Wow, one week!  Where did it go?  (Oh yeah, I was coding ... :)

This week was "the week after" ... the great Republican debate.  Consensus seems to be that the "winners" were Cruz, Fiorina*, and Carson, Trump held serve, and everyone else lost.  Looks like we're going to have to come to grips with Donald Trump, we can't just say "he's an idiot" and ignore him.  I'm not surprised by Ted Cruz, of the professionals, he's the most professional, and of the conservatives, he's the most conservative.  Ben Carson is an impressive guy, but I can't really see him as President.  Fiorina I've written about; she's interesting, and might very well end up as the Republican VP candidate. 

* Fiorina is especially notable because she wasn't part of the main debate, but the storyline seems to be that she won the undercard and is surging...

Check out this post, it's notable for having post-debate-survey numbers, but also for the disrespect shown by [liberal blog] Boing Boing (which I mostly like, but not for their politics). 

I'm pretty surprised, as is [conservative log] Powerline, that Trump easily survived his strange comments about Megyn Kelly.  I think it shows his strength.  Scott "Dilbert" Adams says he is a Clown Genius:  "As far as I can tell, Trump's 'crazy talk' is always in the correct direction for a skilled persuader. When Trump sets an 'anchor' in your mind, it is never random. And it seems to work every time." 

Of all the Republican candidates, Fiorina seems most focused on taking the fight to Hillary Clinton.  She asks What has Clinton accomplished?  Good question.  

BTW Clinton's proposal for college socialism is astonishingly bad; yeah, let's make college even more expensive*.  Government-subsidized loans are already the biggest reason college is expensive (exactly like government subsidized housing loans have made real estate so expensive), and this would only make things worse.  Why are basic economics so difficult for so many people to understand?  Hint: they can't handle the truth :) 

* time was, I liked Bill Clinton better because of his smart wife.  I thought she would fix healthcare.  But no, turns out she wasn't that smart, didn't fix healthcare, and seems to have become less savvy all around.  I will be shocked if she's our next President, in fact, I'll be shocked if she survives to become the Democrat candidate.

If I had to bet, I'd bet on Joe Biden, maybe with Hillary as VP.  I'd definitely pay money to watch a VP debate between Fiorina and Clinton :)

The laws of economics haven't been repealed: Latest Seattle employment numbers.  "The loss of 1,000 restaurant jobs in May following the minimum wage increase in April was the largest one month job decline since January 2009."  There's no such thing as a free lunch. 

Related: for a beautiful example of bogus progressive economic non-logic check out this flyer about Walmart.  "Walmart costs taxpayers an estimated $1 billion per year subsidizing low wages and benefits."  Get that?  If only Walmart would pay their employees more, taxpayers would not have to subsidize their wages and benefits.  Clearly that's Waltmart's fault, right ... It couldn't possibly be the government policies which allocate tax money to this purpose... 

Now if only Walmart would pay for housing and college...