Tuesday, January 31, 2023

US Treasury Department in fiscal 2021 said US fiscal policy is unsustainable because debt to GDP will reach 700% by 2096

 Caused by deficit spending.

In other words, required spending by legislated programs is not being matched by required tax increases to fund that spending. The gap produces the deficits naturally year after year.

Eventually it goes to the moon.

 

Here.



Friday, January 27, 2023

People think he's dumb

 

Noted "bond king" Jeff Gundlach is unaware of the existence of the 27th Amendment, and wants to decrease bond supply to increase its value!


What a shock, huh? No deficit spending means no borrowing, and no new bonds, making the existing dwindling supply worth more and more!

Seriously, if we continued to pay interest on the debt out of current tax revenues as we do, and then amortized the debt principal of ~$32 trillion, you'd have to extract ~$3,212.85 in additional taxes every year for thirty years for every man, woman, and child alive now to have a hope of paying it off ($1.066 trillion per year).

Current federal receipts average in excess of $4 trillion already, so that's an increase of annual revenues to the federal government through taxation in excess of 25%.

About as likely as spending curbs.

Noted billionaire real estate investor predicts Weimar Republic hyperinflation if Fed continues to raise interest rates, LOL

 

Herr Sternlicht thinks you are a Dummkopf.

You can donate your own blood for your own use, you know

 

 
How would you know? Because they said so lol?
 
Gay people are the most promiscuous on the planet.
 
Meanwhile . . .
 

Autologous donors have long been permitted to donate blood for their own use even if they do not meet certain donor eligibility criteria that apply to allogeneic donors because autologous donors are not exposed to new transfusion-transmitted infections in receiving their own blood. 

More.

 

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Employers with workers who think like this don't deserve your business

"Tipping is about making sure the people who are performing that service for you are getting paid what they're owed," said Schenker, who's been working in the service industry for roughly 18 years.

More




Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure a US attack submarine tracked it and practiced sinking it before it got anywhere close to 1,000km of the coastline

 If they weren't too busy checking their pronouns.



Those poor dears


Tuesday, January 24, 2023

LOL, VP Mike Pence found to have classified documents in his house

 Way to go, Brownie!




Turkey's Erdogan is back at it, trying to stop Sweden's entry into NATO

Finland Floats Solo NATO Entry After Erdogan Rejects Sweden

. . . on Monday, Erdogan ruled out supporting Sweden’s bid after a far-right activist burned Islam’s holy book in Stockholm.

 Erdogan has an election coming up, and needs the Koran crowd's vote.

Recent inflation optimism ignores that gasoline is up 11.8% in the thirty days since Christmas

 


Sunday, January 22, 2023

Breaking News: Americans discover they put Biden in the right place at the wrong time . . .

 Whole lotta refried confusion goin' on.



LOL, classified documents he wasn't supposed to have in the first place were "filed in the wrong place" Biden says

 


“We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” Biden explained Thursday during a tour of storm damage in California.


FBI found more documents Friday in a 13-hour search of Biden's home in the presence of Biden's attorneys. Trump's attorneys were not allowed to be present during the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Biden has another classified document eruption: More material found in his house on Friday, dating to his Senate days and VP tenure

 The story broke less than an hour ago, here, just in time for the Sunday morning news programs.

 



Friday, January 20, 2023

There is no daylight between the IRS and today's left, which laughably presents The State as the chief check on wealth when it's the chief partner

 

 


Biden unlawfully possessed top secret documents for years before moving them to UPenn in 2018 and the FBI was never tasked with finding out how and why

 The initial documents, including some classified at the highest security level, were discovered in an office that didn’t open until 2018—meaning they were moved there from yet another unauthorized location and heightening the likelihood of more document finds. ... Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are handled with kid gloves. Carter Page and Donald Trump—not to mention low-profile suspects—face the bluntest federal law-enforcement tools. ... The Justice Department seems unlikely to be done bestowing conveniences on this president.

More.

Thursday, January 19, 2023

LOL, griftor Louder with Crowder in $50 million contract dispute with griftee The Daily Wire

 “We here at Mug Club, we thought that we were all in this together, that we were fighting the media-entertainment industrial complex,” he fumed. “We thought that we were all genuinely taking it to Big Tech. But, too many of those in charge of the big conservative platforms are verifiably in bed with them. Big Tech is in bed with Big Con. The people you thought, the people I thought were fighting for you, a lot of it has been a big con.” ...  (Crowder, in his initial rant, failed to mention that he was offered $50 million over four years.)     

