Is NASCAR Dying?

I think probably it is. I don't know how many people were watching Sunday's race at Sonoma on television, but the lack of people in the stands was simply stunning. In years past when I have watched that race, the stands were filled and there were crowds of people watching on the hillsides. Yesterday there was not one person on any hillside and the stands were, perhaps, 10% filled. Can't blame the weather; it was 72 degrees and not a cloud in sight.

Good Thinking

Just a few years ago a gas line owned and operated by PG&E blew up, destroying several dozen homes and killing eight people. The pipeline was not particularly old and was of steel construction, but was found to be improperly manufactured and PG&E was found criminally responsible.

This year SDG&E applied to the California Public Utilities for permission to replace 400 miles of gas pipeline which is seventy years old and is of cast iron construction. The plan calls for the new pipeline to be 30" in diameter, greatly increasing the capacity of the 16" diameter original. The CPUC denied the application, saying that the new pipeline "is not necessary."

Question. Who will be held responsible if the 70-year-old cast iron pipeline fails and causes damage, injury or death? The title of this post is, in case you didn't pick up on it, snark.

Well, That Was Brutal

Only four players under par in round one today, and only by a single stroke. That course is tough on a good day, and when the wind is up... Yikes. Lefty hit 14 of 15 fairways and still wound up +7, which totally beggars the imagination.

Another post which is not important and, probably, not particularly interesting.

Serendipity

I was at the grocery store and went to the coffee aisle, heading directly to where the Peet's was and glommed a package of Major Dickason's Blend whole beans just as I realized the person stocking the shelf was not wearing a grocery store uniform. She was wearing a Peet's Coffee uniform and she highly approved of my choice.

I realize this is not a highly important post. Just one of life's nice little moments.

Insanity Prevails

Outrage is hitting new heights on the Richter scale over immigrant children being separated from their parents at the southern US border. The implication is that this first started happening just a few months ago at the express order of the Trump administration.

The problem with this narrative is that US law requires that all people attempting to enter the US without entry documentation be stopped from doing so, and that they be detained until their request for asylum can be adjudicated by a court. That has been the law for many years. Further, since 2012, during the Obama administration, it has been illegal to detain children in adult detention facilities.

So all of this towering outrage is about something that has been going on for no less than six years. Not only that, but all of the screaming is to demand that the Trump administration stop doing what it is doing, that is to say complying with laws passed by Congress, and no one is demanding that Congress change the laws.

Premature Victory Laps

I’m trying to figure out why California Democrats are celebrating. No, they didn’t get “locked out” of any of the open Republican US House districts, but neither did they lock out Republicans in any of the open Democratic US House districts. In every race where Republicans are running for reelection, the Republican won with sufficient margins to indicate pretty certain reelection, and in Republican districts with no incumbent candidate the Republican candidate appears not to be in any trouble.

Based on California, Democrats could take over the US House, statistically, but the vote counts certainly do not indicate that they are likely to.

Nor did Democrats lock Republicans out of the gubernatorial race. In fact, the race is much closer than was predicted, and portends a pretty sizeable Republican turnout in the general election. It also leaves Gavin Newsome well short of “shoo in” status for the mansion in Sacramento.

Republicans were locked out of the US Senate race, but so what. They were locked out in the last US Senate race as well, and will be in the next one too. This is, after all, California. In my opinion Democrats suffered a bit of a setback this time in that one of the Democratic candidates for the US Senate is a male. It would be intolerable to the Democratic Party if he won, but there is little chance of that, despite the fact that Dianne Feinstein is actually a Republican in all political principles that actually matter to the nation, because none of those principles matter to the Democratic Party.

I don’t know why Democrats want Trump and/or Republican control of Congress gone, anyway. The stock market is at an all time high. Home prices are higher than they were in 2007, but this time we are told that’s a good thing. Interest rates are rising, which is great for retirement accounts and savings. Employment is at a seven year low and still dropping. Wages are starting to show signs of increasing. Higher minimum wages are passing everywhere. The trade deficit is at a seven year low. Women’s power in politics, in the marketplace, and in the justice system is not just increasing, it is rising like an Elon Musk Falcon 9 rocket. Marijuana is being legalized in more and more states. We’ve won the war in Syria, and Afghanistan apparently doesn’t exist any more. We are making peace with North Korea.

