Shot in the Dark

Tag: Unexpected

  • Shot In The Dark – Today’s News, Five Months Ago

    We noted earlier this year that Philadelphia’s tax on pop was taking down soft drink sales, and jobs and stores with it. And it turns out that that’s true – pop sales are down by half in Philly. But people are healthier – right? Er…right? While researchers found that sales of sugary beverages fell in…

  • Unexpectedly

    Rising tides, it turns out, do actually lift boats: In April, the unemployment rate for Americans with a high school degree fell to the lowest rates since before the Great Recession. Unemployment for workers with disabilities fell from eight percent to 6.3 percent over the last 12 months, the lowest level since the measure began in 2008.Hispanic…

  • Unexpected, Part MCLVIII

    When Saint Paul opted for Tony-Soprano-style trash collection, they used a “formula” more or less like the Five Families used to divvy up racketeering in New York and New Jersey; each of the trash haulers got a slice of the city more or less equal to their market share. This meant there was no “need”…

  • “Unexpected”

    The Democrats will be holding their convention next year in Milwaukee.   Kevin Williamson thinks that’s pretty appropriate, all in all.   In response to a particularly stupid column by Paul Krugman a few years back, our friend Iowahawk shared an interesting discovery: Schools in progressive Wisconsin on average outperform the schools in low-spending, Republican Texas —…

  • “Unexpected”

    SCENE: Mitch BERG is building a snow wall around his property. Before he can close the last gap along the sidewalk, MyLyssa Silberman – reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats – pulls up in a Subaru Outback. SILBERMAN: [stepping out of the car]Merg! BERG: Er…hi, MyLyssa. What’s up? SILBERMAN: I’m…

  • Unexpected

    Price hikes brought about by New York City’s new $15 minimum wage are causing some consumer heartburn. Unexpectedly: Some New Yorkers are displeased with one of the more predictable outcomes of a $15 minimum wage—restaurants all over the city are raising their prices, according to the New York Post. The city’s minimum wage went up to…

  • “Unexpected” Omission

    American public media reports – or, in a sense, “Reports” – on the ironic rising cost of water in several Great Lakes-area cities and, naturally, its disproportionate effect on the poor. The cities – they focus most especially on Cleveland, Detroit, Duluth, Buffalo and Chicago – have water rates that are rising extremely fast, as…

  • Unexpectedly

    After eight years of DFL-led bureaucratic governance and repeated ta hikes, the city of  Luverne was shocked, shocked, to find that a company decided to ditch a deal and move their expansion to South Dakota: With groundbreaking expected this summer at the Luverne site, Tru Shrimp executives said they recently discovered a state environmental rule about…

  • Unexpected

    Anti-bullying programs seem to result in…more bullying?   Seokjin Jeong and Byung Hyn Lee set out to discover how bullying prevention programs could be effectively transferred from individual schools to schools on a national level. To their surprise, they discovered that bullying prevention programs don’t always produced the expected results: “Surprisingly, bullying prevention had a negative…

  • Silent But Dea…Er, Unexpected

    Is another stealth “red wave” about to break? Well, being a fundamental pessimist, I’d say “probably not” –  but I’ve been wrong before, most noticeably two years about tomorrow. But according to Rasmusson, there might just be something sneaking out of the fog.: I’m adding emphasis: The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds…

  • Unexpected

    Hard to believe our intellectual brahmins would not only fail to practice what they preach, but completely refudiate it. Michael Moore is the worst boss ever, according to that noted BreitbartFoxNewsNeoCon tool… …Leonard Maltin? First, Maltin says Moore stiffed workers who helped his Michigan-based film festival. Secondly, Maltin says the far-left filmmaker, who he “respects…

  • Unexpected

    I never cared for Donald Trump – his public persona, at least. And I certainly have never been a big fan of Roseanne Barr. The debut of the reboot of Rosanne shows what I know, I guess. Roseanne made a triumphant return Tuesday night, blowing past projections with a 5.2 adults 18-49 rating and 18.2 million total…

