John T. Reed’s news blog

My first baseball coaching book came out in 2000. It said to bat left handed, not right-handed, no matter which is your dominant hand and that switch hitting was a waste of time, especially at the amateur level where about 90% of the pitchers are right-handed. The 7/25/18 Wall Street Journal has an article titled “Lost Art of Switch Hitting.” Google the title to read it. It’s subtitle ends with, “it isn’t really worth the extra effort.”Told ya. I ran into my neighbor Tony LaRussa at the local gas station once. I sent him an article I wrote on batting left-handed...

I was asked to join a Facebook group called the USMA [United States Military Academy, a.k.a. West Point—my undergraduate alma mater] Real Estate Group, and I did, briefly. I was asked to leave by the head of it and I did. He said I was too self-promotional.  Another member, Realtor® Todd Heatherington, seemed to do nothing but promote himself when I was there, giving his contact information any time anyone sought a Realtor® anywhere in the U.S. (Typically, a Realtor® who refers you to another Realtor® gets 10% of any commission you generate for the Realtor® to whom you are referred....

I was just researching my How to Spot Dishonest Arguments book when I reconsidered impeachment. I had recently researched that topic for my Unelected President novel. Maxine Waters says, as Gerald Ford once did, that “high crimes and misdemeanors,” two of the four grounds for impeachment, are anything the Congress says they are. (Treason and bribery are the other two grounds.)Maxine is an idiot, apparently representing a district of idiots (LAX and the area east and southeast of it). But she and Ford might be right in one sense. ‘High crimes and misdemeanors’ The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” was...

The Fed is finally unwinding the quantitative easing crap that everyone who understands monetary stability knows pushes the U.S. dollar toward high inflation. Quantitative easing means the Fed buying U.S. government bonds with money they conjure out of thin air. That is the modern equivalent of the actual printing presses that ran 24 hours a day in Austria and Germamy during the early 1920s producing their notorious hyperinflation.   The excess money that was “printed” during the quantitive easing from 2009 to date is the increase in assets on the Fed balance sheet. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm $3T of excess money As you...

The Thai soccer team trapped in a flooded cave horrifies the world. What can I add to the discussion?.Not much. It seems to generally be covered correctly.CO2 levels are rising where the boys and their coach are. They are taking oxygen tanks in there to raise the oxygen levels. Uh, CO2 is heavier than oxygen. if you put both into a confined space, the oxygen will lie on top of the CO2 like oil on water..Furthermore, the cave apparently opens to the surface as evidenced by the boys being able to hear birds. So the CO2 will push the oxygen...