I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned it before but I’m looking for a good bourbon that’s within my price range.
For years I drank Early Time but a year or so ago either they changed what they were doing or my taste changed. I strongly suspect they joined the general move for “light” liquors, i.e. liquors that don’t taste like anything and have lighter palates. In the case of bourbon not only is that easy, it’s a cost-saving measure. You just cut it with grain alcohol and dilute it to the desired proof rating.
I’ve read all sorts of reviews and tried quite a few bourbons since then and I’m not really satisfied with any of them. At this point the leader, somewhat to my surprise, is Jim Beam Black.
I’ve even resorted to some exotics. Several months ago I bought a sampler pack of Koval whiskies as a present for my wife. As an aside I am the most fortunate of men. There’s nothing that delights my wife more as a present than a good bottle of single malt or a set of cordless power tools.
The sampler pack in question included three 200ml bottles: one of Four Grain, one of “Bourbon”, and one of Rye. The “Bourbon” and Rye were okay. Not okay enough for me to want to pay 50 bucks for a 750ml bottle (I still miss the days of fifths and pints) but okay. The Four Grain reminded me of a good Irish whiskey. I might be willing to pay 50 bucks for that.
I really ought to swing by the distillery. It’s practically within walking distance of me. Maybe I’ll do that next Saturday.
Meanwhile, I’m still looking for a good bourbon. Tastes in booze like everything else are highly personal. What you like may not be what I like and vice versa. Nonetheless, any suggestions?
The requirements of this graphic mess up my format a bit and aren’t easily changeable but bear with me. You can mouseover a state to see what the actual change was.
The obvious conclusion is that in states where there were real contests the voters actually do show up. If there’s a clear Red State/Blue State dichotomy in these results, they’re not obvious to me.
As to what message the president is deriving from all of the people who aren’t voting we can only speculate.
Money, writes Hosking, makes trust economically effective. It expands the realm of trust, whilst simultaneously depersonalising it. Money only has value because we trust it, and this trust is backstopped by our trust in the government of issue. Our faith in money represents a belief that society will collectively honour its obligations. When that belief is threatened, money loses its value. Hyperinflation beckons.
Oer the years our trust in various institutions from churches to banks to companies to the government has eroded. Trust in government is at a low ebb.
A lack of trust is one of the reasons for the economy’s present slow growth. It’s like grit in the wheels.
Trust must be earned. Once lost it is very difficult to recover.
In the coming decades, China’s GDP growth will slow, as occurs in all economies once they reach a certain level of development – usually the per capita income level, in PPP terms, that China is approaching. After all, China cannot rely on imported technologies and cheap labor to support growth forever. The Harvard economists Lant Pritchett and Lawrence Summers have concluded that regression to the mean would place Chinese growth at 3.9% for the next two decades.
But this straightforward statistical estimate does not account for the serious problems that China must address in the coming years, such as rising inequality between rural and urban areas and between coastal and inland regions. Other major challenges include a bloated and inefficient state sector, environmental degradation, massive internal migration, an inadequate social safety net, corruption, and weak rule of law.
Moreover, China will face increasingly adverse demographic conditions. After enforcing a one-child policy for more than three decades, China’s labor force is set to peak in 2016, with elderly
Nearly ten years ago I wrote a series of lengthy, researched posts on the challenges facing China which include the environment, demographics, its financial system, and the lack of a rule of law. At the time I was quite optimistic.
Over the intervening decade all of those problems have become worse. The only conclusion I can draw is that China’s ruling elite sees no way to solve China’s problems without weakening their own hold on the country. They’ve decided to run the ship right onto the reef and then escape to the villas they’ve purchased around the world, many here in the United States.
It’s a sad situation. We Americans have many problems but I’d rather hold our hand than the hand held by the Chinese. What we and much of the world should be considering is how to mitigate the risks posed by a deteriorating China.
For starters, Rauner benefited — as did Republicans across the country — from a midterm electorate more conservative (and older and whiter) than the electorate that went to the polls two years ago.
Rauner also benefited from the undeniable fact that, when it comes to campaigning, Pat Quinn is no Barack Obama.
But Bruce Rauner also turned out to be different from Mitt Romney, especially in one key respect. Rauner actively campaigned for minority votes. In 2012, Romney not only alienated Latino voters with his absurd “self-deportation†immigration policy, he also reportedly dismissed running mate Paul Ryan’s pleas to campaign in black and Hispanic neighborhoods in America’s inner cities. Romney sided with handlers and campaign consultants who thought the whole idea was a waste of the campaign’s most valuable resource, which is time.
