Two Humble Thoughts

 1.  I now believe that nine Senate seats held by Democrats....will fall in November....mostly because of the Trump-effect.

My list? West Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Nevada, Michigan, Montana, and Arizona.

I'll even go and say the margin of Virginia's Tim Kaine against Hung Cao  (Republican candidate)....will be less than three points.  

What this means?  Assuming Trump wins....I suspect that two Supreme Court Justices will retire in spring of 2025 (Thomas and Alito).  

2.  Just odd on this graphic chart:

Since Biden took office...two trends separated, by 9-million people.

The chart shows the Household Survey data and the Establishment data.

Prior to Biden, they always tracked together.  

The Establishment data incorporates the payroll records of around 144,000 non-farm establishments and government agencies, covering workers at some 554,000 individual worksites.

The Household Survey?  The household survey includes farm/agricultural workers, self-employed folks whose businesses are unincorporated, unpaid family workers, and private household workers among the employed. These groups are excluded from the establishment survey.  If you were on unpai leave from your business....you'd end up on  the Household Survey, NOT the Establishment data.

The missing nine million?  Well....the question is....are they employed on a second job (delivering pizza, stacking shelves, or pouring concrete on weekends)?

A Lot To Ponder

 I sat and read over this item briefly.  How you read and get some extreme view of reality....really wasn't explained.  After three minutes of reading I gave up trying to comprehend where this idea came from.

To be honest....I never read Lord of the Rings, Brave New World,  Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Catcher in the Rye, or Atlas Shrugged.  

Yeah, I read 1984 and Animal Farm around the 7th grade summer vacation.  

Yeah, I did read virtually all of the Steinbeck books by the end of high school.  I read Hemmingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls (twice actually). 

I also read Uncle Toms Cabin, the Great Gatsby, and The Jungle.

By the summer of 1977 when I left for the Air Force, I'd probably read just over 400 books.  For the next decade after 1977?  You can add another 250-odd books. 

So I pondered this government study....to say x-books are dangerous. If this were true....you are left with two odd problems.  First, you'd have to also identify books that cause folks to be very liberal or left-extremist....making them a problem.  Second, do you just go and ban stuff like Huckleberry Finn or Moby Dick because of the threats contained?

But then you come to the odd prospective....if you handed the book Catch-22 to a 15-year old kid....how does he view things after he wraps up the book?  Or say you gave a copy of Call of the Wild to some 13-year old girl, and asked for a review....does she go and say the book demonstrates humanity, or does she give the honest opinion....the Yukon is a crappy place and best to be avoided?

Having grown up in rural Alabama, I would tend to say that 50-percent folks probably read a total of five books by the time they finished high school.  So I'm not sure that this extremist-book-agenda stuff really affects them.  

The 40-percent of young gals I went to school with in the 1975-to-1977 era.....mostly read nurse Jane hyped-up romance novels, with high suggestive 'lust' on every other page...wanting doctor Earl.

This brings me to an odd conclusion.  What if you had a iron-clad leftist liberal....far-left extremist and gave him a copy of 1984 or Animal Farm, would he cut loose at the end and admit he was 'lost', and had now found his reality in life?  Would he be that weak...just requiring one single book to straighten out his life?

Six Observations

 1.  Won't be page one news, but the Fed said 'NO' yesterday....no rate decrease.  All that chatter of five or more decreases in 2024?  I suspect you will get one single rate decrease in the mid-summer....meant to help Biden, but does little to change the economy.

2.  What happens if Artificial Intelligence (AI) dumps a ton of propaganda on you, and you fail to fall for it?  Would AI be smart enough to evolve and upgrade/change their 'brand/message'?

3.  I watched a video of five or six asylum 'dudes in NY City....ganging up on two cops....assaulting them without much fear. The migrant guys didn't show any fear of the cops.  It'd normally beg the question....will the police evolve to the point where they easily pull a pistol out and shoot without much restraint?

4.  On this DA business in Atlanta with Fanni Willis....I'll go and predict that the County Commission suspends her before the state's effort to 'fire' her.  Her political ambitions?  Gone.  And this lawyer boyfriend?  He'll exit the side door.

5.  Entering a Presidential election year, the news media is at a all-time low on trust, and skepticism is actually still increasing.  Biden could go and claim some demon has infested him....triggering the confusion he has, and NO ONE would believe the story.

6.  Just odd....syphilis is now at the highest level nationally in the US.....since the 1950s.  Yet no national emergency?

Nine Observations

 1.  It's not a recession.....it just feels like a recession.

Same logic.....hemorrhoids might not be your problem, but it 'feels' like hemorrhoids.

2.  If you asked around for a two-hour debate between Biden and Trump.....there are probably five million people who'd pay $300 for a pay-per-view debate situation.  If you said following this....if you an extra $300....VP  Harris will face off against Vivek, same folks would fork over the extra $300.

3.  Any day now....I expect the fed to establish 'rules' and regulations on toilet seats.

4. The IRS guy who leaked Trump's returns?  If you check the news....he's set to get 5 years.  Figure 4 years and a early release.  Interesting tale to write about your lost four years.

