2 more 2 hour episodes the next 2 nights.

Kevin Drum summarizes (and his live-blog of the debate is there, too):

My strongest impression is that Ben Carson was terrible. He really needed to show that he wasn't a complete nitwit on national security, and he failed spectacularly. He was obviously out of his depth and had no clue how to answer even the simplest questions. He literally froze when Wolf Blitzer asked him his view of the USA Freedom Act. It was almost painful to watch. Later on he burbled about not being able to fix the Middle East, sending Syrian refugees back to Syria with a few defensive weapons, and then became completely incoherent when asked about North Korea. Carson did so badly that I think his campaign is over.

Donald Trump took a step backward to his persona from the first debate: lots of mugging for the camera and no apparent policy knowledge at all. He doubled down on killing the families of terrorists; he answered three or four different questions by saying he opposed the invasion of Iraq; and then produced one of the night's most fatuous lines: "I think for me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me." That's his position on the nuclear triad? It's hard to believe this isn't going to hurt him in the polls, but this is not a normal world we live in these days. I'd say he's going to lose a few points, but I won't pretend to be confident about that.

Jeb Bush tried manfully to needle Trump, but the poor guy just can't pull it off. All Trump had to do was make a face at him. As for substance, he was one of the most reasonable guys on the stage, but he seems incapable of stating his views in any kind of memorable way. He did nothing to help himself tonight.

Marco Rubio did his usual thing: he produced tight little canned responses to every question. I don't like this approach, but I suppose it sounds coherent and forceful to some people. He did OK, and might pick up a few points. However, I would like to hear more about whether he thinks Ted Cruz exposed national secrets on live TV.

Ted Cruz probably did well, though he struggled with several questions. Does he really think we can carpet bomb only "the bad guys" and no one else? Does he really think arming the Kurds is the key to defeating ISIS? They aren't going to fight ISIS anywhere outside Kurdistan. But I doubt this kind of stuff does him much harm. His tedious manhood fight with Wolf Blitzer over being allowed to speak when it wasn't his turn didn't make him look especially presidential, but maybe that doesn't matter either. My sense is that he came out about even tonight.

Chris Christie said nothing except that he's tough. Carly Fiorina just spouted her usual one-liners. John Kasich desperately wants people to pay attention to him and just can't pull it off. And Rand Paul, bless his heart, didn't try to out-macho everyone. But he also probably didn't appeal to anyone either.

Donald Trump is incoherent.  The entirety of his exchange with Hewitt on the nuclear triad is gibberish.  Aside from not being able to coherently speak about policy, he is too thin-skinned to be president; it's a good thing he has his own company - I don't think he could work for anyone else.

Will be interesting to see, also, if prosecutors ask for a retrial, and if so, whether they will retry on all charges.  

I couldn't watch much of it.

Each one of the contestants, and each one of the questioners, were incrementally repellent.

I did, however, read about it.

Of course, the discourse revolved around the analogy of a boxing match. Who was going after whom and the like.

But the part that turned my stomach the most was the suggestion, seconded by the idiot Doctor, that we should kill family members of terrists - including their children.

link

"With NHI, $592 billion would be saved annually by cutting the administrative waste of some 1,300 private health insurers ($476 billion) and reducing pharmaceutical prices to European levels ($116 billion). "

Let's define up front that the savings written about are the costs of multiple companies to administrate their plans. IOW, the insured individual is the one paying.

Using savings to finance something is always a popular idea. I'll finance my new car by savings on gas and maintenance. But in the case of the new car it is the individual that saves and the individual that spends. So the net savings to the individual is zero. S/he is spending the same.

So to get the $596B  for NHI the money is not saved it is merely redirected from the private payers to the insurance companies  to the government. That would be called a tax. It can be argued that the private payers are saving money because they are no longer purchasing private insurance. The question is, will the savings of the individual match the new outlay? No one knows the answer to that question.

