Some Notes on Twitter Impressions/Views
I have never written a commercially successful pop song, but there have been several discussions of accidental hits: songs like Bob Carlisle's signature "Butterfly Kisses" which was almost an afterthought added track to his upcoming CD. Some classic hits written in minutes vs. weeks for Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Water". (For an interesting piece on well-known accidental rock hits, see here.) One of my favorites was how a DJ fused solo versions of Diamond's "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", blending in Streisand's cover--which led to a real-life duet.There are other stories where songs on an album not originally intended for release started getting a lot of airplay. You could make the same observation of an early Parton unlikely hit song ("Jeannie's Afraid of the Dark"), which is a sad story of a couple's young daughter who loses her battle for life and her parents install an eternal flame at her graveside--not exactly a predictable country hit for Parton and her mentor Wagoner. (A lot of artists think that they've hit on a formula, so Parton would write other family-oriented songs which failed to achieve similar popularity.) One of my favorites as a pop-country fan during the 1970's was Mac Davis' "Whoever Finds This, I Love You", the touching story of a lonely old man who passes by an orphanage on his daily walk. He finds the note of a young lonely orphan girl's note pleading for a friend, catches the sight of the girl looking out the window of the orphanage, and they befriend each other. I don't even think you could write a song like that anymore; the old man would probably be arrested as a suspected pedophile.
I don't really blog, tweet or post on Facebook for eyeballs. On the other hand, sometimes you wonder if you're the only person in the world who has a certain point of view. I still recall driving through Louisiana on an interstate late one night and I was the only one for miles in either direction. I finally saw a truck in the other direction passing by me, and it was a relief knowing I wasn't the only one on the road. I think I started with the idea of building up traffic for a future book release, but in a way writing a daily blog forced me to keep in touch with global affairs and be literate enough to discussing them intelligibly, even if I know, like in the case of my open borders/immigration belief, few share those opinions.
While a number of Trumpkins attack me personally for having only a few dozen followers on Facebook, my tweets over the past month have attracted nearly 50,000 views or impressions But it really varies by tweet; a number go unread even by all my followers, while one reply tweet has gotten over 12,000 views and climbing, nearly a quarter overall. I've had some original tweets attracting thousands, but to be honest, I didn't think this tweet was all that different than some other reply tweets which attracted light readership. To be frank, I dislike predictable tweets, and the original tweet was one of those that looked at economic statistics near the bottom of the recession, around Feb. 2009 and then chose a recent stronger month, along with "thank you, Obama". This is statistical cherry-picking, one of my pet peeves, and it's totally misleading.
If you're a regular reader of the blog, you can probably anticipate what I'm going to say. Historians love activist Presidents I know that they are dead wrong, and Hoover is a textbook example. (It does seem ironic that Stanford-affiliated Hoover Institution is a conservative think-tank, but historians have attempted to reinvent history, that Hoover was this laissez-faire President who fiddled while the American economy burned. Hoover in fact jawboned employers not to cut wages (the theory being, the extra money of artificially high wages would be necessary to stimulate the economy); he aggressively pursued government infrastructure spending, he launched a tariff war to protect American companies from foreign competition and any related layoffs; he increased taxes on higher-income consumers. I could go on and on. Obama and Clinton would gladly run on a Hoover agenda. When FDR ran against Hoover in 1932, it was as if the current party policies were totally reversed. FDR was talking about balanced budgets, while Hoover was arguing that FDR was going to gut the federal workforce, cut taxes on the wealthy, etc.
The point being, the economy looked like it was going to bottom out a year or so later, unemployment in the single digit while everything that Hoover was trying to do was, in fact, counterproductive. This is Bastiat's famous distinction between the things seen and unseen, opportunity costs. One of my favorite sayings is from medicine: "first, do not harm". Hoover's interventions exacerbated economy uncertainty. My contention, from a free market perspective, is no self-serving politician is a capable surrogate for the millions of American consumers.
