Pardoned Turkeys, polls, weather forecasts, economic indicators and other fairy tales

Don't worry, I've added lots of jokes to get you through it...

We have a number of national rituals that are pretty much meaningless like Groundhog Day, the Miss America Pageant or the Republican National Convention, many of which are held mainly for the benefit of the media.  

But they also serve as media distractions so President Biden is happy to pardon a turkey right before Thanksgiving which means for at least 20 minutes no one will ask him to take another whack at saying LL Cool J’s name or ask if Xi Jinping is a dictator.

(People question Biden’s mental acuity, but I think it’s only fair to forgive Joe if on this occasion he mistook pardoning a turkey for a budget meeting with Mitch McConnell.)

So every November a U.S. President publicly pardons a turkey, but then has a bunch of less-fortunate turkeys killed behind closed doors (because as we all know turkeys are delicious and still wind up on the White House Thanksgiving Dinner menu) so for yet another year we can rest assured that just as we suspected our politicians are giant hypocrites and much of our national pageantry is completely phony.

A sidebar about those pardoned turkeys

Each year two turkeys are selected based on poise, knowledge of current events and a swimsuit competition and then those lucky turkeys are crowned by Bert Parks and sent by limousine to Washington, D.C.’s Willard Hotel where they roam free in a plastic covered hotel room and I did not make up that last part about limos and hotel rooms even though the bit about a swimsuit competition seems a lot more likely. 

So if you ever walk into a hotel room and ask, “What’s that smell?” there’s a chance the previous guests were Celebrity Livestock, a description that includes a number of Rock Stars and Hollywood Actors.

Anyway…

The lucky turkeys are selected through an on-line poll so apparently the rest of us should quit whining about not getting enough “likes” on Facebook, because as far as I know nobody ever got beheaded and eaten for not being popular on social media.

They might have had their personal lives ruined, but that’s about it.

The lucky turkeys are trained for the big event by being exposed to lights and people and loud music, which if I recall correctly was pretty close to the brainwashing method they used to train The Manchurian Candidate so if one of those turkeys was playing solitaire and saw a Queen of Diamonds, Joe Biden might have been in trouble.

(OK, that joke is totally dependent on you knowing the plot of The Manchurian Candidate and if you haven’t read the book or seen either movie  – and I’d suggest the 1962 version starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey – go to the library, check it out and watch it while I wait here. So…great movie, huh?)

In what we’ve been encouraged to think is Real Life, it turns out the pardoned turkeys don’t tend to live very long because they were bred for eating and not longevity so it’s like giving a recent participant on My 600-Lb. Life a backpack, a book of matches and a Swiss Army Knife and setting him loose to roam free in the wilds of North Dakota.  

Probably not going to end well.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/turkey-pardon-biden-thanksgiving-b2450510.html

In any event…

According to the Department of Justice website, George Santos – U.S. House of Representative for the Third District of Fantasy Island – has been charged with Conspiracy, Wire Fraud, False Statements, Falsification of Records, Aggravated Identity Theft, and Credit Card Fraud and that being the case I thought he might show up to get one of those pardons.

According to the Washington Post, most Americans are financially better off than they were before the pandemic, but feel worse about their prospects which is no surprise because in my personal opinion we’re a Nation of Whiners and if you don’t believe me you probably weren’t aware of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth after the AFC West-leading and 8-3 Chiefs lost a football game.

(The Chiefs beat the Raiders yesterday so local football fans will be OK until the next Kansas City receiver drops a Patrick Mahomes pass and then it will be right back to whining. Get a grip, people, we could be fans of the 2-9 Patriots.)

Instead of “In God We Trust” our national motto should be: “It’s Always Something.”

And the “something” in the economy’s case is inflation and while it’s fallen, apparently we’re still pissed off that prices rose as much as they did and only 30% of voters approve of President Biden’s handling of the economy. But that’s according to a poll which is slightly less scientific than consulting tea leaves, your horoscope or a Ouija Board.

(More on that in a moment.)

According to the same article, inflation is 3.2% which is down from last summer’s high of 9.1%, but people are still upset because they feel like they’re having to overspend to maintain their pre-pandemic lifestyles and 81% of voters in battleground states say the economy is only “fair” or “poor” despite the U.S. economy showing quarter after quarter of strong growth.

(OK, that last paragraph was incredibly boring, but don’t look at me because I borrowed most of it from the Washington Post and newspapers tend to undervalue a sense of humor unless you include asking readers to pay good money for news they got 48 hours earlier off the internet.)

Anyway…

If you think about it – and I just did – if prices go up and stay there long enough you can have high prices and low inflation at the same time, so someone saying “Look how low inflation is” doesn’t change what you spend at the grocery store.

And now a word about polls

OK, right about here seems like a good time to say that when you read about polls and economic indicators and how they’re created you begin to question how accurate any of this stuff actually is.