IOW, part of the payment will be paid by the same taxpayers who are paying now. They see no savings and they are asked to accept the loss of what they are familiar, and mostly satisfied with, for an unknown. It is the classic, "Trust me....and I will respect you in the morning."

That, especially with what Obamacare has done, is not a politically saleable plan.

The next question is... how do you reduce the drug prices?? The only way that can be done is through price controls. Like it or not price controls always result in shortages, black markets and lower investment in new products and basic research.  I trust you can remember my comment about the suits in Moscow's GUM department store.

But the end result is a payroll tax. Another tax that Joe and Jane must pay while the millions drawing various safety net money, Ebayers, drug dealers and other criminals pay nothing.

$900 for those with incomes less than $53,000 a year, $6,000 for those earning $100,000 a year, and $12,000 for those with incomes of $200,000.

The TV ads write themselves.

If we truly want a single payer system then everyone must be willing to pay.

TANSTAAFL

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." - Heinlein circa 1952

How much is good health care worth to you? $8,233 per year?

That figure is more than two-and-a-half times more than most developed nations in the world, including relatively rich European countries like France, Sweden and the United Kingdom. On a more global scale, it means U.S. health care costs now eat up 17.6 percent of GDP.

As a result the Missouri legislature has introduced a bill to revoke scholarships if players refuse to play for other than health reasons.

folks,

over in the other most recent open thread, I brought up again the Heller decision and one key batch of 2 sentences.  That key batch was the idea that the prefatory clause does not limit the operative clause.

None of you, either lawyers or nonlawyers, choose or chose to "engage" and argue against that position.  One of you referred me or us to an article in MJ in which MJ interviews a leader of the Brennan Center.  I then read the MJ article and I read 2 more articles found at the Brennan Center website on the topic of the 2nd amendment and Heller.

Here is one of the sentence of this topic, from the Heller decision:
"The Amendment's prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause."

Neither you folks nor Donald of Hawaii nor Waldman your expert arguer from New York's Brenna Center in the articles available which I have read so far make any meaningful engagement with this idea.  Now, maybe Waldman does in his book, but I have not got his book. . . and given how important this sentence is to the decision, if you wish to oppose the Heller decision, this is a good place to begin.

Rather than engaging with Heller on this idea:
"The Amendment's prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause." Waldman announces that he has a new and better idea:

"How the country has evolved is important. What the country needs now is important."

and

"While Waldman emphasizes that we must understand what the framers thought, he argues that giving them the last word is impossible--and impractical."

In other words, because guns today at times are used to kill people in crimes, and because some people supposed we will have a lower homicide rate by restricting the availability of guns to those of relatively clean criminal history, rather than convicted drug dealers and robbers, we should adopt a policy like that, despite what the founders intended, if by chance they intended the idea of protecting gun rights or believed in them.

Maybe we should follow the British idea, get rid of nearly all guns and let Muslim terrorists kill unarmed soldiers, and let most of the British public says that they actually want their guns back to defend themselves from a few idiotic thugs . . .

Britain wants its guns back

A Daily Telegraph online poll has revealed that over 80 percent of Brits would rather a repeal on the hand gun ban over various other "new law" choices

Following the Dunblane massacre in 1996, in which 16 schoolchildren were killed, Parliament passed The Firearms Act of 1997, which essentially banned handguns for the atrocity.

But Britons seem unconvinced by the law. The proposer, known as "Colliemum" asked, "...why should only criminals be 'allowed' to possess guns and shoot unarmed, defenceless citizens and police officers?"

I mean, at least, so far, in the absence of my reading the book by Waldman, you folks who claim to disagree with Heller have laid down completely and given up on the question of

"The Amendment's prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause."

The Heller decision has 2 more important parts.  One is the meaning of "the people" and the other is "KBA."

Do you folks wish to concede defeat on the prefatory clause?

"Adoption of state laws permitting millions of qualified citizens to carry guns has not resulted in more murder or violent crime in these states. Rather, adoption of these statutes has been followed by very significant reductions in murder and violence in these states."

