Friday Hodgepodge

Four Things

1. I agree with Alex Epstein that the Green New Deal is an Existential Threat, and am glad to see that his five minute case against same (below) has had a successful launch.

Epstein notes, "My recent Prager University video on the Green New Deal has reached 2.3 million views, including over 1.3 million on YouTube alone.

It deserves millions more, regardless of whether Ocasio-Cortez was "just joking" about it "really" being "about climate."

2. My favorite soccer team, Arsenal, are rebuilding the year after changing managers. And they seem to have just wrapped up a very good transfer window:

The loan deal for Ceballos gives us something different and he might decide he wants to stay. [Head of Football] Raul [Sanllehi] might want him to too. Pepe gives us the pace and width we've cried out for. Saka and Nelson too. Martinelli brings Brazilian flair up front and his fellow countryman brings ruggedness, sneakiness and a lot of chat to our defending either in midfield or defence itself. He's the kind of player I despised at Chelsea but will now love in a red and white shirt. Tierney, a young left back who'll be desperate to prove his fitness and that the step from the SPL to the PL is not too big for him. Lastly, Saliba. A young and expensive centre back, who in just a few years might well look like a £25 million bargain

I'm pretty happy, too, although I am no fan of David Luiz and hope he doesn't give us flashbacks of his poor 2014 World Cup performance against Germany.

Elsewhere in the linked post, Rico argues inter alia, "A two year contract is ideal as Saliba and Medley will grow both in age and experience during that time." I can see this as a decent stopgap, but the player looks like a gamble to me.

3. Every single Democrat running for president (so far) scares the living daylights out of me as either (a) an outright supporter of the Green New Deal or (b) a pushover in the face of the inevitable clamoring for same should the Democrats win the Presidency and Congress in 2020. It's so bad I'm considering a vote for Donald Trump, whom I despise and whose ideas on trade are so wrong I am concerned about him bringing on a depression if he wins and continues meddling in trade.

That said, the race does offer some entertainment value:

The news is particularly bad for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who has participated in more than 50 campaign events across the Granite State but garnered just 3 supporters in the Suffolk poll. Not three percent. Three people. [link and italics in original]

Gillibrand owns an advantage over the seven who didn't register at all despite the fact that, "voters in New Hampshire often run into presidential candidates or political surrogates while out doing their weekend shopping."

4. And now, for some news I hope you never need to use:

Slam on the brakes until the moment just before impact, then release them. This lifts the nose of the car just enough so that you may deflect the animal away from the vehicle, and prevent it from flying directly at you.

This comes from the third of three tips in "How to Properly Slam Into Wildlife With Your Car -- to Save Your Life." The first was, "don't speed," which bears mention since, "traffic engineers set the speed limit low not because of the road design, but because this is an area where deer keep diving through windshields." That makes sense, given the ridiculous number of deer (and apparently pointlessly curvy roads) in my old suburban neighborhood west of Baltimore. The speed limits often seemed overly low, but I was following them mainly because the state had speeding cameras everywhere and mailed me a ticket early on. One cheer for that, I guess.

I would have appreciated some mention of the deer with the fine, though.

-- CAV