Reverie

Price controls are essentially lies about supply and demand.--Sowell

According to BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, the average retiree has only $136,000 saved for retirement. That equates to an income of around only $9,000 a year during retirement. The combination of insolvent pension systems and massive savings shortfalls means many of the 3.5 million Americans who turn 65 over the next dozen years aren’t going to have the retirements they planned for.

While i am constantly revolted by the animosity and rancor of politics--especially in its current iteration--someone has got to do something about the inclusion of Trump's family in the field of fire, especially Melania who seems to be a reluctant but soldering volunteer.

A simple question: Why is it we can not get better candidates for public office? Why does public office attract abusers, fiends and morons when the country is so large? Are these people really representative of us? Do you have to have a personal pathology to go through the candidate process? Even Romney, a seemingly decent man, is a member of a peculiar cult. What is this?

Central-line infections, in the US alone, killed 60,000 patients per year, and infected an additional 200,000 patients at an average treatment cost of $50,000/patient. Central-line infections were also known to decrease by 50% or more if you enforced a five-item checklist that included items like “wash your hands before touching the line.”

"The danger is grow(ing) complacent.  That's what happened in Germany in the 1930s, which despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate.  Sixty million people died...So, you've got to pay attention. And vote."--This is former President Obama talking about the risk in the United States.

Muslim fundamentalists attacked the writer--and Nobel Prize winner--Naguib Mahfouz verbally for backing the Camp David Accord in 1978, and then his Children of Gebelawi was considered so blasphemous that it was banned in Egypt, and Omar Abdul-Rahman pronounced a fatwa against him. This was very nearly carried out in 1994, the 83-year-old Mahfouz stabbed in the neck and severely wounded just outside his apartment.

Who is....Kenneth Starr?

Some good news: MacLean did not win the National Book Award despite her astonishing insincere campaign.


Though a peace accord was signed with Ethiopia in 1988, fighting increased between rival clans within Somalia, and in January 1991 Barre was forced to flee the capital. Over the next 23 months, Somalia’s civil war killed some 50,000 people; another 300,000 died of starvation as United Nations peacekeeping forces struggled in vain to restore order and provide relief amid the chaos of war.


The ex post facto horseman pursued even Al Franken. My favorite part is that he wanted to investigate himself.

According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), by 2020 (just three short years from now), the interest on the national debt will almost double to $474 billion. That’s assuming the yield on the 10-year Treasury doesn’t rise above 3.8%.By 2026, the OMB projects that figure to be $787 billion–assuming the 10-year yield stays at 4% or below. That money can only come from, 1. decreased spending somewhere or, 2. increased taxation and the unavailability of that money for the economy.

Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/06/cab-thoughts-62213.html

Cab Thoughts 6/22/13 steeleydock.blogspot.com “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.” – H. L. Mencken A big Full Moon will rise at sun...

The NYT has an editorial titled "What if Kenneth Starr was Right?"


"Mine and thine cannot be, except this be: No man hath power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man’s." This is from Overton's wonderfully named

An Arrow Against All Tyrants and Tyranny, shot from the Prison of Newgate into the Prerogative Bowels of the Arbitrary House of Lords and All Other Usurpers and Tyrants Whatsoever

In the last decade, all 613 ethics investigations initiated by the Congress resulted in no punishment. Not one. It is reassuring these people are constantly proven to be ethical.

“There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.” And,  “Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT."  This was said by Apple Diversity Chief Denise Young Smith, who was named vice president of diversity and inclusion in May. She resigned her post after making this “controversial” comment last month during a summit in Bogota, Colombia.

The strange and complex  "reap where I did not sow" parable, a capitalist gospel if there was one.


Dowd has an article in the NYT about sexual predators and whether they would have come forward had Hilary been President. The gist is, strangely, that Trump's being in office somehow made people  so overwhelmed with injustice ("feelings of frustration and disgust at having an accused predator in the White House instead of the first woman president had helped give the story velocity") that they came forward rather than the more obvious explanation that the claque of conspirators was finally out of control.


The accusations--again--about Jameis Winston is being framed as a "lack of maturity" rather than the guy being just a bum. It is supposedly good if a culture remains always optimistic about even the worst people.

The Washington Post reports that figures from CMS indicate enrollment in ACA plans for the 39 states which use HealthCare.gov “surged at least 47 percent compared to the same period last year.” Data show almost “1.5 million Americans signed up for coverage during the first 11 days of enrollment...including 876,788 during the second week.” By comparison, that number was just over one million a year ago. However, the percentage “of new consumers enrolling in ACA plans is slightly down this year.”

Medieval Icelandic crime victims would sell the right to pursue a perpetrator to the highest bidder. Think about the dynamics there.





AAAAAaaaaaannnnnnndddddd.....a graph: