Category: Lists

Rank

Lists, Politics

…and that means not only an order, but also the smell.

“Kim, WTF are you talking about?”

Some smart guy (Robert Graboyes, at the splendidly-named Bastiat’s Window ) decided that Teh Experts cocked it up (surprise, surprise):

Two recent BW posts (“Polls, Pols, and Poli-Sci” and “Presidential Prodigiousness Potpourri”) lambasted the Bizarro World of presidential rankings from the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey. Some of the more ludicrous findings are summarized/caricatured in the graphic above. Several readers asked me to offer my own rankings. I can’t do a 1-through-45 list, but I can lump them into five tiers: (T#1) highly positive, (T#2) somewhat positive, (T#3) neutral, (T#4) somewhat negative, and (T#5) highly negative.

Go ahead and read it before continuing here.

My only quibbles are that Obama and Biden (the latter a.k.a. Obama The Much Lesser) didn’t end up in Tier 5, the absolute stinkers;  and that Calvin Coolidge wasn’t in Tier 1 (although I will cop to being a yuge fan of Coolidge, so I may be biased).

I can’t fault Graboyes’s methodology, however, in that he refused to take into account what the presidents did when not in the Oval office (either before or after), which is good.  His example:

Madison’s role in the Federalist Papers and Constitution make him a titan, but his presidency was mediocre.

He did include some non-Presidential material, though:

…Jimmy Carter, who has made himself a national pustule for over four decades.

By the same token, therefore Obama should be likewise excoriated because “national pustule” would be too kind a judgment on his post-Presidential shenanigans.

Feel free to discuss the observations of both Graboyes and mine, in Comments.

Vote Of Confidence

Lists, SHTF

…or not.  No sooner have the Commies won the UK election when we see articles like this one appearing:

Escape from Keir’s Britain with the experts’ definitive emigration guide: The best places for sunshine, big houses, high wages, no crime and top-notch healthcare – plus the hotspot with NO income tax

Of course, the smart money has already made that plan and the moolah has long ago flown over the white cliffs of Dover.  But on to the list.  Some of the countries are a lot more difficult to gain entry to, especially for permanent residence so getting there requires a lot of wishful thinking.  I’m also assuming that the target market folks are either well-off retirees or else have remote-friendly work-from-home jobs where location is irrelevant.

European countries:  Spain (a favorite already), Portugal (close second), France and Italy.  Never been to Spain, don’t care much for Italy (except in the north, which is spendy) but I could certainly do southern France.  Which is Mediterranean, as are Greece and Cyprus.  I would have a serious problem with either, because I have a problem with non-Western European alphabets, and unlike many others, I would never insist that the host people have to learn my language.  My problem, not theirs.  (I should point out that this is not the typical attitude of most Brit expats.)

Sweden:  what?  I mean, winters, dude.  Not to mention taxes (from the article:  “Income tax varies depending on the local authority, ranging from 29-35 per cent. Earners above a certain income pay an additional 20 per cent.”

Canada:  see Scandi countries above.  And speaking of socialist countries…

Oz/New Zealand:  no language barrier (more or less), but fleeing Starmer’s nascent socialist regime for the established (and venal) ones in the Antipodes doesn’t seem like a decent exchange.  (Hello, Covid lockdowns.)

South Africa:  someone has a sense of humor.  Except that South Africa is way beyond a joke. There’s a reason that Zimbabwe, Malawi and other African paradises aren’t on the list, and putting Seffrica on the list is simply a stupid nod to what the country used to be, and not what it is.  A really smart guy once said to me, many years ago, “If I went to my CEO and suggested investing in South Africa, he’d fire me.”

Texas and Florida:  leaving aside the almost impossible-to-crack legal difficulties of establishing U.S. residence, I am amused that only two states made the “cut”.  (No Tennessee?)  Whatever, I think the author has woefully underestimated the cost of living in both states.  Then again, of aaaaaaallllll the countries on the list, once you’ve established residence in either TX or FL, you can buy a gun and protect you and yours without any problems at all.  Which has to count for something.

So much for the Mail’s list.

Conspicuous by their absence from the list are some other countries.

Of course, one would think that Switzerland and Monaco would be obvious options, but they aren’t:  cost of entry, cost of living, and some really high barriers to residence take them right out of the running. Basically, the guys who could afford to move there already have.

When it comes to bang for the buck, so to speak, the Caribbean or Central American countries like Domenica, Belize and the Virgin Islands stand out way ahead of, for example, Sweden.  I’m amazed they weren’t on the list.

Your thoughts in Comments.

Unreality

Lists

Time again for one of those stupid polls done by some organization I’ve never heard of, which ranks the “Best of” — this time, of cities around the world to live in.  The criteria seem quite reasonable:

The results are based on scores across three key categories – liveability, lovability and prosperity, with dozens of factors taken into account. These include educational attainment, GDP per capita, poverty rate, the number of quality restaurants, shops and nightclubs; walkability, the number of mapped bike routes, quality parks and museums.

They cock it up somewhat by including “number of recommendations on sites such as Tripadvisor, Google, Facebook and Instagram” because those are generally driven by booster bots and paid “influencers” (same thing, really), but whatever.  Here are the Top 20:

1 – London
2 – Paris
3 – New York, U.S.
4 – Tokyo
5 – Singapore
6 – Dubai, United Arab Emirates
7 – San Francisco, U.S.
8 – Barcelona, Spain
9 – Amsterdam, Netherlands
10 – Seoul, South Korea
11 – Rome, Italy
12 – Prague, Czechia
13 – Madrid, Spain
14 – Berlin, Germany
15 – Los Angeles, U.S.
16 – Chicago, U.S.
17 – Washington D.C., U.S.
18 – Beijing, China
19 – Istanbul, Turkey
20 – Dublin, Ireland

…and to my Murkin Readers, at least, this would cause coffee-splattered screens and keyboards, because the five U.S. cities listed are the ones showing the greatest outward migration and desertion by the people who actually live there.  (And this is also true of the other U.S. cities in the 30-50 group.)

And where are these “refugees” going, according to actual census data?  To Orlando (53), Miami (55), Atlanta (65), Houston (68), Nashville (71), Dallas (73) and Charlotte (92).  And it’s got nothing to do with the warmer weather, either.

It is, as they say, to LOL.  If the list was entitled “Nice Places To Visit (but you wouldn’t want to live there), then it might have some (but not much) credence, with regard to the U.S. cities anyway.

Forty years ago, this list may have been true — and maybe not even then — but today?  As they say in New York (3):  fuggeddabahdit.

As for the furrin cities, and based solely on my experiences there, I’d have no issue with living in London or Paris, but certainly Amsterdam (9) would rank higher than either, and Vienna (21) would be in the top 5.

Probably the only ranking I agree with is Baltimore (100).  It’s a total shithole, and deservedly placed well below such garden spots as Beijing (18!) and Bogotá (81).

Another Stupid Survey

Lists

You can go ahead and read the silly thing, which as always is crammed full of utter nonsense… but this is more honest:

Kim’s 10 Best Reasons For Having Sex

  1. money
  2. fulfilling a longtime fantasy
  3. the kids are at Nana’s house
  4. you have a sneaking suspicion that you might be making a mistake
  5. you’re out of town on business
  6. you mistakenly popped a Viagra instead of your vitamin tablet
  7. the game’s been called off because of rain
  8. you’re both drunk and she’s keen
  9. the hotel’s Housekeeping will have to clean up the mess
  10. family reunions don’t happen every day, you know.

…and by the way, it’s even better if you can combine any of the above into one really good reason.

Feel free to add your suggestions in Comments…