About that bacon shortage

Yeah, not happening. Sure, the initial reports sounded very official, based on government estimates and whatnot, and things were looking grim:

U.S. bacon reserves have hit a 50 year low. The non-profit Ohio Pork Council said that demand for frozen pork belly, often made into bacon, has far outpaced supply, USA Today reports. “Today’s pig farmers are setting historic records by producing more pigs than ever. Yet our reserves are still depleting,” said Rich Deaton, the group's president.
With low reserve levels, prices have increased; the cost of pork belly rose by 20% in January, according to the council. Officials said that increased foreign demand might also be responsible, however, as hog farmers export around 26% of their total product according to the group.

Many local news sources dutifully reported the 20% rise in pork belly, implying it was a rise in the cost of bacon:

In December, the inventory was at 17.8 million pounds. That sounds like a lot, but it’s the lowest it’s been since 1957, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
It doesn’t take a business degree to deduct that when demand outweighs supply, prices surge. Those prices increased 20 percent in January.

 As someone who buys a lot of bacon, I knew that prices are quite low right now and have shown no upward trend. Sure enough, my sense of the bacon market was correct. It pains me that the New York Times confirmed my believe, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then:

But the truth is this: The frozen reserves are just that — reserves. There will be no rationing at breakfast, or for your burgers (or B.L.T.s, or quiche, or roasted bacon-wrapped rabbit, or apples and ice cream. Not even for your bacon footballs this weekend.)
. . .
. . . . bacon lovers have nothing to fear. According to Mr. Meyer, the United States produces almost 75 million pounds of pork belly every week. “We’re going to slaughter about 3 percent more pigs this year than we did last year — a record number,” he said. “Bacon production will be higher than it’s ever been."

Of course, I am glad to hear that bacon will be plentiful. On the other hand, as a buyer of bacon and observer of prices (I do the grocery shopping in this family) I already knew that there were no price signals of a coming shortage.  If only government would pay more attention to market price signals and ignore the urge to intervene. Sigh. A post for another day.

 

A silly discussion of armored conflict that isn't going to happen

A site called The National Interest recently put up what I consider an unserious and actually downright silly discussion of what might happen if Russian-made T-90 tanks wind up facing off against American-made Abrams M1-A1 tanks in Syria.

The two, of course, are probably the premier main battle tanks in the arena today. The Russian T-90 is essentially a souped-up version of the Soviet-era T-72, considered a cheap-ish, quantity tank intended to overrun NATO tanks of higher quality by virtue of sheer numbers. Rather than build off the more-advanced T-80, Russia decided to "improve" on the T-72. Which gave them this:

As near as I can tell, the T-90 is OK as 3rd-generation main battle tanks go. It is worth noting, though, that the Russians haven't ordered any new T-90s since 2011, preferring to await deployment of their next-generation MBT in 2016. Maybe that doesn't mean anything, and maybe it means they have not a lot of faith in the ability of the T-90 to do well against its projected opponents.

The projected opponent is, of course, the US-made M1 Abrams, including the M1A1 and A2 versions. First entering service in 1980, the M1A1 and, later, the M1A2 tanks have been tested in battle, unlike the T-90, and kicked the shit out of all the Soviet-made iron they ran into during the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars, including the T-72 upon which the T-90 is based. The Abrams, updated frequently since its introduction into service, looks like this:

It has always been superior to the Soviet tanks it was designed to face, and the upgrades have made it superior to any Russian tank it might face today.

So, what the hell is The National Interest doing? They start with the fact that Russia recently deployed an unknown number of T-90s to Syria. They then toss in the fact that it appears that ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a bunch of serious bad guys who have arisen because King Barry chose to abdicate in the Middle East, leaving a power vacuum) has captured a number of American-made Abrams tanks from Iraqi forces who, mostly, fled as soon as they saw ISIS guys approaching.

What could be more natural, then, than postulating on what a battle between Russian-manned T-90s and ISIS-manned Abrams would look like? The only good part about this article is that they reach the proper conclusion:

So how would ISIS’ Abrams fare versus the best Russian-owned and operated tanks? Probably not very well—the Russian crews are professional soldiers, with proper training, tactics and a functional logistical train. ISIS, meanwhile, might have some veterans of Saddam Hussein’s army, but they aren’t exactly experts at employing an Abrams or even mechanized warfare in general given their past performance.

Simply driving a tank is not an easy task. Put that in a combat situation, and a bunch of untrained terrorist asshats are going to get curb-stomped by trained soldiers every time. Especially when those trained soldiers have air support, which the Russians do. This has nothing to do with the relative merits of the combat capabilities of the tanks involved and everything to do with the relative abilities of the crews in those tanks. On the one side --the Russians, with less-capable tanks -- we have a bunch of trained professionals, while on the other side, we have a group of jihadis for whom driving the tank at its most basic level is a challenge. Of course the trained professionals would win. They would win driving World War II-era T-34s.

