My senator says hi

This is something I forgot to mention when it came several months ago. My home state senator is Mark Udall—the Udalls are kind of like the Kennedys of the Southwest. He has two cousins in the Senate.

I've actually met the guy, and my parents are fairly good friends with his brother Randy (I went down Grand Canyon with his family once), as well as his cousin Brad. Mark reminded me a little bit of the Reed College president Colin Diver. One of the better senators, though that's not saying much. Good on him for dropping me a line.

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The Setswana Grammar Manual

One of my few successes during my service here was formatting the Peace Corps South Africa grammar manual for Setswana, written mostly by Art Chambers, an SA16 volunteer. For anyone wanting to learn Setswana, I reckon it's a pretty good primer, so I present it for free here . If you think it sucks and you want to make changes, or you'd like to take a look at the raw TeX file, you can find it here .

On Refusing to Vote for Bloomberg

Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is attempting to buy the Democratic nomination. With something like $400 million in personal spending so far, that much is clear — and it appears to be working at least somewhat well, as he is nearing second place in national polls. I would guess that he will quickly into diminishing returns, but on the other hand spending on this level is totally unprecedented. At this burn rate he could easily spend more than the entire 2016 presidential election cost both parties before the primary is over. I published a piece today outlining why I would not vote for Bloomberg against Trump (I would vote for Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Biden), even though I live in a swing state. This got a lot of "vote blue no matter who" people riled up . They scolded me and demanded that I pre-commit to voting for Bloomberg should he win the nomination. The argument as I understand it is to try to make it as likely as possible that whatever Democrat wins t...

Russiagate and the Left, Round II

Corey Robin has responded to my article arguing that the left should take the Trump-Russia story more seriously . I do appreciate that he considers me an ally, and I feel the same towards him. However I am not convinced. The points I want to make are somewhat disconnected, so I will just take them one at a time. What should be done? Robin complains that I don't give much attention to the question of how we should respond to Russian electoral espionage. As an initial matter, the question of whether a problem is an important one is logically distinct from what the response should be. There is a sizable vein of skepticism about Russiagate on the left, and the argument of the post was that skepticism was misplaced. Solutions can be worked out later. This point is rather similar to the centrist argument that you can't talk about Medicare for All unless you've got a fully costed-out bill detailing all the necessary taxes and regulation. However, I have advanced some pol...

Ryan Cooper

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