While many quickly judge Penny, examining the underlying systemic issues that led to this tragic event is crucial. New York City has long failed to enforce existing laws and provide adequate assistance to its mentally unstable citizens. This failure, coupled with the city’s inability to address the mental health crisis, has created a volatile environment that led to Neely’s untimely death.

As a former Marine, Penny has been trained to handle high-pressure situations and protect himself and others. While some argue that his military training could hurt his self-defense claim, it is essential to consider the context in which he was forced to act. Neely’s aggressive behavior and threats to passengers left them fearing for their safety. Faced with a dangerous situation, Penny intervened, likely believing that he was acting in the best interests of everyone on the train.

The case highlights the urgent need for New York City to address its mental health crisis and provide proper support to individuals suffering from mental illnesses. Neely’s documented history of mental instability should have prompted intervention from the city and mental health professionals. Instead, he was left to struggle on the streets, culminating in this tragic event.

The debate surrounding Penny’s actions should not overshadow the broader issue of mental health support in New York City. This tragic accident should catalyze change, prompting a renewed commitment to addressing the mental health crisis in the city’s streets and subways. Elected officials must take proactive steps to address this crisis, ensuring that those with mental illness receive the help they desperately need.

Furthermore, this incident underlines the need for improved enforcement of existing laws, particularly those aimed at ensuring the safety and well-being of the city’s most vulnerable residents. By enforcing these laws and providing adequate mental health support, New York City can prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future.

In conclusion, while Daniel Penny’s actions have been the subject of intense scrutiny and debate, it is essential to recognize the broader systemic failures that contributed to this tragic incident. New York City’s failure to enforce existing laws and provide adequate support to its mentally unstable citizens has created a dangerous environment for all its residents. Rather than focusing solely on Penny’s actions, we must address these underlying issues and create a safer and more supportive city for all.

In focus groups conducted by Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, swing voters who shifted from Trump to Biden expressed their worries about the President’s age. Longwell notes that these concerns arise unprompted. At 80 years old, Biden would be 82 at the start of a second term and 86 at its end.

Biden’s age has long been a target for his political opponents. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s 2024 presidential campaign kick-off speech called for “mandatory mental competency tests” for candidates over 75. Nevertheless, the President’s response to these concerns is, “Watch me.” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield believes that Biden’s experience and wisdom bring stability and strong leadership to a volatile world.

While President Biden’s annual physical revealed that he is fit for duty, concerns about his cognitive functioning persist. S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, acknowledges that the age question is “absolutely” a fair one. Risks are high for something going wrong in that age range.

However, Biden’s team views the next election as a choice rather than a referendum. They believe that Biden voters worried about age will be more concerned about the return of Trump or Trumpism than Biden’s advanced years. Even in Sarah Longwell’s focus group, all nine participants raised their hand for Biden when asked who they would support in a potential Biden-Trump rematch.

Despite the President’s healthy physical state and the potential for a stable and experienced leader, the age factor remains a critical consideration for Biden’s re-election campaign. As the 2024 race heats, the question of how old is too old for a president will undoubtedly continue to shape the political landscape. In the end, it will be up to the voters to decide if Biden’s age is a concern that outweighs the alternative.

I am not an epidemiologist, so my word is not final on this subject however, I will point out that with every major natural virus in the last 20 or so years, by the time the virus was with us for 12 months we had samples of the virus leaping from bat to animal to human. Not in this case, we still do not know a natural way that this virus could have infected Patient 0. The longer that it takes to find the path of animal to human, the more likely it is that it was lab to human.

According to Dr. Stephen Quay, and Richard Muller, the Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus making it ALMOST impossible that the virus could have come from purely natural origins. Quay is the founder of US-based biopharmaceutical company Atossa Therapeutics, while Muller is a Physics professor at the University of California Berkeley.

Therefore, every passing day, week, and month makes it more likely that this is a human-caused calamity and it is the single biggest, most deadly, and most economically devastating human mistake EVER.

I am not contending that China maliciously released the virus upon its own population. I do believe that China knows for a fact the true origins of the virus and they should likely be held responsible for the trillions of dollars of harm they have caused to the world population.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-report-concluded-covid-19-may-have-leaked-from-wuhan-lab-11623106982?mod=djemalertNEWS

2020 was the first year that I have ever voted for you in your entire career. I didn’t vote for you because I admire you (I don’t), I simply voted for you because your Democratic opponent refused to not vote for Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House. Don’t make me your political enemy in 2022 by trying to overturn the essence of federalism and the power of the individual states in their Constitutional role of checks and balances in the selection of our POTUS.

Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory (whom I did not vote for and do not think will be a good POTUS) strike at the foundation of our republic. It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans. The fact that this effort will fail does not mean it will not do significant damage to American democracy.

I promise that if you vote to not accept the state’s electoral votes, I will actively support your strongest opponent in 2022 and will work to make sure you do not win re-election.

Mr. Biden will be a very poor POTUS, but he won this election. It is now your job to keep him in check using the prescribed Constitutional powers and to recruit and groom a qualified replacement in 2024. It is not your job to be at war with the decision of the various states.

Mr. Biden’s recent Covid-19 vaccination in Delaware proves he now understands that his consistent skepticism about the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed was misguided. This is probably excusable in an election as the words that come out of a politician’s mouth are rarely correlated to reality. Trump is responsible for his inability to convince the American public that he set up the apparatus to get us out of the global pandemic. That failure of communication is probably reason enough to lose an election.

Candidate Biden claimed that the president had no plan for addressing the virus and warned that Americans couldn’t trust Mr. Trump to oversee a quick and safe vaccine approval. This wasn’t true and Candidate Biden probably knew it, but it was the responsibility of Mr. Trump to make that case. Mr. Biden was not obligated to explain the effectiveness of the Trump administration if the Trump administration couldn’t explain their accomplishments in a convincing way.

With yesterday’s vaccination, Mr. Biden has effectively rebutted his own campaign warnings.

His acknowledgment of the vaccine and the public display of its use was designed to inspire Americans to trust the vaccine. The act is an admission that his candidate claims were made for purely political positioning and not based on scientific or logistical evidence. He lied on the campaign trail (or at least used Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt – FUD) to convince people that Mr. Trump was failing at this important task and therefore they should hire him. Admitting that Mr. Trump was doing a good job at getting the vaccine to the American public would not have been in Mr. Biden’s best interest at getting hired to run the country.

The outstanding work of the pharmaceutical industry, encouraged and enabled by President Trump, has already resulted in two approved vaccines, and yes, there is a distribution plan.

Drug distributor McKesson Corp. began picking up doses of the vaccine from manufacturing plants on Saturday for distribution around the country. United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. trucks started rolling out Sunday to deliver the doses to hospitals and other sites.

The federal government plans to distribute over the coming week a total of 7.9 million doses of vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer Inc., which developed the first Covid-19 shot authorized for use in the U.S.

Vaccinations will continue, without Mr. Biden having to do anything. And there are still more vaccines in the pipeline which could soon come to market, as long as he doesn’t get in the way. The J&J vaccine is a one-dose treatment and the preliminary results have been fantastic.

Yet despite his own vaccination experience, Mr. Biden is still talking as if there’s a huge problem he will be called upon to solve. According to a Bloomberg report on Washington’s latest massive goring of taxpayers, Mr. Biden seems to think there’s much more Covid spending to come.

The economy is awash in money; politicians just need to let people use it. Americans suffering economically are suffering from shutdowns, which never worked as intended, inflicted enormous collateral damage, and are now becoming untenable with the arrival of vaccines.

Washington’s work is over. Washington didn’t do enough to save many businesses as they were tied up in the politics of helping things that didn’t really get hurt. That was a shame, but that is the political reality of our country. Republicans and Democrats spent far too much time discussing how to not let a good tragedy go to waste. But now we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

By the time that Mr. Biden is inaugurated, 50-60M people will have been vaccinated (that is about 1/7 of the US population). Combined with the existing survivors of natural infections, this will now probably exceed 25% of the US population.

Within the first two months of Mr. Biden’s reign, we will have vaccinated or infected over 50% of the US population and may reach 60-70%. By the time of opening day of the MLB season, it is reasonable to assume that we will be at 80% which is effectively full herd immunity. We should still try to reach 90% and that should happen in early summer.

Due to Operation Warp Speed, we could have approximately a dozen manufacturers of vaccines for the COVID-19 in a few more months. All we need to do is wear masks and social distance for another couple of months and then the US participation in the global pandemic will be over. This has nothing to do with the leadership of Joe Biden, it is purely a function of the continuity of the efforts of the Trump administration.

Biden should simply sit back and enjoy the ride back to a fully functional economy. The Trump train will get him there without him having to do anything. All he can do now, is screw it up.

This analysis is based on the fine reporting of the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman.