What do we gain by changing government party? If it’s about Trump's bad language, I don’t care. I served in the Navy and rough language doesn’t bother me, and using the bathroom of choice is not something that I consider of vital national security importance.

Memories

CBS News did a retrospect last night on the "last train trip" of Robert Kennedy. It was a nice piece. I enjoyed the memories it evoked of RFK and of how the people of this nation thought of him, and I enjoyed hearing the voice of Harry Reasoner. Perhaps the highlight, for me, was that the train was powered by a GG-1; an electric locomotive with a very special history all of its own.

Amusing

Economists and business writers are all screaming about the impending economic disaster and utter stupidity of Trump's imposition of import tariffs, and fail to notice that the US international trade deficit just fell to a seven month low.

In case you don't know it, that creates an increase in the GDP.

Repeated Drivel Abounds

Dean Baker has a couple of little mindless refrains that he chants repeatedly, one of which strikes me as petty, shallow and nitpicking, the other of which seems to reveal a very real lack of ability in critical thinking.

The first is his penchant for accusing journalists of “mind reading” when they report what various public figures of organizations think. He does so today, accusing the Washington Post of mind reading for its headline that, “Trump thinks he's saving trade. The rest of the world thinks he's blowing it up.”

He retorts with, “I will assert that the Post has no idea what Trump actually thinks,” which is to accuse them of living in a cave in Outer Mongolia, since Trump has stated repeatedly that he believes he is saving trade. I think Trump is nuts, but one does not have to agree with Trump to be willing to say that he believes what he says he believes, so I will counter Dean Baker by asserting that the Post is aware of what Trump is saying and has a very reasonable assumption for believing that it knows what Trump believes.

Baker could have asserted that the Post has no idea what “the rest of the world” believes, as that part of the Post's statement encompasses an overly broad, grandiose and unknowable scope of knowledge, but he did not have sufficient wit to make that reasonable accusation.

The second is, of course, his constant refrain in response to any talk of a labor shortage, which is that there are plenty of laborers out there who are, “working for your competitors,” so all you have to do is pay higher wages to hire them away from away from your competitors. He never admits that this “solution” solves nothing, merely moving the labor shortage from one employer to another.

This is the kind of drivel that economists thrive on these days.

Feline Anatomy

According to Darby Conley, author of the comic strip "Get Fuzzy," cats do not "throw up." (My wife might argue that point. What Molly does certainly looks to her like throwing up.) According to Darby, cats "practice selective digestion" and "gastro liberate" any unwanted "calorie free" food. Apparently they are related to owls in some abstruse manner.

Just Deserts

Every time I respond to complaints about government by reminding the complainer of the phrase “government of the people, by the people,” and that voters are governed by the people whom they knowingly elect, I get rejoinders to the effect of, “but, but, but…” and excuses why voters are not really at fault.

Dianne Feinstein wonderfully makes my point for me. There is every reason in the world why she should have no chance whatever for reelection in this “summer of discontent” with opinions of Congress running at 85% disapproval, hatred of “the rich” at an all time high, and overwhelming disgust with the governmental “establishment.”

Feinstein has been in the Senate for 25 years, is presently 85 years old and would therefor be 92 by the time she finished an upcoming Senate term and, being worth upwards of $100 million and married to a man who is worth billions, is very much a member of the despised “one percent.”

Her voting record is very clear, voting in favor of spying on the American public, extension of the Patriot Act, continuation of FISA and immunity for the telecom industry, and always voting against any curtailment of military spending. She has voted against all forms of strong encryption in electronic communication, opposed single payer health care, and has supported multi-billion dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia. She has consistently voted in favor of legislation that has funneled billions of dollars into her husband’s businesses.

By every standard that the vast majority of California voters claim are important to them, Dianne Feinstein should be getting overwhelmingly defeated in the US Senate primary, but the opposite is happening. By all polls at this point, she is receiving 42% to 50% of the vote. Another Dem, Kevin de Leon, is receiving 16% to 24% (roughly half of her leavings), and no one else is receiving enough of the vote to be of any significance.

For those who don't know it, California has an open primary so all voters, Democrat, Republican and miscellaneous, vote in the one primary election.

Clearly, what the voters say they want from their legislators has nothing whatever to do with how they vote and/or they are utterly uninformed as to who they are voting for. In either case, the American voter is getting precisely the government it deserves.

