The Amazing Spitting Man

OK. Let's bet how long The Manchurian President will take to trash Amazon for the disloyal act of putting the two new HQs dead center in the middle of Educated Coast Land. I don't twit, so it may have already happened. Certainly before the sun goes down. Go Blue!

Whose Numbers Do You Believe?

One of the more interesting episodes in Pharma is whether Vascepa's brand new trial results would be positive or negative. And whether the share price would rocket up or plummet down respectively. Adam Feuerstein has been something of a skeptic on the fish oil, and now that the results of the trial have been made public over the weekend, great argument has ensued.

You can find all you want to know about Vascepa and Amarin, its maker, with a quick innterTubes search, so I won't go into all of that. But what is of interest here: being a blinded, placebo controlled trial, the efficacy numbers for the fish oil are measured relative to the patients getting the placebo. Almost all the time, there is no dispute over the placebo (the substance itself, not other factors such as administration or detection), but not this time. There's reasoned question whether the placebo used was really inert. When is the data just bad?

Here's a sample of the argument courtesy of Feuerstein. One might not be surprised to see battling forces. It's funny. And demonstrates that something as seemingly simple as testing a compound for efficacy most likely isn't. You would think that totally hiding which compound the patient gets is the first order of business, and that the placebo is truly inert (at least, for the indication under study). Guess not. The capsule used as placebo needed to look like Vascepa, so mineral oil was chosen. Turns out now that this is widely known, it is also widely known that mineral oil has been shown (in other studies) to be a bit of an anti-stain. Oops. Evidently, neither Amarin nor the FDA made the content of the placebo widely public, or all those who should know better ignored the issue. Let the jousting begin. Will FDA now change its mind?? Will the company go bankrupt?? And so on. All because the yardstick might be a foot short. Measure twice, cut once.

Goodbye Tony

The mainstream pundits are finally figuring out that the issue driving the country into pieces is the urban/rural divide. The former is plastic, while the latter is concrete. Very white concrete. If you remembered to watch the very last "Parts Unknown", which ended a few minutes ago, about the Lower East Side of NYC, the divide is clear as day.

Bourdain spent the early part of his restaurant career there in the 70s and 80s. The episode interviewed people and places from that period. Nearly all those he talks with say, in one way or another, "if you can't stand change, you can't live here." Of course, in old, fat, white flyover country nothing changes. And they want it that way. Or, if possible, the way it was ante-bellum. If you know a way to get through to such folks, let me know.

New Gold - part the seventh

Yet another laggard in the mainstream media figuring out that the Buck's New Gold status has some implications. This piece deals with the Trumpian (lack of) intelligence manifest in tariffs and the like. Of major concern, although not the lede alas, is this:

In some ways, sanctions are the perfect American weapon. They are cheap, put no American lives at risk and elicit no equivalent response. Thanks to the centrality of the dollar to the global financial system, only the United States has the power to fully wield them.

In other words, if the US Buck were just another currency, Trump's sword would just be a wet noodle. Kind of like his dick.

Quit Bitchin

Do you get sick and tired of the fat, uneducated, shitkickers in flyover country's continued whining about how unfair it is that the Coastal states get all the good jobs??? Do you?? White grievance manifest. When I've typed about that situation in the many times past, the conclusion is obvious: they're in the situation just because they have always in years past, and continue to, elect right wingnut politicians who see to it that the shitkickers remain uneducated, unhealthy and generally unemployable beyond "do you want fries with that" or lawn boy. At some point tough love has to tell them the truth: it's your own damn fault; don't blame the highly educated Coastal Cabal.

So, it was with a warm heart, that Emily Badger provides lots of meat on those bones in the context of Amazon headquarters 2/3. The lede:

In the end, even Amazon has behaved according to this rule: In the modern tech economy, cities that already have wealth, opportunity, highly educated workers and high salaries will just keep attracting more of them.

This situation mirrors the Red/Blue divide, which I (and an increasing number of Others) have been saying is really a Rural/Urban divide.

Between 2010 and 2017, according to Brookings, nearly half of the country's total employment growth occurred in just 20 large metro areas (places that are home to about a third of the population). The Washington and New York regions alone accounted for about half of the net increase in business establishments across the country between 2007 and 2016, according to the Economic Innovation Group, which tracks economic inequality across the country.

Keep in mind: the GOP's middle class tax cut (snark) doubly penalized Coastal Blue states by cutting the deduction of state taxes, which taxes are used, in large part, to support education and healthcare of the folks the likes of Amazon wants to find. You won't find many in flyover country, just because the flyover folks don't want to learn anything useful, but want a 90210 Lifestyle. They ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Numerous studies, here and here for example, have been driving a stake in the lie that small business drives job growth. Certainly not high-skill, high-education jobs. Nope.

Also, we see, again, the minority dictatorship by the shitkickers, in the person of The Manchurian President, who's convinced them that he's their savior. Yeah, right.

There is some hope that flyover folks are beginning to find some sense. Some Red state voters got Medicaid expansion and a raised minimum wage.

Get Me Cheap and Dirty! Now!

Some readers of history view human progress as accidental, in the sense that improvement in things don't mostly happen. What tends to be the case: some new innovation is an actual improvement over history, but then the capitalists debase it relentlessly. Herewith just the latest example. And y'all thought that SSD would lead to more intelligent data management?? Hah! The COBOL flat-file continues to reign supreme.

The RCH Factor

So, for the last couple of weeks the Pundits of MSNBC have been HIGHsterical. It goes like this: "we blew it in 2016 by misjudging the polls"!! Well, no. As stated many times, and many places (here, certainly), the pollsters got the national vote dead on (you should read the whole thing).

But here's a stubborn and surprising fact — and one to keep in mind as midterm polls really start rolling in: Over the past two years — meaning in the 2016 general election and then in the various gubernatorial elections and special elections that have taken place in 2017 and 2018 — the accuracy of polls has been pretty much average by historical standards.

As also stated here many times, stratified random sampling is the toughest thing in all of quant. At the national level, it's quite a bit easier to say how the vote totals will go, but when you have something as biased as the electoral college getting in the way, making a presidential prediction gets to be problematic.

The number that matters to the 2016 experience is 79,000. That's the high end of various numbers that have been reported for PA, MI, WI margins for Trump. Turns out, while vote totals by state are readily available, number of precincts by state aren't so easy to find. I was able to find both numbers for MI. Here they are:
Trump margin: 10,704
precincts: 4,830

So, the margin is about 2 votes per precinct!!! There is no way on God's Green Earth that a national poll would find so few aberrant voters. The midterms aren't biased by the electoral college. Even so, MSNBC is showing as I type, and they've put up numbers for some interesting races, and the margins are running in the 4 to 6 point range. But... if you look at the fine print in the graphics, the MOE (that's what it says, rather than spelling out margin of error) runs to 3.5+ points! There's a reason that the House as been held by Democrats so much of the time: the mass of the voting public isn't Trumpian and never has been. It's essentially Liberal, even though many won't admit it.