It pains me to live in a world where something like this gets people's attention but a quality show like Arrested Development can't.
Of course, 35% of eligible Americans couldn't be bothered to vote in the most widely-publicized and talked about Presidental election ever, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
Ok, you can have your bail-out (though not for the extra $9 billion you suddenly find yourself looking for). BUT - you give $10,000 to every high school graduate to buy a GM/Ford/Chrysler car - or the cash equivelant if they prefer (because maybe, like today, they will still want a Toyota instead). You do that for my kids, their kids, and their kids to make up for how your inability to adjust your business model has mortgaged their future.
You bankrupt us, we bankrupt you. It'll be fun!
I've asked a lot of my more politically connected friends what the chances are of a change in the top leadership for Republicans in the House and Senate when they caucus next month. Most of them tell me "Not much." Boehner has no real opposition for majority leader, though at least Pence is in the running for conference chair.
On the Senate side, I've been exceptionally surprised at the lack of chatter about replacing McConnell. Here's a guy who is only 214 votes and a run-off away having the filibuster lost on his watch and who nearly lost his own bid for reelection in Kentucky. Why would the GOP want to keep him in a leadership position?
Finally I've found at least one voice who agrees with me on this, in an opinion piece today from the DC Examiner.
In 2006 you settled on Mitch McConnell as your leader and quite frankly, the Republicans in the Senate and across the country have very little to show for that decision. We're down six seats in the Senate -- and they're still counting.
Moreover, Mitch McConnell, who supported the Bridge to Nowhere twice, who led you into a disastrous fight on illegal immigration, and who did little to strike back against the Democrats who were slandering the GOP on an almost daily basis, actually campaigned on bringing home pork to Kentucky.
Diane Feinstein (D-CA) is upset that people would have the audacity to hope that they could sell their inauguration viewing tickets for a profit (are we still allowed to say that word or is it profane now?).
Diane, dear, don't be mad just because you missed an opportunity to make the government entrepreneurial. If the government had sold those tickets, it could have gained a few extra pennies for the coffers - instead of coming after us in taxes later.
Let's say Congress sold the 250,000 tickets in the viewing area like airline tickets, so the first people get them for cheaper and the later sign-ups pay more. If you can average the ticket prices at $1,000, that's $250 million for Diane and the Congress to play with. Some tickets are going for as much as $40,000 on eBay - sell them all at that price and you're talking $10 billion - that's real money! Hey, you could give that to your friends at GM!
It's not too late! You still have those tickets in a secure location. No one will be surprised by the bait-and-switch on the "free" tickets - though if you're still uncomfortable with it, go ask Hank Paulson. He'll tell you how easy it can be.
PJ O'Rourke is mad at everyone:
What will destroy our country and us is not the financial crisis but the fact that liberals think the free market is some kind of sect or cult, which conservatives have asked Americans to take on faith. That's not what the free market is. The free market is just a measurement, a device to tell us what people are willing to pay for any given thing at any given moment. The free market is a bathroom scale. You may hate what you see when you step on the scale. "Jeeze, 230 pounds!" But you can't pass a law making yourself weigh 185. Liberals think you can. And voters--all the voters, right up to the tippy-top corner office of Goldman Sachs--think so too.
We, the conservatives, who do understand the free market, had the responsibility to--as it were--foreclose upon this mess. The market is a measurement, but that measuring does not work to the advantage of a nation or its citizens unless the assessments of volume, circumference, and weight are conducted with transparency and under the rule of law. We've had the rule of law largely in our hands since 1980. Where is the transparency? It's one more job we botched.
With the election over, it has suddenly become acceptable again to notice that Barack Obama is black and for us to awe at the historical significance of this moment.
It is truly a remarkable moment, and despite the plethora of policy differences I am sure to have with his administration, I agree with my friend Charles that now, in this post-election, pre-governing period, it is right to pause and reflect on the accomplishment of an intelligent and eloquent man and, more broadly, with the truimph of Real People in moving beyond prejudices that affected - and in some cases defined - all but the most recent generations.
