Cats, charts, and politics
It's curious that progressives are so unhappy these days. They have a lot to be proud of! Here's a collection of changes over the past decade in the condition of the poor:
The only real dim spots (red bars) are in housing. There's been good progress everywhere else. This, needless to say, is due entirely to liberals, and they should be blowing their own horns about it more.
NOTE: I hardly think I need to say this, but all the metrics based on money are adjusted for inflation.
The American economy gained 275,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 185,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate increased to 3.9%.
The number of unemployed went up 334,000, and the number of new jobs in December and January were both revised downward. Put this all together and the jobs report is good but not great—which, ironically, might be "perfect." It's more evidence for a soft landing.
Wages were up 5.4% from January on an annualized basis. Adjusted for inflation, that's about a 1.7% increase. This is good for workers, but maybe not so good for inflation.
Wages were up 3.7% from a year ago. Adjusted for inflation that's growth of 0.6%.
Joe Biden's State of the Union speech was more interesting than I expected. This is mainly for two reasons.
First, he was surprisingly tough on Republicans and on Donald Trump in particular—though, as usual, he refused to mention Trump by name. It was a very bristly speech, one that's likely to rouse the liberal political base.
Second, he seemed fine. Better than usual. His speaking style was forceful and he was both clear and easy to follow. There were no serious bumbles, and he responded well to the occasional heckling. My biases aside, I don't see how anyone could have watched this and come away with any issues about Biden's age or stamina.
It was interesting watching Mike Johnson, too. He maintained pursed lips the entire time, but occasionally he nodded in agreement almost unconsciously. In particular, he was nodding the entire time Biden talked about Ukraine. This makes me think that he'd personally really like to pass the Ukraine/Israel aid bill but just doesn't know how to do it with all the lunatics in his caucus.
Biden talked a lot about the "$2 trillion" Republican tax cut, which produced one of his signature moments. Last year he badgered Republicans in the audience into agreeing they wouldn't cut Medicare, and this year he (sort of) badgered them into agreeing they didn't want another big tax cut. This doesn't mean anything in substance, but it was good theater.
The other subject that got a lot of time was immigration, in particular the bipartisan Senate immigration bill that Republicans killed. Biden obviously wanted to bang home the point that partisan Republicans killed the bill for cynical political reasons while virtuous Democrats just want to fix the border. I'm not sure he really got that point across clearly enough, but he gave it a good try.
Overall, it was a pretty good speech and pretty good optics. I don't think it will make a huge impact, but it might be good for a point or two in his approval ratings.
POSTSCRIPT: And the prime minister of Sweden was there!
Today is the day for columnists everywhere to tell us what Joe Biden should really say in tonight's State of the Union address.
Don't bother with them. Without exception, they're all stupid ideas. What Biden is going to do is present a laundry list of stuff he's done and stuff he wants to do, interrupted by a few shoutouts to regular folks sitting next to Jill in the audience. It will last about an hour.
That's what every president does. And while political junkies find it tedious, ordinary people like it. They always have. So you might just as well accept right now that this is what you're going to get.
This is from a Twitter post about a middle school in New York City that's adopted a phone-free policy:
Yondr? What's that?
That's clever. In comments to the Twitter post, a lot of people said they disliked phone-free policies because they wanted their kids to be able to contact them in case of a school shooting or something similar. The odds of that may be pretty small, but it's still an issue, especially now that pay phones are extinct.
But Yondr pretty much solves this problem. In case of an emergency, you just step outside the school gates (where you'd probably be anyway after evacuation) and unlock your phone. For less critical things, presumably the principal's office has an unlocker that they can make available if circumstances warrant.
I'm not entirely sold on phones and social media being the scourge that so many old people think they are, but I can certainly understand what a nuisance they are in classrooms. This seems like a pretty good solution.
Here's another poll released today:
This is a scraggly tree/bush of some kind out in the desert. I took it at sunrise a couple of years ago after a dex-fueled night of pre-telescope astrophotography. At that time all I could do was photograph the Milky Way, since there isn't much else you can do with just an ordinary camera on a tripod.
What precisely is the national security concern with TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company? There's this:
Both the FBI and officials at the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share TikTok user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with China’s authoritarian government.
We cannot allow the Chinese Communist Party, our chief adversary and an organization notoriously devoted to propaganda and censorship, to control the platform that America’s youth overwhelmingly relies on for news. To do so would be akin to allowing Soviet control of several major American newspapers and TV channels during the Cold War.
I won't pretend to have a settled opinion about this. Maybe I lack imagination. But on the surveillance concern, is even the worst case that big a deal? Suppose the CCP is harvesting every bit of user data from every teenager in America. What could they do with it that's a genuine national security threat?
And on the propaganda front, does it really matter if TikTok is Chinese? Countries like Russia have no problem producing tons of bot-driven propaganda on American-owned social media like Facebook and Twitter. China does the same.
Has some reasonable person set out the case against TikTok? Lots of countries have banned TikTok from government-owned phones, so it's not just the US that has concerns. But we seem to be alone in our broader fears. Why? I've read lots of panicked opinions based mostly on fuzzy speculation, but not a sober analysis. What am I missing?
Oh look, another high quality poll is out today:
The crosstabs for this poll are a little hard to make sense of, but they seem to show that Joe Biden has 80% support among Black voters and 63% support among Hispanic voters. Among independents, he trails Trump 46%-54%. These seem relatively reasonable, which provides reason to think the poll is fairly accurate.
10% of voters were undecided. When they were pushed to say who they leaned toward, Biden came out ahead of Trump 51%-49%.
Once again, this is a poll of registered voters. Later in the campaign pollsters will start including their likely voter screens, which will help provide somewhat more accurate numbers.
Also, a standard caveat: this is a national poll. It says nothing about how Biden and Trump are doing in specific states.
More news on humanitarian aid to Gaza:
The U.S. military will build a temporary port and pier on Gaza’s coastline to provide a new route for humanitarian aid, President Biden is set to announce in his State of the Union address Thursday evening, according to senior administration officials. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said the plan is part of Biden’s orders to “flood the zone” with assistance arriving by air, land and sea.
This is late, but better late than never.
I realize the "free Palestine" crowd will never buy this, but I think it shows yet again Biden's basic human decency. He's obviously a longtime supporter of Israel and, regardless of the politics, feels strongly that Hamas needs to be destroyed. At the same time, he has slowly but inevitably come around to the view that Israel is deliberately starving the Gazans and the US can't allow that to happen.
He'll get credit from no one for this plan. Progressives will deride it as a token gesture against genocide while hawks will condemn it as weakness in the face of terrorism. In reality, it's just Biden being Biden in a no-win situation.
But in the end, it will be important. It will ramp up steadily, just like other aid programs always have, but it will prevent mass starvation in Gaza. Finally.