A musician must make music,
an artist must paint,
a poet must write,
if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
What a man can be, he must be.
Abraham Maslow
Hero of the Day
Some loser fiance got cold feet. But a lovely young lady's family tried to make the best of the situation.
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| Carin Richardson, a 12-year-old with Down Syndrome, saved baby sister 3-year-old Jac’Lynn from drowning in the pool via LifeNews |
High schooler Tamara Perry tells Fox 5, “I’ve gotten lunch where my mandarin oranges have had mold. There has been instances where lunch ladies have had to collect our food because it’s been expired. Our milk has been expired. [I've opened] up apple juice cartons and it’s been green.”Image of the Day
Political Potpourri
In one sense, the latest NBC Poll shows that outsider trio (Trump, Carson, and Fiorina) continue to dominate with 50% or better of the aggregate vote. Trump continues to plateau around the 25% share and Carson continues a follow close behind at 22%. What is somewhat discouraging (this blog does not support Trump) was after a long string of polls showing others within a 5-point or so spread, even a couple of Carson leads, Trump went into a 35-40% spread and double-digit leads in Connecticut, Nevada and South Carolina. I'm still amazed how Trump continues to engage in defying political death, most recently by blaming Bush for 9/11 and the Iraq war, which tend to be against the grain of the Republican base and straight out of Democratic talking points. It seems most of this is simply a politically amateurish attempt to get under widely perceived GOP Establishment favorite Jeb Bush's skin and/or portray Jeb as George W.'s third term. I still think it's unlikely for Trump to prevail: outsiders rarely win nominations, and his candidacy is not unlike Pat Buchanan's early successes which were not sustainable. I also think that Trump has largely benefited from rivals like Cruz not attacking Trump--yet--hoping to get their fair share of Trump cultists if and when the balloon finally bursts. Only Rand Paul and Bobby Jindal have openly attacked Trump.
The most notable thing I've noticed about the NBC poll is that Rubio seems to be steathily rising into the double digits with a firm third place. Fiorina has continued to fade after her surge after the second debate. Trump continues to struggle in national polls against a floundering Hillary Clinton. One poll I saw puts Trump at only 12% among Latinos. I still believe that GOP voters in the end want the Democrats out of the White House more than sending a protest vote to Washington. Although Trump has won a few Dem head-to-heads over the recent past, almost every set of one-on-one's I've seen to date show Trump doing worse than any other candidate with the possible exception of Jeb Bush in a few polls. The last thing is that the Bush campaign continues to flounder. It's seems recently that Trump has tried to make George W. a campaign issue and put Jeb on the defensive. Note that I'm not a Jeb fan, although I would vote for Bush and would never vote for Trump. I think in the current environment of political populism, Bush is going to think out of the box and get what his Dad once called "that vision thing"; he needs to get across what he can get done with a GOP Congress. But I think he's beginning to run out of time to get some traction.
ACLU Opposes REAL Consumer Choice: Education
One of My Pet Peeve Soundbites: All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
I would have liked to see more coverage of nuclear energy in this clip; Germany has cut its reliance from nuclear energy in half from almost 30% in 2000 and due for elimination within a decade, spurred on by the infamous Fukushima disaster in 2011. On the other hand, energy costs for heavily-nuclear France are about half of that for German residents.
Hillary Clinton Speaks Regional/Foreign Accents
Facebook Corner
(a follow-up to my recent Libertarian Catholic exchange with a "progressive" atheist critic, who challenged me to back up my criticisms of government social programs):
To the fascist troll: I got the 40% obesity (vs. 30% for the general population) via a simple Google search on SNAP and obesity. I think it comes from this USDA study: http://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/ops/NHANES-SNAP07-10-Summary.pdf
It's hard to get good numbers on government overhead, because there are a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons of overhead--a lot of costs are not allocated like they are in the private sector, the public sector short-shrifts things like fraud prevention, etc. I somewhat oversimplified my earlier statement in that it's not just government bureaucrats who share in the spoils of public programs, but direct transfers to third parties, like healthcare providers and landlords. This statistic from Michael Cannon from Cato Institute and others:
"Finally, private charity has a better record of actually delivering aid to recipients. With all the money being spent on federal and state social-welfare programs, surprisingly little money actually reaches recipients. In 1994, for example, federal, state and local government welfare spending averaged $35,756 for every family of four below the poverty level. Obviously, the poor did not receive anywhere near this amount of money. In 1965, 70 cents of every dollar spent by the government to fight poverty went directly to poor people. Today, 70 cents of every dollar goes not to poor people, but to government bureaucrats and others who serve the poor. Few private charities have the bureaucratic overhead and inefficiency of government programs."(Reason). Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton may take for granted the affordable travel, instant communications, appetizing food, advanced medical treatments and comfortable accommodations available to them—and most other Americans—on a routine basis. But these are largely the products of a profit-driven economic system.
And the Republicans and Libertarians like to conveniently forget that the most popular programs in the country are socialist in nature (social security, public schools, Medicare, interstate highway system, national parks etc.). Like everything, this is not a 0 sum game. Pure socialism is crazy and a pure free market is crazy. Fundamentalists on both sides are only making things worse. We need to find a happy balance of free market incentive and government social programs for the public benefit.
Anti-capitalist trolls in this thread are in a state of denial. This house of cards was never built by the free market system. The free market system simply refers to the interface of supply and demand without economically perverse forces manipulating it.
(Reason). Both candidates [Clinton, Sanders] seem to think our prisons are filled with pot smokers.
I don't think Democrats are inclined in general to support the supplier side of markets vs. consumers.
(FEE). How did Martin Shkreli get away with such an enormous price increase for generic drug Daraprim? The answer has to do with more than just greed.
Ikea is correct about pointing to the FDA approval process for off-patent, generic drugs like Daraprim, but I think another part of the problem involves the scale--in this case, of about 4 billion prescriptions, Daraprim accounts for 10,000. No doubt Turing could price Daraprim below a competitor's costs to win approval. Clearly, we need pro-market reforms, like allowing the import of regulated OPEC generics, more flexible approvals of generics, and/or privatization of the drug approval process.
Do You Remember Your First Crush?
Political Humor: Bruce Willis Plays a Trump Cultist
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Glenn McCoy via Bastiat Institute |
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| Courtesy of Steve Breen via Townhall |
Meat Loaf (featuring Lorraine Crosby), "I'd Do Anything For Love, But I Won't Do That". Meat Loaf's biggest hit, his only #1 (in several county charts). One of my favorite all-time hits, period, every note, even the special effects. The "big reveal" (of what "that" is) duet between Meat Loaf and Crosby is freaking awesome, one of the best duets I've ever heard performed.