Google “how many people are interviewed in a typical poll” and you get led to a Pew Research Center article that says there are about 225 million adults in the U.S. (another website says it’s actually 260,836,740 adult Americans and either way subtract at least one because I’m pretty sure I don’t qualify as an adult and my body of work proves it) and Pew typically interviews around 1,500 people for one of their polls so if I did the math right they’re talking to .0000066667 of one percent of adults in the U.S. and then extrapolating from there and when that doesn’t turn out to accurately predict the future we’re surprised.

That’s a lot like going into the water up to your ankles and then trying to draw a map of the ocean. (No idea if that comparison’s mathematically accurate; maybe Pew Research Center poll-takers could ask fifteen hundred people and see how they feel about it and get back to us.)

And Pew Research Center is considered one of the better sources of information; according to the internet, interviewing 500 to 1,000 people for an opinion poll is typical.

Which reminds me: when 10-day weather forecasts first became a thing, a local meteorologist said they weren’t very accurate, but people seemed to like them which means they’re in the exact same category as campaign promises.

Once again according to the internet (and I really hope you appreciate all the random crap I look up so you won’t have to) 10-day forecasts are right about half the time so you might as well flip one of those “It’s-Always-Something” embossed coins.

None of which stops anyone from making 10-day forecasts or talking to a small fraction of one percent of Americans and then telling us what all Americans think or me from using all that questionable information and drawing a cartoon featuring a Republican banging a pessimism drum while Joe Biden claims the economy is booming.

And now another word about “inflation”

Google “what is inflation” and the same source of information that in the past told us there was a Child-Molestation-Devil-Worshipping-Sex Ring being run out of a Georgetown pizza parlor basement in a pizza parlor that didn’t actually have a basement will tell you that’s it the increase in prices of a “basket of goods and services” over a certain period of time.

Which makes it sound like Jill and Joe Biden run down to the local supermarket once a month, fill up a shopping cart with the exact same items and then go back to the White House, get out a pocket calculator and do some addition, assuming Joe didn’t get lost in the produce aisle while telling a 9-year-old what it was like being a lifeguard during the Civil War.

But while that would be extremely entertaining it’s not how it’s done and according to the Brookings Institute website:

The government measures inflation using the Consumer Price Index which is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and I just figured out why bureaucrats love acronyms: it’s much easier to write “CPI” and “BLS” and then you can use those acronyms to write cryptic policy papers that make everybody else ask WTF?

The “primary” CPI (which makes it sound like there’s more than one CPI and there is) is called “CPI U” and is designed to measure price changes faced by “urban consumers” who makes up 93% of the U.S. population, so apparently the 7% of straw-chewing-moonshine-guzzling American hayseeds living on a farm and buying bales of alfalfa can suck on it.

Also: CPI U is used to produce an “average” and doesn’t reflect anyone’s actual experience.

Here’s all you need to know about averages and accuracy: if I have $2 million and you have nothing and you complain about being hungry, you won’t get much sympathy because on “average” you’re a millionaire.

The CPI is constructed each month using 80,000 items in a “fixed basket of goods and services” and the BLS uses a Consumer Expenditures Survey to decided what goods and services go into the basket and how to weight them which probably means there’s never ever been any inflation in the price of getting laid at a whorehouse because no consumer with the exception of Charlie Sheen is going to admit he does that.

If you’re starting to think, “Wow, there seems to be a lot of moving parts and places where you could make a mistake or get something wrong and maybe inflation isn’t really being measured accurately” you’re having the exact same experience I did when I started looking into baseball analytics.

And we haven’t even discussed other factors involved like “owners’ equivalent rent” or “Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers” or “Personal Consumption Expenditures” or “Core Inflation” or “trimmed-mean CPI” or “median CPI” or “On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging Percentage” and throw in a few more places where things can go wrong – like trying to figure in “seasonal fluctuations”– and you begin to realize this stuff is way less scientific than the people who produce it want us to think.

A fairly grumpy baseball scout once pointed out that you could tell “boutique metrics” weren’t totally accurate because they had to keep making adjustments and baseball now has WAR and bWAR and fWAR and they all use different formulas and reach different conclusions and despite their theoretical improvements not one of them has produced a better song than “Why Can’t We Be Friends” and if you don’t believe me, here’s the video:

In any case…

Leave out something that should be included or include something you shouldn’t or weight the included factors incorrectly and your conclusions will be off-target which is probably OK because most of us don’t understand this crap anyway and we’ll accept that in 2023 Salvador Perez was worth precisely 0.5 wins more than a totally imaginary replacement player.

And if you accept measuring things using imaginary ballplayers that means if the Royals trade Salvy they need to get at least one unicorn, a healthy centaur and some magic beans in return.

If you want to read all about this stuff (and I’d only recommend it if you’re ready to go to bed and don’t have any Sominex available) here’s the Brooking’s article:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-does-the-government-measure-inflation/

OK, that’s it for today and I’ve got to get busy because I’m still working on Thanksgiving leftovers, including some Unpardoned Turkey Casserole.

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