Innocent Bystanders

Biden Blood Babble July 24, 2021

Was musing over Joe Biden’s weird statement: “Are there people in the Republican Party who think we’re sucking the blood out of kids?”

Could just be more Bidenbabble or maybe some convoluted reference to vaccinating children, but then I thought about Tony Wyss-Coray and his work at Stanford and his company, Alkahest.

You all may recall that back in 2014 Professor Wyss-Coray mated the circulatory systems of an old mouse and a young mouse, resulting in large improvements in the physical and mental health of the old mouse. They ran some tests on a small number of people with Alzheimer’s a few years ago, and the young blood treatment seemed to help some of them. The press made a lot of stupid vampire jokes about it, and then promptly forgot about it though the research continues.

Fast forward to Joe Biden’s non sequitor: perhaps the notion of young blood treatments for dementia patients was on his mind.

Can’t imagine why.

Quick Review of “Soul” July 4, 2021

Just watched Soul last night – the Pixar animation with Jamie Foxx as an aspiring jazz pianist. Not too bad (4.3/5, I’d say). Probably the upper limit of the amount of jazz reg’lar people can tolerate, but frustratingly short jazz licks for people like me who enjoy it.

Kind of a banal message from the film, but certainly better than all the woke messaging we get from most media. Revealing the message might corrupt your viewing, so I’ll put it below the fold:

Biden Makes No Progress on Employment Participation July 3, 2021

Last month I showed y’all a plot from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which illustrated how the recovery in labor participation had remained flat ever since Biden was elected. Here’s this month’s update, again from the BLS, which shows that nothing has changed:

You can refer to the earlier post for a view of a longer timeline.

Biden tells us that Milton Friedman is no longer the boss of him. But Biden and his administration will always be subject to the basic principles that everybody save Modern Money Theorists understand:

If you pay people to stay home, they stay home. And if you print money to pay for them to stay home, you get inflation.

Fittest Air Force Evah July 2, 2021

You may have heard that the Air Force is planning on changing their fitness testing to allow walking and raised hand pushups. One wag burdened us with his thoughts:

“I think you can make an event like walking just as hard as running depending on how you score it,” Spoehr said. For example, he explained, a two-and-a-half mile walk in 13 minutes for a 17-year-old can be “really, really hard to make.”

Doing some quick math (13 minutes/2.5 miles) gives us 5.2 minute miles (5 minutes, 12 seconds), which I’m pretty sure no human on the planet is capable of doing.

For comparison, let’s check in on the world record for a mile:

British Olympian Tom Bosworth race-walked a mile in 5:31.08 at a Diamond League meet in London on Sunday, the fastest time ever in the rarely contested event. Bosworth broke a 27-year-old record by almost six seconds.

When I was a young lad in the Air Force we were required to run a mile and half in less than 12 minutes. Perhaps that’s more like what General Spoehr (ret.) was thinking. But I’m kind of stunned that no one did a spit take when he made his statement.

Grilling Biden’s PR Folk About July 4 Cookout Prices July 2, 2021

The White House is desperate to dispel concerns over inflation. So desperate, in fact, that they put out idiotic tweets like this:

Idiotic indeed, both due to the terrible puns (hence my obnoxious title) and the abuse of the Farm Bureau’s data. Mainly the latter, as you’ll see.

If you dig into the Farm Bureau’s report and plot the results, you find that ground beef, pork & beans, ice cream, and pork chops were the biggest contributors to the decline in prices:

But the Farm Bureau sez:

“Beef and pork processing plant disruptions that occurred in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic have been resolved, leading to lower retail ground beef and pork chop prices in 2021 compared to 2020,” Nigh said. “However, consumers looking a bit farther back to compare prices are seeing higher prices for ground beef, pork chops and chicken breasts compared to pre-pandemic (2019) prices.”

The run on canned goods last year would easily explain the drop in pork & beans price as well. So all of their fanfare is due to COVID-19 effects.

I am excited about the drop in ice cream price, though . . .

Anyway, you might well ask, “How do 2021 prices compare to 2019 prices?” Here’s the Farm Bureau’s handy chart:

Yes, prices have inflated 8% since 2019.

And that, my friends, is the Biden economic plan “working.”