Anti-Creationism

By now everybody has made note of the Obama Administration’s spin that their policies have, or are going to, “save or create” such-and-such number of jobs. People criticize this because, they say, by adding “save” into the mix, Obama is able to inflate his numbers arbitrarily, well above what they could ever rightfully claim to have created. After all, there’s no way to check how many jobs get “saved”, right? So (the criticism concludes) an honest administration would only speak of jobs created, not “saved or created”.

This criticism is wrong, and here’s why: government doesn’t even “create” jobs, let alone “save or create” them. The widespread, long-held idea that it makes sense to speak about how many jobs this or that government policy “creates” never made a lick of sense in the first place. Sure, “save or create” is wrong too. But let’s not give “create” a pass here.

Late Nite Rants

When you can’t sleep, rant…

1. To be clear about something, re: this graph: the problem is not that the Obama administration predicted future unemployment wrongly. If they had predicted it correctly, it would have been shocking. But I don’t expect, or even want really, the government to predict how many “Jobs” will exist over some future time period. Actually I wish they wouldn’t even try, because it perpetuates the myth that we should ever look to the government as an authority on that sort of thing. My problem is not that I wanted their bogus-ass Jobs Prediction Chart that they pulled out of their butts to be “accurate”. (Any “accuracy” it would have had would have been misleadingly accidental anyway, like a stopped clock.) My problem is when policymakers use charts and numbers that they pull out of their butts as arguments for some policy (i.e., phony-baloney pseudo-evidence they cook up for some policy that they want to do anyway, for ideological reasons, regardless of evidence). The take-away lesson is not that policymakers in government need to do a better job of being “accurate” in their bogus-ass prediction charts (which would be impossible, frankly). The take-away lesson is that no one should place any stock in predictions that come from the government.
2. Being on Netflix leads to strange coincidences in the movies I watch. For example I watched Waitress (which had Keri Russell), and I watched Match Point (which had Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), which must have caused Netflix to calculate that I’d like August Rush (which had both), because I ended up adding that to my queue as well. This phenomenon is always kind of creepy (“did I suddenly, subconsciously become a huge Keri Russell fan?”, I think..) until I realize that’s what’s going on.
3. Speaking of Woody Allen’s (?) Match Point (which was great), I somehow got suggested to go back and re-watch Manhattan. (See? Another connection.) Which I did. That’s when I realized why I never became a Woody Allen fan. Don’t get me wrong, pleasant enough to watch, interesting/diverting, but I always feel like I’m missing something in a Woody Allen movie. Just not that funny, for one thing. Oh, one chuckles under one’s breath from time to time. Or at least forms a half-grin in a grudging recognition of moments/one-liners intended as humor. But I remain convinced that people who claim to find Woody Allen hilarious are lying. Seems to me a single Seinfeld episode has more laughs than Allen’s entire filmography. The other thing though is that I found it depressing. Manhattan, it seems, does have a serious undercurrent theme that has to do with integrity, which the characters lack (and are mostly in denial about), which is where the humor would come from (if it were truly humorous). There’s an effective scene where Woody gets at some truths, wondering how future generations would judge them. But that scene has probably lost its power, because at the time I imagine the characters were more extreme outliers than they would be today – I think people have become more, not less, like them, and now would have no negative judgment of them at all. Which is what is depressing.
4. Have you noticed that people are still talking about Sarah Palin? What the heck is wrong with people? For crying out loud, I’m tempted to become a diehard Palin Voter For Life merely out of spite. And I can’t be the only one. It’s as if the Palin-deranged crowd are trying to increase her popularity in the most efficient way they can think of. I can’t help but look at some of the Palin-haters and think that anyone they hate this much must be doing something right.
5. So my boss name-drops that his kid is in the same chi-chi preschool with the kid of a well-thought-of movie actress and her even more well-thought-of movie director husband. I’d probably be more fascinated by all that if he paid me enough this year that my income, less taxes, over the year exceeded my cost of living over the year while he’s sending his kid to chi-chi preschool with moviestars.
6. The notion of President Obama’s “brilliance” has been on my mind recently. Why/how did people become convinced of this? In what way has Barack Obama ever demonstrated this supposed “brilliance”? As far as I can tell, it boils down to: he’s a black man who looks good in a suit, and when he talks he doesn’t sound like a blithering idiot or an uncouth lowlife. “Why, a black man who can wear a suit, and speak proper English? He must be a genius!”, all the progressives exclaim in unison, like some 18th century British slave-trader aristocrat amazed to learn that an African who he thought could only sing and clap can be taught his letters and recite the alphabet as well. Well? Is there any more to it than that? Because if there is, I’m not seeing it.

Reality Keeps On Biting

Keynesianism is idiotic, pass it on.

Indeed, I’ve found that a very effective way to shut up and humble a lefty is to remind him of the idiotic notions he supported of “stimulus”, in the guise of amateurish “Keynesianism”, just a few months ago – and then point to reality. Reality like the graph below.

It’s wonderful yet depressing, and in a way strangely disorienting, to have been so thoroughly vindicated in my undisguised venom for everything the government has done to the economy in the past year or so. I am being THOROUGHLY, UNDENIABLY proven right by reality here, each and every day. That is not exactly a familiar feeling to me

HT

Pelosi Logic Pt. 2

As a follow-up to this post, where I discussed Nancy’s Pelosi’s (intended) observation that every month without a stimulus, 500 thousand Americans lost their jobs –

I note today with the latest unemployment/nonfarm payroll numbers we see once again that every month since a stimulus, at least 650 thousand Americans have lost their jobs.

But of course, we must always remember that this just means the stimulus wasn’t large enough; or (to quote yet another of my posts), if the patient’s getting sicker you just didn’t bleed him enough.

Stimulus Math

Back in January, Nancy Pelosi famously misspoke by claiming that “Every month we don’t have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs”.

Let me defend Nancy Pelosi. This was obviously just a misstatement. What she meant was that every month they didn’t pass the “stimulus”, 500 thousand Americans lose their jobs. It’s obvious that’s what she meant, so lay off her.

Well, since then, the “stimulus” was passed. And the new jobs report came out yesterday. Guess how many people lost their jobs in a month where the ‘economy recovery package’ did pass?

650 thousand.

So there’s your comparison: every month without a “stimulus”, 500 thousand jobs lost. I boldly predict that every month with a “stimulus”, there will be something around… 650 thousand jobs lost.

I guess Pelosi just left that last part out.