hard. 

As pundits and well-seasoned writers are wont to do when examining the Republican Party, "How America Ends" looks at how the GOP under Moscow Don is targeting a shrinking demographic and how the party might be prone to doing all sorts of heinous crap to keep their hold and sustain their perception as "real Americans." 

Here are some factoids from the last two versions of the Harper's Index:

• Percentage of Uber riders who never tip: 60
• Who always tip: 1
• Estimated number of people who could go unaccounted for in the 2020 census because of an "increased climate of fear": 4,000,000
• Average effective tax rate, as a percentage of income, paid by the richest 400 households in the United States in 2018: 23
• By the poorest half of American households: 24
• Percentage by which owning a dog lowers one's risk of death: 24
• Percentage of American men who say they would not feel "very comfortable" with a woman as president: 51
• Of American women who say so: 41
• Percentage of Americans aged 13 to 38 who would be willing to post sponsored content to their social-media accounts: 86
• Number of pending patent applications for variations of the phrase "OK, Boomer": 6

In the online version of The Atlantic, Cohen penned a good piece about Romney's speech about voting yes for conviction: "In the Long Run, Romney Wins." I think he's right. He was the only GOP with guts to do what's right.