Posts Tagged ‘economy’

Five Fast Thoughts Under the Fedora: A Good Start, A Calendar oddity, A Bit of Luck for Next Season, Celtics Still Proving me Wrong, DeSantis goes there.

Posted: November 19, 2023 by datechguy in under the fedora
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The first of the three David Tennant Doctor Who specials meant to try to get the views they chased away to tune back in prepare for the 60th anniversary of the show is due out this week but for the Red Nose day children in need business in England there was a short special that came out yesterday:

It was not only hilarious but had several little things for the folks who have been gone:

  • Julean Blech as Davros who played him in opposite both Tennant and Capaldi
  • Reference to the Mark Three travel machine, vs Mark 4 in the premiere Davros episode
  • Reference to Genesis of the Daleks
  • The joke about messing up the Canon (in reference to the actions of Chibnall)

It’s a promising start.

Thanksgiving comes very early this year meaning that Advent, the beginning of the church year will not be starting the Saturday after thanksgiving as usual, but the week afterwards. So technically we have a full week between Thanksgiving and the start of the shortened Christmas season but the start of the shopping season still begins on the 24th.

The media and the admin keeps insisting that the economy is doing fine. The events of the next two to six weeks will tell us if they are right or if they are full of it.

In my tabletop baseball league my team which has been overachieving has dropped out of 1st but is still solidly in the playoffs. But no matter how it ends I’m looking good for next year.

Both unanimous winners of the MVP Ohtani in the AL and Acuna Jr. in the NL are currently on my roster so no matter what happens the rest of this year, It going to look pretty good for me next year.

But I think Ohtani would look much better in a Redsox Uniform next year. It would be the best marketing move to bring the Redsox fans back to the stands.

Will they have the balls to do it?

The Celtics with Porzingis and Jrue Holiday have gotten off to an incredible start and it has become apparent that Holiday has more than adequately replaced Marcus Smart both in terms of defense and in terms of intentional fortitude.

At least one writer has suggested that Philadelphia go after Smart to shore up their defense as they chase Boston, but no matter what the situation there is no question that I was completely wrong in terms of the effect of this trade.

The Celtics and the Bruins both with incredible starts are making a serious move to win over the Boston/New England fans who are walking away from the Pats. If they can follow through they might just do so.

Both the media and the Trump campaign have gone all in on the idea that Ron DeSantis is finished both to serve their own purposes as both fear him but despite this DeSantis continues to pull in money and continues to make the fight.

Yesterday he made the case for him over Trump noting some basic facts that people ignore

“As a lame duck with poor personnel, and the distractions, it’s going to be hard for him to get this done,” DeSantis said. “My candidacy is lower risk, because we’ll run Biden ragged around this country, but high reward because you get a two-term conservative president who’s going to stand for your values and deliver for you for eight full years.”

And on CBS he played the age card rather effectively:

Trump is still my 2nd choice and if he’s at the top of the GOP ticket next November he’s have my vote no prob but anyone who is discounting DeSantis is deluding themselves

Update: Here is one more

Just How Hard Up are Nurse Practitioners in Virginia?

Posted: September 13, 2023 by datechguy in News/opinion
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The Susanna Gibson story, the nurse practitioner in Virginia running for state who is apparently selling her live sex shows online is the definition of click bait for media.

And while the censored still pictures are all over the net at the moment there is one aspect of the story that jumps out at me, and that’s the financial one.

The various stories all note that Gibson asked for premium payments for those watching her perform online. If you wanted to see a particular sex act the viewers online had to pay for ahem…services rendered.

And that brings me to Salary.com and the average wage for a Nurse Practitioner in Virginia:

The average Nurse Practitioner salary in Virginia is $121,463 as of August 27, 2023, but the range typically falls between $112,710 and $131,956.

Now I’ll concede Virginia can be an expensive state to live in but it would seem to me that a nurse practitioner in the state just might make enough cash that she doesn’t need to sell premium sex acts displays online to keep the home finances intact.

If I was the GOP I’d be pushing the idea that the Biden economy is so bad that a highly educated nurse practitioner have to pimp themselves out.

Five Fast Thoughts Under the Fedora: Disney’s different Goals, Media’s Different Standards, Tucker Pulls a Drudge, Serving Their Master and My Pay Cut and Yours

Posted: August 11, 2023 by datechguy in economy, entertainment, media, under the fedora
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Yesterday I endorsed Ron DeSantis for President of the United States, Today Don Surber endorsed him as President of Disney while asking this question

How do you not make money when you can offer just about anyone in the world access to the most storied collection of family-friendly fare in the world? The company has 80 years of high-quality material produced by Disney, plus the Muppets, plus Pixar, plus just about everyone else who wholesome entertainment for kids.

