No, Joe – Once Again You’re to Blame. This Time It’s Immigration. September 22, 2023

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and President Biden have been telling us for two and a half years that there is no border crisis. Now Biden is saying that if there is a crisis, it’s Trump’s fault for creating it, and the GOP’s fault for not giving him funding to fix it.

Well, let’s let the chart do the talkin’ (stats from CBP, boxed quote from MSN):

Well, that’s looking grim for Mayorkas/Biden. Seems like the explosion in border patrol encounters happened on their watch, and that it’s not improving. At all.

But maybe the president was referring to legal immigration. Since lawful permanent residency for 5 years is a requirement for naturalization, I’ve plotted the number of people who obtained permanent legal resident status every year since 2020 (data here):

Except for the COVID crisis, there doesn’t seem to have been anything broken in the legal resident system.

I think the real message here is that whoever is creating messages and policy for the president are a sorry collection of clueless, dishonest roaches.

Hopefully they’ll scatter when the lights of the scatter plots shine upon them.

Inflation Picks Up the Pace September 13, 2023

Various news sites are reporting the latest inflation news as “a little uptick on a year-over-year basis,” but looking at the raw data, I think a more pessimistic evaluation is warranted. At least we (probably) won’t be hearing the Biden administration crowing about how they are getting inflation under control.

Bulwer-Lytton 2023 “Winners” September 5, 2023

I had warned you previously that the Bulwer-Lytton awards were coming out in August, and indeed they did. My favorite came from the Fantasy & Horror category because it reminded me of every fantasy novel ever written:

Fantasy & Horror

Winner

In obedience to the Thousand-year Mandate of Hawksrealm, following the prophecy of Glenfrik the Morrowsayer, Klagnar and his (thus far) loyal Deathsword Warriors journeyed countless skyturns across the Burning Plains of Hellsplat and the Great Eastern Doomsea to an immense, shining folkshive that more or less resembled Fresno, but with a more genre-appropriate name.   

Drew Herman, Midlothian, VA

And then, because I majored in physics as an undergraduate, I have to include this:

Purple Prose

Dishonorable Mentions

Susan was a walking thermal reactor, with an electron-beam smile, a megawatt body and an amazing fuel assembly, radiating heat at a lethal dose; and though Jack knew that any achievable fusion of his charged particles and her spark chamber would have a very short half-life and would leave him a decaying, spent fuel rod, he also knew in his core that no amount of coolant could quench the chain reaction currently taking place in his overheated neutrinos.

Mark Meiches, Dallas, TX

Biden vs. Labor Participation Rate Reality September 5, 2023

Joe Biden was distorting reality once again with his comments on last Friday’s employment report:

The White House touted the August jobs news, with Biden declaring that “America is now in one of the strongest job-creating periods in our history — in the history of our country.”

He also bragged that “more than 700,000 people joined the labor force last month, which means the highest share of working-age Americans are in the workforce now than at any time in the past 20 years.”

He added, “People are coming off the sidelines, getting back to their workplaces.”

But if you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ website and plot up the participation rate for the last 20 years, you get this:

Not even back to the participation rate right before COVID hit.