Monthly Archives: May 2020

Has it ever been drawn to your attention how repulsive the people at our ABC are?

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Such happiness! Such joy! From our ABC: Historic unemployment rate upends Trump’s reelection bid.

The record unemployment rate reported on Friday captured the pain of a nation where tens of millions of jobs suddenly vanished, devastating the economy and forcing President Donald Trump to overcome historic headwinds to win a second term.

Just a few short months ago, Trump planned to campaign for reelection on the back of a robust economy. That’s a distant memory after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April, leading to an unemployment rate of 14.7%, the highest since the Great Depression.

There’s no parallel in U.S. history for the suddenness or severity of the economic collapse, which is ravaging some states that are crucial to Trump’s victory. The president is now tasked with convincing voters that the catastrophic jobs losses were the result of the pandemic — not his management of the public health crisis. He also argues that he deserves another chance to rebuild what the virus destroyed.

Models are not evidence

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Seems sensible to me.

Models are not scientific evidence. Evidence is proof of something that has already happened. Model predictions have not happened.

Repeat it with me:

Models are not evidence.

Models are not evidence.

Models are not evidence.

This is true about lots of things, specially in economics. First the conception, then the model, then the real world, then the application, then the failure and then the forgetting about what happened so that the same mistakes can be made all over again.

Models are not evidence was a comment on this post at Instapundit. Along with these.

If there is a silver lining to this event, perhaps it will be that more people will come to understand why the models for climate change should not be taken as gospel. Models are based on assumptions, and the more complex the model, the greater the number of assumptions. When our so-called experts were so wrong with the models for a virus that acts much like many other similar viruses, how the heck can anyone expect experts to correctly model the interaction of everything in the earth’s atmosphere? It makes no sense.

Everyone’s got a cold, let’s shut the economy down. The hyperbole is strongly on the side of the jackboots.

If you want to live in fear, stay in your stinking lair and obey your government masters, you quivering slave.

It’s going to be fun watching the Blue City State folk impoverish themselves in an attempt to damage Trump’s re-election. While the rest of us are at work, restaurants, gyms, shopping, etc. At some point, they will have to throw in the towel and grudgingly rejoin the rest of the country, with the (delicious, to me) knowledge that this will enable Trump 2020.

I always ask them “why not lower the speed limit to 25mph too? If it saves one life…”

Don’t mean to be argumentative, but GIGO is only part of the problem. In all modeling software the data inputs are usually “tuned” by weighting factors. These factors are sometimes based on experiential data matrices or historical observations and collective norming, but at times they are little more than “knowledgeable estimates.” With experience – a whole lot of detailed experience – a model designer can fine tune the formulation and weighting factors to increase accuracy but this process is often somewhat less than rigorous “scientific method.” Consequently, in some instances, “modeling” is little more than a fancy word for guessing.

When they drew the line in the sand back at the start of March, Sarah was the only mod here who backed a free people and supported individual liberty. The rest went apocalyptic, demanding we sacrifice our rights for the common good (Yes, Glenn Reynolds wrote a USA Today article using that phrase), and screaming that the authorities weren’t locking us down fast enough. When push comes to shove, I know Sarah will support me and my freedoms, and that the rest of the mods here will happily sacrifice me. Don’t ignore that very important data point.

Did we really elect Daniel Andrews to tell us whether we could visit our mothers on Mothers’ Day?

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State premiers are mostly to decide about making the trains run on time or which roads to build. They are not designed to deal with plagues and other such disasters, and quite frankly I don’t want them to. And from what I’ve seen so far, when it comes to Daniel Andrews, he has no clue about anything beyond how to create large loss-making projects to employ members of the Construction Unions at excessive rates of pay. He has a great bed-side manner so that in spite of the tragic consequences his premiership will in the long run lead to, he was electable. My guess is that he will never run for premier again since by the time he will need to be re-elected in three years’ time, the disaster he has overseen and led us into will either be fully visible to us all, or certainly visible to everyone within the Labor Government. He will bail out before everything becomes unmistakably clear, leaving it to the Joan Kirner of the time to take the rap while Dan the Man escapes with his reputation intact just the way John Cain Jr had previously done.

So why has he insisted that we do not see our Mothers on Mother’s Day, or allow our children to visit their Mothers and Grandmothers? Because he can. We can tell he is oh so benevolent and kind because he is a socialist which proves he cares about us and wants only the best. To me, however, he is a socialist and therefore is a tyrant who wants to tell us what to do because it is the power he has that gives him pleasure. He hates achievement and success. He hates people who can successfully run a business. He pretends to worry about whether we become ill with the Chinese flu.

But here’s the reality. Anyone who delays by that one single day in allowing us to visit our parents and grandparents until the day after Mother’s Day reveals himself for what he really is. And the same goes for any other premier who has done the same. They are wicked people.

