My Thoughts On Wall Street

      Mostly the current top-of-newscast stock-market flap:

      Any time you have a system with rules, people will game the rules.  And they'll do so high, wide and handsome, for year upon year, and it will become tradition.

      Every. Time.

      Want to fix it by changing the rules?  Okay -- as long as you remember that new rules mean new ways to use them that you didn't foresee.

      And so it goes.

A Lesson In Two Charts

      When I write on factual subjects, or even express opinions based on facts or someone else's notions, I try to include citations and links.  I ding commenters who try handwaving "studies show..." in an attempt to buttress their claims.  --What studies, where?  Who did them?  Who wrote about them?  Did you read those "studies," or are you just passing on what some guy's second cousin thought she read in a Twitter post that someone screenshot and put on Facebook?

      Facts matter.  Verifiable facts matter.  And so does how you present them.

      Here's an example, as called out at Roll Call:


      Two charts.  Same facts.  One got the "unused" part trimmed off -- probably innocently enough; Art Directors and Editors loathe empty space, and those charts have to show up on a smartphone screen!  But in fact, the "empty" space here is chock-full of information that you cannot otherwise take in with the same glance that reveals the up and down path of consumer confidence in the news media.

      Present facts, not rumor -- and present facts clearly.  Always take a second, longer look before you share -- put that ten percent drop in your trust of media to good use, instead of elevating idle rumor to the same status as hard news.

On Politics In General

      A lot of the electorate - and no few of the elected -- appear to have decided that politics, especially at the Federal level, is some sort of apocalyptic blood sport.

      Some of this can be laid at the door of Mr. Trump (and his less-temperate opposition): he and they both grasped, early and deeply, that a great way to motivate voters was to get them alarmed that Their Way Of Life™ was under dire threat if the wrong power-drunk, jaded zillionaires (or would-be zillionaires) won, and never mind that part of the genius of the Federal Constitution is that no side wins once and for all.  More of it can be blamed on the spreading of nutty conspiracy theories, of which "Qanon" is only the more recent and -- so far! -- worst.*  Even more of this Ragnarokian thinking can be ascribed to the headline-grabbing but minuscule memberships of various street-theatre groups, from the masses of regular sign-wavers to street-blocking BLM protesters through to the rough-and-tumble combatants of antifa, the Proud Boys and all of their violent ilks, and on around to the tough-talking (and at times, ineptly gun-toting) Oathkeepers and Threepers. 

      What all of them have in common is that none of them are in the mainstream of American political thought or behavior -- Mr. Trump may come closest, but his intemperate speech and actions were better suited to a hostile corporate takeover than an election for Federal office and are not the generally done thing.

      What, you liked that?  Yes, politicians have been running as "outsiders" for years, as candidates who will look out for the little guy and clean up Washington D.C.  That's how you get former state Governors in the Oval Office -- Carter, Clinton, Reagan.  Nevertheless, they follow the normal forms and conventions of the electoral system, which Mr. Trump did not.  Neither did much of the reaction to him.

      As a result, we are now way out there, from the wittering media to the most stick-in-the-mud party-line Democrat or Republican, from your Great-Aunt Millie's Christmas newsletter to the fickle lunacy of social media.

      Take a step back.  Take a deep breath.  The End is not nigh.  I can't make your Congressthing stop talking brash nonsense, but we all can, by voting better.  The House of Representatives was always supposed to be full of churn and experiment, and the outliers are often outlying indeed, from AOC to MTG.  They get two years, and maybe if a House district if full of nitwits, it gets a nitwit in Congress and, well, that's representation.  But we can hold them to a higher standard; we don't have to reward trash talk and fantasy.

      And remember, the ones that stand out?  They are outliers.  That's why we notice them.  Most Representatives and Senators are sober, serious men and women, who do their homework and try to do a decent job.  They mean well.  About half of them have some damfool notions, but they are not deliberately malicious and they're open to compromise.

      Most of the members of the opposition party (whichever one that is for you) do not, in fact, hold their ideas and opinions because they are bad people who are out to do wrong to you, yours and the United States of America.  Their intentions are good -- and we elect Federal legislators to two assemblies to hash out the differences in their aims and plans, to find the approach that is the least obnoxious to the greatest number of the citizens, to test it against the Constitution as amended, and to stall and trip one another up in the process.

      This is not The Battle At The End Of Time.  It is not Armageddon.  It's the normal give and take of the Federal government, clunky and cumbersome.  It is, by design and intent, inefficient.  It is not improved by shoving a wrench into the already slow-grinding gears.

      We need to get back to fighting the normal legislative and lobbying fights in the normal way, and leave the sideshow behind.
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* Look, if you have bought into the "Q" line of bullshit, you might as well stop reading my blog now.  That Q stuff is risible but pernicious nonsense, playing on the worst fears of decent Americans and the power of grouped imaginations; if it's not run directly by Russia's FSB, it is at least deeply and powerfully influenced by them.  It's a mind virus, akin to communism or following the Grateful Dead.