We know how this story ends--FDR.did a bait-and-switch and basically put Hoover's interventions on steroids, and Hoover would reverse course, realizing FDR's policies went a step too far. On top of everything else, once the economy finally started recovery in the mid-30's (despite of, not because of FDR), FDR introduces entitlements, in particular, social security, with a flat, regressive tax on income paid by workers and employers. The last thing you want to do with high unemployment is to increase the cost of labor; you can predict what happens to the demand for labor at a higher price. And there were other FDR bonehead moves, including wage and price controls. Basically the tax-sheltered policy on employer-sourced health insurance started as a workaround to wage controls in a labor-tightening wartime economy. There is a myth that many believe to this day that WWII "saved" the economy; so what would happen when government spending fell after the war? The Keynesians predicted a financial Armageddon: without the government, who would spend? We now know that spending returned to consumers, with long-deferred spending due to war-time rationing, etc. That's what historians tend to overlook: after a short-term adjustment, we entered into an economic boom. Not because of Truman's economic policies, but despite them.
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What happens after a blowout election, like in 1932 and 2008, the Dems found themselves with an opportunity to run up the score on a political wishlist--including healthcare and financial regulation. (Curiously, that list didn't include immigration, but my theory is that a key constituency, organized labor, wasn't that crazy about immigration reform.) Business owners couldn't predict government policies for long-term planning. Economic uncertainty exacerbated problems in the recovery. Obama felt no need to accommodate a weakened opposition. Yet despite the most accommodating Fed Reserve in American history (near zero interest rates for 2 terms), he was the first POTUS never to achieve at least 3% growth. You now had employers cutting part-time hours to minimize healthcare benefit cost exposure. We now have a nearly $2T regulatory drag drag on the economy. He raised high-end income tax rates, despite nearly doubling the national debt.
I could go on to talk about other tweets. Sometimes I'll go into the belly of the beast. For example, the Gray Lady had a piece showing the "right" principal in a school can make a huge difference. I basically adlibbed that principals in the public sector are bound by teacher union contracts and government regulations, which really cuts down their options. I was pleasantly surprised to see over 200 impressions, without the usual progressive Statist snipers.
A Pro Wrestling Postscript
As expected, WWE booked WCW legend Goldberg into a squash match victory. It's not the first time. Champion Bob Backlund lost to Diesel/Nash in seconds in the 90's and more recently Sheamus had abruptly ended Daniel Bryan's reign in just a few seconds as well. Champion Kevin Owens was surprised by Jericho's appearance, and Goldberg took advantage with his signature spear and jackhammer finishing move within 22 or so seconds, Owens never landed a finger on Goldberg. I mean, I could have phoned in this script. Earlier they did tease a possible Lesnar intervention, but his manager Heyman was threatened. I really don't get a Goldberg-Lesnar rematch; Lesnar doesn't need the title as an incentive to beat Goldberg, and Goldberg could argue Lesnar hasn't done anything to warrant being the #1 contender.Owens has the obvious revenge match against Jericho (and his title), and I suspect he will be booked into a successful title rematch challenge post-Wrestlemania.
More interesting, is the Bray Wyatt-Randy Orton match, as Orton reasserted his Royal Rumble qualification to face Wyatt by beating Styles, who had won the right after Orton had relinquished his opportunity. It turns out that Orton won Wyatt's trust with his move and used it to destroy the Wyatt compound. It's not entirely clear what they do with Styles. Do they insert Styles into the feud, making him a new member of the Wyatt family? Do they resurrect the Bullet Club? Do they book Styles into an open challenge, say, against a returning Finn Balor? (I would probably book a returning Balor to a feud with cruiserweight champ Neville.)
I will say that I like the way they are booking Samoa Joe into a monster heel. But it's not clear where they are going with New Day, and it would be a shame if they did away with the Wyatt Family gimmick. Is this where they finally book Sister Abigail as a character? But booking Goldberg-Lesnar and John Cena with girlfriend Nikki Bella? Not interested.
Gripes With Self-Serving Checkouts at Walmart
I've noticed my air conditioner click on multiple times today as temperatures are slowly climbing up to near-100 readings. Yet, of all things, I seem to be catching a cold and coughing a lot. For a lot of us in IT, we often have to work in cold server rooms. Oddly enough, I don't really catch that many colds, even in 2013-14 when the day high in WV struggled to hit 0. I may have also caught it from a co-worker. in a nearby cubicle.So I go to buy some cough medicine, only to find out in self-checkout everything stops (and you have to find a roving Walmart worker to reset your transaction. It turns out they had to check my age in buying the cough medicine. (I really haven't been carded in years, and the sales associate really didn't feel the need to check.) There really should be a way to work around these issues.
