John T. Reed’s news blog

The black mayor of Buffalo angrily said he would not let the world forget the 10 people who were murdered there Sunday. . What a great guy! But he HAS let the world forget about the 67 murders that happened in Buffalo last year. . I did not put it into my Unelected President novel, but I think the presidents should have a ranked list of all causes of premature death in the US available at all news conferences. Every time anyone asks about someone dying, the ranked list of US causes of death should pop up. Mass shootings would be...

Citibank moving from NYC to Sioux Falls In 1981, Citibank in NYC did something that I as a real estate investment writer recognizes was earth shattering. They moved their credit card processing from NYC to Sioux Falls, SD. . At the time, that was unheard of. Citibank was a long-time huge bank headquartered in NYC. How and why could they move such a big operation so far away and to the boondocks, no less, not Chicago of LA? Satellites and no interest rate limits Two reasons. Satellite communications had been invented and was ready for prime time. I graduated from...

I have read a zillion books on baseball—maybe more than any other subject other than real estate. And there may be more baseball books than real estate books. One of the best is one I am now reading: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner. It is a bad title. The book is about the grip and other techniques and actual performance details and mostly mental aspects of pitching each of those pitches. Also, the basic idea of what pitchers are trying to do and what batters are trying to do. For example, I couldn’t find it...

I highly praised Tucker Carlson here in the last year I think. . But I noted he has some blind spots. Nowadays, he is essentially an absolute isolationist, a believer in the notion that we must retreat from all nuclear weapons owners who threaten to use them against us..By definition, if all nations were absolute isolationists who would only fight when they were invaded, evil dictators could take over the world one county at a time by the salami-slice gradual divide-and-conquer approach. . He acknowledges that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is totally wrong, but rejects doing anything to stop or reverse...

We got AC work done today. One estimate was $17,767. The other was $9,142. This was to replace the heating and air-conditioning for the first floor of our two-story home.  The second-floor systems were replaced about seven years ago. The third company we asked for an estimate was the one who replaced the second floor HVAC seven years ago. They charged us over $12,000 then, so it is not likely that they would would have made a competitive bid this time. They promised to give us an estimate this time, but did not. This got us a 3-ton, 14 SEER condenser and...