Innocent Bystanders

Economic Failure Newsom Evangelizing for Economic Failure Biden February 25, 2024

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.

When Life Imitates Olympic Art February 24, 2024

Given the way things have been going, this was inevitable:

Enhanced Games founder says steroid-approved event is ‘the future of sports,’ calls out hypocrisy of Olympics

Enhanced Games to be Olympic-style event that allows steroids

Obvious, but obligatory:

Mystery Solved? February 20, 2024

This headline from Front Page Mag…

Can Texas Stop Soros From Taking Over Conservative Radio?

220 radio stations, 200 million listeners, one radical billionaire.

…pretty much tells you what happened to Drudge.

Fani’s Cash February 20, 2024

Fani Willis’ ridiculous excuse that she reimbursed her paramour with cash taken from her 6-month-living-expenses-stash should have been hammered in court. In particular, I would have liked to see answers to the following questions:

• How much cash is that, exactly?
• If the bailiff accompanies you to your house, could you please show him the cash?
• Where are your bank records of refilling your cash stash?
• As a public servant, you know the importance of keeping records to demonstrate that you didn’t receive gifts (i.e., travel expenses) from entities that could be perceived as compromising your integrity and objectivity. Why didn’t you keep those records?

She’s a ridiculous woman with a ridiculous story. Justice had better be served.

I Guess We Somehow Dodged That COVID-19 Bullet February 19, 2024

Do ya remember a couple of months ago when we were hearing that we all had to hustle out and get our COVID-19 booster shots, because IT WAS BACK, BABY!

We all ignored the warnings, and now you don’t hear anything about it. This is why (chart downloaded from CDC site):

Yah – it seems to have passed without much impact.

BTW, when I say “We all ignored the warnings,” that’s pretty much what happened. Here’s the CDC’s chart on the percentage of adults who received the updated vaccine:

Major institutions have squandered the trust of the American public, so that now formerly respected agencies like the CDC are ignored by a large majority of the population. It’s sad, and makes you wonder, “If they’re not going to be able to have an impact on a significant percentage of our citizens, why should those citizens continue to fund them?”

Inflation Lumbers On February 13, 2024

Been a while since I posted the inflation data (actually, it’s been a while since I posted anything at all). Hearing the media bleat about what the latest data might mean motivated me to head off to the St. Louis Fed and generate their chart of the CPI for urban areas (the heck with that year-over-year malarkey). Here’s what it shows:

Feeling comforted by Biden’s claims that inflation is solved?

Sniff My Tears, the Policewoman Said* January 20, 2024

The act of women crying always has a balloon-puncturing effect on men during an argument or confrontation. At least it always does in movies, literature, and my house.

But apparently the fairer sex piles on with a chemical attack as well:

Male aggression in rodents is known to be blocked when they smell female tears. This is an example of social chemosignaling, a process that is common in animals but less common — or less understood — in humans. To determine whether tears have the same affect in people, the researchers exposed a group of men to either women’s emotional tears or saline while they played a two-person game.  . . .

Revenge-seeking aggressive behavior during the game dropped more than 40% after the men sniffed women’s emotional tears.

I think it’s completely unnecessary – seeing and hearing a woman cry does the trick without snorting a lady’s tears. But it’s nice to be aware of what’s going on when she starts weeping into your nostrils.

Wondering why they didn’t also test men’s tears. Probably because if they were sampling Real Men, they couldn’t collect any (nyuk, nyuk).

Of course, had they waited until the after the NFL Wildcard games, Cowboys fans could have supplied plenty.

*Classical reference in headline

Gaming Industry Kicks Sand in Puny TV/Movie Industry’s Face January 7, 2024

I remember many years ago when I was astounded at the realization that a Final Fantasy game release could generate as much revenue as a Hollywood blockbuster. I had had no idea that games had that much economic clout: probably because they have very little media clout.

Jumping forward in time to the near-present, I ran across these estimates of the 2021 revenues for both the TV/movie industry and the gaming industry:

• TV/Movie Industry (from Statista)
  • Licensing of TV programs: $21.58 billion
  • Licensing of movies: $10.04 billion
  • Production services: $13.75 billion
  • Wholesale, retail, and rental sales: $3.87 billion
  • Licensing: $2.86 billion
  • Other: $19.69 billion
  • TOTAL: $71.79 billion
• Gaming Industry (from Visual Capitalist)
  • Console: $33 billion
  • PC: $44 billion
  • Arcade: $2 billion
  • Mobile: $105 billion
  • VR/AR: $6 billion
  • TOTAL: $190 billion

So the gaming industry is two and a half times larger than the TV/movie industry. But our attention is always focused on the buzz from Hollywood.

But there are times when Hollywood stars and video games collide, as in this infamous clip of Tim Curry playing the villain in Red Alert 3 (watch to the end – it’s only 24 seconds long).

Melancholy Mencken January 4, 2024

Not to be a total downer, but I ran across this H. L. Mencken quote from 1921, and it reminded me of Dave in Texas (and Michael, for that matter):

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

I thought it was a nice sentiment, though a century later one would probably avoid the “homely girl” usage and pick a different example of rakish charity.

The Last Trumpet Christmas December 24, 2023

If you’ve ever played trumpet . . . sincerely . . . from the heart . . . then you’ve wanted to screetch. You’ve wanted to slip the surly bonds of the staff and touch the dubba-C:

[That’s Mr. Double C on the far right.]

I myself never quite got there, only managing to squeak out a B-flat once during my high school days. But I could dream, and among the people who fed that dream were the legendary Tastee Bros.

One of the (completely ironically named) Tastee Bros’ favorite things to do was take a nice classical piece and then poop all over it with obnoxious screetching. And that, my friends, is what I bring to you today – a fine celebratory Christmas trumpet fanfare . . .

. . . overlaid and overwhelmed with annoying glorious screetch trumpeting.

Cracks me up every time I hear it.

Merry Christmas, Y’all.

Vintage Happy Jazz November 6, 2023

A little peppy light jazz to get your week going.

Pollution vs. Global Warming October 26, 2023

[This is a little bit of pseudoscience that doesn’t qualify as anything like a real study, but which would hopefully prompt a more rigorous inquiry by interested (and funded) investigators.]

Was reading some global warming article a few days ago, and had the idle speculation: I wonder if declining air pollution since the 1970s had an influence on rising temperatures in the US? I did a little look around for papers on the subject, and found one that noted that sulphur dioxide emissions (which turn into sulphate aerosols) were a major contributor to aerosol “radiation forcing” (i.e., the effect of aerosols on the radiation received by the Earth).¹

So let’s compare the history of temperatures in the US (I don’t trust older measurements elsewhere) to sulphur dioxide emissions in the US (I don’t trust older measurements elsewhere).

Here’s the temperature history (much more below the fold):