Will the historical nature of his election cause Obama to become one of our greatest presidents? Joseph Ellis, in his most recent book "American Creation", discusses the consideration the Founder's gave not to their acclaim while living, but to the fame they would achieve in posterity. "They were, in effect, always on their best behavior because they knew we would be watching."
Now, history will be watching Barack Obama. He won because of a lofty and passionately-told story of where he wants to take America, not because he had a powerful set of policy proposals. Many of the other presidents history remembers as "great" have done the same thing: Roosevelt with his promise for change in '32, Kennedy and his lofty notions of country, Reagan's declaration of Morning in America.
My hope is that a President Obama will be mindful of history's record of him as he governs for the next four to eight years. If he truly reaches across the aisle, if he truly manages to lower the tax burden on 95% of Americans while somehow not undermining our business climate, if he truly rekindles America's connection to the world without compromising our strength and independence, and, above all, if he truly restores America's sense of hope and promise, then he can indeed be remembered as great.
I sincerely hope he does become a great president. To do that, though, he will sometimes have to listen to the voices of future generations rather than the voices of those in the room. Keep wistfully gazing into the future, Mr. President-elect, because that is where your true fame lies.
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I can't believe I live in a district represented by this idiot. If he represents the views of the people here then I've gotta move.
Curious about Twitter? The Wall Street Journal ran a nice article on the service the other day. People use Twitter for lots of things, from personal to professional to promotional. The article is also frank with the downfalls of Twitter, particularly the fact that if people don't use it then it's not really serving its purpose.
Do you Twitter? You know I do - you can see my most recent tweets over on the right. Several readers of the blog do, and several more - particularly dear friends of mine - are signed up but neglectful.
Make Twitter valuable for you - find two or three people who you care about knowing what they're up to and who would be interested in knowing what you're doing. Sign them up. Most importantly, register your phone with Twitter and get the alerts for your five favorite people on your phone. Send tweets from your phone. That funny thing that happened to you on the subway or at Subway will likely be appreciated by someone else - but if you don't tweet it now you'll probably forget it by the time you're back at your computer.
I didn't sit down and watch the infomercial last night, but my friend Charles did and had some pretty interesting thoughts.
I continue to be surprised at how relatively cheap it was for Obama to buy up all that ad time. At around $1 million a pop for the 30-minute spot, that comes to $33,333 a minute or $16,667 for every thirty seconds. For the 2007-2008 TV season, a 30-second ad on CBS cost $97,000 during the 8:00 hour, and that's at the low-end of prime-time pricing.
I'm sure there are blog posts or articles out there that can somehow justify the rock-bottom rate that the campaign received, but it sure seems odd to me. CBS for one said they would offer a comparable deal to McCain should he be so inclined, though with sweeps starting tonight I find it tough to believe everyone would be so generous unless compelled by law.
Though I for one wouldn't want to sit through thirty minutes of McCain, either. I did that for the convention speech and that was enough for me.
Are you excited about tonight's three-and-a-half inning showdown with the World Series on the line tonight? I am. Exciting baseball that should end early enough to get to bed at a reasonable time.
Tom Verducci at Sports Illustrated sums it up nicely:
For all the criticism of the weather, TV ratings and this strange World Series -- we've played 4 1/2 games over seven days and still there hasn't been one lead change -- baseball wound up with one of the most exciting nights it ever has seen: a 3 1/2-inning game with the world championship on the line. It is baseball's version of overtime, the shootout or penalty kicks. It is baseball for people who don't have time for baseball. It is baseball for the attention-challenged.
Fox should be working overtime to promote this game. It is an unprecedented situation with the urgency you never get from baseball. It can guarantee viewers that the game, if not the entire World Series, will be decided in the late innings -- without asking anyone to invest the time of watching the first two-thirds of the game. And there's yet another bright side to what people thought was a mess: Kids can watch the end of the game on a school night (assuming no rain delays or extra innings). The first suspended game in World Series history is not bad at all for baseball.
