California last week joined Ohio and Indiana in the COVID death backfill phenomenon with over a thousand added on 2/24

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths hit 510k, 101k dead of COVID since Biden became president

Very impressive.

Despite non-stop recruitment propaganda, the LGBT share of the US population rises to only 5.6%, and most of that is bi, and most of that is female

5.6% of US adults are LGBT, up from 4.5% in 2017.

3.1% of Americans identify as bisexual, 1.4% as gay, 0.7% as lesbian and 0.6% as transgender.

Gallup.

The rise in Americans saying they are bisexual is driven by women:

[O]ver 3% of US adults say they are bisexual (a sexual identity in which someone is attracted to people of their gender or other genders). This is up from just over 1% in 2008. (The GSS allowed individuals to self-classify as “heterosexual or straight,” “gay, lesbian, homosexual,” “bisexual,” or “don’t know.”) An analysis of the GSS data by the sociologists D’Lane Compton and Tristan Bridges shows that the change has been almost entirely due to an increase in the number of bisexual women . . .. 

Tiger Woods' father groomed him for golf, but inserted a self-destruct device in the training

Tiger Woods was 'agitated and impatient and almost hit another car as he sped out of five-star resort' on his way to country club just 15 minutes before horror LA crash that shattered his right leg and left him needing surgery :

"A close family friend said Woods learned his philandering ways from watching his father have sex with blondes in a Winnebago RV that he parked next to golf courses when they practiced in his childhood."

Remember when Trump said if we stopped coronavirus testing, the number of cases would go down? He was rightly mocked, but that's exactly what Biden appears to be doing.

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths reach 500k

 

Hospitalization data from the states worst affected by COVID-19 show two distinct waves of the pandemic, the second more severe in California and Texas and less severe in New York and Florida

Florida, Texas and California all lagged the outbreak in New York, but the experience of all four coincide in the second wave, which is clearly now receding.

The Spanish Flu pandemic had three waves.

1918 Pandemic Influenza: Three Waves

New York (gray), Florida (green), California (blue), Texas (pink)

LOL, The Atlantic has declared the pandemic over and will stop collecting data on March 7, 2021

It's good to be a Democrat.

Meanwhile through Feb 20 2,802 people in the US have died of COVID-19 every single damn day in February, the second highest daily death rate measured monthly since the beginning of the pandemic.

Everyone thinks the recent big drop in cases means it's over? What a joke.

New cases in Feb just through 2/20 total 1.873 million, far exceeding May 2020's 1.799 million. The country went into SHUT DOWN mode with far fewer new cases in March 2020: 188,461. In April when so many Americans perished there were just 1.075 million new cases.

It's way too early to stop collecting data, unless of course you have an axe to grind, like the neo-cons did when Goldberg at The Atlantic insisted Iraq had WMD.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Now that Rush Limbaugh is dead, The Daily Beast fills the gap with a chopadickoffame story

 Inside the World of Backstreet Castrators, Cutters and Eunuch-Makers :

Some people born with penises and testicles want to keep the former, but lose the latter—though some choose to keep their empty scrotums. (There is a dedicated Reddit forum for the latter group to share photos of their genitals: Empty Sacks, “for those who had the balls to give theirs up.”) Others want to keep the genitalia they were born with and add new genitalia on top. ... (Mexico and Thailand have both been hot spots for quick-and-easy but largely unregulated clinical castrations, penectomies, and similar procedures for at least a couple of decades now.) ... the greater availability of open and official care—far more than horror stories and crackdowns—has led to a drastic decline in demand for cutters, which means there are now fewer of them practicing than there were five or ten years ago. 

Peggy Noonan has second thoughts, recalls with fondness the crabbed public square of Fairness Doctrine infamy

What a shock, right? Roman Catholic from Brooklyn thinks Methodist hick from Missouri should have been shut up long ago.

