More Irony

The United States weaponizes Ukraine to the hilt against Russia via an array of “consultants,” advisers, trainers, mercenaries, heavy weapons, munitions, satellite intelligence, and electronic warfare. We don’t even deny this, we openly brag about it, and we are not selling these things to Ukraine, we are providing them as gifts.

Then, in yet another trademark boatload of hysteria loaded to the gunwales with irony, we accuse Iran of weaponizing the Russian Armed Forces by selling them drones.

I Love It

SportsScroll ran an article about the worst NFL coaches of all time and included Josh McDaniels, who was an assistant under Belichek for the Patriots before and after serving as head coach of the Denver Broncos.

One wonders how much he contributed to the Patriots, given that his first season with the Broncos their record was 8-8, and he was fired during his second season when the team was at 3-9.

The Raiders then come along and hire him as head coach, at $1 million per year, and currently have a record of 2-5 in his first year. Question. Why would the Raiders think that he would be any better in Las Vegas than he was in Denver?

Slanted Much?

When the stock market falls, the media always cites the drop in terms of how many dollars the drop was. "Dow dropped $439," it will tell us.

When it rises the media will tell us what the percentage of rise was. "Dow rose 1.39%," is the headline.

Would it surprise you to know that the huge drop of $439 and the miniscule rise of 1.39% are precisely the same amount?

Forecasting (Probably Accurate)

James Howard Kunstler speaks of, "...the magic moment when the necromancers of finance discover that the proverbial can they’ve been kicking is filled with Schrödinger’s cat food, and the road they’ve been kicking it down actually comes to a dead end."  He goes on to say that, "Economics will never be the same hereafter."

 You can read the whole thing. He is not an admirer of American governance.

The Peter Principle

Just because one is good at participating in a sport does not mean they will become a success at officiating that sport, or will be very illuminating as announcer for it.

The Alabama quarterback was sacked in his own endzone. He lost the ball after going down, which rolled out of bounds in the end zone. Texas was celebrating a safety until they noticed a flag on the play.

The official announced “roughing the passer with targeting” and that there would be a review. So far, so good, but the Texas player barely hit the quarterback, and did not come anywhere near his head, so the first part of the call was a stretch, and the second was pure fiction. Targeting requires a review, but roughing the passer is not reviewable, so the two-point safety was out and Alabama was going to get a first down just based on the roughing part of the call.

Not so fast. The review established that there was no targeting, but it also made it very clear that the roughing call was ridiculous. Problem was, however, that roughing is not reviewable. The official then gave a complicated explanation about the call having been explained to him wrong and that roughing had never been called, only the targeting had and that there was no targeting. (And no roughing, not because it was overturned, but because that penalty had never been called.)

He did not explain how targeting, hitting the quarterback in the head, can be called without also calling roughing the passer. It would seem impossible, but… So there was no penalty. That would make it a sack, and two points for Texas.

He wasn’t done yet. He said that the quarterback was out of the pocket and had not fumbled the ball but had thrown it, and it was therefor an incomplete pass, third down Alabama at the one yard line.

If the quarterback had thrown, rather than fumbled, the ball, which he did not, the ball did not reach the line of scrimmage, which means it was “intentional grounding.” That would be a penalty committed in the end zone, which is by definition, wait for it... A safety.

So the official’s ignorance, abetted by the announcers’ ignorance, was a gift of two points to Alabama, which won the game by one point.

On to Indycar, and the season ending race at Laguna Seca. Will Power was leading in the championship by 21 points and was starting on the pole. Joseph Newgarten, second place in the points, was starting at the rear, in 26th place.

As Newgarten worked his way up in the field, the announcers, both former Indycar drivers, got all excited, implying, and even saying that all Newgarten had to do was pass Power to win the championship. I knew different, and was becoming increasingly annoyed, as it was increasingly unlikely that Newgarten was even going to take the lead in the race, let alone pass Power for the championship.

Finally one of the announcers calmed down as he said that, “We have been informed that because of the way that race points are awarded if Will Power finishes fifth or better he will win the championship.”

I knew that before the race started, as did a million other people. Why did they not?

