Cruise Blues

Mrs. BeeLine and I have spent a fair amount of time on cruise ships over the last few years.

We have done four transatlantic and two transpacific crossings and have visited Alaska, Hawaii, Tahiti, Bora Bora, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea, England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Belgium, France, Italy, Croatia and Greece in our travels.

It is a very convenient way to travel. It is a cost effective way to view a number of locales on one trip. It is relaxing. It is a great way to meet new and interesting people from around the world.

There is also no doubt that when you cruise you are floating in a germ factory when you are in close quarters with thousands of other human beings as you sail the seven seas.

When we cruise we always pack an industrial size pack of Lysol wipes and a large can of Lysol spray. Those are used to wipe down and spray every surface in our cabin before we touch anything. That includes spraying the HVAC vents.

We wash our hands religiously before every meal. We use the hand sanitizers around the ship constantly. We avoid touching any bannisters or railings everywhere we can. If we need to steady ourselves going up or down stairs we use the inside crook of our arm. We try to avoid the elevators when we can and use the stairs. We only touch the buttons on the elevator with our knuckle rather than our fingers.

On a ship you see clear evidence of herd behavior. On ships that place a steward at the front of the buffet venue the first few days of the cruise directing people to wash their hands before entering, you see a high percentage of people doing this the rest of the cruise. On ships that don't do this, you see very little compliance with hand washing. This does not make Mrs. BeeLine very happy.

The coronavirus has put a particular spotlight on the cruise industry.

First, we had the Diamond Princess situation in which the ship was quarantined in the harbor at Yokohama, Japan with 3,711 passengers and crew members. Over 700 on the ship ultimately tested positive for the virus. 46 were Americans.

This is a picture I took from our cabin when we were docked in Yokohama two years ago. It is a beautiful sight but I don't know if it would look as good if this was the only thing you had to look at for two weeks.

Yokohama, Japan at night

Shortly after the Diamond Princess began its quarantine, Holland America's Westerdam was stranded at sea for several days as five different ports in Asia refused to give it permission to dock after it had been to China. Cambodia ultimately allowed the ship to dock and it turned out that one passenger had a mild case of the virus.

Holland America had to subsequently cancel all future sailings in Asia for the next several months as have other major cruise lines.

The latest cruise ship that is now dealing with coronavirus is the Grand Princess. This is a picture I took of that ship as it was leaving San Francisco several years ago. You can see Alcatraz Island just to the left of the bow of the ship.

The Grand Princess leaving San Francisco

21 (19 crew, 2 passengers) on the ship have tested positive for the virus so far. A passenger on a previous cruise two weeks ago had developed symptoms when they got home and recently passed away. Public health officials determined that the passenger most likely had acquired the virus on the ship leading to increased scrutiny. The latest news is the passengers will disembark in Oakland, CA i n the next couple of days and then be quarantined at various facilities around the country.

All of this is bad news for the cruise industry.

However, I believe it is going to get much, much worse.

The Diamond Princess episode caused the cancellation of almost all cruise with stops in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. This has to now also include Japan and South Korea.

Many lines have been prohibited passengers who were from China (or who were recently in China) from boarding their ships. For example, some friends recently returned from a Caribbean cruise in which the cruise line was not allowing anyone from China, Hong Kong or Macau (or who had been there recently) to board the ship.

What do the cruise lines do now?  The list is getting long of those places that are hot spots. There are also not many places that can be considered totally safe. Korea? Italy? Iran? Seattle?

The cruise industry is also heavily reliant on an older demographic for a large portion of its revenues. This is also the group that experts are now saying carries the most risk from the virus. It has also recently been recommended that those over age 60 should avoid unnecessary air travel or venues with lots of people. Is going on a cruise necessary for anyone?

Dr. Anothory Fauci of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases was pretty direct in an appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday.

"If you're a person with an underlying condition — and you are particularly an elderly person with an underlying condition — you need to think twice about getting on a plane or on a long trip," Fauci said. "And not only think twice, just don't get on a cruise ship."

You have to think that more and more of these people are not going to get on an airplane to congregate with 3,000-4,000 people on a ship.

The cruise industry will also soon be beginning its Alaska cruise season that heavily relies on Seattle and Vancouver as the major port cities. I had read that some cruise lines were also planning to take ships out of the Asia market and reposition them to Alaska. That might not work.

Seattle now seems to be ground zero for the virus in the United States. 17 of the 20 US. deaths from COVID-19 have been in Washington state. I would not be surprised to soon see Vancouver become the leading hot spot for the virus in Canada. Canada did not stop flights to China as early as the United States and the proximity to Seattle practically guarantees that we will see community transmission between the two areas.

All in all, I see a lot of rough seas ahead for the cruise industry before public confidence is regained.

Vice President Pence met with cruise line executives in Florida on Friday and urged them to step up efforts on protecting passengers, crew and the ports they visit from the virus.

Pence said that over the next 72 hours, cruise lines will work with federal officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to screen more passengers for the coronavirus before they board ships, establish onboard testing and develop a plan to move anyone who has contracted the virus to land quickly.

That will help but I have doubts whether that will do enough to restore the confidence the cruise industry is going to need to get passengers on those ships in the near term.

For example, 2/3 of those responded in a recent survey that they would not go on a cruise even if it was offered to them for free! It was 77% for those age 65 and older.

Carnival Corporation (the owner Princess Cruise Lines) has seem its stock almost cut in half since the first of the year.

This is the chart of the stock over the last one month.

As bad as I see the situation of the cruise industry dealing with the coronavirus, Iran seems to be on verge of being in even worse straits.

The disease seems to be raging through Iran in ways not seen elsewhere. A large number of members of parliament and other public officials have been infected. A number have died. The virus also seems to be claiming a significant number of health professionals, including doctors and nurses, and members of the police and security forces. Therefore, in Iran the virus is attacking some of the  foundations of the society that will not be easily replaced when the epidemic ends.

Of course, with Iran, you never know if you are getting the whole story. However, even with what they are disclosing, it does not look good. Reports from within Iran are the numbers are much, more worse that what the government is admitting.

These are the most recent worldwide numbers on the extent of the virus by country. The disease is accelerating faster in Iran than anywhere else in the world right now.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
3/8/20

I am following @aliostad on Twitter who is an Iranian who lives in the UK and is monitoring various news and social media sites in Iran and translating them to English. His reports paint a grim picture of what is going on in Iran. Here are a few recent tweets to provide you some context.

Prayers for the Iranian people. 