Dear Microsoft,
I have always enjoyed your products. You revolutionized computing, and I thank you for that. You created a superior product and we all bought it. And you continue to innovate, or, and the very least - and you shouldn't apologize for this - bring the best innovations of others to the masses. Good for you.
But now you've brought us this new ad campaign where we can apparently broadcast ourselves saying that "I'm a PC and we like broccoli" or "I'm a PC and I appreciate ugly dogs" or whatever. Now I realize that, by using a PC, I must be a loser. That saddens me.
I always thought Mac users were a bunch of weirdos. Now I realize that it is my fellow PC users that are the weirdos. Mac users are like that hip dude in the commercial that you are now trying to make apologies for.
And I'm the pathetic fat guy.
I feel lost and alone. Thanks Microsoft. Maybe I'll just wait for Google to make an operating system.
Lots of love,
A Microsoft loser
My friend Ania twittered recently that she bought her first stock. I thought, Good for her. I also got a little jealous because I hadn't done that yet (except for the ol' 401k). Given the bargain price of so many stocks, it's an enticing time to start investing. My plan has been to see where I sit at the end of the year and consider investing a bit of money in a few carefully selected stocks.
A thought occurred to me today, though, that says I'll probably know if I want to invest after the election on Tuesday. Barack Obama joked at one of the debates, in response to John McCain noting that Obama plans to raise capital gains tax, that no one was going to have capital gains this year. Cute, and true. For people who bought high, they probably won't have capital gains for a while. But for those of buying now, capital gains are going to come quickly if the stock market begins to rebound.
So should I put my money into a stock market when I know that, if I want to pull it out in a few years, I'm going to get hit with the government taking an even bigger portion than they already do? And for those who make more than $250,000 a year, the ones who would have to pay whatever the new top rate is (possibly as high as 28%, versus 15% now) and actually have the money to invest, won't this create either a disincentive for investment or a disincentive to trade?
By the way, if those realizing gains are not actively trading but instead sit on their gains to wait for a more favorable tax climate, the government isn't going to get the tax revenue anyway. And then you have to wonder where an Obama administration will go looking for funds...
I encourage you to read this post that has it all: hunger, obstacles, and the innovation that conquered them - and then the government that took it all away.
The proposed new contract for police in Peabody, MA, adds a demand that Sept. 11 become a paid holiday for police officers. The police officers in Peabody were, of course, not involved or effected by the attacks directly until voluntarily helping in the recovery effort afterward, but no matter.
Once President-anointed Obama comes to power along with his Parliament and passed card check, expect to see a lot more of this. Once secret-ballot union elects disappear and right-to-work starts to slip away, expect to see more states like Michigan and fewer enjoying the prosperity they enjoy now.
Being smart might be luck of the draw, but knowing stuff is the result of effort.That's the best line from a really wonderful and challenging post from Seth Godin the other day. Read the whole thing.
A thought occurred to me during the constant discussion of energy in last night's debate, which prompted a tweet but is something I've continued to ponder: did the new industry forming around the internal combustion engine receive subsidies in the late 1800s-early 1900s?
Politicians want to throw so much money at growing "green" industries now to stop the evils of climate change but also to reduce our dependence on foreign energy (the Right's common argument) and to create thousands, nay, millions!, of "green jobs" (the Left's common argument). But couldn't compelling, and in some cases similar, arguments have been made one hundred years ago?
Versus walking, a car sure was tough to beat. Cover great distances in no time! And against horses? Horses are heavy polluters, dropping their business in the road or wherever they please. They smell and can be temperamental. Plus you have to feed them them corn and other important foodstuffs, and why would you want to put precious food in your mode of transport? (oh, wait, we don't care about that anymore? Well never mind.)
But the car! Great distances in no time flat, runs on abundant oil (more food for people!), and a car can probably hold more than one or two people. Plus the number of jobs that would be created by this growth industry is remarkable! Why wouldn't the government want to put its stamp on this wonderful new idea?