Burying The Lede

It tends to amuse me when the media promote social causes by using stories which “bury the lede,” that is, which ignore points within the story which utterly refute the point which they are trying to make.

“This is the worst drought in 200 years.” To suggest that it is caused by current human activity raising CO2 levels ignores that the worse drought 200 years ago was not caused by current human activity and happened when CO2 levels were lower. Why do we suppose that, not having caused that drought, we did cause this one? The planet has been having droughts for many centuries.

The Anazazi people, who built amazing cities in the cliffs of the Southwest, disappeared somewhere around the 14th century. According to Britannica, “The Great Drought (1276–99) probably caused massive crop failure; rainfall continued to be sparse and unpredictable until approximately 1450,” which contributed to their disappearance. Did the Anazazi people cause that drought, too?

The most recent is the appearance of “Hunger Stones” in the rivers of Europe. These stones have been exposed by river levels dropping to the lowest levels that they have been in centuries. Back then, people carved notes on the stones recording the severe conditions prevailing when the rivers became that dry. One stone dates from the year 1616 and others from the 19th century.

We were probably burning some fossil fuels in the 19th century, but not a hell of a lot. How much fossil fuel were we burning in the year 1616? And yet when the rivers drop to the same level that they did when we were not burning fossil fuel, we blame the drop on the fact that we are burning fossil fuel.

The rivers dry up when the CO2 level is 280ppm, and when they dry up now we claim that they did so because the CO2 level is 420ppm.

To bemoan that something is “the worst it has been since…” is an admission that it has happened before now, that the condition is not unique. It says that the condition existed when your purported cause did not yet exist. For statement of actual systemic disaster attributable to your purported cause one needs, “this is the worst it has ever been,” which we virtually never see.

Big Weekend Upcoming

Big, big weekend coming up. To start with, Formula 1 goes to Holland (Netherlands). Dutch Grand Prix. Max Verstappen's home course. This is a downforce course, so he won't dominate like he did in Belgium, but Zandvoort is a really cool curcuit.

MotoGP is on television. In case you don't know, this is motorcycles on Formula 1 race courses. They go as fast as 200 mph, and in the turns lean over at 70 degrees. Exciting stuff. Those riders are nuts. They're on NBC Sunday afternoon.

Indycar is on the road course at Portland. It's a really nice circuit and usually provides for interesting competition.

Finally, college football opens with two games featuring what I consider home teams. San Diego State plays in their new stadium against Arizona Saturday, and LSU plays Florida State on Sunday. Both should be fun games to watch.

I have the best wife in the world. She is happy for me to have all these sports to watch and makes her plans around me doing so.

Why do they do things like this?

Mark Wahlberg said he spent 12 hours naked on a pier while filming his latest movie "Me Time." Well, he wasted his time. The movie was probably the worst movie in several decades. I watched about 12 minutes and turned it off. Utter garbage.

A Non-sentient Race

The human race was living in North America 15,000 years ago. The area was still in the throes of the last Ice Age, which would not end for another 3000 years. The average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere was 46 degrees, some 11 degrees cooler than it is today.

The human race is still living in North America. Or I think it’s the human race. Sometimes I’m not sure.

Anyway, the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere has risen 11 degrees, a process which not only has the human race survived, but during which it has thrived and multiplied, but we are told that we will be catastrophically destroyed if the temperature rises another 2 degrees.

To repeat a bit; we survived an 11 degree rise, but we will not survive a 2 degree rise. Does that sound a little bit stupid to you? Did we lose our ability to adapt? Or did we merely lose our intelligence?

Since we, apparently, no longer can change ourselves or the way we have been doing things for the past 100 years or so (other than by using electricity to do it instead of “fossil” fuels), we propose to change the way the planet has been doing things for more than 15,000 years.

Sea levels are rising, we are told. I have seen no observable evidence of that in the more than fifty years that I have been going to the beach, but let’s assume that sea levels are rising and will drown our big cities.

Perhaps we should be talking about moving our big cities inland and to higher ground, away from those rising seas. We’re not doing that. Not one person is suggesting that. We are, instead, talking about stopping the seas from rising. I spent time in the Navy. News flash. The oceans are really big.