As bad as the cruise blues might be, you have to think that the percentage who would accept an all-expenses trip to Iran right now would have to be close to 0%.

Are You Satisfied?

If we have learned anything the last several weeks it is how quickly fortune can turn. It literally can turn on a dime---good or bad.

Joe Biden's fortunes turned for the good. The stock market turned for the bad.

A lot of what happens in the world is driven by social mood. Social mood is as contagious as COVID-19. Human beings are social creatures and our interactions among each other affects our collective mood both positively and negatively.

There is an entire field of study called "socionomics" that has been popularized by stock market economist Robert Prechter.

Traditional thought is that social events drive social mood. For example, a falling stock market turns people's moods from positive to negative. Socionomics theory proposes just the opposite. It is social mood that governs the character of social events.

This is how the Socionomics Institute describes social mood and its effects.

Social mood waxes and wanes positively and negatively. Periods of positive social mood tend to be associated with a host of social phenomena, such as rising stock prices, re-election of incumbents, peace, increasing deregulation, and the popularity of brighter colors and shorter skirts. Periods of negative social mood also tend to be associated with a host of social phenomena, such as falling stock prices, rejection of incumbents, discord, increasing regulation, and the popularity of darker colors and longer skirts.

A Gallup survey released February 6, 2020 showed that we were undeniably in a period in which social mood was particularly positive.

In fact, it is one of the more amazing polling numbers I have ever seen.  That survey asked Americans whether they were satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things were going in their personal lives.

An incredible 90% of Americans recently said they were satisfied with their personal life!

90%! Is there anything you can cite in which 90% of people agree on anything these days.

That is the highest number Gallup has ever found in this survey which dates back to 1979.

What is particularly noteworthy is that 65% of those surveyed stated they were very satisfied with their personal life. That is the highest total ever by a large margin and it has spiked up noticeably since 2017.

Yes, the economy is better but personal satisfaction is a much broader measure. You may be putting bread on the table but do you like your job? Your boss? Are you satisfied in your marriage? With your friendships? How about your health? It encompasses a lot. 90% are satisfied with their personal life? That is incredible.

It is pretty interesting to also look at the breakdowns on the question of personal satisfaction by subgroup.

As you might expect, those making $100,000+ and Republicans are more satisfied right now than Democrats and those making less than $40,000 are.

However, no subgroup scores at less than 80% satisfied.

There is also no subgroup that isn't at least 54% very satisfied with their personal life.

Will people be as satisfied with their lives in November as they are now?

Donald Trump has to be hoping that is the case.

However, a lot can happen in eight days let alone eight months. Look no further than Joe Biden or the stock market

Will a contagious virus have just as strong a contagious effect on the social mood of the country?

The reality is that the latter will have much more profound impacts on our society than the former.

Will people be as positive and satisfied about their lives six months from now even if COVID-19 is a distant memory?

A lot may depend on whether the positive social mood reflected in this Gallup survey remains intact.

Miracles Can Happen

Super Tuesday is behind us and I see two big takeaways.

First, miracles can happen. Joe Biden was close to being on life support a week ago. He now looks poised to go toe to toe with Bernie Sanders in the remaining primaries.

Second, $500 million doesn't appear to buy you much in politics if you are not a good candidate to begin with. Mike Bloomberg proved that on Super Tuesday. Will he get out? If he doesn't, the only thing he can do is make it much more likely we will see a contested Democrat convention. Will he stay in to merely insure he has a big voice in who the nominee is?

How was Joe Biden able to come back from the dead?

He owes a lot to South Carolina. He also owes a lot to the Democrat establishment who began to panic two weeks ago about the prospects of losing control of the party to Bernie and his band of socialists. They put a full court press on for Biden leading up to South Carolina. Biden has also benefited the most from being the most familiar name and face in a crowded field looking for an alternative to Bernie Sanders.

One of the problems the Democrats had in looking for that alternative is that all of those most likely to assume that role this year did not measure up with voters. Kamala Harris did not even make it to the Iowa caucus. She ran out of money and supporters before the first votes were taken. Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar looked liked they might be able to gain the attention of voters but it never happened. They both dropped out after South Carolina and endorsed Biden. Bloomberg spent $500 million but threw most of it away in his first debate appearance.

When human beings are uncertain about a decision they tend to default to the familiar.  Familiar is the safe choice. You see it in politics all the time. Voting for an unknown and unproven candidate is risky unless the new candidate really convinces voters and separates themselves from the field.

The Democrat primary this year reminds me of the 1996 GOP primary. You had younger and fresher candidates seeking the Republican nomination that year like Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes and Phil Gramm. However, Bob Dole was a familiar name and face even though he was 73 years old. The only reason that he got the nomination is that people knew him and weren't sure of the others.  Dole got crushed by Bill Clinton in the general election.

John McCain gained the nomination in 2008 under similar circumstances against candidates like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. None of the new names really could separate themselves and McCain was the beneficiary despite being 72 years old. He didn't really excite anyone but he was a familiar and "safe" bet when the voter had to make a decision. Of course, McCain lost big to Barack Obama.

It was just two weeks ago that I wrote that Bernie Sanders had the inside track to the nomination in that he would generally be able to count on 15%-35% in most states and the alternative candidates would split the remaining votes and delegates. For the establishment Democrats to beat Bernie Sanders in the primaries they would need to get the race down to a one on one race with Sanders.

Klobuchar and Buttigieg dropping out of the race after South Carolina opened up a wide lane for Biden to operate.

Bloomberg is still a potential problem in getting to that one on one race, and it is difficult to know what is motivating him in all of this, but it is clear now that all he can be is a spoiler.

Elizabeth Warren is in the same place.  However, she is hurting Bernie rather than Biden. Does she care? Will she now drop out? Would the Democrat establishment rather see her stay in? Who is she trying to please?

I wrote this two weeks ago...

Lack of funding usually ends the dream for most candidates but that will not end the Bloomberg campaign. He only gets out if he feels he has absolutely no chance and also sees that he is actually helping Sanders by staying in. One other candidate will likely go the distance with Bernie (Buttigieg, Klobuchar or Biden (miracles can happen).

Yes, miracles can happen.

Joe Biden is now leading the Democrat primary race or in a dead heat with Bernie Sanders (depending on the final results in California). At a minimum, he has gained the momentum.

However, a contested convention is still not out of the question due to the fact that the Democrats do not have any "winner take all" primaries.

I still think Biden is a ticking time bomb for the Democrats. He is a human gaffe machine. I will be shocked if he does not do or say something that ultimately does him in.