Rush Limbaugh’s Complicated Legacy :

By the 1980s it was being argued that the doctrine itself was hurting free speech: It was a governmental intrusion on the freedom of broadcasters, and, perversely, it inhibited the presentation of controversial issues. There were so many voices in the marketplace, and more were coming; fairness and balance would sort themselves out.

In 1987 the doctrine was abolished, a significant Reagan-era reform. But I don’t know. Let me be apostate again. Has anything in our political culture gotten better since it was removed? Aren’t things more polarized, more bitter, less stable?

I’m not sure it was good for America.

Imagine if religion were similarly circumscribed.

From 17 distinct religious groups in 1776 and about 3,200 congregations, today there are north of 300 groups and 300,000 congregations.

The lack of unanimity surely bothers devout believers in one or the other, some of whom are certain everyone else is going to hell, and something should be done to stop it.

I suspect the one true church of Peggy Noonan feels the same way, except its liberalism has invented the half-way house of Purgatory to roast malefactors until ready for Valhalla.

Deal with it, Peggy. It's still a Protestant country.

Johns Hopkins: 490k dead from COVID in USA, 81,825 since Biden inaugurated

Rush Limbaugh dead at 70, FOX obituary includes famous "preamble to the Constitution" blunder from CPAC 2009

Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio pioneer, dead at 70 :

"We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness."

The mistake is fairly typical, both of Rush, and of Rush's audience the Baby Boom for whom basic knowledge of civics had long been in decline. For Rush, and for them, conservatism was always more aspirational than actual, often conflating present perspectives with historical realities.

An example is the Straussians who in our time explicitly argued for the unity of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, giving Thomas Jefferson's more revolutionary, Enlightenment-tinged views in the former too much sway over the interpretation of the latter.

The irony of that fusionism was always that Jefferson sought for the United States "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them", not the "exceptional" American position touted by Limbaugh as an heir of America's post-war position of global domination.

The Constitution's preamble expressed a matter-of-factly self-interested goal, "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", a country of Americans, by Americans, and for Americans, not a nation of immigrants, by immigrants, and for immigrants, not a nation of heroes marching forth in search of monsters to destroy. America's founding was above all modest, which is perhaps the surest indicator of its inherent conservatism.

If Rush Limbaugh slaughtered the important details on a regular basis, what made the show so enjoyable was the entertainment, which largely came from the sheer pleasure Rush derived from doing it and communicating it, "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have". If nothing else, Rush Limbaugh was a conservative of enjoyment, and who doesn't want to be around people having a good time? It is one reason for Rush's tremendous success in a career spanning more than three decades.

Students of conservatism might think this a whimsy, not to be taken seriously, but no less a figure than Russell Kirk devoted a chapter to such conservatism in his "The Conservative Mind". Rush himself, from time to time, in his own non-academic way had observed how liberals are not funny and don't have fun, and in this he was on to something. Generally speaking conservatives possess contentment to a far greater degree than do liberals, derived from a judiciously formed view of the self as sinners saved by grace. It is a freeing thing which allows people to accept things as they are, even as God accepts sinners as they are.

Of course in the post-war there has been a tremendous amount for Americans to enjoy, to the point that we have become completely distracted by this. One may rightly say we have overdone it, and that enjoyment has frankly become conservatives' Achilles' heel. It has produced a myriad of problems, not the least of which has been a failure to reproduce, inattention to religion, and a proclivity for the easy politics of the executive where we look for one man to save us. As America was not built by Protestants enjoying religious entertainments and all-you-can-eat brunches on Sundays, it will not be recovered, if that is still possible, but by serious, religious people who work hard, deny themselves, and save.

Rush Limbaugh was an optimist about America because he still believed there were enough individual Americans remaining who exemplified the old virtues. America's future will depend on Rush having been right.

Ohio went on a three-day tear Feb 11-13 backfilling COVID deaths totaling nearly 4,500

 

It would be silly for Republicans to waste any time on a Trump candidacy in 2024

Who in their right mind wants to go to all that trouble just to elect a lame duck?