5.  Once you realize that words don't accomplish much....the value of weapons shoots up big-time.

6.  Once you've achieved four-star whore-status....it's pretty much advisable to pack and leave the trailer-park if you want to regain 'something'.

7.  I counted yesterday in the kitchen....I have 8 clocks...which were all set on 1 January to the exact time.  All eight....are now off....1 by 16 minutes (plus), 1 by 10 minutes (plus), 1 by 10 minutes (minus), and so on.  All electronic.

I'm wondering if it means anything special.  Maybe as those UFO aliens sneak into the house occasionally....they reset these on purpose to challenge me. 

8.  Maybe it's just me....but I see Nikki Haley as a carbon copy of Liz Cheney.  

9.  NYC says they will spend around $10-billion over a 3-year period....ending mid-summer 2024....on refugees and migrants.  Its just hard to imagine them doing that, and getting little to nothing from the deal.

The Times Story

I sat and read over this piece from the NYT....'Where Southerners Go to Fill their Tank and Feed the Family'.

I paused for about 10 minutes thinking over this. 

There's typically about three reasons why I don't read the NYT much.  One of those is that you get the feeling....they've NEVER left NYC itself in their life.  Another is that they write about something....trying to suggest they know something, when they don't. The third reason is that most of their 1,000 word stories....probably could be told in 300 words.  Meaning?  They try to say they can write like Hemmingway or Steinbeck....failing.

In my youth, my dad would organize a trip or two yearly (probably 20 of them really), and you left awful early.....then you'd stop at some gas station or grocery operations....buying a loaf of white bread, a fair amount of baloney, some soda, and maybe a couple of bananas.  

In the 1970s...in the south, there were still gas stations that were offering deli-like services.  I will admit throughout the 1980s and 1990s....that kinda went away.  Presently, with the Buc-ees....it's returning.

Just a southern thing like they suggest?  Well....you can go into parts of Idaho, Colorado, Nebraska and Wisconsin, and find this tank-pizza shop-deli situation.   I would imagine in the urbanized areas of Alaska....it exists as well.

In some ways, I feel for the NYT's reporter.  They ought to be forced into a truck and told to spend six weeks a year....touring the nation and getting orientated to reality.

As for those who haven't had the experience of tanking up and eating on the run....maybe the summer of 2024 is a great time to rediscover the heartland...go spend ten days on the road and live like it was 1975 again.  

My Trend Story

 I sat gazing over this chart from yesterday.  What the data shows....of college graduates....not high-school level...that some trend is showing a high level of undergraduates having a diagnosis of 'some' type of mental illness.

It didn't break it down into men versus women.  It didn't say people with electrical engineering degrees versus people with journalism degrees.  It didn't say undergraduates from Portland versus Little Rock.

So yeah, it's just a half-ass study, as far as I'm concerned.

What does bother me...the trend continues upward...meaning that depression-wise, it'll pass the 25-percent point by the end of 2024.  Panic or anxiety?  That will pass 30-percent point by the end of this year.

In both cases....what do you do as a time-limited mental health consultant?  You prescribe happy-pills.

Marvin, in his first year of college....on happy-pills, and working on a teaching degree....probably is going to be blitzed about six hours a day, and graduate from college in four years....being less intelligent  than he was in high school.

Judy?  In her second year of college, will seek help for panic attacks, getting Benzodiazepines.  She'll develop memory loss in the 3rd year of college, and fall asleep in half of the morning classes.  She'll marginally graduate and end up at some school....barely teaching  kids and making $40,000 a year.

All of this brings me to the idea....maybe we were always mentally screwed-up, and prior to 2000....we just sipped through a case of beer each weekend and accepted the fact that life was rather rough.  

I end this discussion with this odd feeling.  If the trend holds....somewhere around 2075 (I will have passed on)....the vast majority of undergraduates will be royally fu**ed-up, and unable to function in a valued way. Other than being a Uber-driver, hauling hay, or being a dim-witted Senator....there's no hope for your work-future.  

Relationships Story

 Yesterday, I watched a podcast, and the main focus was economics/finance...but the guy got onto the topic of dating, and if you should develop a relationship with a heavily-in-debt person.  

Generally, the question is....if you were around age 25-to-30....having met up with a gal graduate of some college and working, would it be a no-go situation if you figured out her debt is $80,000 (and it's not a house debt)?

Today versus 1980s? That's really the discussion.  

I might have had two or three filters in the 1980s for dating.  In the 2024 era....if I were 25....there's going to be twenty-odd filters.

Yeah, I'm likely crossing off some gal with a college debt of $50,000 or more. 

Yeah, I'm likely crossing off the extreme view of reality gal.

Yeah, I'm crossing off someone who bought a $75,000 new car last year, and has a 8-year payment plan.

Yeah, I'm crossing off the gal who spends four hours a day on social media.

This brings me the consequence....where there might be twenty-million men and women in America today who are ill-prepared for any relationship. They'd be better off to say....'hook-ups' are the way to go and just prepare never to have long-term relationships.

More guys than women on this path?  Yeah, it might be that way....but no one is collecting this type of data to tell a story.