The only question is whether it happens before the convention...or after.

Even if Biden survives the gaffes, we are talking about a man who will be 78 years old at the beginning of a first term, 82 years old at the beginning of a second term and 86 years old at the end.

Will the American people trust their lives, livelihood and liberty to a man of that age?

I don't think young people will trust that he can. I don't think older voters will believe that he can.

Then again...miracles can happen.

I have learned you never say never in politics.

A Tale of Two Flu Pandemics

A global pandemic.

Millions infected by the virus.

20,000 hospitalizations.

1,000 deaths.

Our President does not declare a national emergency until months after it is clear that the virus is being spread widely in communities in the United States.

Am I speaking about President Trump?

No. Trump declared a public health emergency involving coronavirus over a month ago on January 31, 2020. This was when only a couple of cases had been found in the United States.

The global pandemic stats I referenced above occurred in 2009 under the administration of Barack Obama involving the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. Despite millions infected by the virus, Barack Obama did not declare it a national emergency before 20,000 Americans had been hospitalized and 1,000 had died from the virus. That was six months after the initial outbreak in California. That flu ultimately was blamed for 265,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 deaths in the United States before it was over.

The CDC estimated the global death toll from the H1N1 flu to be 265,000.

What about Trump's actions on coronavirus?

Trump declared a public health emergency a week before the Diamond Princess went into quarantine in Japan. It was only 10 days after the first coronavirus case was identified in the United States in a man who returned to Seattle from Wuhan, China. Interestingly, Seattle appears to the the area that now appears most at risk for new cases emerging.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the travel ban "premature" and a "war on immigrants" shortly after Trump put the policy into effect.

Schumer has recently deleted this tweet. I wonder why?

What was one of the reasons that the Trump decisions were quickly criticized?

Democrats and some in the media complained that the White House task force that had briefed Trump on the cornonavirus situation, that led to the decisions that were made, lacked "diversity".

Is this where we are now? Health decisions are not legitimate if there is a lack of diversity?

Does this mean under Medicare for All it will be required to get a second opinion from a doctor of color? Or your surgery will not be paid for unless it is performed by a transgender surgeon?

 

Of course, anyone should now know how important those proactive steps made by Trump and his advisors were to buy the United States additional time to deal with the pandemic.

If you doubt that, look at this chart from the WSJ's Daily Shot (as of February 28) that compares the identified cases in the United States to other countries based on where the virus was caught.

At that point, only one of the cases of the virus in the States had been identified as having been caught in the United States. Most cases were from American passengers on the Diamond Princess who caught the virus on the ship and were subsequently repatriated to the United States.

Compare that to the other countries which were seeing much higher incidences of community infection due to the fact that they did not implement restrictive border rules as quickly as the United States did.

All that being said, we are now at point we are almost certain to see a large increase in identified cases in the United States over the next several weeks.

The virus is clearly out in the community, in particular in Washington state and California.

Test kits are more readily available now, and as more are tested, we are are undoubtedly going to find many more cases of the virus.

This will also result in more short-term panic. It is an expected human response in dealing with the unknown. There are many things we are not sure about involving this virus right now. How long is the incubation period? What is the true mortality rate? How safe am I?

Panic driven by the unknown right now seems to be a bigger danger to all of us than the virus. We have seen what happened to the stock market last week. Of course, financial markets loath uncertainty and we have seen that in volumes in the past week.

We have already seen international air travel drop dramatically. I would expect that we will soon see the same in domestic air travel. I would expect restaurants, bars, theaters and other venues that host large numbers of people around Seattle, and in places in California where cases have been identified, will see precipitous drops in business. Retail shops will also suffer except for grocery stores which may struggle to keep their shelves full due to panic buying.

We may see this story unfold across this country if the virus cannot be contained. It may get very, very ugly before it gets better. Most people will survive the virus. It is an open question how many will survive the potential economic fallout.

What is most interesting to me is comparing the reaction to the H1N1 flu in 2009 with what is going on right now.

How many people even remember that flu as a big deal even though it was only a decade ago?

What is different?

There were plenty of other things to be concerned with in 2009. Unemployment was almost 10% and the Dow Jones was below 9,000. When the coronavirus panic started we were at 3.5% unemployment and over 29,000 on the Dow.

The media was not out there pounding on Obama for six months even though 1,000 Americans had died before he took any substantive action at all.

We did not have the level of hatred exhibited toward the President we see today where many Democrats and members of the mainstream media seem to be rooting for bad things for the country in order to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming election.

I often say that context is everything when assessing anything.

It could not be truer than in comparing the tale of these two flu pandemics.

Where does it all lead?

I don't know.

I do know that human beings are often their worst enemies. Charles Mackay called it the "madness of crowds" back in the 16th century.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" when the United States was in the depths of the Great Depression. That also seems entirely appropriate advice for us right now.

First and foremost, as FDR showed, it is the job of the President to inspire confidence and lead with a steady hand.

Critics of Trump say he has not done enough. Of course, as shown above, they also said early on that he was doing too much or he was consulting with the wrong people.

President Trump was asked in his recent press conference whether it was just inevitable that we would see a full fledged pandemic outbreak in the United States.

As I wrote recently, speaking pessimistically and unconfidently is just not in Trump's DNA.

His response was, " I don't think it is inevitable. "Nothing is inevitable." The import being we have the best public health system in the world. We have the best medical professionals and pharmaceuticals on the planet. We can control the outcome but we have to be smart and be calm.

What did Barack Obama say about the swine flu as it was similarly emerging.

"We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States. This is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it is not a cause for alarm," 

Even though this is very similar in tone to what Trump has been saying why is the media playing it so differently?

Such is the tale of two flu pandemics.

Why does politics have to be interjected into this at all?

What everyone should be doing right now is getting down on their hands and knees and blessing
our medical professionals who will soon have all hands on deck on the front lines in fighting this virus for us.

What can we do?

For most people it is the same advice that Barack Obama gave in 2009.

Stay home if you're sick, wash your hands frequently, cover your sneezes with your sleeve, not your hands. And take all the necessary precautions to stay healthy. I know it sounds simple but it's important and it works.

When Trump says this he is not serious and not preparing us.

On the other hand, Obama had such a way with words it was hard to ignore him.

If you don't like Trump, then take the advice of Obama

Such is the tale of two pandemics.

Stay safe.