History's Not Cyclic, But Parts Of It Rhyme

 1914 - 1918, World War One
 2001 - tfn, Global War On Terror

 1917 - 1920, Influenza Pandemic
 2019 -2021(?), Coronavirus Pandemic

 1920 - 1925, Radio Broadcasting, a consumer-friendly application of a geeky technology, becomes wildly popular
 1994 - 2005  The World Wide Web, a consumer-friendly application of a geeky technology, becomes wildly popular
 2004 - tfn, social media (Facebook and others), a consumer-friendly application of a geeky technology, becomes wildly popular

 1919 - 1929, increasing -- and increasingly causal -- investment in the stock market expands from the wealthy to the middle class, ending in a crash.
2000 - ????, increasing -- and increasingly causal -- investment in the stock market expands from the wealthy to the middle class, ending in ????

 1929 - 1939, global Great Depression
 202? - ????, ??

 1928 - 1939, rise of fascism in Europe

 1939 - 1945, World War Two

     Buckle up, it could get bumpy.

Song For The Day

      A familiar tune, in something more like the original form.  Words to live by?

Yesterday

      As the front came through, I got a hellacious headache.  For weather, we got a nice coating of ice followed by rising temperatures, so Indy dodged the worst and the surrounding counties should thaw out by noon.  Other parts of the country have not been so lucky.

      But what it did to me was a vicious migraine, with dizziness, visual distortions and pain that is still barely under control.  I took acetaminophen and aspirin and toppled into bed at 3:30 yesterday afternoon, waking only for a microwave dinner around six.  The visual stuff was especially appalling and the throbbing eyeballs that accompanied them were a close second.

      It would be nice to report that I am now rested, refreshed and ready for duty.  Instead, I'd like to crawl back under the covers and curl up, preferably until springtime.  I can't, and it probably wouldn't help if I did.  So it's time to get stuck back in, and hope nothing's too sticky when I get there.

Still Nothing

      I'd like to write about politics.  It's still all too crazy to write much about.  A good many of the Republican-leaning bloggers are still living in fantasy-land, and a lot of The Usual Dem-Leaning sources seem to have found opium dreams of their own.  Those are not good places to be.

      The pandemic is still raging, and still killing off the elderly in significant numbers -- it's as if we'd fought WWII by filling the enlisted ranks with seniors.  But we've already lost more Americans to the coronavirus than we did soldiers in that war.  That's not a fantasy -- it's a nightmare.

Just Tired Of It

      Tired of crazy, tired of stupid, tired of the pandemic, tired of pseudoscience.  People didn't used to be this badly askew.

Everything Is A Giant Conspiracy

      And they don't want you to find out.  Learn the secret hidden truth!

It's Another Sunny Day

      Better yet, the pulmonologist says I'm not developing COPD.  She doesn't see any big masses in my lungs or airways, either.

      That does mean we still don't know why I get short of breath sometimes, but it does explain why the inhaler isn't a whole lot of help.  "Old, overweight and out of shape" is the prime contender for the cause at present, so perhaps I'll have a nice walk this afternoon.

The Sun Is Shining

      ...But I find I have no idea what to write about.

      Fight quietly amongst yourselves.

A Day Of Pomp And Ceremony

      It is my greatest hope that today is as routine and even dull as all of the Inauguration Days that have preceded it, or at least as much so as possible during this damn pandemic.

      If you are serious about politics and not a Party-line Democrat, the next four years will be something of a hard slog at the Federal level.  With a majority in the House and a scant majority in the Senate, while Mr. Biden's Administration probably won't get everything on their wish list, they'll get quite a lot.  That's likely to include gun control and well-intentioned (but ill thought-out) social engineering.

      People who have decided they prefer apocalyptic fantasy to workaday reality aren't going to be any help in trying to restrain the worst excesses.  That includes at least a third of the Republican Senators and Congressbeings, and a far higher share of the active voting base.  That latter group is where political parties get their envelope-stuffers, phone-callers and all of the other hundred and one little jobs it takes to move the pointer.

      It's going to be an interesting few years.  I'm just hoping for the more routine kind of "interesting" and not unmitigated disaster.  I'm hoping President Biden will focus on what we used to call "good governance," the shared issues that cut across Party and political philosophy,  and dealing with the far-reaching effects of the coronavirus pandemic before he goes after partisan and divisive issues.

      And I'm hoping people calm the hell down and grow the hell up over the next six months.  The country needs less face-paint and fantasy, less window-breaking and rock-throwing (both Right and Left-handed!) and more normal civic engagement by sober, shirt-wearing adults.