And yet, amazingly enough, my guess is the government restrained itself, and Henry Ford probably forgot to ask for free money. But I don't know that for certain, and I'd sure be interested to see. Does anyone have a spare intern they can put on finding this out?
"One of the cleanest things in the bathrooms we find are the toilet seats," Gerba said. "I'd put my fanny on it any time -- unless it's wet; then you'd want to wipe it first."Still prefer to know where the cleanest toilets are outside of your home or office? The market came up with a solution to that, too. It's in the article.
Travelling is a fairly grueling endeavor these days thanks to the TSA and the bevy of rules they impose. All of us come up with pithy, clever, and occasionally salient questions about the procedures the TSA/FAA/airlines put us through. Seth Godin's new post asks many of the best of them, and does so in his usual way of honest challenge that makes you believe (realize?) that these changes really are possible.
He also comes through with a bitter pill at the end that made me think that with the things I do at work, I've probably also forced customers to, in whatever way, remove their shoes or turn off their safe electronics before take off. You?
Terrifying:
A truly Keynesian rescue plan should do more than bail out foolish investors. How might the pieces fit into a larger design? Well, if the taxpayers are going to acquire a stake in the nation's largest insurance company, perhaps that company can be the cornerstone of a new system of universal private health coverage. If the taxpayers are going to acquire $700 billion in real estate assets, perhaps the eventual profits can fund new investments in infrastructure or energy technology.
The more I read about this bailout, the more terrified I become. I mean, this is a lot of money and not a lot of accountability. Obviously no one fully understands this thing, but from various things I have read, the bill:
Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the U.S. House's Republican Study Committee, is one Republican who's ready to stand atop history yelling stop. On Friday he released a statement about the impending bailout of corporate America. Here's the crux of it:
At this point, Congress is being asked to support an uncertain entity, costing
an uncertain amount of dollars, for an uncertain duration – a decision that will
have implications for generations to come and requires absolute certainty. We
are being asked to go ‘all in’ with taxpayer dollars, and once our government
and the taxpayer is on the hook, there is no fallback option. My fear is that
taxpayers will be left with the mother of all debts, the federal government
becomes the lender and guarantor of last resort, and our nation finds itself on
the slippery slope to socialism.
One headline on CNN right now reads, "Democrats push back." It's in regards to the massive federal bailout of Wall Street proposed over the past few days.
Why aren't the Republicans pushing back?! We have to be done with giving a blank check to the Bush administration to do crazy things. We don't get to be the party of fiscal responsibility if we don't at least just ask the question of if this is the right move - or the right amount of money.
Now, maybe there are Republicans in Congress who are questioning and CNN isn't looking at them. The article mentions Shelby of Alabama at least noting the size of this thing. If anyone sees any members of the GOP asking tough questions and avoiding the blank check, please let me know.
It's something I've pondered for a while and generally I come to the answer of yes, he would. Not a lot of them, but a few. Doing so actually goes along with his message of audaciously hoping for change. What's more different than a White House built with a diversity of views, particularly ones the administration doesn't believe in?
Bush admin and Congress team up to put taxpayers on the hook for other people's mistakes. The Wall Street Journal notes, "President George W. Bush warned that a "significant" amount of taxpayer funds will be put at risk with the government's plan to bolster shaky markets." At least he's being honest.
Voters would rather watch football with Obama. Women prefer Obama, likely assuming he wouldn't be watching the football game either. Hope he'll bring chip in for the arugula tray.
"Redistribution of wealth - it's the American way!" - Joe Biden
Economy troubles force...FORCE...people to cook for themselves. Cookbooks appear on shelfs as though guided by some invisible hand...
An article on CNN today actually maybe the gas station owners weren't gouging after all; maybe they were just succumbing to this whole "supply and demand" rumor...and we were being "irrational."