The Confidence Game

Our lives are based on confidence. We have to believe in ourselves but we also have to believe in others. We have to believe that we have a future. We have to believe the other guy is going to stop at the red light. We have to believe that the water we drink is not polluted
.
Our economy is based on confidence. An investor has to believe they are going to get a return on their money. A person opening a business has to have confidence that they have a product or service that someone wants. A customer has to feel safe in shopping for or using a product.

Without confidence, not much happens.

The biggest reason the United States became the greatest country known to man is because of confidence.

Our Constitution provides people the confidence that they will have the individual freedom to pursue their dreams.

They have the confidence that they have certain inalienable rights that will not be infringed by the government.

They have the confidence that their property rights will be respected.

Those in the United States have also generally enjoyed confidence in their safety and security that few others in the world have enjoyed.

When confidence breaks down, bad things happen. It can also happen fast.

We saw it right after 9/11.

We saw it with the mortgage crisis and market meltdown in 2008/2009.

If people are not confident in their safety or security, or start to fear the future, that mindset becomes self-fulfilling.

We have seen it in the stock market this week.

Last week we were hitting record highs. This week saw 2,000 points shaved off the Dow in a few days.

Did that much change between last week and this week? We have been hearing about coronavirus (now being called Covid-19) for most of the year. What changed? Things were under control last week but perhaps they are not this week? CONFIDENCE.

There is no man that knows more about the importance of confidence than Donald J. Trump.

He is singularly driven by confidence. He knows how important that mindset is to achieving anything. That is why you often hear him refer to things as the best, the greatest, or it was just plain "YUGE"

Trump does not allow negativity or lack of confidence anywhere near him or to permit anything that does not convey confidence to pass his lips. He knows how important it is for people to believe in the positive to build confidence. There is nothing more important in his mind.

Trump understands branding and at its essence a brand is about confidence. It is knowing you are going to get exactly what you expect. It is knowing you can rely on it. It is knowing you can be confident in it.

This is why I am interested in seeing how President Trump will deal with the Covid-19 situation.

It is a tough situation for Trump because he knows he has to inspire confidence. However, he also knows that it could spin out of his control. It is unnatural for Trump to speak pessimistically. He will avoid it at almost all costs if you observe him closely.

Trump has to thread the needle on the issue by talking confidently about the proactive steps that were taken to limit travel into the United States early (taken earlier than most other countries) and the low number of cases we have seen to date. However, he also has to acknowledge that there is some unknowable risk. When he does this he will inevitably also reiterate his confidence in our country and the fact that we will respond as necessary. He will always default to optimism and confidence. It is his natural state.

The one thing Trump knows for sure is that if he does not speak confidently he will definitely have a problem because it is then just a small step where public confidence is quickly lost. It doesn't take much and the economy quickly goes over a cliff.

People quit traveling. (Are there any people anywhere who have not already cancelled a cruise or are thinking about it? How long before people avoid all foreign travel? How many cases in the United States would it take for air travel to contract substantially?)

People quit shopping. (Auto sales in China were down 92% in the first two weeks of February compared to last year.)

People quit eating out, going to the movies and bars.

People quit going to sporting events, concerts and other large gatherings of people.

All of this may happen and more if the virus is not contained and there is nothing Trump can do about it. It will be disastrous for the economy if it comes to that. Look no further than what China is going through.

However, if Trump starts talking like it is inevitable we are going to start seeing things like this tomorrow. Trump knows that for sure. That is why he is going to keep speaking confidently. You can count on it. He did not get where he is today without knowing how important confidence is.

That is why Trump made VP Pence his point man and he surrounded himself with a host of medical and infectious disease experts at his press conference. It is also about portraying confidence.

Credit:AmericanMilitaryNews.com

In the end, our lives are built on a confidence game.

It is really unnerving when you stop and think about it. The small difference that mindset can have on our life. All lying within each of our minds.

I guess that is why most of us don't stop and think about it very much.

I can assure you Donald Trump is one who thinks about it a lot.

How Many Really Know Bernie?

Bernie Sanders seems to have all of the momentum heading into the Democrat primary in South Carolina this Saturday and Super Tuesday following close behind a few days later on March 3.

South Carolina is not considered a good state for Sanders with its high percentage of African American voters which have not favored Bernie in the past. Two-thirds of Democrat primary voters in South Carolina are expected to be African American. Hillary Clinton beat Sanders by 47 points in South Carolina in 2016. An unexpectedly strong showing there, followed by a large delegate haul on Super Tuesday, could put Bernie in a commanding position for the Democrat nomination .

That prospect seems to be causing great alarm among the Democrat establishment who are seeing their party effectively taken over by an avowed Socialist.

What I find interesting is that while Bernie seems to always a high level of energy and enthusiasm among his faithful supporters, the question remains just how great that support is within the general electorate.

For example, Sanders is drawing 29% support in the latest Real Clear Politics poll average of Democrat voters nationally. He has gotten about 28% of the vote in the first three primary states to lead the field. However, he is a long way from getting majority support in the Democrat party right now let alone being able to also attract Independents in a general election with his socialist views.

I have to wonder as well how many voters really know Bernie?

I mean, really know him and understand what he wants to do to the United States of America.

I believe there is good reason for traditional Democrats to be concerned about what Bernie could do to their party.

For those that don't know Bernie, let me give you a little background.

First of all, even though Sanders is running for the Democrat nomination for President, he does not consider himself a Democrat. He has never run for any office he was elected to (Mayor, Congressman, Senator) as a Democrat. He refers to himself as a Democrat Socialist.

Sanders earns his reputation as a Socialist honestly. Until he was age 40 he never had a steady job or paycheck. Of course, when he got a steady job it was a government job---Mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

Investor's Business Daily provided some useful background on "Bernie Sanders, The Bum Who Wants Your Money" in an editorial in 2016.

Sanders spent most of his life as an angry radical and agitator who never accomplished much of anything. 

One of his first jobs was registering people for food stamps, and it was all downhill from there.

Sanders took his first bride to live in a maple sugar shack with a dirt floor, and she soon left him. Penniless, he went on unemployment. Then he had a child out of wedlock. Desperate, he tried carpentry but could barely sink a nail. “He was a shi**y carpenter,” a friend told Politico Magazine. “His carpentry was not going to support him, and didn’t.”

Then he tried his hand freelancing for leftist rags, writing about “masturbation and rape” and other crudities for $50 a story. He drove around in a rusted-out, Bondo-covered VW bug with no working windshield wipers. Friends said he was “always poor” and his “electricity was turned off a lot.” 

They described him as a slob who kept a messy apartment — and this is what his friends had to say about him

Further, you begin to understand that very few people really know Bernie when looking at the results of a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll which showed Sanders with a double-digit lead among all candidates for the Democrat nomination and a 4-point lead in a general election matchup with Trump.