In Transition

The United States is in transition between forms of government at this point, and has been since Nixon really, from a country governed by the Congress to one governed by an Imperial President. Obama made the largest incremental step in that transition when he made the statement that, "if Congress does not act then I will," and began issuing executive orders which directly contradicted laws passed and/or rejected by Congress.

Congress is finally waking up to the fact that it gave away more power than it meant to give to an Imperial Presidency and is trying to stage a coup against the current President by using the media, for the most part, and by distracting the public with domestic social issues. So, while the branches of government wage war with each other for control of government, a war which the Judicial branch has now illogically joined, the country is essentially ungovernable.

This results externally in an inability to make agreements with other nations and an equally ineffective military posture, and internally with ever increasingly open warfare between classes, ethnicities and genders, stoked by liberals in the guise of "social policy." We may be lucky enough to emerge from this without another civil war, but not if Democrats win control of Congress and impeach the sitting President as is their current plan.

Danica Does Not Disapoint

Danica started seventh in the Indianapolis 500 today and, while running 17th on lap 168, crashed while running by herself. Bestwick said that it would, "in no way detract from her legacy as a race driver." Indeed. Advancing to the rear and crashing unassisted are what she did best.

In all fairness, these cars are a handful, and quite a few other drivers crashed without assistance, including Bourdais, Castroneves and Kanaan, all of whom have won the Indy 500 one or more times. That didn't detract from my enjoyment in watching her do it.

Vehicles Searched?

From Google news feed today.

The headline doesn't say whom they expect to have no regrets.

And it turns out the vehicles which may be searched are those driven by fans entering the race grounds on race day, but that is not the image that popped into my feverish little mind.  I imagined TSA putting on rubber gloves and searching the race cars in front of a grandstand filled with 300,000 impatient fans. Imagine the reaction.

538 Ways To Blow It

An organization calling themselves “FiveThirtyEight” has been considered to be the holy grail of political thinking by liberals ever since they quite accurately predicted victory by Obama in the election of 2004. Their track record since then has been a bit sketchy, but they are still considered to be the font of all wisdom and, for reasons known only to the liberal mind, their reputation suffered not at all when their advance announcement of a Clinton landslide in the election of 2016 went so badly.

I mean, they didn’t even phrase that one as a prediction, they published it as a statement of known fact, and we all know how it turned out. They then came out with a whole host of reasons which “nobody could have known” why they had missed the call, all of which were bought by the powers that be, and which preserved their reputation.

Politics is a very weird business. You can, for instance, accept dirty campaign money so long as you give it back when you get caught. If you don’t get caught you can keep it, so there is upside but no downside to taking bribes. Similarly, you can make really bad predictions, and as long as you have good excuses for why you did so, all of your future predictions will continue to be relied upon as being accurate.

At any rate, FiveThirtyEight published a treatise last week comparing the Mueller investigation on “Russiagate” with the last three great special farces investigations of Watergate, Iran-Contra and Whitewater. They take great glee in pointing out that Mueller has “racked up five guilty pleas and 14 indictments of individuals,” more than any special prosecution other than Watergate.

For some reason, the author is not mentioning the indictments against corporations, one of which did not even exist at the time the alleged offense occurred. We’ll pass on that for the moment. To hell with it, we’ll just pass.

The author also does not mention that of all the indictments and pleas obtained, not one of them involves the combination of the Trump campaign, the 2016 election, and anyone in Russia. Most of his indictments are for things like tax fraud and lying to the FBI.

Mueller does have handful of indictments which contain two of the three elements which are the purported subject of his investigation; indictments having to do with Russians and the 2016 election but not even pretending to have anything to do with Trump’s election campaign. Even those indictments are evaporating like an ice cube on a hot sidewalk as Muller pleads for a delayed trial because his evidence is not ready.

And yet FiveThirtyEight wants us to believe that the Mueller investigation is the most valid and productive “special investigation” ever in the history of the process.

Dean Baker Has An Accident

What is the saying about what even a blind pig does once in a while? I believe Dean Baker actually said something rather profound yesterday, but it's okay because I'm pretty sure he was unaware of the meaning of what he said.

Economists are baffled by the failure of something called the Phillips Curve in today's labor market. Phillips was an economist, of course, who drew a curve which showed that as unemployment decreased wages increased, and posited cause and effect. Today, however, unemployment is plummeting and wages are essentially flat and people like Dean Baker are tearing their hair out trying to figure out where Philips went wrong why. (Philips, of course, could not have gone wrong because he was an economist. Economists never go wrong, so there must be something wrong in today's labor market.)