Gas station owners earn only a few pennies of profit on each gallon of gas, Laskoski said, explaining that proprietors essentially use gas to lure consumers into convenience stores to buy cigarettes, beer and potato chips -- items that draw better profits.
When supply is low and retailers are uncertain when they'll receive their next gas shipment, some proprietors actually raise their gas prices so they can keep their gas supply longer and maintain profits from their snacks and sundries.Read the whole article, because it is actually sound and logical. It's what use to pass as news. Poor Eliott C. MacLaughlin, you won't last long there at CNN but at least you gave honest reporting a try!
An article on CNN today discusses fears of higher gas prices in the wake of the hurricane have caused runs on gas stations in places, many of them far from the eye - or even the winds - of the storm.
Canadian Ian McIntosh said gas prices jumped 57 cents per gallon overnight in Milton, Ontario.
"This stuff's in the tanks, it's just sitting in the gas stations, they're using this as a windfall event," the retired teacher said.
Lacking strong credentials in foreign policy and defense, the presidential candidate has picked a senior Senator as a running mate who is recognized on both sides of the aisle as being strong in these areas and keen on protecting America's interests. The VP pick comes from a sparesely populated state, quite the opposite of the presidental candidate's own home state. The VP pick will appeal well to the more moderate base of the party. Plus, he's older, a nice counterbalance to the youth and inexperience at the top of the ticket.
Yes, friends, this is change we can believe in, a new way of doing things, a real change from the old guard.
At a discussion with the new moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA today, a woman asked about the importance of her church reflecting its neighborhood. In her case, the church is surrounded by a couple predomenantly black neighborhoods and one predominitely white neighborhood.
Does diversity matter? One of the lynchpin differences I have always seen between liberal and conservative thought is in the importance of diversity. From my classically-liberal, conservative worldview, diversity is a biproduct of respect and equality. Begin with the basis that all men are created equal, have equal rights under the law, and have equality of opportunity in all things and this can and will lead to diversity - when diversy makes sense.
Sometimes, though, diversity won't make sense. As this woman pointed out, while the church feels like it needs to reflect the neighborhoods nearby, the black community has its own church. As long as nothing is being done to prevent blacks from joining her church, then the church is likely doing exactly what it needs to do. Should we, in the name of diversity, pressure people to come to one church over another in the name of diversity, even if it cuts against what they really want? How would that be different than keeping them out in the name of homogeny.
As we move toward a society that is more open to providing equality of opportunity, diversity will come. It won't come as an end in and of itself, but because diversity (of color, sex, intelligence, age, ideology, willingness to eat at Arby's, etc.) tends to make efforts stronger by creating a healthier challenge process for ideas.
My phone says i can blog from it. This post is short on substance but long on potential. Perhaps having a computer in my pocket at all times will influence my blogging frequency.
Although I have tried to do this from behind the scenes for some time now, I've decided to come right out with it now that it's being reported on News 3. Here's the video, with more to come about this big development soon.
Leaving the Derby is an exceptionally complicated process, where you're hearded like cattle onto a bus. It took forever, and in the end the clever gambit with parking the car at the end of the parking lot didn't do anything but make us walk a long way.
My favorite in the Derby, successful came in dead last, and Pyro, my mom's favorite who I'd put extra money on, came in 9th. None of us in our group picked Big Brown (save the knowledgable grandfather who'd asked us to pick him), who won handily.
Sadly Eight Bells was the only success in our group, picked by both my father and father-in-law, as well as one of the guys with us. We watched the equine ambulance speed past us to the end of the turn. Rumors flew around the boxes that the horse that was down was Eight Bells, and then rumors began circulating that she had already been put down. They had a big tarp up shielding whatever they were doing from view. My brother-in-law saw the Eight Bells jockey breaking the news to the owner's wife there on the track in front of where we were.
Ironic that despite the fact we were there we had to call out to people watching on tv to get the details. Last we heard was she suffered a heart attack, after which her two front legs broke. That poor horse.