Easy, because the goal of Disney today is to avoid wholesome family fare.

At Instapundit today there is a bit of a quip on a post concerning Assisted suicide in Canada:

The Doctor Can’t See You Right Now, Would You Like to Kill Yourself Instead? “Stage Four lung cancer? MAID. Permanently disabled and unable to care for yourself? MAID. Chronic pain? MAID. Down in the dumps? MAID. Are you one of those icky poor people? MAID.”

All of this can be summed up with one simple sentence:

“Your like sucks so would you care to commit a mortal sin as the last act of your life before you meet your maker?”

That’s the truth in advertising for assisted suicide that nobody wants to say aloud.

Tucker Carlson had the former head of the capital police on his Twitter / X show yesterday redoing an interview that he had done at Fox but was never aired.

People seem shocked that it was never aired, I don’t see why, after all does anybody really think that the folks who gave the signal that the fix was in (the Arizona call) would not do all they can to preserve the narrative?

Oddly the first thought I had when hearing about this was it’s exactly the type of thing that got Drudge started, when the MSM passed on the Clinton Dress story. I guess that means in 2043 Tucker will sell out and go left.

The American Spectator has a piece going over all the lies of the left during this administration. Again I don’t understand the shock. When you’re stealing elections, imprisoning people for prayer and prosecuting your political enemies lying is pretty small potatoes.

What’s more I suspect a lot of folks who support them know that they are lying but consider power more important than truth, just like the left knew Barack Obama was lying about opposing Gay marriage but pretended otherwise for the sake of the narrative.

Finally very few people are talking about this canary in the coal mine:

US paper mills are scaling back production as big-box retailers buy less cardboard, signaling a slowdown in consumer spending.

This tells me the worst is yet to come, I’ve already seen part of the worst as this week my 40 hour week was only 30 hours, last week it was 36, the week before it was 32 and I suspect I won’t see a 40 hour week at my job any time this month and it would not surprise me if that’s true for next month too.

Oh well, it beat getting laid off and I suspect a lot of folks will be seeing that soon.

The bailout hustle

Posted: March 14, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

Silicon Valley and New York City bankers got a good deal: a bailout worth billions of dollars in exchange for millions in campaign funds for Democrats.

But the cozy relationship between bankers and Democrats is a fairly recent development.

My father was a banker in the Midwest and a diehard Republican. He condemned FDR’s spending policies, loved Ronald Reagan, and wanted the government to balance the budget and stay away from his paycheck.

In fact, I thought for years that you had to join the Republican Party to become a banker. As a boomer, I thought my father was a bit off his rocker in his politics, and I wish I had told him just how right he was.

Today’s bankers remind me of the commodities traders I reported on in the 1970s. They’ll bet on almost anything.

Silicon Valley Bank bet on almost every tech idea that came through the doors.

But Andy Kessler of The Wall Street Journal goes beyond the gambling. “Management screwed up interest rates, underestimated customer withdrawals, hired the wrong people, and failed to sell equity. You’re really only allowed one mistake; more proved fatal. Was management hubristic, delusional, or incompetent? Sometimes there’s no difference,” he wrote.

Signature Bank of New York added political wokeness to the combination. The bank refused to do business with Donald Trump, scolding him for the events of January 6, 2021.

Despite all this nonsense, Biden & Co. will bail out the banks even though the White House says it’s not a bailout, providing funds to depositors who recklessly kept more than $250,000 in the banks. Federal bank insurance would not have covered that money until Biden waived the limit.

But the math doesn’t work. Silicon Valley Bank had $173 billion in total deposits, including $152 billion not covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Also, the FDIC did not cover $79 billion of the $88 billion in deposits at Signature Bank.

That’s nearly double the amount at the FDIC to cover all the depositors over $250,000.

Treasury officials said any losses to the DIF would be repaid in full by raising fees on the system’s banks. If the FDIC charges banks higher fees to cover the extra money, those costs will probably be passed onto the consumer through higher costs, such as increased ATM charges and overdraft fees.

So we will end up paying much of the bill for the bailout!

At least there’s a silver lining to all these shenanigans: no one will ever take Jim Cramer seriously, who told people to buy Silicon Valley Bank stock.

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