There was a king named Canute tried what we are proposing. He was a powerful guy, being king of England and Denmark, and Norway and Sweden. He got wet.

Temperatures are rising, we are told, so maybe we should be talking about moving our populations farther north and/or to higher altitudes where it is cooler. Adapting. We’re not talking about that either. Instead we’re talking about stopping the temperature from rising, stopping the entire freaking planet from doing something that it has been doing for more than 15,000 years.

Sorry for being so blunt, but that is just plain stupid.

Government Accuracy

The "Employment Survey" produced by the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the economy produced well over 500,000 new jobs last month, which was hailed by the media as proof that there is no recession and that the economy is growing like mad. The stock marked soared.

The "Household Survey," also produced by the BLS, reported that there were only 150,000 newly employed persons filling those newly created jobs. That should have created some suspicion about the jobs report, but it was ignored.

Do economists think that each of the newly employed persons filled 3.33 new jobs?

Redefining Reality

After a report saying that the nation has experienced a second quarter of negative growth in GDP, which has been the definition of a recession for more than fifty years, the White House is denying that we are in a recession because two quarters of negative growth is not the definition of a recession as everyone has thought for the past half century.

Just like we thought that a vaccine was a product that prevented the spread of an infectious pathogen. We were set straight on that one by the Biden White House. A vaccine does not stop the spread of a disease, like the smallpox vaccine did, it merely “reduces the risk of hospitalization or death.”

So we are now told that a recession is not defined by negative GDP, but is defined by “a much broader spectrum of data points,” which for some reason they cannot list for us. Probably because they have not made them up them yet. After all, the second negative GDP quarter was only announced yesterday.

From Politico we learn that the “National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee can determine whether the U.S. economy is in a recession, based on a multitude of factors that can only be found several months or up to a year after a recession actually begins.” And, presumably after the current election cycle has passed as well.

Economist Ben White provided a tweet reading, “Yeah I did a bad tweet a while ago referring to two negative q’s in a row as  a recession. Should have known better at the time but it had been a while since I’d studied recession criteria and that’s not it.” Right. It had, "been a while since I’d studied recession criteria."

That was not particularly illuminating, so he amplified that the actual definition is “NBER and lots of data points beyond GDP.” He, too, does not elaborate on the “lots of data points.”

Wikipedia, which cannot be used for toilet paper because it is a virtual source, admits that its article, “may be affected by the following current event: Increased political debate in the United States.” No shit.

Anyway, it says that a recession, “In the United States, a recession is defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as ‘a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales’."

Wikipedia follows that with the statement that, “In the United Kingdom and most other countries, it is defined as negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters,” which is basically saying that the NBER, and the White House, are full of shit, which is kind of awesome.

Note that, despite its name, the NBER cited repeatedly above is a private economic research organization.

I don’t really care what the “lots of data points” are, two quarters of negative GDP growth tells me we are in a recession, and my observation and common sense told me that several months ago.

Say What?

A military expert is challenged with respect to his predictions on the war in Ukraine. "You have been predicting that the Russians will soon run out of missiles, ammo and men since mid-March. And yet as predictions go it never seems to come to pass." 

The expert responds, "It is an ongoing process." 

And we keep paying attention to these oracles of wisdom, seeking their "wisdom"  and publishing their opinions.

Echoing Obama

It was only a matter of time before Biden was parroting Obama with, "If Congress won't act, then I will," by means of imperial executive order.

Because we don't need no stinking constitution.

When in Doubt, Overreact

I love the hyperbolic overreaction to many of the recent Supreme Court decisions.

"Omigod, the government is not allowed to regulate carbon emissions any more!" 

Well, yes it is,  only the Supreme Court says it has to be done by elected legislators, not by unelected bureaucrats.

Roe v. Wade

Polling regarding the most recent Supreme Court decision is almost entirely stupid, because is seeks opinion on the legality of abortion, and the Supreme Court made no decision on that issue whatever. What it decided was simply that it is not a federal issue, is not an issue to be decided by the constitution, and that it must be decided by each state rather than by a federal court.