However, in the same poll voters were asked about seven different characteristics for presidential candidates and whether they would have reservations or feel uncomfortable about a candidate with that characteristic.

What were the three things that voters would be most concerned about in a candidate for President?

• A combined 67% say they have reservations or are "very uncomfortable" with a candidate being a socialist.

• 57% have reservations/are very uncomfortable with someone who had a heart attack in the last year.

• 53% have reservations/are very uncomfortable with someone who's older than 75.

Of course, all of these describe Bernie Sanders. He is an avowed socialist who had a heart attack last fall and will be 79 years old if he is elected President.

For context, that survey also found that only 14% had any reservations about voting for a woman and 27% had some reservations about electing a gay or lesbian candidate.

Do you see a disconnect somewhere?

How could this be?

Most likely it is that many, many voters do not know much about Bernie other than he has been portrayed as "cool" and "hip". They may have also heard he is going to fix health care or student loans and make the rich pay more in taxes.

However, many clearly do not really know who Bernie is. Most voters just do not start paying close attention until a month or so before the general election.

How crazy is "Crazy Bernie"?

Let's start with the fact that Bernie says he wants to file criminal charges against executives of fossil fuel companies. In other words, he wants to put the people in jail who provide the fuel to warm your home, charge your cell phone and power your car.

He wants to totally eliminate private and employer-sponsored health insurance and replace it with a single government program which he calls Medicare for All. He claims it would require no premiums, no deductibles and no copayments. Of course, current Medicare has all three and private insurance is still necessary to supplement Medicare because of the gaps in coverage. Medicare as it is today is headed for insolvency. Would Medicare for seniors also be "free"? How could it not be if everybody else is getting "free" coverage? Where is the money going to come for all of this?

He wants to implement a Green New Deal that would cost trillions and trillions of dollars.

He says he will eliminate all student loan debt and make college free. He says that he will pay for this with a "small tax" on Wall Street. However, did you know that there is more student loan debt today than the entire GDP of Russia?

He says he is going to abolish ICE and our Customs and Border Patrol. What do you think happens if you have free health care and college for illegals and you also have an open border?

He wants to raise income taxes on anyone making more than $29,000 per year. I can guarantee this will not be the only taxes that will be raised or enacted on the working men and women of the country if Bernie has his way.

Not only does he want to raise the income tax of the wealthy he wants to effectively confiscate their wealth. He says he wants to establish a new wealth tax that would slowly eliminate the wealth of entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates to the tune of 8% per year. After ten years, the government would take most of what they accumulated over their lifetimes.

These proposals are not just crazy, they are literally insane.

Bernie's supporters like to say "Feel the Bern".

The reality is that Bernie wants to burn the United States of America to the ground with his proposals.

How many really know Bernie?

Very few.

Feel free to send this blog post to those who really need to know Bernie.

It will assuredly be the only truly free thing they will ever get when it comes to Bernie Sanders.

Three Simple Rules

There continues to be a lot of talk about poverty and income inequality in the United States. It is a popular topic among Democrats running for President despite the strong economy. There is no disputing the fact that the rich have a higher share of the country's income and wealth than they did 40 years ago. For example, the share of income of the top 1% went from 8.3% of total income in 1981 to 21% in 2019.

In my view, the largest drivers in this trend have been the impacts of technology, international competition and illegal immigration. Technology has put a premium on education and those with the rights skills and education have been able to drive their incomes upwards. Technological advances and increased economic freedom have also affected income equality. People like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs created fantastic new products that increased both productivity and our quality of life. However, the information age spreads money around much differently than the manufacturing age we were in 40 years ago.

Manufacturing spreads income in a much broader swath in an economy. For example, you used to need to pay a lot of workers to make a ton of steel or build an automobile. You only need a couple of computer programmers today to develop a video game that might sell millions. For example, the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 game that was released in 2011 grossed $1 billion in the first 16 days it was for sale.  Instagram's entire company had only 13 employees when it was sold to Facebook for $1 billion.

International competition has also put enormous downward pressure on the incomes of those with fewer skills and lower education levels as this labor pool is now competing with China, India, Mexico and other emerging economies.

Therefore, in relative terms, the demand for unskilled labor has fallen while the demand for skilled and educated workers has increased. These both have contributed to income inequality. The overall trend has been exacerbated by millions of poorly educated illegal immigrants who have entered the country the last 40 years and have further depressed wages in the lowest income categories.

This chart, that was developed by the American Enterprise Institute, puts the income inequality issue into a little better context.  Looking at this chart you can see the tremendous impact that demographic factors have on income.  I might add that most demographic factors are individual choices. You have no control over when you were born, or who you were born to, but choices are made about graduating from high school, going to college, marriage, children born out of wedlock and the like.  These choices are also not fixed over a lifetime and certainly are not fixed from generation to generation.

Some people may have a greater advantage at birth than others. However, all people in the United States have a greater opportunity to change their situation than almost anywhere else in the world. Why else do so many people immigrate to the United States other than the freedom and opportunity it provides?

The first thing you notice in looking at the chart is those that are in the highest fifth of U.S households have earned that status by working.  In fact, 2.10 is the mean numbers of earners in the top quintile of households. There are a lot of two earner families in that top quintile. There might also be a recent college graduate living in the basement. The lowest quintile only has .40 earners per household.

Only 4.2% of these well-off households have no earners. These are not people clipping coupons, they are working and earning a living. 77.5% of these households are working full-time. On the other hand, 63.0% of those in the lowest quintile had no one in the household with any earnings at all. Only 18.9% of them are working full-time.  No one is going to get rich on government programs.

77.4% of the high income households are married compared to only 16.7% of the poor.

83.3% of the households in the lowest quintile are single parent families or singles. Only 22.6% of the households in the top quintile are. There are substantial economic advantages in being married. Two cannot live as cheaply as one but they can live more cost effectively than two singles. That is an economic fact.

It is no surprise that education stands out as a key demographic factor.  Only 1.6% of the highest earners failed to graduate from high school but 22.2% of the poor failed to get that basic educational attainment. This is despite the fact that a free high school education is available to everyone in the country.  On the other hand, 67.0% of the richest Americans have graduated from college.

As you can see, in most of the selected characteristics there is a direct demographic correlation that corresponds with moving up the income scale whether it is number of earners per household, marital status, work status or education.