Why in God’s name is our government spending time dictating how long or short a dishwashing machine can run? Don’t we have better uses for our hard-earned taxes? Throw the bums out!! I have no desire to pay ANYONE for such advice let alone an overpaid bunch of bureaucrats. The worst part is that this is a regulation so all of the dishwasher manufacturers have to hire lawyers to make sure they are compliant with this silly rule. This cost gets passed on to the consumer so therefore this is a CONSUMER TAX that would unevenly hurt poorer people (i.e. it is a regressive cost/tax).

We need our government to stop creating silly costs that are ultimately passed on to the consumer via higher prices. Big government is bad for poor people – I will never understand why poorer people tend to vote for Democrats that love big government. Next time, vote Libertarian, and let’s get Big Government out of our lives and lower our costs!

https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-issues-final-rules-ensure-american-families-have-access-high-performance

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued two Final Rules focused on quality-of-life improvements for the American people.  The first rule ensures that Americans can have access to high-performance, time-saving clothes washers and dryers. The second rule ensures access to showerheads that can provide enough water for quality showers.

“Today the Trump Administration affirmed its commitment to reducing regulatory burdens and safeguarding consumer choice,” said Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. “With these rule changes, Americans can choose products that are best suited to meet their individual needs and the needs of their families.”

The department is concerned that cycle times for washers and dryers could become very long in the future—reducing the value of these critical time-saving devices. The final rule on washers and dryers allows manufacturers to offer new products that meet consumer demand for clothes washers and dryers that have shorter cycle times. The rule establishes separate product classes for residential clothes washers and clothes dryers with cycle times of less than 30 minutes (45 minutes for front-loading clothes washers).

DOE has used this authority in the past to create separate classes for products with specific features and configurations, including cycle time for dishwashers and top-loading clothes washers.

Here is my advice to our incoming elected officials: there was no wave – either red or blue. Don’t think that there was. No one won everything that they wanted – in fact, except for the Presidency, the Democrats pretty much failed and were by and large rejected.

I agree with President-elect Biden that he needs to be the President for all Americans. But will he? It is no secret that I am pretty sure that Mr. Biden will be a wimp of a President. I thought he was a terrible pick for the Democratic Party. He is a poster child for almost everything that is wrong with our federal politics.

The only mandate that Mr. Biden received was that he was not Trump. That is all. It is primarily the only real plank that he had in his election. It is what he talked about in his very few speeches and his carefully structured interviews.

Mr. Biden was lucky; the global pandemic happened immediately after a failed effort to remove a sitting President. Had that pandemic not happened, Mr. Trump would not have shown what a terrible leader and motivator of humanity that he is. Mr. Trump would have easily been re-elected, and there would have been a red wave.

Mr. Biden would be a fool to think that he could have beaten Mr. Trump had there not been a global pandemic with what would have easily been the most robust economy this country has ever seen.

He (and his Democratic handlers that will be really running the Office of the President) should be careful not to think that they have any mandate other than tweeting and insulting people regularly. That was the only real reason that they won.

• They didn’t win based on a mandate for Medicare For All or the expansion of Medicare.
• They didn’t win based on a mandate to create the Green New Deal.
• They didn’t win to end fracking.
• They didn’t win to gouge the rich and give able-bodied people the means to not work hard for their livelihood.
• They didn’t win to kowtow to Europe, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

Significantly changing any of the above Trump administration policies will cause the Democrats to lose substantially seats in the Senate and the House (probably more likely the House) in 2022. It will cause them to have Ms. Harris lose the Presidential election of 2024 (I do not anticipate Mr. Biden to be mentally able to finish these next four years, let alone run for re-election).

Finally, the American tradition of not persecuting your political opponents must be withheld. The investigations into Ms. Clinton effectively were squashed after she lost four years ago. This is how it should be. Those who think the Democrats should throw Trump in jail, bite your tongue until you have bitten it in half. That is not the way that we treat our defeated political rivals in the US.

Mr. Biden has the Presidency, but will he be wise enough to ensure that he (or his chosen heir) will win in 4 years? Based on the rhetoric of his political supporters, I doubt it. My gut is that there will be a Republican POTUS in 2024 because the Democrats have chosen an inept man to sit in the Oval Office now. They will be unwilling to govern from the center and not punish hard-working Americans for working hard.

“You’ll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over,” Biden said during a campaign stop in Phoenix. “It’s a great question, and I don’t blame you for asking. But you know, the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be on the answer to that question.”

Well duh!! Of course it will be on that question. Because it is an important question and the American citizens have every right to know the answer.

Obviously, we know the answer. It will be whatever is good for Joe Biden, Sanders, Pelosi, and AOC. It won’t be the best answer for the average citizen.

