Whoppers

Woke up this morning to see that the Shanghai stock index is up 3,1%. Wow!, this must mean that China agreed to the previously negotiated tirade terms ... and Trump held back on the new 25% tariffs. A little further investigation revealed that exactly the opposite happened and the Dow Jones futures indicated a down US market today. So why is the Chinese market up ... and up so much ... and ours might be down?

Dear reader, may I speculate here? I can visualize Xi Jinping turning to a subordinate after hearing that China’s power play didn’t work and Trump upped the tariffs ... and saying (in Mandarin Chinese), “Make the stock market go up.” And so it happened. This bit of psychological warfare is a side benefit of autocratic government control.

Often this type of single-point decision making is seen as an advantage of the Sino-form of capitalism ... whereas such market outcomes in the US are the net result of millions of back-and-forth decisions rolled up into an overall free-market result ... much, much less efficient ... but, far more democratic.

Which is really better? Well, the Chinese form is obviously more efficient ... but when they make a mistake (like the Great Leap Forward), it is usually a whopper ... and I don’t mean a hamburger.

Afterthought: And the million Muslims concentration camps might be at least a Big Mac ...

Lies

If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. -- Joseph Goebbels paraphrased


There seems to this observer to be more lies told these days than I can remember. And so, to honor this meme, I have, as is my habit, decided to offer up a taxonomy of this mendacity:

Fibs -- "No, I didn't eat the rest of the Oreo cookies."

White Lies -- "No dear, that pants suit doesn't make you look hippy."

Lawyerly Lies -- "I didn't have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, not a single time." ("Actually, I had sex with her multiple times.")

Political Lies -- "Under the Affordable Care Act, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."

Self-serving Lies -- "I am 1/8 Cherokee Indian."

Popular Delusions -- "Carbon dioxide is a pollutant gas."

Propaganda -- "This agreement will prevent Iran from getting the atomic bomb."

Whoppers -- "This hamburger only has 125 calories."

Weasel Words

Last night, Mr. Mendacity gave his State of the Union Message. I could not bring myself to listen to his modern-day equivalent of “War is peace.  Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” (George Orwell, 1984).  But there were listeners, some of whom found that Obama was stretching the truth well past the breaking point.  Even NPR this morning  found many of his more audacious remarks to be questionable.  To catch up on his speech, I found the following fact-check listing of many of Obama’s truth-twistings.  It is well worth a read:  Breitbart Analysis.  (Actually, even the Lily Ledbetter analysis is incomplete.  There have long been laws that guarantee equal pay (for women) for equal work.  The Lily Ledbetter law did nothing more than extend the period over which lawyers could sue employers for such misfeasance.)  After pulling out your hair over these whoppers, you might consider a stiff martini.

I have also heard that, last night Obama bragged that his administration has created six million jobs since he took office … an oft-repeated misdirection.  This may be true in the sense that six million Americans have found new jobs.  But what he doesn’t enumerate is how many Americans have lost jobs during this same period.  When His Royal Highness took office in January of 2008, there were 145.4 million workers.  Now, there are 143.3 million workers in this country … which means that there are now 2.1 million fewer workers … while at the same time our population has grown by 10.9 million (Source Bureau of Labor Statistics).  Basically, 6 million Americans may have found jobs, but 8.1 million have obviously lost jobs.  If one were measuring the height of the tide last year this way, it would be 2 miles high because one would never count for all its ebbs.

The real sad part of this narrative is that obviously maybe half of all Americans are taken in by this claptrap … the uninformed voter if you will.  Are you one of them?