The American Dream Ain’t Quite Dead May 11, 2024
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My wife and I are essentially shut-ins, due to her health problems, so we have everything delivered. When the time comes for haircuts, an extremely nice and thoughtful young lady comes by and takes care of both of us.
She’s in her mid-20’s, from a very modest socioeconomic background, with no college education. But this young lady has her act together.
With only her income as a hairdresser, she recently bought a house. Megafixer in a skanky little town, but now it’s hers. And she was recently accepted at **** to pursue a degree in **** (decided to delete the school and degree to avoid doxxing her). Of course she’ll have to keep working while going to school, but she’s resigned to that.
No whining about disadvantages, no patriarchy keeping her down – she’s just making it happen with her own two hands.
The Left keeps telling us that upward mobility is a myth and that bootstrapping your way to a better life is no longer possible. She puts the lie to that.
Eurovision 2024 May 11, 2024
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The Grand Final of Eurovision 2024 is tonight (Europe time, around 2 pm Central here in the States). Don’t know why I put up posts about it, because I don’t enjoy the music much and don’t really care who wins. I guess it’s because I want to keep abreast of what the Europeans consider to be such a big deal.
Anyway, here’s the lineup (list taken from here):
The full running order for Eurovision 2024 is:
1. Sweden | Marcus & Martinus – ‘Unforgettable’
2. Ukraine | alyona alyona & Jerry Heil – ‘Teresa & Maria’
3. Germany | ISAAK – ‘Always On The Run’
4. Luxembourg | TALI – ‘Fighter’
5. Netherlands | Joost Klein – ‘Europapa’
6. Israel | Eden Golan – ‘Hurricane’
7. Lithuania | Silvester Belt – ‘Luktelk’
8. Spain | Nebulossa – ‘ZORRA’
9. Estonia | 5MIINUST x Puuluup – ‘(nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi’
10. Ireland | Bambie Thug – ‘Doomsday Blue’
11. Latvia | Dons – ‘Hollow’
12. Greece | Marina Satti – ‘ZARI’
13. United Kingdom | Olly Alexander – ‘Dizzy’
14. Norway | Gåte – ‘Ulveham’
15. Italy | Angelina Mango – ‘La Noia’
16. Serbia | TEYA DORA – ‘RAMONDA’
17. Finland | Windows95man – ‘No Rules!’
18. Portugal | iolanda – ‘Grito’
19. Armenia | LADANIVA – ‘Jako’
20. Cyprus | Silia Kapsis – ‘Liar’
21. Switzerland | Nemo – ‘The Code’
22. Slovenia | Raiven – ‘Veronika’
23. Croatia | Baby Lasagna – ‘Rim Tim Tagi Dim’
24. Georgia | Nutsa Buzaladze – ‘Firefighter’
25. France | Slimane – ‘Mon Amour’
26. Austria | Kaleen – ‘We Will Rave’
You can live stream the contest here.
The Sad Reality of Patriot Front April 28, 2024
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Apparently the stupid Patriot Front losers are at it again, which has once again elicited hopeful outcries from the Right that they must be feds or liberals. Unfortunately I don’t believe that’s the case.
Back in 2022 31 members of the organization were arrested in Idaho. They were, of course, unmasked by law enforcement, and their names are publicly available. Here they are:
Now you know why they wear masks. [I’m going to have to write some more posts just to push that image down the page.]
Anyway, it’s time to stop our wishful thinking and accept the fact that these guys are exactly what they claim to be: White Supremacists. Not Feds, not liberals trying to gin up outrage against the opposition, not victims of a honeypot operation.
Just irredeemable idiots.
MMT, We Hardly Knew Ye April 26, 2024
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Was noticing that I hadn’t heard much about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in the news lately. Since Biden’s economic policies appear to be based on MMT, either willfully or by chance, I was wondering if the economists advising the White House were cooling off on the notion that they could print arbitrary amounts of money and control inflation via taxation.
Then I ran across this recent article by some fellows in the UK, where they built economic models for MMT and “New Keynesian” (NK) theories, and compared the predictions of both to the economy from 2008 to 2019. From their conclusion:
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) portrays a world in which fiscal activism need not be constrained by the government budget, for which it has received much attention since the Financial Crisis while the space for monetary policy has largely contracted. Nevertheless, while MMT economists have failed to sell their Theory as well as its associated policy advice with evidence established by formal economic models, the wider group of mainstream economists have not been able to assess MMT in a formal manner, either—the fundamental barrier being that none has been able to embody MMT in a structural model in a testable form.