If it was the best answer for the average citizen than Biden would be shouting it from the rooftops! He would be proud of it.

Because Biden won’t profess his answer, it is going to be the answer that you don’t want. He is afraid that if he told you his answer, you wouldn’t vote for him.

So don’t vote for him. Withholding his plans is simply unacceptable. Vote for Jo Jorgensen of the Libertarian Party. Voting for Joe Biden is simply playing into his agenda for NOT helping you.

Burrow has already been sacked 14 times with 11 hurries and 30 pressures on a pressure rate of 18.4 percent. In the latest game alone, Burrow was sacked a season-high eight times and was the recipient of 18 hits in the 23-23 tie. The rookie quarterback has now been sacked a league-high 14 times through three weeks. He’s taking hits that go instantly viral and it’s clear to anyone who has watched football in the past that he might not make it through all 16 games.

Taylor’s playcalling has mostly been miserable, especially in Week 3 – he needs to have the offensive coordinator call plays since clearly he is not up to the challenge of doing this on the sideline.

His Lou Anarumo-directed defense still doesn’t want to tackle. His offensive line is still headed up by Jim Turner, he of an iffy pro resume to begin with but oddly defended by Taylor from Day 1, and they’re still trotting out Bobby Hart at right tackle and praying a mediocre-to-terrible cast of guards can somehow come together and make it work inside.

Flick on a random play and you’ll probably see some combination of Hart getting pushed back so hard it looks like he’s a bodyguard escorting the defender to the quarterback, Jonah Williams randomly losing all sense of how to function, and some tandem of Michael Jordan, Fred Johnson, and Billy Price getting plopped on their rear ends like they’re getting bullied on a middle school playground.

It’s bad and something has to change.

At some point, excuses have to fly out the window. Last year was a 2-14 season for Zac Taylor and his handpicked staff and the excuses flowed. They assembled late and were unable to change up the roster they inherited. The injury bug, etc.

This year, the Bengals are 0-2-1 and the excuses could flow again. There wasn’t a preseason. The team overhauled the roster. The list goes on.
Fix it or resign. I, for one, am sick of watching a Bengals team that probably would lose to any of the final 4 NCAA contenders last year. Yes, I am saying that when Burrows left LSU, he went to a worse team – he definitely went to a worse coaching staff.

Many of the ideas in this post originated in this great article.

The header image is not mine and I make no claims to it. It appears to be the property of Bryan Woolston of the Associated Press and I will remove it upon request.

Voters can decide whom to believe, but one fact to note is that the story doesn’t assert illegal behavior. The IRS presumably signed off on the Trump returns, except in one case in which it is disputing a $72.9 million deduction claimed by Mr. Trump. This is a fight rich people have with the IRS all the time, often ending in Tax Court.

The report makes much of a deduction Mr. Trump took for business consulting fees that match payments his daughter Ivanka reported in separate filings. There may be legitimate reasons for those fee payments, and Ms. Trump ought to clear the matter up. Paying your adult offspring is not illegal – in fact, it is a good practice. This point should probably be dropped on the social media hate frenzy.

Also, it appears to be a big scandal that Trump paid a hairstylist during his reality TV days. Give me a break. Have you seen this guy’s hair? It would take a wizard to make it look decent. BTW, if you are going to make fun of Trump’s hair, please be honest and make fun of “comb over” Joe Biden also – yes, I am old enough to remember him as being bald.

Is it a scandal if Mr. Trump legally exploited the tax code’s treatment of chronic business losses to pay little tax? Hardly. Mr. Trump admitted this himself in a 2016 debate so there is no news in the NYTimes article – he already told us that he didn’t pay much in personal income taxes. Congress littered the code with loopholes aimed at assisting real-estate businesses, among others. Democrat and Republican elected officials write a tax code to please their corporate donors and then selectively attack CEOs or businesses that use the loopholes.

Here is a hint: if you are a business leader that is going to run for office and challenge the elected elite then you are not allowed to use the tax code to your advantage. But it is okay if you are simply going to take that tax-advantaged and donate to the elected elite. This is especially okay if you are donating to Democrat elected officials.

The story also claims that Mr. Trump’s empire is under financial stress and rising debt. This may be true, but the reporters can’t seem to decide if Mr. Trump is a shark exploiting the White House for personal gain or a sap who is bleeding cash while in office. Brilliant or bumpkin? Make up your mind. Many of Trump’s supporters cite his lack of tax burden as part of the reason they support him saying that he has a brilliant business mind. His enemies would do best to stick to one narrative.

