Barack Obama 42% Ron Paul 41%

Ron Paul has made quite the journey; from the outer fringe to just outside the mainstream. He won the Republican straw poll at CPAC and came within one vote of Mitt Romney at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. And after being repeatedly made fun of on Fox News during the 2008 election, today he’s one of their regular guests.

Now the libertarian Republican has made a big splash in the polls. According to Rasmussen Reports, in a hypothetical matchup for the presidency in 2012 between Ron Paul and Barack Obama, they are polling in a virtual dead heat! Barack Obama is at 42% and Ron Paul is at 41%. While statistics and surveys can be deceptive, I find this shocking, albeit in a good way. Plus the press release had this little gem in it:

“Ask the Political Class, though, and it’s a blowout. While 58% of Mainstream voters favor Paul, 95% of the Political Class vote for Obama.”

Wow.

33 States Out of Money

If you think the federal government has budget problems, just look at the states. California is basically bankrupt and now, according to CNN, 33 states have run out of money to fund their unemployment benefits. This in turn has forced them to borrow from the federal government just to meet the bills. So far they’ve borrowed $38.7 billion and that figure is surely to rise as unemployment appears to have stagnated.

Cow Farts No Longer Cause Global Warming

In some “good” news, cows may no longer cause global warming. Louise Gray of The Telegraph in England reports that “…a new study found that cattle grazed on the grasslands of China actually reduce another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide.”

She does stress this doesn’t mean grazing cows can help fight global warming in all cases. And, at least in my judgment, this actually doesn’t mean anything at all. But it’s nice to know the money spent studying cow farts has been put to good use.

Study Shows Problems with Foreign Aid

It’s very contentious to oppose foreign aid… Bono would be quite upset indeed. However, experts from The Lancet studying countries receiving foreign aid found that these countries trimmed their health budgets after receiving aid. For every dollar in aid, $1.14 was sent from health to somewhere else. While there are other important areas to be spending money on, given the devastating effects of disease in these third world countries, it seems health would be their primary concern.

What this shows is that while foreign aid sounds nice, often it just props up corrupt governments. John Stossel had a good piece on it back when he worked for 20/20:

What we should be doing instead of sending dictators billions of dollars to “disburse” is circumvent the corrupt bureaucrats and trade with these countries. As economist Johan Norberg puts it:

“External barriers such as rich country protectionism in goods of particular importance to the third world – textiles and agriculture – that (according to UNCTAD) deprives developing countries of nearly $700 billion in export income a year – almost 14 times more than they receive in foreign aid.”

That would help poor people a lot more than subsidizing the kleptocracies they live under.

Smart Women Get Their Drink On

And finally, according to a study by the London School of Economics, smart women get tipsy, buzzed, blitzed, sloshed, sauced, trashed, plastered, wasted and hammered more often than other women… Nice.