Never mind that the jihadis are unlikely to even try to deploy these tanks in battle. I guess they might try to use them as self-propelled artillery, but they certainly wouldn't try to use them as actual tanks -- they don't know how. The match-up postulated by The National Interest simply isn't going to happen, and if it did, the Russians would win without breaking a sweat, and it wouldn't answer any questions about the relative merits of the two tanks. All in all, this is one of the most asinine speculative articles I've ever seen.

Holy fucking shit, they really do believe their own bullshit

It would appear that when Emperor Barry really does, as he told Newsweek reporter Richard Wolff, "You know, I actually believe my own bullshit." His attitude toward the Islamic State In Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, would appear to indicate this sentiment is pretty much what drives Emperor Barry's foreign policy.


Drawing major lessons from the history of the world, Barry has decided we don't need to do anything to stop ISIS, since they will inevitably realize that we are right and they are wrong:

After consulting with military leaders at the Pentagon this afternoon President Obama held a press conference on the growing threat of ISIS. President Obama declared the United States "will never be at war with Islam." Obama also said, "ideologies are not defeated with guns but better ideas."

Yeah, I completely remember studying in school how we kicked some Nazi ass by convincing them that Democracy was totes the way to go. The knowledge drove Hitler to suicide, and we never had to fire a shot. Am I getting something wrong here? Ideologies might not be defeated with guns, but guys with guns who are dead set on using them against you are pretty much only defeated with guns. But Emperor Barry knows better, I guess, and is well-versed in the long history of the times genocidal maniacs have been deterred by "better ideas." That's a history that's easy to be well-versed in, of course, because there are no examples, except in Barry's otherwise empty head.

Hell, these ignorant fuckheads think that endorsing gay marriage will convince a group that throws gay men from tall buildings as a means of execution will somehow realize that our gay ways are what Allah actually wants. All we have to do is keep tweeting pictures of the gay rights groups celebrating on the steps of the Supreme Court:

Do you want to fight the Islamic State and the forces of Islamic extremist terrorism? I’ll tell you the best way to send a message to those masked gunmen in Iraq and Syria and to everyone else who gains power by sowing violence and fear. Just keep posting that second set of images. Post them on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and in comments all over the Internet. Send them to your friends and your family. Send them to your pen pal in France and your old roommate in Tunisia. Send them to strangers.
Yes, it’s sappy. But this has always been the dream of America: a dream of freedom, of a land where no one would force their religious beliefs on anyone else. A land where all people would have the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A land where we could seek change peacefully and trust our laws and institutions to respond to our deepest hopes.

Because that is the way freedom has always conquered tyranny. Over Twitter and Reddit and whatever. Good fucking plan. Scary part? The author of that piece of fantasy bullshit is a former Obama defense official. Great. Our fates are in the best of hands.

Signs of life among the press, and brain death in the administration?

As Hot Air comments, the mainstream media is finally beginning to notice that the Obama administration is kind of making shit up as it goes along. Now, apparently, even administration spokespersons are admitting that the things they say don't make any sense. Jen Psaki, the red-headed State Department spokesperson and routine question-dodger, recently acknowledged that her statement on Egypt could have been created by a random word generator. Under questioning from Associated Press reporter Matt Lee about Egypt's decision to not press murder charges against former president Hosni Mubarak, Psaki issued a statement that apparently was pure State Department drivel. Lee, unimpressed, said of the statement: "What you said says nothing. It’s like saying, ‘We support the right of people to breathe."

Quite likely unaware that her microphone was still on, Psaki actually acknowledged that she was spouting horseshit. Pay close attention at the end of the video and you will here Psaki say, "That Egypt line is ridiculous."



Talk about inadvertent honesty. She could have been summing up the administration's foreign policy. It's good to see the mainstream media start to challenge the administration on its bullshit, but it is a little disturbing to hear the administration acknowledge that it is, in fact, distributing bullshit.

I'm not sure Hillary Clinton actually understands the concept of "dead broke"

I realize that this makes me a sexist, misogynist all-around-bad-person, but I don't think Hillary Clinton knows what the fuck she's talking about when  she refers to being "dead broke," at least not based on the situation she discussed with Diane Sawyer in their recent interview:



Let's look at this. Please. As Ace points out, the Clintons were pretty solid in the 1 percent even after they left the White House, between her Senate salary and Bill's presidential pension (not to mention his pension from Arkansas from his bazillion terms as governor):

She was also making $186,600 as a US Senator.
Bill was pulling down $200K in pension as an ex-President (that's just cash and doesn't include office staff, protection, etc).

OK, so we're looking at nearly $400,000 in annual salary -- roughly 10 times the national media household income at the time. Dead broke? Um, maybe not. As the December 16, 2000 New York Times noted:

Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed last night to sell Simon & Schuster a memoir of her years as first lady, for the near-record advance of about $8 million.
The deal ends a frantic weeklong bidding war that provoked widespread curiosity about just what she planned to write. Mrs. Clinton had told publishers she planned to discuss her feelings about the scandals of her husband's administration as well as her thoughts about women's changing roles in the world.