Despite the pall put on the crowd by Eight Bells' collapse, it was a great day at the Derby. And we only ended the day about $5 down....as long as you don't factor in the cost of mint julips.
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We were suprised to find ourselves $2 ahead going into the Derby. We're 17 minutes away. All of us put a throwaway bet on #11who currently has the longest odds. I'm for Monba. we'll see soon....
Ann-Bailey's won again, cutting our losses on the day in half. All the losses, of course, are mine, so it's nice to have a wife that's so financially supportive.
Total spend on three races: $17
Total won: $11.40
Net loss: $5.60
Our favorite outfit we've seen so far was a guy dressed much like Abe Lincoln. His wife (well, I suppose that is just an assumption) was decked to the nines as well.
I wish I had a bowler hat. Why aren't they standard on young upwardly mobile men any more?
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For years my mom has always been very good at picking one of the top finishers in the Kentucky Derby. My wife is showing a pretty good knack at it too. While my horse finished 4th when I needed huim to show, her number 7 won the whole thing in the past race. We're off to see how much she's won. Maybe I should follow her betting line from here on out.
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Number 3 let me down. I let Number 8 down by picking Number 8 to place instead of show. So I'm down by $7 so far. I'll see if Number 9 can come through for me in race number 7....41 minutes away.
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Streets around Churchill Downs are closed except for buses and limos, so you have to park at one of various lots around Louisville. We're at the Louisville Expo Center. That's $5. Then we get on a $10 shuttle with a mix of the beautiful people going to their boxes and the bedraggled going to the Infield.
We've tried to park stategically for the easy exit. We'll know later tonight how effective that will be, or if we've wasted our time parking a half-gazillion miles from the shuttle pick-up.
OK, sunscreen's on and we're off to the races....
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Per request from Bill, here's the official times for race day. The first of the 16 races run today was at 11:00 am. The Kentucky Derby will be run shortly after 6:00pm today, and I believe it's shown on NBC.
We just had a friendly cop compliment our well-dressedness and my wife's lovely hat and give us the tip that the interstate is back open so let's see if we can make up some time....
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Although it has absolutely nothing to do with the usual subjects covered in this blog, I'm going to spend today live blogging from the Kentucky Derby.
Not that I have very much to report at the moment. We're in a car on some backwoods highway in Kentucky, taking a detour around an interstate-closing accident on I-65 North. The news coverage stopped briefly to report the accident before we left the hotel, but felt one mention was enough. Afterall, they had HATS to talk about!! So we learning nothing helpful to allow us to avoid the accident.
Hopefully there will be more exciting things to report soon....
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If you type in all caps, you are screaming at me.
If you don't take the time to punctuate with any semblance of effort, you are saying you have more important things to do than communicate with me.
If I ask two questions and you only answer one, I know you didn't take time to read my email, and probably should be skeptical of the one answer you did give.
If I copy someone on an email to you but you only reply back to me, it looks like you're hiding something (or, again, aren't paying attention).
Email's great and email's fast, but email also says a lot about how you value me.
Stumbled on this in today's Political Diary from the Wall Street Journal:
"I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.... [Now I] question my hatred for 'the Corporations' -- the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live. And I began to question my distrust of the 'Bad, Bad Military' of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world.... I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism"
-- Playwright David Mamet, writing in the Village Voice on why he is no longer a
"brain-dead liberal."
CNN's article on the resignation of Elliott Spitzer, the Democratic governor New York (can we call him "former governor" yet?) fails to mention his party affiliation. It makes a reference to the party affiliation of the Lt. Governor's mother's party affiliation, but you have to read the sidebar of the article to learn that "The first-term governor had been considered a rising star in the Democratic Party."
That's it. Nothing in the article proper. And this isn't a blurb, either - it's nearly 1,000 words long.
It's impressive. Really. Quite a feat. Way to rise above partisanship, CNN!
(note: the article will be continually updated throughout the day, so at some point the above post may become out of date if they fix the article. Currently, though, everything above is fact.)