More.

There's a lot of money to be made in so-called conservatism.



Wednesday, January 18, 2023

After Nov 2 discovery of UPenn Biden Center classified documents, FBI agreed to let search for more documents be handled by the fox in the chicken coop

 DOJ and FBI are as corrupt as the day is long.

The Wall Street Journal, here:  

After Mr. Biden’s lawyers discovered documents marked as classified dating from his term as vice president at an office he used at a Washington-based think tank on Nov. 2, the Justice Department opened an inquiry into why and how they got there. Mr. Biden’s legal team prepared to search his other properties for any similar documents, and discussed with the Justice Department the prospect of having FBI agents present while Mr. Biden’s lawyers conducted the additional searches.
Instead, the two sides agreed that Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys would inspect the homes, notify the Justice Department as soon as they identified any other potentially classified records, and arrange for law-enforcement authorities to take them. 


The Congress' biggest ding-dongs believed the Russian Twitter bots hoax: Rep. Adam Schiff, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and Sen. Diane Feinstein

 Over and over, Twitter – which was hardly sympathetic to Trump – told Schiff and his colleagues there was simply no evidence of Russian involvement. As much as some Twitter employees may have liked to report the opposite, to their credit they refused to participate in the scam.

Even after Twitter had informed Schiff and his fellow hoaxers that there was no Russian involvement, Sen. Blumenthal released a statement he knew was not true: “We find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans.” Again, this was right after he had been informed by Twitter employees - who were by-and-large strongly opposed to Trump - that there was just no evidence to back up such a statement.

More.

FBI, completely in the tank for Joe Biden, declined invitation to search Biden's home and let Joe's lawyers without security clearances conduct the search

 Abolish the FBI. Impeach Biden.

Jonathan Turley, here:

". . . there was no 302, which is the type of document that many of us use on criminal defense work. It is essentially the record created in criminal cases by FBI agents. So this was treated as a very informal interview."

"The fact is that by November 2nd, they had found highly classified documents," Turley said. "They did not know how many more existed. They did know that these documents likely had been transferred more than once, and that they had been out there for probably six years. So in the midst of all of that, according to the 'Wall Street Journal,' they were offered the opportunity to search the Biden residence. Now, why on Earth would the FBI not take that opportunity? I mean, what is the possible reason for saying, no, we're really not inclined to do that. You're embarrassing us. You, you go ahead and do it. It's bizarre. And so not only did they allow uncleared lawyers to look for highly classified information, but those lawyers then continue to find them over 60 days and the FBI doesn't seem to have done a thing."

 


Monday, January 16, 2023

Fats Domino would just like to say that Monday's been a mess since at least 1956

 . . . popularized in a recording by Fats Domino in 1956, also on Imperial (catalog # 5417), on which the songwriting credit was shared between him and Bartholomew.   

More.

 


Third Monday of January is the most depressing day of the year


The term Blue Monday was coined by psychologist Dr Cliff Arnall, who worked out a formula to show how the third Monday in January is especially bad. 

It takes into account factors including the average time for New Year's resolutions to fail, the bad weather, debt, the time since Christmas and motivational levels. ...

The main theory suggests that a lack of sunlight may stop a part of the brain called the hypothalamus from working properly. 



More.

Education, The God

 


Sunday, January 15, 2023

Hooah DuPage County sheriff

 

With a population of over 920,000 residents, DuPage County is the largest county to defy the law.


At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments vow to defy state assault weapons ban



What are public school students for, if not for political campaign work for incumbent Democrats?

 


On Thursday, news broke that the mayor’s campaign had sent an email attempting to recruit Chicago Public School students to “help” with the incumbent’s reelection effort. The students would earn class credit in exchange for their contributions.

More.

Joe Biden: One law for me, another for thee

Why was it not until Nov. 2, 2022, that his lawyers were emptying the old [UPenn] office? ... The biggest problem with the Joe Biden documents story is that we know only what Joe Biden's lawyers have told us.  And that is just the way Biden wants it.

Byron York here

The Mar-a-Lago raid was on August 8, 2022, that's why.

Right on cue, The New York Times does damage control for VP Joe Biden, trying to excuse his possession of classified documents as an accident of the last, frenetic days of the Obama Administration

 What a crock.

The only frenzy was "Holy shit, now that Trump's elected, not Hillary, we've got a lot to hide before he takes over or we're toast".

 


 


Today's drinking phrase is "third discovery of VP Biden classified documents"

 From when he was VP, not president.