Republicans need a president who can get something accomplished in office. Only the threat of re-election to a second term gives force to a first term. That no longer applies in Trump's case. 

He is a spent force who would be a mere place-holder.

By definition, anyone's prospects are better than his.

It would be a colossal waste of time and money to spend either on someone who has already been given the opportunity and come up short. If Trump were worthy of the office again, he would acknowledge that.

They don't call it "Sunny South Florida" for nothing

 

Ohio back-filled hundreds of COVID deaths for Feb 11th totaling 721

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths climb to 480k, 77,383 have died since Biden became president

 

NeverTrump lunatics, led by Evan McMuffinhead and themselves fractured, hold ZOOM call to form 3rd Party in headlong rush to formalize GOP fracture over "nativism"

Add in a new "Patriot Party" and the GOP will be an utter shambles.

EXCLUSIVE-Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party :

More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of "principled conservatism," including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law - ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump. ...

Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters that he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trump's grip on Republicans and the nativist turn the party has taken.

Three other people confirmed to Reuters the call and the discussions for a potential splinter party, but asked not to be identified.

Among the call participants were John Mitnick, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; former Republican congressman Charlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff in the Homeland Security Department under Trump; and Miles Taylor, another former Trump homeland security official. ...

Call participants said they were particularly dismayed by the fact that more than half of the Republicans in Congress - eight senators and 139 House representatives - voted to block certification of Biden's election victory just hours after the Capitol siege. ...

McMullin said just over 40% of those on last week's Zoom call backed the idea of a breakaway, national third party. Another option under discussion is to form a "faction" that would operate either inside the current Republican Party or outside it.

Libertarian survey: Republicans are sharply divided over Trump, the QAnon child sex conspiracy, and the use of force

Among Trump voters 53% view themselves as GOP supporters vs. 47% who view themselves as Trump supporters. 

29% of Republicans believe Trump was fighting a global sex trafficking ring whereas 30% do not. 43% of Republicans were . . . uncertain about this, which is kind of shocking when you consider that . . . Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.

55% of Republicans support the use of force to stop the decline of the traditional American way of life and its values, but 43% oppose this. A clear majority of Republicans, however, oppose using violence to achieve political ends even when elected leaders fail to act to "protect America", whatever that means.

The survey, a project of the libertarian American Enterprise Institute, notably fails to ask any questions about immigration, which was the beginning, middle, and end of the Trump 2016 run for the presidency and also his most colossal failure.

It's more expedient for libertarians who want to fling open the borders, in league with Democrats, to have Trump "major in the minors" and paint him in the worst light at those things than to expose the widespread popular support for immigration restriction at which he failed.

That issue lurks underneath the survey's result which found that:

There is bipartisan agreement that the American system of democracy is failing to address the concerns and needs of the public. Nearly seven in 10 (69 percent) Americans agree that American democracy serves the interests of only the wealthy and powerful. Seventy percent of Democrats and 66 percent of Republicans hold this view.  

After the ballots are counted: Conspiracies, political violence, and American exceptionalism

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths hit 470k mark, 67,539 added since Biden was inaugurated president on Jan 20

 

V is for victory, V is for violence: Molly Ball never tells you the meaning of her election 2020 story, but you can figure it out

The meaning is that the left threatened violence if Trump got re-elected, and made good on that threat with the summer down payment in the George Floyd riots. The threat created the default attitude at every level of the process to capitulate and avoid a repeat: Either accept the results of an election where nearly half the votes cast were of a kind most susceptible to fraud, or else.

That's what made the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Evangelicals cave to the left's long active operation one week before Nov 3.

It's all in there, but you have to think about it because Molly isn't going to just hand that narrative to you.

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election :

The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.

About a week before Election Day, Podhorzer received an unexpected message: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wanted to talk.

The AFL-CIO and the Chamber have a long history of antagonism. Though neither organization is explicitly partisan, the influential business lobby has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns, just as the nation’s unions funnel hundreds of millions to Democrats. On one side is labor, on the other management, locked in an eternal struggle for power and resources.