  • Events Of A Feather

    Six years ago, Venezuela banned private firearms ownership,  via a piece of legislation that had to have sent a tingle down Linda Slocum, Erin Maye Quade, Jamie Becker-Finn and Dave Pinto’s spines.   It was done to consolidate and reinforce the control of a government that, one might suspect in concept had to have sent a tingle down…

  • More Unexpected Results

    The Canadian province of Ontario – which includes Toronto and, Ontario natives tell me, a major city named “Tronna” – raised its minimum wage in January. Coincidentally, nearly 3% of the province’s part time jobs evaporated  that very month.  Unexpectedly!: It gained approximately 8,500 full-time positions but lost roughly 59,300 part-time gigs, according to data provided…

  • “Unexpected”

    Canadians raise the minimum-wage – in other words, force people to pay more for a commodity, labor, then it is otherwise worth – and are, inevitably, shocked, shocked, when it backfires. I’ve always joked, without really joking, that being a progressive requires being ignorant of history as well as economics. It would seem current events…

  • “Unexpected”

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Article examines why Alabama voters shifting back toward Moore.  Weakness of claims, distracting news accounts (Weinstein, Franken, Lauer), traditional Republican state, all likely true but I suspect the real reason is timing. The Washington Post released the article as an October Surprise, intended to create the drop in the…

  • Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

    Marines test all male versus gender integrated combat units in battlefield simulations. The results were completely unexpected – if you were a Google executive.   Otherwise, not all that unpredictable.

  • Unexpected!

    Last summer, when the people of the UK voted to leave the EU in the fabled “Brexit”, the same pundits who routinely Americans for “voting against their best interests” took a time out to chide Brits for voting…against their “best interests”.   The Brit economy was going to tank, returning the UK, if not to the…

  • Unexpected!

    As carry permit applications, pre-purchase background checks, and gun and ammo sales roar to new all-time records, the NRA is being crushed with new and renewing members. Scarcely a peep in the media (especially about the membership). But one Democrat politician and “NRA member” “quits” – and the media is lined up out the door.…

  • Unexpected

    United HealthGroup – the Minnetonka based health insurance megalith – after spending most of Barack Obama’s first term shamelessly shilling for Obamacare… … wants out of the Obamacare state exchanges. Surely there must be some mistake…

  • Unexpected

    The “Obama Recovery” still isn’t.  The U.S. economy shrank at an annual rate of 2.9 percent during the first three months of 2014, government bean counters announced this morning. That matches the worst non-recession contraction of the U.S. economy in over 40 years. Perhaps, taking a cue from minimum wage hike laws, the Administration could…

  • “Unexpected”

    For the fourth straight month, Minnesota’s revenues came in below forecast – and the rate of the shortfalls is accelerating.  That is according to Minnesota Management and Budget, which is nominally non-partisan (but whose leadership depends on Mark Dayton for their employment, and whose rank and file work for AFSCME).  Exactly as fiscal conservatives said…

  • Strib: “Oops – Sorry About All Those Unexpected Property Tax Hikes”

    If there’s a “broken record” phrase in all of Minnesota conservative alt-media, it’s “the Star Tribune is carrying the water for the DFL”. It’s like saying “Boy, isn’t Lady Gaga weird”.  It’s the baseline.  It hardly needs to be said. As Strib observers and critics go, I’m more jaded and cynical than most, which is another way of…

  • Unexpected

    This is your Obama economy, part oh-who-the-hell-remembers: The residential real-estate rebound suffered a setback in June as housing starts unexpectedly fell to the lowest level in almost a year, curbing how much construction contributed to U.S. economic growth last quarter. Believe harder and faster, people!

  • Unexpected, Again

    Jobs plummet: U.S. employment fell for the first this year in June as thousands of temporary census jobs ended and private hiring grew less than expected, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama who has identified job creation as a key priority. Change!