Granted, 8 million doesn't go as far as it used to, but it wasn't all the family reeled in that year, even if we ignore the $400,000 in salary they had coming. Not even close:

Former President Clinton has agreed to write his memoirs for Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher announced Monday, in perhaps the biggest deal ever for a nonfiction work.
Terms were not immediately disclosed, but the New York Times reported on its Web site that the 42nd president agreed to an advance of more than $10 million. The book is expected to be out in 2003.
That figure could be just the tip of the iceberg. The Washington Post reports the former president has received dozens of inquiries from international publishers who hope to buy foreign rights to the book.

OK, so we're up to $18.4 million or so in income for 2001, "when we left the White House."  What awful expenses did they have to cover?

According to Clinton, she and her husband, who has made over $100 million since leaving the White House, “struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education, you know, it was not easy.”
But, as Clinton’s story goes, the two hard-working, middle-class millionaires somehow managed to put food on the table in their multiple houses, even though they “had to make double the money, because of, obviously, taxes, and then pay off the debts and get us houses and take care of family members.”

 Yeah, I can see her clipping coupons just to make it. Chelsea fucking graduated in 2001 -- the Clintons had to cover exactly one semester of her education post-White House, which I have to believe they could do with the money they had coming in. Even if they also paid for her post-graduate education, during which Chelsea was employed and fully capable of paying her own way.

As for the other debts? Most of that was legal bills because Bill couldn't keep his dick in his pants and then felt the need to fight the resulting sexual harassment allegations for nearly five years before settling. Of course, he had the help of a legal defense fund that raised more than $8 million from generous Democrats. Weird how Hillary never mentions that.

Despite all these hardships, Hillary and Bill somehow managed to "piece together the resources for mortgages for houses." Plural. You know, I don't think a lot of people will buy her story of hardship, even if they don't follow the links.

Too late for me, but maybe you can ride this train to success

You see all kinds of weird stuff when you're reviewing a company's documents. Not as much as you used to, of course, when computerized subject-matter filters didn't exist. Used to be the client just dumped every document into the database for review, and temps looked at all of them. Got lots of porn, emails about intra-office affairs, stuff like that. Nothing to do with the case, of course, but it kept things lively. Now, the law firms are able to run searches for key words and only review those documents. Of course, the searches still usually have to be pretty broad, so there's a lot of junk still gathered up because it happens to include one of the search terms somewhere in the document, but you almost never get an email these days with the subject line, "Anna Kournikova naked." Sad, I know, but true. (Yes, I worked a case like that once, and it wasn't actually her -- it was her head skillfully photoshopped onto someone else's body who was, herself, gettin' it done. But I digress.)

These days, alas, the documents might not have much to do with the case, but they generally have something to do with the business in which the client company engages. This makes our job extraordinarily boring, by and large, because the documents have to be actually looked at, and they do not include pictures of Anna Kournikova naked. Or anybody else naked, for that matter.

But they do include a lot of the inanities that drive American corporate culture these days. The business-speak, the buzzwords coming down from HR about "empowerment" and shit like that. The other day I came across a couple phrases that I decided were the key to becoming the CEO of a major corporation. If you could say these phrases with a straight face, you were headed for the stars. Only one temp I have put to this test has passed so far. Frankly, I think this actually speaks well of temps, as it indicates a cynicism that is unable to take seriously the utter horseshit that makes up such a significant part of politically correct corporate culture these days.

The phrases? "Teamwork makes the dream work," and "Excel in the search for excellence." Try it in front of a mirror. If you can say these with a straight face, the Fortune 500 wants you.

Obama's government shutdown kabuki thwarted by determined octagenarians

Honor Flight is a great organization that puts together tours for aging veterans so they can visit, at no cost, the memorials in Washington that commemorate their valor. The focus, obviously, is on World War II veterans, who are getting up there in years and are running short of chances to make the visit. So, with an Honor Flight sponsored group of Mississippi veterans scheduled to make a visit to the World War II memorial Tuesday, a Mississippi congressman asked the administration to let the veterans visit the memorial. The White House and the Park Service said "fuck you" and put up barricades to keep the veterans out.

The World War II memorial is a pretty open space:

It would take some doing to keep folks out, I think. The Park Service Police, apparently did not have what it takes, as the wheelchair-bound, octagenarian WWII vets kicked over the barricades and went in anyway. Apparently, it was awesome.

Thanks to The Daily Caller for the picture. Lots of pictures at all those links, by the way.

Now, can we please dispense with the horseshit that the memorials in Washington need to be "closed"? Most are in open areas -- the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, WWII Memorial, Martin Luther King Memorial, FDR Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial -- all of them are walk-by, wide open. None of them have Park Rangers there to explain shit to you. All of them are patrolled by the Park Service Police. Well, as a police force, the Park Service Police are "essential" and are still on the job. So why go to the monumental effort (pun intended) to close off these otherwise open memorials? Simple. Barry, in a fit of petulance, wants to make the shutdown as painful as possible in visible ways, because otherwise, most people won't realize the federal government went home. For most people, a federal shutdown is positive. Big-government Barry can't have that. Thus, the attempt to keep aging veterans from visiting an open-air memorial. Glad they refused to take that shit. Government works for us, damn it, not the other way around.

Hat tip to Ace, Buzzfeed,  Twitchy and The Daily Caller for covering this before me.