Baker actually touched on part of the answer in yesterday's column when he referenced the low participation rate, which reflects a high number of people who are not working but are also not looking for work and are therefor not counted as unemployed. That means the actual unemployment rate is much higher than what is being reported, which plays hell with the Phillips Curve (even if the Philips Curve did make any kind of sense, which it does not), but the participation rate does not suit a number of Baker's other pet arguments and so he is forced to disregard it here.

Then he starts in on "quit rates," which is another of his pet theories having to do with when more people are quitting jobs wages go higher. I think he has it backward; that people quit as a result of higher wages, rather than people quitting being a cause of higher wages. Fred quits working for my company, so I'm going to hire Tom and pay him and Sam a higher wage. I don't think so.

Then he says that, "Fewer people are now employed in sectors with few quits, like manufacturing, and relatively more people are employed in sectors with frequent quits like retail trade and restaurants."

I recall many years ago, when there was much talk about the nation "transitioning to a service economy," something which Dean Baker seems to acknowledge has been fully accomplished, my father made the dry comment that, "Hell, we can't all make a living selling each other hamburgers."

I think Dean Baker has pointed out that Dad had it completely right.

Eating A Little Crow

Danica Patrick qualified seventh at Indianapolis yesterday. She is, admittedly, driving a car furnished by one of the best two builders in the business, and her teammate qualified on the pole. Nonetheless, the best car on the track is not worth a bucket of warm spit if it is not well driven, and she was impressive as hell. She was very smooth and accurate both days, especially on "pole day" yesterday, when she improved her position from ninth to seventh.

Only in NASCAR

I'm not sure that any organization in the world other than NASCAR could produce the following statement. Perhaps the US government, or some branch of the military, but probably not. Probably only NASCAR.

"NASCAR implemented changes for the All-Star Race to help drivers pass each other more frequently. The cars will have restrictor plates in the engines to slow down top speed and acceleration."

I cannot comment. That just leaves me speechless.

Media Goes Nuttier on Russia

According to CBS Evening News on Tuesday, a Russian oligarch paid $500,000 to Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s lawyer, and some of that money may have been used to pay the infamous porn star to keep quiet about her affair with Trump. According to CBS, Robert Mueller is investigating this Russian payment. Of course he is.

The facts, according to the New York Times, which is no paragon of truth telling itself, so we’ll have to take this for what it’s worth, is that Cohen "received payments last year of about $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch,” and that Columbus Nova “described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Mr. Vekselberg.”

So we go from “was paid by a Russian oligarch” to “was paid by an American firm who has a Russian oligarch as a customer” with no evidence that the payment was in any way related to the Russian oligarch. Not to mention the time travel aspect of Mr. Cohen using money he received in 2017 to pay off a blackmailing porn star in 2015.

CNN is freaked out over Cohen “having dealings with Russians who are under US sanctions,” but admits that Mr. Vekselberg was not under US sanctions if and when he paid unknown sums of money to Mr. Cohen Columbus Nova, nor was he under US sanctions when when Colombus Nova paid $500,000 to Mr. Cohen to represent Mr. Vekselberg some unknown client of Columbus Nova.

Furthermore, CBS News tells us that back in 2015 the same Russian government hackers that stole Hillary Clinton’s emails and gave them to Wikileaks (which is, of course, an entirely bogus claim) also sent death threats to military spouses purporting to be from ISIS. They interviewed one military wife who said that as long as she thought the threat was from ISIS she was able to shrug it off, but now that she knows it came from the Russian government, she is really upset about it.

She is not, apparently, afraid of ISIS but is afraid of the Russian government, which means the media is doing only half of its job with respect to at least one military wife.

Their “computer expert” said that the Russian government has a good reason to be “really mad at the US,” blaming us for the downfall of the Soviet Union.

Really? What part of today’s Russian government is upset about the downfall of the Soviet Union?

It Depends on What You Say

People in government who reveal secret matters which the government does not want the public to know about are called "leakers" and/or "traitors," and are pursued relentlessly by law enforcement so that they may be brought to court and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

People in government who reveal secret matters which the government does want the public to know about are called "officials who demanded anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the matter," and are rigorously protected by the media and by government.