In this paper, we filled this gap by spelling out MMT as a full DSGE model, and tested its empirical validity and implications on economic stability and welfare, side by side with a standard New Keynesian (NK) model treated as the benchmark model. By testing both models against the post-Crisis data with indirect inference, we found the MMT model was rejected at the usual 5% significance level, while the NK model passed the test with a high probability. Thus, there is strong evidence against the MMT narrative of how fiscal and monetary policies have interacted and affected the US economy post-Crisis; by contrast, the NK model with a Taylor rule explains the data fairly well.
[Emphasis mine in the second paragraph. DSGE is Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium, and no, I don’t know that is either.]
To those of you who thought MMT sounded like a complete crock; yeah, it’s a complete crock.
CPI March Badness April 10, 2024
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The news is abuzz with the latest CPI release, wherein the month-over-month inflation was 0.4%, compared to the expectation of 0.3%.
As usual, I think year-over-year and month-over-month stats are not very illuminating, so here’s this month’s CPI chart (downloaded, also as usual, from the St. Louis Fed):
Can’t wait for Paul Krugman to lecture us again about its our perception of inflation that’s the real problem. Couldn’t possibly be the nasty post-Trump slope of the CPI.
A slope which doesn’t suggest that inflation is under control.
Disney’s Hurtin’ Ticket Sales March 29, 2024
Posted by geoff in News.Tags: bob-iger, disney, marvel, Movies, News
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Ace was talking about the Disney elections today, noting along the way that the Hollywood Reporter was totally in the tank for Bob Iger:
And Peltz said of Marvel chief Kevin Feige, “I question his record,” again mirroring comments from Perlmutter, and sparking a rebuke from Disney, which noted that with $30 billion at the box office, Feige is the top-grossing producer of all time.
That set me to wondering: How is Walt Disney Movies doing at the box office? I mean, the dextrosphere (haven’t heard that term in a while) has been gloating over the various woke failures of late, but are those failures representative of the company’s fortunes as a whole?
According to this marvelous chart I downloaded from The Numbers, the answer seems to be “Yes!” (this is domestic box office, not world-wide).
In the years 2016 – 2019 Disney had captured an enormous market share, but then COVID-19 arrived and they’ve never fully recovered. Part of that is due to an industry-wide depression resulting from the public’s loss of their movie-going habits during the COVID crisis.
It’s also worth noting that none of their post-2019 movies has cracked the inflation-adjusted Top 25 list at The Numbers. Avengers: Endgame was the last huge hit they had.
Iger may have presided over a Disney-dominant period in the movie industry (fueled by its acquisition of Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios), but Disney’s performance over the last 3 years has been much less impressive, and Iger’s return at the end of 2022 hasn’t yet turned things around. And, based on his comments concerning future market positioning, it never will.
How About Some Misery With Your Meal? March 18, 2024
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A lot of concern about the direction of “sustainable” food sources, with increasing pressure to consider insects, and now snakes, as high efficiency, low environmental impact, foods. Snakes don’t sound half-bad to me, but I’d prefer to keep insects out of my diet as much as possible.
Unfortunately, with the way things are going, eating bugs may be the lesser evil:
It’s hearty, it’s meaty, it’s mold
Scientists are exploring how tuning the genomes of mushrooms and molds can transform these food sources into gourmet, nutrient-packed meals made with minimal processing and a light environmental footprint.
Yeah – given a choice between bugs and mold, I’m thinking bugs every time.
The Latest Medical Panic March 17, 2024
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Gotta get your panic on. First it was the onslaught of Flu/COVID/RSV. Then it was monkeypox. Then it was flesh-eating parasites. And now?
OMG, OMG, now it’s Hansen’s Disease coming to your town soon!! Yes, the latest medical panic-porn involves the horror of the ancient world ==> leprosy.
Leprosy Is Spreading Across The U.S. – Why Is The Ancient Disease Returning Now?
…
Leprosy is beginning to occur regularly within parts of the southeastern United States. Most recently, Florida has seen a heightened incidence of leprosy, accounting for many of the newly diagnosed cases in the U.S.
The surge in new cases in central Florida highlights the urgent need for health care providers to report them immediately. Contact tracing is critical to identifying sources and reducing transmission.
The actual data in the article (which has been making the rounds on the internet) is lacking, so I did a little investigating. First, the authors of the “surge in new cases” reference don’t really quantify the “surge,” except to include this chart in their appendix:
Weird that it stops in 2010, ain’t it? For a paper written in 2023 that’s agitating about a “recent” increase in cases in Florida? Also, they only plot every other year (to make it look more monotonic, I suppose). What happens if you include all the data up through 2022 (sorry, the Florida site only provides case data starting in 2003, rather than 1994)?
If only they had written the paper in 2016 or 2018, they’d have their “recent increase.” Of course, there aren’t that many cases in the first place, so this is really a nothing burger.