This time in his house, and not in the garage.

Saying "third" is being avoided at all costs, as is "in the house" on the advice of the Maoist Bob Bauer.

Mar-a-Lago chickens . . . comin' home . . . to roost. 

 

Additional classified government documents [third batch] were found at President Joe Biden’s Delaware home this week, the White House confirmed Saturday.

In a statement, Richard Sauber, White House special counsel, said that a total of six pages of documents with classification markings were discovered at Biden’s Wilmington residence. [statement conflates second and third discoveries] The White House previously said that only one page was found there.

The first document [second batch] was identified on Wednesday by Biden’s personal lawyer and turned over, and the additional five documents were discovered later that week [third batch . . . yesterday], Sauber said. ...

According to a statement Saturday from Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer, the second batch of documents was discovered in the garage of Biden’s Delaware residence on Dec. 20. The president’s attorneys [why not the FBI?] conducted another search of the home to look for other classified materials beginning Wednesday, which is when they found the additional records [third batch] in a room adjacent to the garage. ...

Bauer said the attorneys do not have security clearances, which means they are not aware of the exact number of documents or their content.

 

What will they find when they search Dr. Jill Biden's underwear drawer?

Presumably nothing, because Biden's own attorneys are searching Biden's home, not the FBI.

ALL THESE PEOPLE NEED TO GO.

The story here came out yesterday around noon while everyone was busy with Saturday errands and living for the weekend.

Saturday, January 14, 2023

The Feds always bury the bad info in Friday afternoon data dumps when no one is paying attention

 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday said it is “very unlikely” the Pfizer omicron booster carries a risk of stroke for seniors after it launched an investigation into a preliminary safety concern detected by one of its monitoring systems.

The CDC, in a statement posted to its website Friday, said a surveillance system called the Vaccine Safety Datalink detected a possible risk for stroke in people ages 65 and older who received the Pfizer booster shot targeting the omicron Covid variant. A CDC spokesperson said this issue was first detected in late November.

By mid-December, the CDC concluded the concern was persisting and launched an investigation into whether seniors are more likely to have a stroke in the first 21 days after receiving the Pfizer booster, the spokesperson said. A similar preliminary signal was not detected for Moderna’s booster.

The VSD monitoring system found that 130 people ages 65 and older had a stroke within 21 days of receiving the Pfizer omicron booster among about 550,000 seniors who received the shot, the CDC spokesperson said. No deaths have been reported. The Washington Post earlier reported the news. ...

The agency spokesperson said investigators hope to have a clearer picture and more data in the coming weeks.

Story here.

Again, notice the limited scope "within 21 days". 

Hey, if I don't get sick within 90 days of reception the jab worked, right?

And if I don't have a stroke within 21 days of reception, no problem, right? 

Right?

The people have been voting on this with their feet.

From the peak in April 2021, the vaccine uptake rate in the US has collapsed from 1.06% to 0.04%, or over 96%.

The current rate annualized would mean just 48.5 million Americans per year will get a jab, about 14.6% of the 332 million population.

Meanwhile, France, 80.6% of which has received at least one dose of a vaccine to date, ranks 37th to date for deaths per million at 2438.

Germany, 77.8% of which has received at least one dose of a vaccine, ranks 50th at 1975.

The United States, 80.9% of which has received at least one dose of a vaccine, ranks 12th WORST in the world at 3439.

Vaccine coverage doesn't seem obviously correlated with outcomes.





Friday, January 13, 2023

Year over year in December, broad inflation is down for six consecutive months, core inflation is down three consecutive months

 

But there's still a long way to go to get to 2-ish percent in either category.

The Fed Funds Rate will be kept higher for longer.


Thursday, January 12, 2023

Classified documents found in Biden's garage on Dec 20

 ... a small number of additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings were found in the President’s Wilmington residence garage. One document consisting of one page was discovered in an adjacent room.

Story here.

These document eruptions aren't as funny as Bill Clinton's bimbo eruptions. 

America in decline.







Wednesday, January 11, 2023

LOL: Not only 10-year old classified documents found in VP Biden's drawers marked "personal", but "three or four boxes containing papers that fall under the Presidential Records Act"

 CNN, the first name in news!, here:

Among the items from Joe Biden’s time as vice president discovered in a private office last fall are 10 classified documents including US intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom, according to a source familiar with the matter. ...

The classified documents were dated between 2013 and 2016, according to the source familiar. They were found in three or four boxes also containing unclassified papers that fall under the Presidential Records Act. ...