Tyson Fury vs Deontay Wilder

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https://youtu.be/inuZFwjR3vY

First the fight and then after. In the previous fight where they drew, in Fury’s corner his second kept telling “Don’t be greedy” by which he meant that he was winning but don’t throw it away by being rash. In this second fight, he went for the win from the first moment. Then with the fight, a female commentator who only distracted. Could not follow the fight and was always missing the action since she could not see that Fury was ahead. She was like the American media, a partisan and not an objective observer. And then perhaps the most unusual post-match performance ever.

And if you are interested in their previous fight that ended in a draw, it is also worth a bit of a look.

You can hear the “don’t be greedy” line just as Round 2 was about to start. Sometimes greed is good.

The government screwed up and by the way the worker lost his thumb

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Here’s the story – Coroanvirus: Infected nurse not told of abattoir risk – which was on the front page of The Oz. It shows a phenomenal level of incompetence by the Victorian public service. I will slightly unscramble the narrative to emphasise what it says.

There is deep concern among those close to a 60 year old nurse that the Health Department and therefore the hospital had not identified an infection in a Cedar Meats worker on April 2 as a risk to the workplace.

The Sunshine Hospital nurse was not initially required to wear appropriate personal protective equipment while treating the worker, because the hospital had not been made aware of the risks.

The nurse was infected with COVID-19 while treating a Cedar Meats worker WITH A SEVERED THUMB because authorities had not alerted the hospital.

[This statement is in the paper but not online] The Australian has been told the nurse has lost her senses of smell and taste, along with her appetite, and is feeling extremely tired.

How often does losing a thumb happen in the public sector?

Typhoid Mary everywhere you turn

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It’s not the hypocrisy, it is that they know everything they say is false. They know they are not in danger and they know they are not endangering anyone else. They laugh at us, and think of us as fools.

And then there is the media to report every word as honestly and as accurately as they possibly can. Here is an excerpt from PDT’s new media person if you want to see true professionalism in action. If you are in a hurry, this is the short-form version.

Here’s the whole thing. You can watch from the above excerpt which is right at the end of the press conference and then go back to the beginning.

I vaguely remember her from the campaign. In this role she will be formidable. She understands the issues, the politics and the message she needs to get across. What remains more amazing than anything is that the left can rely on their constituency to vote for them no matter what. They have burned #MeToo to the ground and virtually not a single person among the Democrats, so far as I have been able to tell, has seen this as a reason to change the way they vote.

Socialists never let opportunities go to waste

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The point I will be trying to make is that the more you tell a socialist that what they are doing will be very harmful to business, the more they will be encouraged to do whatever it is. Do you really think Daniel Andrews is trying to get the Victorian economy rolling again? He is a member of the Victorian Socialist Left faction. Does that suggest anything at all to you? It should.

Let’s begin here with this from The Age which would not lie about this: Premier’s faction loses to union-stacked rebel alliance in committee vote. And just what faction is that?

Premier Daniel Andrews’ Socialist Left powerbase ….

Mr Andrews’ Socialist Left faction ….

Let us take it as read that Daniel Andrews is a socialist as far to the left as he can possibly be.

Then there is this:

Anti–capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti–capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economic system, usually some form of socialism.

Finally, just what constitutes socialism in the modern world? From Wikipedia and obviously written by one of its fans.

Socialism is a political, social and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership[1][2][3] of the means of production and workers’ self-management of enterprises. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, cooperative or of equity While no single definition encapsulates many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element. It aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with capital accumulation and the profit system in capitalism.

The one common element, that is, is to get rid of the market economy, to get rid of business enterprise, to replace business with state control.

Socialists pretend to care about you but no socialist government in history has ever improved the circumstances of the people over whom they ruled. Not Lenin, not Stalin, not Mao, not Pol Pot, not Castro, not Maduro. They run on hatred and envy.

In Victoria, there has been such a phenomenal increase in waste and debt. Ask about our new train line. Learn about the desal plant. Find out about the metro tunnel.

The $11 billion Metro Tunnel’s independent cost advisers have warned its financial backers the project could face many millions of dollars in extra costs and months of delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Socialists only bring ruin in their wake. They cannot manage an economy nor can they deal with a free people. So long as there are viable parties that exist to call them out and a political system that stands in their way. Until then, they show only pretend concern. We are not called Victoriastan for nothing.

“Please Do  Not Feed the Animals”

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Once in a while we just have to stand back in awe of government .
The Food Stamp Program,  administered by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, is proud to be distributing the greatest amount
of free Meals and Food Stamps  ever, to 46 million people.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service,  administered by the U.S.
Department of the Interior, asks us “Please Do  Not Feed the Animals.”
Their stated reason for the policy is because   “The animals will grow
dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.”

Thus ends today’s lesson in  irony.