In order to address the issue of income inequality in this country we need to spend more time on trying to pull people up from the bottom than by trying to penalize and push people down from the top.  After all, if you look at the data, it appears that most people at the top got there by simply doing a few things right. Getting a good education, working hard, getting married, avoiding out of wedlock births.

The liberal-leaning Brookings Institution has studied this issue extensively and it states that if you want to avoid poverty and join the middle class in the United States, all you need to do is follow three simple rules...

Complete high school
Marry before you have children
Work full time

If you do all three, your chances of being poor fall from 12% to 2% and your chances of joining the middle class or above increases from 56% to 74%.

We hear a lot about income inequality and income redistribution from Democrats. How often do we hear them speak about these three simple rules? It seems that we should be hearing about individual responsibility in equal measure to poverty and income inequality if we are to do anything about it.

Trivia Thursday

I marvel every day at the information that is available to me that someone somewhere has been kind enough to put out there on the internet.

It seems only right that I share some of the more interesting stuff I see with you.

CEO's

The average age of CEO's that were hired by Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies in 2005 was 46.

The average of CEO's hired in 2018 was 58 signaling an overall trend of companies hiring CEO's with more maturity and experience.

I thought it was particularly interesting that the CEO's hired at age 46 in 2005 would be age 60 in 2019---almost the same age as the 58 year old newly hired CEO's are today.

It does not appear that the Baby Boomers are willing to allow many Gen Xer's to become CEO's.


Southpaws

Countries with the most left-handers.

Do you think there might be a cultural bias against left-handed people in Asian countries?

Who was the greatest Japanese baseball player of all time? Ichiro Suzuki. Batted left. Threw right.

Did batting left-handed give him an advantage honing his batting skills growing up in Japan?

Shohei Ohtani of the LA Angels who is known for his dual skills pitching and hitting also throws right and hits left.

The Cincinnati Reds just signed Shogo Akiyama from Japan to a $21 million three-year contract. He also throws right and hits left.

Do you see a pattern with top Japanese baseball players?


Mothers and Grandmothers

This factoid is from the book, "Fewer, Richer, Greener" by Laurence Siegel which makes the case as to why the world is a much, much better place than it has ever been and there is every reason to believe it will get better in the future if we continue to believe in free markets and free minds.

More 20 year old Americans today have a living grandmother than had a living mother in the year 1900.

That is pretty incredible, especially when you consider the average age of birth my mothers has risen over the last 100 years or so.

All bets are off if Bernie Sanders and similar Socialist thinkers are given the power to change our political and economic system. Why is it that they call themselves progressives? It seem the system we have been following is what has fueled progress like this.

Presidential Pardons and Commutations

A lot has been made of the fact that President Trump announced this week that he had commuted the sentence of former Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) and pardoned former San Francisco 49er owner Ed DeBartolo, New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and financier Michael Milken.

Many Democrats and those in the mainstream media said this shows that Trump has no respect for the rule of law. They say it is another example of his "abuse of power".

Really?

Let's compare how many pardons and commutations that Trump has given in his first three years in office (including those this week) with his recent predecessors. The average per year for each President is included in parentheses. You can go here for a complete list of all pardons and commutations given by all Presidents.

Trump              26   (8.7/yr)
Obama        1,715   (214.4/yr)
GW Bush       200   (25.0/yr)
Clinton           459   (57.4/yr)
GHW Bush      77   (19.3/ yr)
Reagan           406   (50.8/yr)

If Trump is abusing his power what do you call what Obama and Clinton were doing?

By the way, if you are keeping score, the Democrats above averaged 181.2 pardons and commutations per year. The Republicans 30.8 per year.

Trump is the lowest by far compared to any Democrat or Republican.

Proving once again, context is everything when assessing anything.

Bottled Water

Isn't it interesting that in a country where the number of people who say they are concerned about the environment and fossil fuels has increased continually over the last 30 years but are the same people who increasingly drink water out of plastic bottles in which it takes 17 million barrels of oil per year to make those bottles for the American consumer.

On From New Hampshire

The New Hampshire primary is over and I thought it was a good time to assess the race for the Democrat nomination for President.

At one point there were 25 Democrat candidates in the race.

The field has been winnowed to 8 even though only two relatively small states have voted. Of course, after what happened with the Iowa caucuses, it is unclear how much we can even trust those results.

Here are the Democrats remaining in the race.

Sanders
Buttigieg
Boomberg
Biden
Warren
Klobuchar
Gabbard
Steyer

Jerry Yang, Deval Patrick and Michael Bennet all dropped out after New Hampshire's results came in.

Donald Trump

I will get into my observations of the Democrat race below but not before noting the performance of Donald Trump in New Hampshire.

Trump has no serious competition for the GOP nomination as the incumbent President. However, I found it astounding the numbers of voters who turned out to vote for him anyway.

It is similar to the astonishment I still get in seeing Trump pack these huge arenas for his campaign rallies night after night. I have been following politics for a long time and it is not easy to get many people off of their couch to attend a political rally let alone vote in a primary that means nothing.

Somehow, someway, Trump gets people to turn out and show up.

Look at Trump's vote in New Hampshire's GOP primary compared to other incumbent Presidents running for a second term for their party's nomination.

Credit: Fox News

The graphic above is when 87% of precincts were reporting. Trump's final vote count was just short of 130,000 votes.

There is a long way to go to November but Trump is in a much better position in 2020 than he ever was in 2016.

Even after Trump won in 2016 there were a lot of doubters among Republicans as to what kind of President he would be.

Those doubts have all but disappeared except for the most strident never Trumpers among traditional Republican voters.

Someone I know recently said this about Trump which I think is true for a lot of Republicans in 2016.

"I held my nose and voted for Trump in 2016. However, I would crawl across a room of broken glass to vote for him again in 2020."


The Democrats

At this point the race appears to be narrowing down to four names---Sanders, Buttigieg, Bloomberg and Klobuchar.

Who is missing from that list?  Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. It was barely two months ago that these two were leading the polls. The speed of their demise has been breathtaking. However, their failure at the polls has not surprised me. Voters can render harsh verdicts. Both Biden and Warren had weaknesses to begin with. Those weaknesses further revealed themselves as voters looked at both of them closer.

Warren had a "truth" problem going into the race with her discredited claim that she was an American Indian. I was surprised she was able to rehabilitate herself such that she was even able to be a credible candidate at all. However, Americans are generally a forgiving people. They will give you a second chance. Warren's problem is that she seemed to have a consistent problem with being truthful. Voters seem to have figured it out and abandoned her for Bernie.