Rauner took a different approach. During the hard-fought campaign, he spent a good deal of time on the South Side of Chicago, listening to African-Americans and courting endorsements from prominent black business leaders and pastors.
Rauner, too, heard from those who proclaimed this a wasted effort. He wasn’t going to change any minds, these critics told him, and he should spend his time campaigning where the votes were truly up for grabs.
Read the whole thing.
I’ve mentioned it before but I haven’t read anybody else talking about it so I’ll mention it again: the Rauner campaign was a cheerful, upbeat campaign, especially by comparison with the Quinn campaign. I think that made a difference.
I am surprised that I’m not hearing more people remember the greatest lesson of the last six years: that Congress can enact practically anything through the reconciliation process. President Obama is fortunate that Republicans aren’t cleverer than they are.
If they were they could maneuver the president into vetoing simple, short, unambiguous bills that had substantial popular support, wreaking havoc on the Democratic Party for decades.
I don’t think Republicans are that clever. I think they’ll continue to enact mammoth omnibus legislation that includes everything but the kitchen sink and allows the president ample room for plausible deniability. The reason for that is, as Glenn Reynolds puts it, those bills have more opportunity for graft and I see no evidence that Republicans are any more above that sort of thing than Democrats are.
Judging by this week’s election, voters didn’t appreciate the irony of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s speech a few weeks ago lamenting a rise in “inequality.â€
The Federal Reserve’s main ministration for a weak recovery, after all, has been stoking a “wealth effect.†By levitating the stock portfolios of the top 1%, jobs and wage growth for the other 99% would be stimulated. “Higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence,†once explained ex-Fed chief Ben Bernanke.
It hasn’t worked. The only confidence stimulated has been the confidence of hedge funds that stocks might be a good bet in the short term if central banks are printing money. Still missing is the kind of confidence that would boost the incomes and prospects of people who don’t own stocks for a living. The simplest and most convincing analysis of this secular stagnation is from former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who emphasizes a single datapoint: the missing investment in “long-lived assets†such as homes, buildings and industrial equipment—i.e., assets that require long-term optimism by employers, entrepreneurs and young people starting families.
They might do well to think about another of Mr. Dooley’s sage remarks: “One of the strangest things about life is that the poor, who need the money the most, are the ones that never have it.”
Why has Gov. Walker been so durable in Wisconsin? Including being the only governor in U. S. history to withstand a recall election? I think that one possibility is that many Americans don’t find public employees who earn much more than they do, have incredible job security, and defined benefit pension plans particularly sympathetic. The reality is that everyone who depends on the public purse and there are very many of them these days needs to regulate their demands to what the public is able to pay. As long as wages remain flat and many people’s jobs hang by a thread maintaining a low profile might be a better strategy than trying to mobilize public outcry.
The 2014 midterms were not a wave. If they had been a wave election Jeanne Shaheen would not have been re-elected in New Hampshire and Mark Warner would have been defeated in a surprise upset. However, it was close enough to it to make little difference.
Republicans won not only because of a favorable map. In solid Democratic states, they won big or came close. Nor were the results due only to low midterm turnout. Nate Cohn,
in the New York Times, noted that turnout in Colorado was up over 2010, yet Republican Cory Gardner beat incumbent Sen. Mark Udall with room to spare. The sheer number of blowouts was mind-boggling. Sen. Mitch McConnell was supposed to win in Kentucky, but not by 15 points. In Arkansas the Republican challenger, Tom Cotton, beat Democratic incumbent, Sen. Mark Pryor, by 17 points. In Georgia, where the Senate race was assumed to be close, the Republican won by eight. Republican Pat Roberts, eft for dead in Kansas months ago, won by 10.
Among the governors, Republican John Kasich won re-election in swing-state Ohio won by an astounding 31 points. In South Carolina, incumbent Nikki Haley beat her Democratic challenger by 15 points. In solid-blue Illinois, the Republican challenger, Bruce Rauner, turned out the incumbent by five points; in solid-Democratic Maryland, the Republican candidate for governor won by a solid five. Scott Walker, perpetually under siege in Wisconsin, the focus of public-employee-union ferocity and targeted nationally by Democrats who needed to knock him off, also won by five.
The president’s response was astonishing. He says he’s listening. Clearly, it’s not to the voters or to those so discouraged by politics and government they didn’t even bother to show up and vote. One can only wonder who he’s listening to.