The documents were discovered on November 2, just six days before the midterm elections, but the matter only became public Monday due to news reports. ...

The lawyer saw a manila folder that was labeled “personal,” opened the envelope and noticed there were classified documents inside.





Tuesday, January 10, 2023

US National Archives, a bunch of partisan hacks

 It will never not be funny that our US National Archives was all over Trump like white on rice but hadn't the slightest bit of interest in finding classified documents from the Obama administration that went missing for five years because VP Joe Biden had them in his drawers.

Like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, VP Joe Biden discovered to have possessed top secret classified documents FOR YEARS

 Way to go, Brandon.

Notice how this was supposedly discovered early last November, but we're only finding out about it now.

Also notice how no one at National Archives is out to investigate Democrats like these for infractions of rules pertaining to classified documents, but if you're President Trump, watch out.

Sweet meteor of death, come to DC.






Sunday, January 8, 2023

400k without power in California

 

 

 

Jonathan Mitchell, the man ultimately behind the overthrow of Roe vs. Wade, is a constitutional departmentalist whose real target is judicial supremacy

Early on, Mitchell insisted that, although he personally opposes abortion, “I’m not an anti-abortion activist. I never have been.” His goal is to destroy “judicial supremacy”—the idea that the Supreme Court is the final authority on the meaning of the Constitution—a campaign with bipartisan potential at a moment when liberals and progressives have little to gain from an imposing conservative Court. ...

Mitchell disapproved of the Supreme Court’s use of “language that makes its precedents seem sacrosanct or irreversible,” even going “so far to equate its interpretations of the Constitution with the Constitution itself.” The conventional idea that courts can “strike down,” “invalidate,” or “block” statutes was, he wrote, simply wrong. A court can “opine” that a statute is unconstitutional and tell an official not to enforce it, but the statute nonetheless “remains a law until it is repealed by the legislature that enacted it.” ...

In their dissenting opinions on S.B. 8, both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Sonia Sotomayor went to first judicial principles by invoking Marbury v. Madison to rebuke Mitchell’s judiciary-evading tactic. In Marbury, in 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall proclaimed, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” There, the Supreme Court, for the first time, declared an act of Congress unconstitutional and “entirely void.” Because the Court implied that its own authority to interpret the Constitution is superior to that of the other branches, the case is the fountainhead of judicial supremacy. One could view it as a power grab that we have mostly accepted for more than two hundred years.

Mitchell said he found it telling that Roberts and Sotomayor treated judicial supremacy as “axiomatic” rather than as “a choice that must be defended.” From the beginning of the country, there were prominent anti-federalists who were opposed to judicial supremacy. Thomas Jefferson—who was President when Marbury was decided—believed that “each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution.” Jefferson’s view, which scholars have called departmentalism, countered judicial supremacy with the claim that the power to determine whether acts violate the Constitution is enjoyed by each branch in its own sphere of action.

Several Presidents since have embraced departmentalism to varying degrees. Andrew Jackson explained his veto of Congress’s bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States as being based on its unconstitutionality, even though the Supreme Court had approved Congress’s authority to so act years earlier. He said, “The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both.” The same year, Chief Justice Marshall held that Georgia’s regulations on Cherokee lands violated federal treaties. An enraged Jackson didn’t enforce the ruling, which enabled Georgia to disobey it.

Abraham Lincoln resisted judicial supremacy in his scathing reaction to Dred Scott v. Sandford, in which the Court declared that Congress’s prohibition of slavery in the territories was unconstitutional. Lincoln, who was not yet President, acknowledged that the Court resolved the parties’ dispute, but he rejected the idea that the ruling authoritatively answered the constitutional question of slavery. In his first Inaugural Address, Lincoln further worried that, if policy on “vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,” then “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.” ...

Like other critics of judicial supremacy, Mitchell believes that Congress, rather than the Court, should have final say on constitutional meaning, even if it means rights might shift along with electoral outcomes—and the Court, where possible, should decide matters based on congressional statutes rather than judicial doctrines on constitutional rights.

That approach has recently put Mitchell at odds with other conservative lawyers.

More.







The Eugenics movement, victorious with abortion, aims now for widespread euthanasia to cull the herd of the poor, homeless, and mentally ill

In 2021, only 486 people died using California's assisted suicide program, but that same year in Canada, 10,064 died used MAID to die that year.  MAID has now grown so popular that Canada has both anti-suicide hotlines to try and stop people killing themselves, as well as pro-suicide hotlines for people wanting to end their lives. ... MAID has fallen into further scrutiny over claims that people are now seeking assisted suicide due to poverty and homelessness or mental anguish, as opposed to the traditional method of the terminally-ill seeking a painless death.