Each state is perfectly free to rule that abortion is entirely or partially legal within its borders, and many have done so. That includes California, which is experiencing rioting over the supposition that the Supreme Court outlawed abortion. Actually, the Supreme Court's decision had no effect whatever in this state, where abortion remains available to precisely the same degree that it did before the ruling. 

The media has not helped. Robert Kuttner, of The American Prospect, said of the ruling that, "the Court’s ruling today does a lot more than criminalize abortion." It did nothing of the sort, of course, let alone "a lot more." The Wall Street Journal referred to the decision as "eliminating a constitutional right to an abortion," which is another fiction. There was never a "constitutional right to an abortion," and this decision merely eliminated the fiction perpetrated by an earlier court.

What the Supreme Court even said in its ruling is that if the people of this nation want a nationwide legal right to abortion, then they can prevail upon their legislators to pass a federal law to that effect. Such a law would not be struck down because, while the constitution does not contain a provision guaranteeing abortion, it does not contain one prohibiting abortion either. The Court said explicitly they would have no problem with such a federal law should Congress decide to pass one.

Will Congress hear what was said and pass a law reflecting public opinion? Not only no but, "Oh, hell no." That would require a level of courage far above that which is possessed by Congress. They want no part of any decision on which the nation is anywhere near to being evenly divided. They punt such decisions to courts, and the executive branch. That's why they leave it to the President on all matters affecting the use of military force. That's why they will not pass a budget until the President proposes one, so that the media will endlessly prate about "the Bush tax cuts," even though Congress passed them. That's why "Obamacare" is called "Obamacare" even though Obama had almost nothing to do with any of the few good parts.

They won't pass an abortion law either; won't even allow the media to let the voters know that such a thing is possible.

"We Can't Look"

This is Willy protecting his sister, Missy, while their dad is watching a Dutchman in an English car being chased by a Spaniard in an Italian car for more than twenty laps. (Formula 1 does live up to its claim of being international racing.) A certain amount of swearing and yelling seemed like it might be pending.

Carlos Sainz was never more than 1.05 seconds behind Max Verstaffen, and was often as close as 0.025 seconds for the entire 20+ laps, and all it would have taken was for Max to breathe wrong and he would have been passed. The pass never happened, and the swearing and yelling was averted. A small amount of screaming did occur when the Red Bull took the checkered flag, but the cats are used to that.

Sunday's Stock Car Race

Dale Earnhardt Jr said that Sunday’s race at Charlotte, NC was a “good race” which he enjoyed watching.

I would like to know what his definition is of “bad racing.” There were 28 caution flags during the race, on average one every 14 laps, and 17 of 38 drivers (45%) failed to finish due to crashes.

Not sure how anyone could describe that as a “good race.”

Failure to Think

 Is building homes for the homeless really a solution?

You have a family member who is running a fever, with a temperature of 105 degrees. You take him to a doctor who says he will solve the problem by putting the person in a bathtub filled with ice water.

If you have any capacity for critical thinking, you know that the fever is not the problem. The fever is the result of an underlying illness, and you expect the doctor to discover that underlying illness and to treat it.

So why do we settle for politicians “solving the homeless problem” by simply building homes for the homeless?

When a politician sees a person living in squalor on the street, he tells us that we can take care of that person by saying that the person’s problem is that he/she is “homeless” and giving that person a free home.

But being homeless is not that person’s problem any more than the 105 degree temperature was your family member’s problem. Being homeless is the result of a problem that the person had before they became homeless. That problem might be any one of or a combination of many things; alcohol or drug addiction, mental health issues, family problems, employment problems and more.

To actually help that person it is necessary to look at her/him not as a member of a class (“homeless”), but to look at him/her as an individual and determine why that person lost their home to begin with, and to help them with that problem.

But that is hard to do, and politicians don’t do hard things.

On "Rushing In"

I have an explanation, I suspect, for the cops in Uvalde who loitered outside the school. They were pretty sure that it would be necessary to shoot and kill the shooter inside, and that the shooter was a person of color. 

They also knew that if you take down a criminal who is a person of color, you will be put on trial for murder and will spend the rest of your life in prison.

On Banning Guns

A person becomes enraged and drives his car into a crowd of people, killing many. Not hypothetical. It has happened more than once. How many times has it resulted in calls to ban automobiles?