You can see how unimportant this “crisis” is from the national statistics (chart copied from Health Resources and Services Administration website):
Let’s recap: There is no “recent” surge. There is no “spread across the United States.” There is no “return of an ancient disease.”
There is one case in Florida where they can’t figure out what the means of transmission was (normally travel in a foreign land or armadillo-humping). That usually means the patient is lying – he had sex with someone he shouldn’t have (maybe an armadillo after all), and won’t admit it. Regardless, one case is not enough to panic about a new means of transmission.
As I said at the outset, it’s just more medical panic-porn.
[This reminded me of an awful joke from my adolescence (probably from the Boy Scout magazine): “That’s about as funny as a jukebox in a leprosy ward playing “What’s Eating You?”]
2/24 CPI: Up, Up, and Away March 12, 2024
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Innocent Bystanders: Going to the St. Louis Fed site and making plots so you don’t have to.
…and here’s this month’s dollop of despair:
Can’t believe you aren’t reassured by the administration’s control over inflation.
Economic Drag Queens March 5, 2024
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Found this over at ZeroHedge:
Dutch Immigration Study Demonstrates The Folly Of Mass Immigration
Socialism attracts losers. This is also true for immigration socialism. pic.twitter.com/OV2kCLtzxw
— Emil O W Kirkegaard (@KirkegaardEmil) February 26, 2024
One cannot replace low native fertility with foreigners to fix the ponzi scheme of welfare socialism. It just makes it worse because of the poor performance of foreigners. pic.twitter.com/JOvURaunSu
— Emil O W Kirkegaard (@KirkegaardEmil) February 26, 2024
This thing about asylum seekers is a new thing in Dutch history. pic.twitter.com/uwowCMDVhN
— Emil O W Kirkegaard (@KirkegaardEmil) March 1, 2024
As above, but with countries. Asian immigrants stay for a short time, then leave, and don’t use any welfare. Muslims stay forever and use a lot. pic.twitter.com/wOJaKxCcTE
— Emil O W Kirkegaard (@KirkegaardEmil) March 1, 2024
Something to consider as the Biden Administration floods America with millions of low-skilled migrants.
Nice pithy encapsulations by Kirkegaard.
Just a side note on socialism. I think it attracts three classes of people: the losers mentioned above, the dreamers, and the ambitious. The dreamers have no grasp of economic or social reality, but at least have good intentions.
The ambitious look at socialism as a way to centralize power, and fully intend to be part of that centralized decision making. They don’t particularly care whether socialism improves the lot of the needy, they just want control.
You see these types every time the Left does something stupid, like Occupy Wall Street or CHAZ in Seattle. The ambitious take charge, the dreamers follow and focus on getting their hand signals right, and the losers just sit around and do drugs.
Is That a Ballot in Your Pocket…? March 2, 2024
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In the ever-expanding effort to balkanize America, we now have gender-specific voting sites:
The first-ever transgender voting center is opening its doors on Saturday for the California primary election, according to CBS News.
The Connie Norman Transgender Empowerment Center in Los Angeles County will be available to voters from March 2 to March 5 and while it is open to all Californians, the center is mainly focusing on creating a safe environment for the LGBTQ community to vote in, CBS News reported. Democratic Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis visited the center Thursday and touted it as a “significant milestone” for LGBTQ Americans, according to KFI, a local media outlet.
Hadn’t heard that voting was a particularly dangerous endeavor for the LGBTQ community, but I’m OK with the concept, so long as they open similar centers for cis-types as well. A place we can also feel safe and at home.
Like, installing voting booths at Hooters’ locations, for example.
…although that might corrupt me into trying to vote multiple times.
Economic Failure Newsom Evangelizing for Economic Failure Biden February 25, 2024
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Gavin Newsom is fawning over Biden’s performance:
Newsom said, “I mean, what he’s done in three years, it’s been a masterclass. Close to 15 million jobs, that’s eight times more than the last three Republican presidents combined. The economy is booming. Inflation is cooling. It’s .6% more than it was in the summer of 2020 at just 3.1%.”
He continued, “We have American manufacturing coming home, all because of Biden’s wisdom, his temperance, his capacity to lead in a bipartisan manner, which is an underrepresented point.
So let’s look at that first claim – I may get to the rest of the claims this week, time and energy permitting.
The 15 million jobs number is true, but only because Biden took over during the COVID rebound. If you look at the jobs trend before COVID and project it forward (the dotted line on the graph below), you find that we still haven’t caught up to where we should be.
Oh for a world with no COVID or Biden.
BTW, regarding Newsom’s brown-nosing: I’m starting to think Newsome is angling for the VP slot, which will comfort Democrats who are worried about Biden’s capacity to serve.