I never thought Biden would ascend to the White House. For me, it was just a question of when he would implode. I just could not determine whether it would occur in the primaries or in the general election. I wrote this about Biden last Fall when he was far and away the odds on favorite to be the nominee.

Biden is 77 years old and, if elected, would be the oldest President to ever be sworn in at age 78. He is gaffe-prone and you have to think that this alone will be his undoing at some point. He also has the entire specter of his son Hunter's behavior hanging over his head. Hunter earned millions by serving on the board of a Ukranian gas company while his father was VP but now claims he has little money to pay child support for a child born from his relationship with a DC stripper? Biden is the strongest candidate in the field? If he is, it is only because the rest of the field are so far left that good old Joe looks pretty good in comparison. That is hardly the stuff of a strong candidate to challenge Trump. An important question--will Biden implode before or after the Democrat convention? I have to think it is inevitable.

Could Biden surprise in South Carolina with heavy Black support? It is possible but I think that will just delay the inevitable. It is hard to see how Biden recovers from here. He is looking like damaged goods. Put another way, he is trying to sell himself but he is beyond his expiration date. Voters are not buying him.

In many respects the Democrat race is shaping up somewhat like the 2016 Republican race when the most important thing was for a candidate who could beat Hillary or in 2012 when GOP voters were looking for the person who could beat Obama.

Similarly, the Democrat voters are looking for someone who can beat Donald Trump. By a nearly 2:1 margin, voters in New Hampshire said it was more important to select a candidate who could beat Trump than someone who agreed with them on the issues, according to an NBC exit poll.

Sanders

The problem for establishment Democrats is they don't think that their frontrunner right now, Bernie Sanders, can beat Trump. This is despite the fact that Sanders appears to be the only one in the Democrat field that seems capable of exciting some voters.

This is not dissimilar to the views that establishment Republicans had about Trump about this same time in 2016.

Seeing Sanders leading the field right now is also not a surprise to me. I wrote this about Bernie in April, 2019 as the Democrat field was just starting to come together.

At this point I would think Bernie Sanders has the best chance for the nomination. He has been through this before. He starts the race with the biggest fundraising operation. There are also a lot of supporters who believe he was cheated out of the nomination in 2016 by the DNC. However, in the end, will Democrat voters nominate a 78-year old unabashed Socialist (he is not officially a Democrat in the Senate) as their nominee?

That still remains true today. In fact, this race now looks like it is Sanders or whichever of the other four candidates can separate themselves and get this down to a one-on-one matchup with the Socialist Bernie.

Buttigieg 

Mayor Pete Buttigieg has basically matched Bernie's vote and delegate totals in the first two states. He has come the furthest in this campaign from the beginning.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether voters are really ready to elevate a 38-year gay Mayor from a city of 100,000 population to the highest office in the land? 

However, being the "fresh face" has generally been more important than experience and competence with Democrat Presidential primary voters in the past. Look no further than the Obama vs. Hillary race in 2008. Or Democrat candidates like McGovern, Carter, Dukakis and Clinton. It even applied to JFK who bested old hand Hubert Humphrey in 1960.

Will history repeat itself in 2020?

Bloomberg

Bloomberg has not even officially been on any ballot yet. He got in late and he has put most of his focus on Super Tuesday in addition to spending mountains of money.

The New York Times reports that Bloomberg has already spent over $400 million of his own money on his campaign. To put that in context, Trump spent about $66 million of his money between the primary and general election campaigns in 2016.

Bloomberg has spent almost $25 million on Facebook advertising alone since January 1, 2020.

Advertising Analytics estimates that Bloomberg has already spent over $300 million on tv, radio and digital advertising.

He is paying new staffers $72,000 per year and provides three meals per day and receives an iPhone 11 and a MacBook Pro on the first day of work. Many of his staffers are quitting other campaigns to join his.

It has been said that money talks in politics. Bloomberg is in the conversation for the nomination due to that money with the hope that he can be the Bernie alternative.

There has never been anyone that has thrown so much of his money around in a political race. Bloomberg is just not buying advertising and staff. Bloomberg has funneled huge sums into the campaign coffers of Democrat officeholders and liberal causes the last several years. For example, Bloomberg spent $110 million in 2018 to boost the efforts of 24 candidates who are now in Congress. You can be sure that all the cash that has been spread around will insure that there will be little criticism of Bloomberg from any Democrats. No wants to bite the hand that feeds them (or will possibly feed them in the future).

If there is one truth in politics it is that "money talks".

Bloomberg's fate will be determined Super Tuesday. If he can't finish 1st or 2nd on that day after spending all that money and placing such a big bet on Super Tuesday it will probably be hard to convince people he is viable.

Bloomberg cannot be counted out for the simple reason that he appears willing to bury his opponents under the piles of money he is putting into the race. If I have to bet on one person to be left standing to challenge Bernie it is Bloomberg. The money is the reason.

Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar is the fastest riser in the Democrat race. She was dead in the polls for six months and has suddenly caught fire in the last two weeks. I attribute her rise solely to the fact that many Democrats are desperately searching for a Sanders alternative. She is more moderate than Bernie and Buttigieg, she is younger than Sanders and older than Pete, and at age 59, is about the right age to be running for President. She is also a woman which makes her very attractive as an alternative to three men and as an adversary for Trump this fall. She also is not a billionaire which should be helpful in a Democrat primary.

She shares the same problem with Buttigieg and Bloomberg. They are unlikely to be able to beat Sanders if all three of them are splitting up the anti-Bernie vote. Three is too much of a crowd and one or two of them needs to fall by the wayside for any of them to beat Bernie.

The Numbers

Winning the Democrat nomination on the first ballot at the DNC Convention is complicated by the fact that the Democrats do not have any "winner take all" states. Delegates are apportioned to any candidate garnering at least 15% of the vote in a state's primary.

Therefore, the longer the field stays large and the vote is split, the less likelihood that any candidate will have enough pledged delegates to gain the nomination.

If no candidate gains the majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, then the Democrats allow the "Super Delegates" to vote. This is a change from the past when these party big wigs voted on the first ballot. This is one of the reasons Hillary was able to beat Bernie in 2016.

We should know a lot more about how the numbers are coming together over the next month. By March 17, 61% of the pledged delegates will be decided. This is more front-loaded than in past years as the delegate-rich California primary has been moved up from June to March 3 (Super Tuesday). Texas is the same day as are 12 other states.

This is the Democrat primary calendar with the delegates in play over the next month.

