7-25-15 Hodgepodge

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Another Perot, the Other Clinton?

Scott Holleran notes a serious lack of substance in the Trump candidacy:

... Trump has no serious, tenable positions on the most critical issues of this dark moment in history. To the extent his positions, sense of purpose and reliability are known, he is mixed, anti-capitalist, unserious and unsteady or shaky, the opposite qualities needed for a good or even decent president at this pivotal point...
To this unseriousness, add either a sense of entitlement or malice aforethought. Trump has threatened a third-party run should the Republican establishment not treat him "fairly".

"... I know Hillary very well...," he says in another part of the article. Great.

Weekend Reading

"Rather than relying on objective, rational facts, [people pleasers] place themselves totally at the mercy of others' judgments." -- Michael Hurd, in "'People Pleasing' Backfires On Its Own Terms" at The Delaware Wave

"[Y]ou're entirely right to take offense at ... unsolicited advice, no matter the source." -- Michael Hurd, in "How to Give GOOD Advice" at The Delaware Coast Press

Thallium in Greens?

I have often heard extolled the virtues of leafy, green vegetables, but caution may be warranted, if the work of California scientist Ernie Hubbard is to be believed:
As the tests progressed, the detoxification regimens seemed to prove effective (and with no side-effects), but thallium kept showing up. Then, in July of 2014, he stumbled on a 2006 study out of the Czech Republic showing how the "cruciferous" family of vegetables behave as "hyperaccumulators" of thallium. Crucifers include many of our more intense green vegetables such as kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, mustard and collard greens. These are also the vegetables often touted -- and consumed -- most heavily these days, supposedly for their outsized health benefits.
Kale, which I fortunately dislike, seems to be a top suspect.

-- CAV

3 comments:

Snedcat said...

Whoa, thallium? Count me out! One of the side effects, as it were, of being a mystery lover is that one tends to see thallium even where it's not...though its use in a couple of classic mysteries has saved at least two lives.

Anonymous said...

More or less the following was posted on OO, which reblogs Gus Van Horn:

From Scott Holleran’s article:
“Trump ... brings nothing essential to the arena and should be dismissed as the clown or carnival barker many have said he is.”

“a sideshow”

“insane”

Well, Trump does come with baggage. Everyone should remember his colluding with New Jersey’s state government in an attempt to steal someone’s home, so he could build another casino parking lot. Fortunately he lost in court.

Though Trump is no Objectivist capitalist I wouldn’t call him anti-capitalist either, as Scott Holleran does at one point. If Trump is anti-capitalist what on earth are Hillary and the other candidates? As Scott Holleran says in a more temperate part of his article, Trump is a “mixed” economy type.

But even if a president Trump made the U.S. more statist instead of less, and probably it would be less, eventually we could recover from the damage he inflicted. The Pilgrims began their first year in America by imposing out-and-out communism, with the every man’s farm production owned by every other man. After the ensuing disaster they reversed course and became more capitalist than in their former country.

They had one thing going for them. The Pilgrims were the same men before and after their experiment with communism, they hadn’t been overwhelmed by Haitians, Guatemalans, Vietnamese, Nigerians, etc. Today we could recover from statism if it were imposed by Americans on Americans, we will never recover from replacement by Third World migrants.

Trump is the candidate most consistently opposed to unrestricted immigration. Bringing the issue front and center has made his support among grassroots Republicans soar. People are fed up with our immigration disaster.

Despite the substantial Republican grassroots support, Republican leaders oppose his candidacy. They hate him for the very reason the public loves him: his daring to point out what is obvious to everyone.

Now they are trying to keep him out of the debates. If Trump must threaten to run as a third party candidate to get treated fairly the responsibility lies with the Republican machine.

If it comes down to the Republican machine freezing out Trump we should welcome him as a third party candidate. The Republican machine would get what it deserves, complete destruction, then the third party would become the second.

Without Trump there isn’t much difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. These days, to borrow a line, the parties are two wings of the same bird of prey.

Voting for “the lesser of two evils” is getting monotonous.

Gus Van Horn said...

Anon.,

So you regard someone who didn't use the state to steal someone else's property only because a court stopped him as not anticapitalist AND fit to serve as chief executive?

Also, I disagree with his anti-immigration views and regard a third party (even if he somehow managed to attract pro-capitalists) as an impediment to the cause of liberty.

Gus