Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Gains came from increases in private inventory investment, strong consumer activity as reflected in personal consumption expenditures, exports, and business spending as measured by nonresidential fixed investment.

Across-the-board decreases in the pace of government spending subtracted from GDP, as did imports, which are measured as a drag on output.

The quarter brought an end to a 2021 that saw a 5.7% increase in annualized GDP, the strongest pace since 1984 as the U.S. tried to pull away from the unprecedented drop in activity during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Wages up 4%. CPI up 7%.

Sounds like a success to me.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Herschel gets irritated by a question from the oh-so-hostile Daily Caller

They had the nerve to ask him if he would have voted for the Infrastructure Bill

Herschel says that's an UNFAIR question and the interviewer must be an Alabama fan. He doesn't know the facts! How can you ask him to weigh in on something he knows nothing about???

[Jeff Buchanan]

It's about time ....... the real picture:

1.27.22 COVID.JPG

Compared to the carefully crafted narrative ....... "while new case numbers decline (note no use of the adverbs that typically ascribe the awfulness of whatever data point is being used) deaths are soaring (note use of adverb). We should lament these deaths but recognize that they tend to be reported in clumps that then bias the seven day average - the usual reporting metric of awfulness. "Soaring?" Use of that term is terribly misleading.

We should not be surprised about that 34% rise. Death reports are a lagging indicator and not a particularly useful predictive metric. This number of deaths, of course, In a country of 330,000,000 is "stunning" (sarcasm) 0.0007% of folks who might die in the US on any given day from COVID. But, you knew this, right? Right, but for those that can't do the math, nope, don masks, side step others on the sidewalk, order distant learning in public schools, mandate, mandate, mandate. You get the point.

There are several other points I want to make from this graphic (ignoring the awfulness of deaths - not sarcastic):

• There are only 8 states with accelerating case numbers. Remember (Rt)? Less than 1.0 is good and gets goodlier the lower it goes. When it needs to be, like now, this is a very useful predictive metric by which officials should be planning the end of a PHEs:https://www.statista.com/statistics/...e-us-by-state/
• There are plenty of people a lot smarter than I in this field that know this accelerating decrease in new COVID cases has ZERO to do with changing human behaviors such as mobility (social distancing and hiding out in your house).You can play around with any of these mobility tracking data bases and see a steady upward trend in personal mobility since mid July 2021. FL is useful because the climate there is not a confounding factor in assessing how mobile citizens are like it is in,say NY or Vermont. I like the Apple display better: https://covid19.apple.com/mobility
• I don't think there is any question that vaccines and previous infections have influenced the decline in new COVID cases but we are foolish to think human interventions are the primary cause. It is, in this instance, the behavior of SARS-CoV2 which is becoming more evident as time has passed.
• Aside from the usual handwringing over OMG, new variants, they happen and turn out to not be quite as bad as expected and definitely not as bad the last one (as measured by disease impact metrics). My take is that will continue and I'm not in a minority of people with opinions on this.

Every evening the NYTs releases it's COVID report (where that graphic above came from). I've already noted that the NYTs in particular seems to be a megaphone for factual, positive COVID news and I applaud that. They need to go farther and speak more loudly about where we really are in the US and work to beat back and erase all forms of COVID doom-saying. Here's this evening's report. It's a start:

“The best-case scenario is that the Omicron variant is the last bad variant of the virus and that the worst is behind us. It’s possible that as early as March or April, we’ll start to get back to some version of our pre-pandemic lives.......In this scenario, many of us might experience a mild infection every few years, as with coronaviruses that cause the common cold, but would not become seriously ill. Only those at high risk from Covid, (edit, the same cohort at high risk for influenza and pneumonia), would need regular boosters tailored to the latest variant.......Scientists have agreed for a while that it’s unlikely that we’ll reach herd immunity and that the virus will completely disappear. Instead, the virus seems likely to become endemic, a permanent part of our lives that, like the flu, we have to (edit, are eminently capable of, right now) manage."

WTF are we waiting for?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Heh. Elon is always real good at distracting from disappointing company performance by tossing political red meat to his fanboys.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Case in point, in addressing why Tesla is way behind on three new car models that Elon promised would be out by now, he rambled on about how much more critical and important their robot project is versus those dumb cars.

I think a few years ago he promised to have a million robo taxis on the streets by 2020. That sure panned out

Musk: Tesla robot top priority for new product development this year (cnbc.com)

[Obi-Jon]

Note to self….Jeff just applauded the New York Times….googling “end of world timeframe”…..

[Dr. Strangelove]

Bridge collapses in Pittsburgh just hours before Biden is supposed to visit and tout his bridge-building program.

Miracle that no one died. I guess there was less traffic than normal this morning because schools were on a two hour delay. Pretty sure I've actually been across this bridge. If anyone knows Pittsburgh at all it's the Forbes avenue bridge that runs through Frick Park east of Carngie Mellon

Pittsburgh bridge collapses hours before Biden visit to discuss infrastructure - CNN

[Dr. Strangelove]

Seems like a pretty big rift has opened between Zelensky and the Biden Administration. He's coming close to bashing the US and NATO at this point and saying nothing he sees indicates Putin is going to invade any time soon. He and the US are both leaking things to the media...it's a mess. About an hour ago he spoke to the press and demanded NATO give them a yes or no answer. Will they ever be allowed to join or not? I'm reading things from people that think Zelensky suspects the US is actually trying to goad Putin into invading, not stop it.

Biden May Catch Putin in His Own Ukraine Trap - Bloomberg

[iam416]

US Presidents should probably just never talk to Zelensky

[Jeff Buchanan]

Pretty amazing no one was killed or seriously injured. If this isn't proof that America's transportation infrastructure needs serious repairs, any drive along Chicago's thoroughfares where you can see bridge structures for that city's "El" crumbling before your eyes, will convince you of it.

Assurances like the one's made from the idiots who made this one after this morning bridge collapse, "The city's bridges are routinely inspected, he said, and if there was any warning or concern, we would have been notified and we would have made sure that we didn't use this route" are very reassuring. Right.

We need major improvements and rebuilding of our transportation systems and, yes, Congress passed a a huge bipartisan infrastructure bill and the President signed it last November. The problem going forward is inefficient execution of the disbursements and project management that will actually fund and enable needed improvements. I'm not confident anything close to the scope of rebuilding needed will get carried off.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Hmmmmm

[Hannibal]

We have an administration whose primary concern about our infrastructure is whether it's racist.

[THE_WIZARD_]

That was a racist thing to say.

[crashcourse]

talking to biden on the phone has to be like talking to a wall... or wall plant

zelensky to use a term commonly heard should tell biden just stfu and let germany and france negotiate this thing