A steel cage match.

The world is wondering.
The questions of the day are before us:

Will Trump attack Ted "Maniac" Cruz?
Will Cruz attack Rubio?
Will Jeb attack Trump?
Will the panel attack?
Will Trump attack the panel.
Will Ben "the Doctor" Carson be awake?
Will Florina be as frightening as before?
Will Rand Paul be asked anything at all?

Since 2007, the number of concealed handgun permits has soared from 4.6 million to over 12.8 million, and murder rates have fallen from 5.6 killings per 100,000 people to just 4.2, about a 25 percent drop, according to the report from the Crime Prevention Research Center.

Of course, only someone with a phd as a highly trained economist (or statistician) could figure out if the cc permit increase has really led to the decrease in certain crime rates.  Obama is in; unemployment is down; health insurance rates are slightly up; there are a variety of factors that could be causing a reduction in the violent crime rate.  We probably slightly reduced the violent crime rate when we legalized drinking alcohol again, cause we were then funding org crime a little bit less and there was slightly less incentive for police to work on the side with the Mafia.

But the fact also is that there are one or more highly trained economists who claim they have done the research and they claim to have distinguished out some of the causes in higher and lower rates of crime . . .  AND, wonder of wonders . . .

The authors also said concealed carry policies on college campuses lead to a reduction in crime, using two Colorado schools as test cases. After the state enacted its concealed carry law in 2003, Colorado State University decided to allow students to carry concealed weapons while the University of Colorado prohibited them. The report found a 60 percent decrease in crime at Colorado State since 2004, while the University of Colorado saw a 35 percent increase during the same time period.
"(It does not) seem likely that a would-be robber would be deterred because of stickers on the doors announcing that armed robbery is severely frowned upon by the student code of conduct," the report said.

"Consider Boston, our best guess for where you might be reading this article."

Article

"The Experts Were Wrong About the Best
Places for Better and Cheaper Health Care"

gist of the article:

"places that spend less on Medicare do not necessarily spend less on health care over all."

Regarding Boston:

"Spending on Medicare patients is very high in this area. But, when it comes to private health insurance, spending is about average."

Not surprising to me was how often politicians, especially the Republicans running for president, lie, or at the very least, play fast and loose with the truth. Yes, the Democrats also say things that are not true, but to a much smaller degree.

Of particular interest to me was the truth side of the equation. Democrats have a much closer relationship with the truth than does the GOP. Based on this chart, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and old Slick Willie himself tell the truth, just the truth with no shading, at least 50% of the time. Martin O'Malley's statements tend to fall in the part truth/part falsehood area.

The GOP? they all seem to have a troubled relationship with the truth.

That 50% totally truthful number may seem lacking to most of us who were taught, and still make the effort to, be truthful at all times. For an American politician that 50 % is apparently the gold standard.

After watching that bit, and what it would take to make it occur, I am thinking the possibility is not as rare as I once thought.  Basically if no candidate gets 50% all hell is going to break lose.

Now it makes a little more sense why they are keeping all the clowns around, they don't want a certain someone getting 50%.

This year, 14 states and the federal government issued just 49 new death sentences. That's a dramatic decline from the peak of 315 new sentences recorded in 1996 at the height of the moral panic around murder rates in big cities and the crack cocaine epidemic.

This year, 28 executions have been performed, down from a 1999 peak of 98. Most tellingly, only six states were responsible for all those deaths, and within that rump an even smaller rump of just three states - Texas, Missouri and Georgia - performed the lion's share.

Yet a closer look at Texas's year shows that even at the core of the death penalty, the practice is withering. The annual report of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty records a steady decline.

At its peak in 1999, Texas condemned 48 people to death. This year that number had fallen to three.

"The use of the death penalty is becoming increasingly rare and increasingly isolated in the US," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "These are not just annual blips in statistics, but reflect a broad change in attitudes."