Credit: Wikipedia

I think the odds are better than 50/50 right now that no candidate will have the pledged delegates heading into the convention. I say that thinking that Sanders will be in it to the end. There are at least 15% committed Socialists in the Democrat party in every state who will show up to vote for Bernie and send him money along the way.

Lack of funding usually ends the dream for most candidates but that will not end the Bloomberg campaign. He only gets out if he feels he has absolutely no chance and also sees that he is actually helping Sanders by staying in. One other candidate will likely go the distance with Bernie (Buttigieg, Klobuchar or Biden (miracles can happen).

In that scenario Sanders might never get 50% of the vote in any state's primary while his competitors each gain 15% -20% in every state and accumulate delegates as well.

This is very similar to what Trump did in March in the 2016 election. He rarely got above 40% in the vote but the GOP transitions to "winner take all" contests later in the primary calendar which gave Trump the delegates to avoid a contested convention. Even with that added benefit, Trump only had a slight majority of delegates when he got to the RNC convention.

Should Bernie be worried that he may have the most pledged delegates heading to Milwaukee but he will leave there without the nomination?

Absolutely.

Remember that Bernie does not admit to being a Democrat. He calls himself a Democrat Socialist or Progressive. He officially represents Vermont in the Senate as an Independent. He is not real popular with the Democrat party big wigs.

Sanders got pushed aside in 2016 and it is not going too far out on a limb for me to suggest that they could do it to him again.

Fasten your seatbelts. We could be on our way to a really wild ride as the Democrats move on from New Hampshire.

Cupid Connections

On Valentine's Day it seems appropriate to write something about love.

The foundation upon which love normally grows is mutual attractiveness. That special spark that ignites a relationship that ends in love.

The most interesting factoid I learned in 2019 is the massive difference between how men rate the attractiveness of women compared to how women rate men. I wrote about it here.

This is how men rate the attractiveness of women based on research by the online dating site OKcupid.com.

Compare that to how women rate men.

The popular narrative is that men are sexist pigs when it comes to judging and rating the attractiveness of women. According to OKCupid.com it is the women who are the most critical judges imaginable when it comes to rating the attractiveness of the opposite sex.

Men broadly rate women on something closely resembling a perfect distribution. A few 9's and 10's and 1's and 2's. A lot in the middle. With women, almost no man measures up on the attractiveness scale and a large majority are absolute bottom dwellers.

It makes you wonder how a woman ever finds a man she believes is attractive?

What is a man (or woman) to do if they think they might be lower on the attractiveness scale and are interested in finding love?

I wrote the following blog post almost five years ago. I wrote it in July. It seems a better fit for Valentine's Day.

Sound advice on what you need to know about making yourself more attractive in the eyes of the opposite sex.

Share this blog post freely with your single friends who are looking for cupid to make a connection for them.

💕

Hope for Non-Hotties
(originally published July 15, 2015)


"Water always seeks its own level"

"Birds of a feather flock together."

You have heard these idioms over the years to describe the tendency for similar people to associate with each other.

Positive people attract other positive people. Conversely, misery loves company. Negative people seem to gravitate to other negative thinkers. High quality finds high quality and low quality inevitably finds something similar as well.

The same can usually be said about the physical attractiveness of couples. Good lookers attract good lookers. Average looks usually ends up with an average mate. It seems to be the natural order of things.

But not always.

There are times when water does not seek its own level.

Or as a friend said to me upon meeting my wife, "You really out-kicked your coverage with her".

John Tierney recently wrote about the science behind "mate value" in The New York Times.  The research indicates that people with high mate value insist on comparable partners and they usually get equivalent value in return when looking at looks, education and social status.

That pattern also occurs in married couples: Attractive, well-educated, high-earning people tend to marry people like themselves. In fact, economists say that this growing trend of “assortative mating” is a major cause of income inequality, because a household with two high earners makes so much more money than a household with two low earners (or only one earner).

However, researchers were most interested when this did not occur and there was a mismatch of "mate value". For example. Mr. Darcy ending up with Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

Jane Austen describes Mr. Darcy as tall, good looking and with a "noble mien". On the other hand, Elizabeth is initially seen by Mr. Darcy as "tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt me." A bigger problem for Mr. Darcy was the fact that the Bennet family was decidedly of a lower social and economic standing.

So what about the science? Is there something beyond the superficial in our decisions about assessing the value of potential mates?

To investigate, psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin asked students to rate the romantic appeal of their opposite-sex classmates.

At the start of the semester, the students pretty much agreed on who in their class was most desirable. But when they were asked again three months later, after spending a semester in a small class together, their judgments varied widely on who was hot and who was not.

“Perceptions of mate value change the more time that people spend together,” said Lucy Hunt, a graduate student who published the study last year with Paul Eastwick, an assistant professor of human development and family sciences.

In short, the more familiar one becomes with someone, perceptions of attractiveness change. Some 10's become 7's and some 5's become 8's. Conversations, common interests, wit and wisdom all make a difference.

What I find most interesting in the research is the strong influence that familiarity has on the perception of attractiveness. In my years of working in branding and advertising, familiarity has the same effect in making a product or service desirable. This is based on the simple principle that the human brain generally feels safest and most comfortable with those things that they are most familiar with. The effect seems to be at work in determining "mate value" as well.

Familiarity drives favorability.

Further research by the psychologists at UT-Austin and Eli Finkel of Northwestern University seems to bear this out in a recent study on "mate value" among married couples. The longer you know someone, and the more familiar they are with you before you begin dating, the better you are going to look to them. (Assuming what is inside of you equals or exceeds what is outside).

Some of the couples had been married for five decades; others had been dating for just a few months. Some had known one another for a while before starting a romantic relationship; others had started dating as soon as they met. After being videotaped talking about their relationships, all were rated for physical attractiveness by a group of judges who viewed each partner separately.

When the ratings for partners were compared, there was a clear pattern based on how long the people had known one another before they had begun dating.

If they’d begun going out within a month of meeting, then they tended to be equally attractive physically. But if they’d been acquaintances for a long time, or if they’d been friends before becoming lovers, then someone hot was more liable to end up with someone not so hot.

Therefore, if you have your eye on someone "outside of your league", do not despair.

Make yourself visible.

Stay in their line of sight,

Become a familiar friend.

Let them see you for who you really are.

Keep in mind that time is really your ally, not your enemy. Each tick of the clock increases the odds that the beat of their heart will be for you in the end.

There is hope for non-hotties everywhere if you remember these lessons.

By the way, for the record, I first dated my wife within a week of meeting her.

Perhaps I didn't out-kick my coverage after all?