The Economist has a great quote in this week's edition:
"A disappearing species is good for fund-raising; blood on your hands is not."
The article's about the culling of endangered species in Africa. It made me think of the Grand Old Party, though, and how it is getting significantly outraised by the Dems. Could it be because they've sacrificed the party's conservative principles in the name of keeping power?
Look where that's getting ready to get you....
I just walked by Trent Lott on F Street in DC. I nodded and he nodded and we went on our ways. He was all by himself - that's what happens when you leave the Senate behind.
I like this headline in today's Newday:
Clinton accuses media of pro-Obama bias at debate
So maybe the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" she use to complain about really is just a Vast Anti-Clinton Conspiracy."
If she thinks the media doesn't like her, she really shouldn't go here.
If you watched McCain's debate performance last night you can't help but be a little fearful of the man. Several people have noted to me that Senators are endorsing him just because they're scared of him and don't want to deal with him on the Senate floor after he loses.
But other than his temper, we need to be worried about the ideals he holds. Would he be an excellent defender of our national security? Probably. But what about liberty? Free enterprise? James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal points to some things that had me worried in last night's debate as well:
Two of McCain's comments--"I did it out of patriotism, not for profit" and "sometimes people lost their jobs"--lead us to think that McCain's problem with economics goes beyond mere indifference. He seems to view the making of money--that is to say, the production of goods and services that people want, and the act of supplying them through voluntary exchange in a free market--as a less than honorable pursuit.
The wife and I haven't been good about updating our wine blog, so I'm posting this interesting tidbit here: new research indicates that expensive wine really does taste better.
Researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford's business school have directly seen that the sensation of pleasantness that people experience when tasting wine is linked directly to its price. And that's true even when, unbeknownst to the test subjects, it's exactly the same Cabernet Sauvignon with a dramatically different price tag.
CNN is reporting that Bill Richardson's dropping out of the presidential race. I think that's a shame. He's a likable moderate (in some ways) Democrat, but he really underperformed in the race this year. If he's at the top of his game, I think he could be a real threat in November.
But not, apparently, in January.
Of course, with his exceptional resume and skills, he's clearly at the top of the list in the Dem veepstakes. He'd be a great accompaniment for Hillary or Edwards - probably too many racial overtones for Obama to tap him, but, hey, why not go all out?
Since presidential primary elections are usually over by Valentine's Day nowadays, it's easy to forget that what really matters is the number of delegates a candidate has, because it's the delegates who do the actual selecting of their party's presidential nominee.
This year, because the fields are so wide open and populated with so many qualified candidates, politicos are drooling over the idea that conventions could become relevant again, that no candidate will get a majority of delegates.
I'm one of them. I'd think it'd be neat.
So Romney's "two silvers" haven't been particularly bad for him, and McCain's big win didn't do all that much for him on the delegate front - though of course prominent wins open the door for future prominent wins and more delegates, just as the inverse is true for losses.Here's a new ad from the Club for Growth offering more reasons not to elect Mike Huckabee as the Republican nominee for president.
Now that Ralph Wiggum is running for president, I have someone to vote for if the Republicans accidently give the nomination to Mike Huckabee. Whew.
The biggest threat to America? Populism, according to David Strom in a new article on Townhall.
Government policies have proven time and again capable of slowing economic growth, but with few exceptions they have never proven capable of stimulating the economy in the long term. Even policies that economic conservatives think of as "pro-growth," such as deregulation, tax cuts and reducing trade barriers are more accurately thought of as the removal of government-created barriers to growth than actual government stimulants to economic activity.
"The economy," simply put, is not manageable like a machine. It is dynamic, driven by the choices, actions, and desires of over 300 million Americans, and ultimately the billions of people around the world. However frustrating it is to think that our fortunes are hostage to the actions of people across the globe, there is almost nothing positive the government can do to change that fact. We all live on the same planet and are tapping into the same resources to better our lives. It is the inventiveness of individuals and firms that shape those resources into useful products and services that truly make up the economy.