 

The January 6th protesters were treated as enemies of the state by the so-called Department of Justice, the Kavanaugh protesters not so much

 In it Medvin lays out in detail what she illustrates as the hypocrisy of the government’s approach to punishing (or not punishing) protesters opposing the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Protesters entering the Capitol were charged under local D.C. statutes as opposed to federal ones.

Medvin cites a tweet from the Women’s March Twitter account during that protest. “Hundreds of people are being trained for today’s #CancelKavanaugh action every 30 minutes this morning. We’re going to flood the Capitol.” Crisis Magazine tweeted later that day: “@womensmarch just took the Capitol. Women, survivors, and allies walked straight past the police, climbed over barricades, and sat down on the Capitol steps.” Others did make it inside the building, into the gallery, disrupting Senate proceedings. They were charged with “Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding,” under the local D.C. code.

Medvin points out that only one of the Kavanaugh protesters was charged under federal statutes and that person was ultimately not prosecuted. But even more importantly, in court papers from that case, it states, “Notably, no other person charged with protest and/or disruptive-type behavior at the U.S. Capitol Grounds has been previously charged in federal court for the District of Columbia.”

More.

Saturday, January 7, 2023

Rasmussen Reports wrecks its credibility with this COVID-19 vaccine deaths tweet from Jan 2, both for the scale and the math

 73 million don't die in the world every year, let alone in the United States.

At best the math means 73 million KNOW of a vaccine related death. This is why converting math problems into word problems used to be drilled into children's heads. Now they just drill racism into their heads.





Friday, January 6, 2023

Full time employment finished 2022 pretty strong, given the circumstances

 Full time in December 2022 was 49.76% of civilian population.

The full year 2022 average was 50.09%.

This still falls short of 2019, and is woefully underperforming even at that level, but considering the economic problems of 2022 the end result is pretty good.

 


 


Thursday, January 5, 2023

NFL Draft goes to only seven rounds

 

GOP leader McCarthy loses 10th House speaker vote as far right Republicans dig in -- CNBC

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

I watched Die Hard on Christmas Eve

 It was much dumber than I remember, but then so was I back in the day.

It turns out that Roger Ebert's review here captured what's wrong with the film.

The review in THE GRAUNIAD here is just laughable.

Yippee-ki-yay. 

 




Total bond market index for long term investors vs. S&P 500

Return for VBMFX, Vanguard's Total Bond Market Index Fund, investor shares, closed to new investors, inception December 1986-December 2022 per annum:

5.08%.

Return for S&P 500, average nominal, dividends fully reinvested, December 1986-December 2022 per annum:

10.28%.

Long-term investment grade bonds for long term investors vs. the S&P 500

Return for VWESX, Vanguard's Long-Term Investment Grade Bond Fund, inception July 1973-December 2022:

7.48%.

Return for S&P 500, average nominal, dividends fully reinvested, July 1973-December 2022:

10.61%.


Sunday, January 1, 2023

Germany boosts electricity from coal to 10 gigawatts, a drop in the bucket

 Bloomberg, here:

Germany now generates more than a third of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, according to Destatis, the federal statistical office. In the third quarter, its electricity from the fuel was 13.3% higher than the same period a year earlier, the agency said.  

Germany as recently as 2019 still had 40 gigawatts of electricity capacity from coal, and planned to reduce that to 27 by 2022, so obviously Germany has much more capacity available than 10 gigawatts during its present natural gas supply crisis caused by the Ukraine war.

But Germany's more serious mistake than reducing its coal capacity was its voluntary and hysterical reduction of nuclear generation capacity by 40% in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Now it's got just 3 reactors left out of the 17 it had back in the day. 

Meanwhile US electric capacity from coal in 2021 dwarfed the German, at about 210 gigawatts, but that is way down from almost 318 in 2011, a similarly ideologically driven, self-imposed, and illogical reduction of 108 gigawatts, or 33% in ten years.

The foolish growing reliance on unreliable "green energy" in the US and the turn away from coal which began in earnest under Obama has meant increasing unreliability of electric resources during extreme events, and a huge increase in the duration of power outages experienced by customers.

The average customer outage was just north of 8 hours in 2020 vs. about 3.5 hours in 2013, an increase of over 130%.

This will only get worse if America tries to rely on wind and solar at the expense of fossil fuels and nuclear.