But behind the scenes, the business community was engaged in its own anxious discussions about how the election and its aftermath might unfold. The summer’s racial-justice protests had sent a signal to business owners too: the potential for economy-disrupting civil disorder. “With tensions running high, there was a lot of concern about unrest around the election, or a breakdown in our normal way we handle contentious elections,” says Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer. These worries had led the Chamber to release a pre-election statement with the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based CEOs’ group, as well as associations of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, calling for patience and confidence as votes were counted.

But Bradley wanted to send a broader, more bipartisan message. He reached out to Podhorzer, through an intermediary both men declined to name. Agreeing that their unlikely alliance would be powerful, they began to discuss a joint statement pledging their organizations’ shared commitment to a fair and peaceful election. They chose their words carefully and scheduled the statement’s release for maximum impact. As it was being finalized, Christian leaders signaled their interest in joining, further broadening its reach.

The statement was released on Election Day, under the names of Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and the heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African American Clergy Network. “It is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws,” it stated. “We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual.” The groups added, “Although we may not always agree on desired outcomes up and down the ballot, we are united in our call for the American democratic process to proceed without violence, intimidation or any other tactic that makes us weaker as a nation.”

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths passed through the 460k mark today

 

Indiana did a massive COVID deaths back-fill on Feb 4, skewing the averages

South Carolina and Iowa also appear to have backfilled 230-250 deaths on each of three recent occasions. It's fairly common for this to happen around the country as death investigations conclude, but the Indiana backfill is a real whopper.

 

In January 2021 just 47.4% of the civilian population had full-time jobs, compared with 2020's average of 47.3%

Biden reportedly said in response to the employment situation summary today:

"At that rate it's going to take ten years to get back to full employment. That's not hyperbole that's a fact."

The fact is employment has never recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, and Biden is as little likely to fix that as were Obama and Trump.

The Reagan era tax reforms hollowed out the labor economy. 

Before Reagan, high marginal tax rates on ordinary income steered that income into capital investment, gains from which received preferential tax treatment if held long enough. The investment grew the economy, providing good jobs for Americans and tax revenues for government at all levels. The arrangement distrusted rich people to do the right thing with their money, but rewarded them if they did.

Reagan libertarianism changed all that.

We were sold the idea that lower taxes on high ordinary incomes would still result in capital investment because we could trust people to do the right thing with their own money.

Guess what? Libertarian trust of human nature turned out to be as false as liberal trust of human nature. 

Under the influence of libertarian free trade dogma and growing globalization, that investment went abroad where there was far cheaper labor, lower taxes and less regulation. Profits soared for the few, bringing the number of billionaires from less than fifty in the 1980s to nearly 800 today. Meanwhile the good jobs gradually disappeared and income inequality soared.

Ordinary people today cannot afford cars, educations, health care, and houses as a result.

Add in cheap labor competition from immigration at a clip of 1 million a year and you can understand how Trump was so popular, however incompetent and narcissistic he was.

Trump may be gone, but the people remain screwed by these problems and by the time serving politicians and 2.8 million federal bureaucrats working for pensions who stand in the way.

Returning to the status quo ante might fix it, but it would take a generation to start feeling it. And who among us has the vision and the cojones to pull it off?

Certainly not the women and snowflakes who cry crocodile tears of fear on the House floor. Certainly not the sailors on board the Chafee who are in a panic because the cooks are infected with COVID.

The country is rotting from the inside out. All it will take to bring it down is . . . a series of unfortunate events.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths hit 450k today

 

Climate Update for KGRR: January 2021

 

Climate Update for KGRR: January 2021

Max T 41, Mean 48

Min T 11, Mean -3

Av T 28.1, Mean 23.8

Precip 1.37, Mean 2.07

Snow 9.9, Mean 18.4

HDD 1136, Mean 1269

HDD season to date 3413, Mean 3754 (season to date 9.08% below the mean)