The Times says it will have more such stories in the coming days, and who can doubt it? The press and most of official Washington are all-in to defeat Mr. Trump. I wonder if the FBI is doing a repeat and trying to help the Democrats as well.

Trump has made it easier for his opponents, as he often does. He danced his way through the 2016 campaign with promises to release his returns followed by claims that he couldn’t do so because of an audit. Many of his supporters advised him to do it in the public interest, but there’s no legal obligation for a candidate to release his taxes.

Trump could have controlled the political narrative by releasing his tax returns on his terms and timetable. If he would have done it soon after his election, this story would have died a slow death a long time ago. Now his opponents will do it. As in the past, Trump is his own worst adviser.

Many of the ideas in this story were sourced from this WSJ opinion article.

This analysis of the recent deal in the Mideast is very well done. Probably the best that I have read. If you are not blocked by the NYT paywall, you should read it.

This deal is amazing. In a normal news cycle, this would be the top headline in every newspaper and every news site (but this isn’t a normal news cycle). This is a deal that no former POTUS has been able to pull off. Is it a Nobel worthy as what James E. Carter or William J. Clinton did? No. But it is a lot better than what George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, or Barack H. Obama did in the Mideast (and Obama received the Nobel prize just for giving good speeches not for actually doing anything). Trump won’t get a Nobel for this because the committee hates Trump. But even if you are a Trump-hater, you have got to give credit for getting this deal done.

Thankfully, Mr. Friedman does that and kudos to him to look past politics and focus on a great result that will make the world a better place. Friedman writes a lot about the Mideast and he knows a massive move forward when he sees it.

To allay the fears of some of you that have read this far, I am still not voting for Trump for re-election even though he accomplished one of the biggest international wins of the 21st century so far. I am still supporting Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party candidate as I feel that her platform is the closest to mine and I think this nation needs a change in the political discussion of something other than Left or Right but instead a focus on personal liberty and personal responsibility. If you believe in personal liberty and personal responsibility, please give an honest look at her platform and then join me in changing the US to be a better place.

Since NYT may block you from reading the article, here are the first couple of paragraphs but will keep it under 300 words to protect NYT copyright. The following are not my words but Mr. Friedman’s:

The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.”

It is not Anwar el-Sadat going to Jerusalem — nothing could match that first big opening between Arabs and Israelis. It is not Yasir Arafat shaking Yitzhak Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn — nothing could match that first moment of public reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

But it is close. Just go down the scorecard, and you see how this deal affects every major party in the region — with those in the pro-American, pro-moderate Islam, pro-ending-the-conflict-with-Israel-once-and-for-all camp benefiting the most and those in the radical pro-Iran, anti-American, pro-Islamist permanent-struggle-with-Israel camp all becoming more isolated and left behind.

It’s a geopolitical earthquake.

To fully appreciate why, you need to start with the internal dynamics of the deal. It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opinion/israel-uae.html

Many people consistently underestimate how fast the value increases – a mistake known as the “exponential growth bias” – and while it may seem abstract, it may have had profound consequences for people’s behavior this year.

A spate of studies has shown that people who are susceptible to the exponential growth bias are less concerned about Covid-19’s spread, and less likely to endorse measures like social distancing, hand washing, or mask-wearing. In other words, this simple mathematical error could be costing lives – meaning that the correction of the bias should be a priority as we attempt to flatten curves and avoid second waves of the pandemic around the world.

The researchers speculate that some of the graphical representations found in the media may have been counter-productive. It’s common for the number of infections to be presented on a “logarithmic scale”, in which the figures on the y-axis increase by a power of 10 (so the gap between 1 and 10 is the same as the gap between 10 and 100, or 100 and 1000).

While this makes it easier to plot different regions with low and high growth rates, it means that exponential growth looks more linear than it really is, which could reinforce the exponential growth bias.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200812-exponential-growth-bias-the-numerical-error-behind-covid-19

Header Photo by RebeccaBarray

This is the downside of most government interventions. The goals of the “do-gooders” are overwhelmed by the special interests. Laws should be simple and have as little interference in the personal lives as possible.

The gig economy has provided opportunities for millions of Americans to make money. That’s not the same as having a “job” but that’s the point. Many gig workers have other jobs and many of the ones who don’t are in school or want to work part-time to make a little extra cash. Obviously, some of these people would like to have a different job which they can freely look for while doing gig work without any repercussions from an “employer” looking for loyalty or firm work hours.

Photo by raezer