Innocent Bystanders

Dammit, I Know I Had a Good Victim Spiel Around Here Somewhere! February 23, 2019

So Jussie Smollett, who maligned a lot of good people with his fabricated story of MAGAmaniacs attacking him on a frigid Chicago night, apparently has a Plan B.

Plan A: Become an intersectional victim at the corner of gay & black.

Result: “Curses! I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling security cameras!!”

Plan B: Become a helpless victim of substance abuse.

This one I’m willing to believe, though unlike Jussie, I don’t think it qualifies him as a victim.

Now I’m trying to figure out which victim category he’ll go for with Plan C.

Freedom Dies with a Whimper February 20, 2019

Do we really want to live in a world where a retiree can’t express themselves freely in court?

Pensioner kicked out of court for waving his genitals at staff

Or toss a few items about in a playful fashion?

Michael Folan, 67, was faced[sic] magistrates for throwing chairs and tables at cars and passers by outside a Wetherspoon in Huddersfield Town Centre.

He was almost hit by a bus as he dragged metal poles belonging to The Cherry Tree pub into the street to throw them at vehicles.

What a repressive society we’ve become.

Well Looky There… February 18, 2019

…looks like all those posts dating back to 2006 were, how you say in your country? Frickin’ prescient?

Manufacturing Jobs Experiencing Bloating February 8, 2019

Like the employment numbers described in the preceding post, the Bureau for Labor Statistics made some revisions to their data in this report. This is an annual thing, so no cause for alarm. I’ve updated the data back to 2016.

Caveats in place, let’s take a look at the manufacturing jobs story:

The mind, she is boggled.

You Didn’t Actually Want to Use Your Electric Car in the Winter, Did You? February 8, 2019

Fast on the heels of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ill-fated “Green New Deal” nonsense, we find that physics once again intrudes on the good intentions of environmentalists:

As freezing temperatures plague much of the country, electric vehicle owners may experience a decrease in driving range, compounded by the use of the vehicle’s interior climate control. New research from AAA reveals that when the mercury dips to 20°F and the HVAC system is used to heat the inside of the vehicle, the average driving range is decreased by 41 percent.

So all those subsidies paid for electric car purchases ended up saddling car owners with a car that really can’t cope with winter. I mean, 20°F ain’t that low, and using your heater when it’s 20°F is not unreasonable.

I don’t have anything against electric cars, except when they are pushed into the market prematurely by government subsidies. Which you and I pay for.

2nd-to-Last Employment Post February 8, 2019

Been swamped with work lately, so little time for blogging. Seems like the better the economy is doing, the less time we have to blog, but when it’s hurting, we have plenty of time to whine online.

Anyway, I’m a week late in getting the employment graph out. The data is a little weird this month, because the Bureau for Labor Statistics made some major changes in the population estimates (they disappeared 800K people).

A little downtick, but well above 0.5. Here’s the big picture, going back to 1990:

Gotta warn you guys: I’ve been tracking employment for almost 10 years (started in April ’09 with The Chart), and I think I’m going to put it to bed next month, making it exactly 10.

Try to stifle your sniffles.

Death Can’t Stop Justice February 1, 2019

Amid questions concerning whether Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is alive, and certainly hoping that she is (though I wouldn’t mind her retiring, quite honestly), I’m reminded that perhaps it doesn’t really matter. [I have this set to start at 0:55, but it’s worth watching the whole thing.]