Austria's "Survival Lily" says there's no firewood left to purchase and the people have moved on to coal, which also is soaring in price

 

Germany is still hedging on banning Russia from the SWIFT system at this hour after worldwide outcry at EU intransigence two days ago

And as usual Biden is a follower, not a leader, still mulling over what he should do.

Austria, Hungary, France, Italy, Cyprus all have now signaled readiness to accept the draconian measure in order to cut off Russia's access to payment flows.

Germany could easily find itself without heat very shortly if it relents.

Meanwhile Ukrainians are bravely fighting off the Russians alone.

I was under the impression, Herr Zeller, that it was "my body, my choice" in Austria, at least in the Austria that I know

... starting Feb. 1, the country will also make vaccinations mandatory.

That's some crisis you got there if you can wait until February.

 

LOL Mike "Mish" Shedlock goes full Keynes on C19 vaccines

Israel's high vaccination rate isn't high enough. The country jumped out ahead of all other countries on vaccines, and 78% of eligible Israelis over 12 years old are vaccinated.

More.

Mish is a long time popularizer of the Austrian School of Economics.

Coronavirus data update for Sun Apr 26, 2020

Johns Hopkins reports right now 5,184,635 tests completed in the US with 940,797 confirmed cases of infection.

That's an infection rate of 18.1%, after stay-at-home has been observed more or less nationwide since mid-March. Average flu infection in the US, without stay-at-home, is 8%. So imagine how bad this could have been, and still might be.

Reports of infection rates as high as 31.5% in Chelsea, MA, are problematic. These are antibody tests, and so far have high false positive rates, meaning all the positives could be false, test populations which are much too small, and test populations which are not representative. People on the streets right now and people in grocery stores right now are not representative of the whole population. What's more, the antibodies detected by these tests could well be for non-COVID-19 coronaviruses, which means you've learned nothing about exposure to SARS-CoV-2.

There have been 54,001 deaths according to Johns Hopkins data right now, for a mortality rate of 5.74%.

Flu mortality averages 0.1%.

Therefore we are dealing with something at least 2.3 times more infectious than flu, and 57 times more deadly.

Global data indicates as of 0730 hours a mortality rate of 6.98%. Test data is too uneven globally to draw firm general conclusions. Mortality data from places like Iran at 6.31%, China at 5.53% and Russia at 0.92% just looks like lies in comparison to open, free societies, as follows.

The European big five, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the UK have an average mortality rate of 11%, 1.9 times worse than for the US. Germany remains a standout with mortality of only 3.75%, however, which is 35% lower than in the US. Belgium has the most liberal counts of deaths, and so a very high mortality rate of 15.38%.

Norway is at 2.68%, Sweden 12.06% (oops, they followed herd immunity, and are now paying the price), Finland 4.15%, and Denmark 4.84%.

Switzerland 5.56% and Austria 3.56% really stand out relative to Hungary at 10.88%.

Canada reports in at 5.6% with Mexico at 9.43%.

Japan and South Korea come in at 2.72% and 2.26% respectively.

It's obvious to me right now that if America wants to return to some sense of normalcy after this debacle has been allowed to reach the stage that it has, the only plausible way forward is to ramp up testing for the disease massively, and provide masks to the general population which protect it while in public. Instead our president and lawmakers have been busy with other things, like bailing out businesses. They are not serious people, anymore than the people they represent, a minority of which is clamoring for herd immunity, and therefore massive casualties.

The pro-life anti-abortion party is infected with a pro-death coronavirus party. The real division in the Republican Party between the actual conservatives and the libertarian ideologues has been laid bare by SARS-CoV-2. The former want to save you, as do many liberals. The latter believe only in survival of the fittest.  

The idea that immunity will be built up for this disease in the US population so that this will be over once and for all strikes me as completely speculative at this point.

America has to prepare to live with this disease indefinitely.  

The modus operandi of progressivism is to take everything beautiful and shit all over it

Because only the future can be good, therefore everything from the past is evil, including Obamacare which no Democrat running for president in 2020 is defending, and even "Edelweiss" by Rogers and Hammerstein. Yes, a song from a beloved old musical.

Maggie Haberman Thinks It’s Weird For The White House To Play ‘Edelweiss’:

“Edelweiss” is original to the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, “The Sound of Music,” and dates back to 1959. More recently, a version of “Edelweiss” was used by the Amazon series, “The Man in the High Castle.”

The series, based on a novel by Phillip K. Dick, takes place in an alternate version of the United States in the 1960s. In the show’s version, the Axis powers won World War II and have split up the United States as German states and Japanese states.

So the version of “Edelweiss” used by the series is meant to sound creepy and uncomfortable. Those unfamiliar with the origins of the song might even think it was supposed to sound like a German folk song now being sung in a zombie-like chorus in the fictionally occupied United States. ...

While the Amazon series created its own version of the song that guts its emotional sentiment and original purpose, “Edelweiss” was written for “The Sound of Music” as a tear-jerking tribute to Captain von Trapp’s homeland of Austria.

In the musical, based on a true story, the von Trapps are forced to flee their homeland following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. The captain was no fascist, and while he loved Austria and its beautiful, pillowy, alpine flowers greeting him every morning, he knew he must escape to preserve his integrity and protect his family.

In “The Sound of Music,” Captain von Trapp singing “Edelweiss” is one of the most emotional musical numbers of the entire film. He attempts to softly strum a guitar and deliver the lyrics to a small crowd but becomes overwhelmed with emotion when he reaches the line “bless my homeland forever.” His family joins him on stage to help him finish. That night, they flee Nazi persecutors who are trying to recruit the captain into the Nazi war effort.

The namesake flower of the song is also associated with anti-Nazi Austrian Resistance groups, like the “Edelweiss Pirates,” which was comprised mainly of children and teens. Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, both Jewish and fiercely anti-Nazi, wrote the song at a later point in the musical production because they felt Captain von Trapp’s patriotism needed to be underscored.

Stupid Antifa marchers cheer in Austria when pranked by patriot counter-protesters who don't want to be replaced by Muslims

"Put a stop to the great replacement!"

Here.

Not one month in to his ambassadorship to Germany, Richard Grenell is throwing his weight around like Ernst Röhm

All of Trump's problems begin with personnel, because he picks them.

From the story here:

Richard Grenell had taken up his diplomatic posting in Berlin on May 8, and immediately irked Germany when he tweeted on the same day that German companies should stop doing business with Iran as Trump quit the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.

He stoked further outrage over the weekend with reported comments to far-right website Breitbart of his ambition to "empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders".

Grenell also raised eyebrows with his plan to host Austria's arch-conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz -- who the US envoy describes as a "rock star", for lunch on June 13.

Already yesterday's news in 2013, "Hitlerwein" gets Austrian man thrown behind bars

We reported on the story in 2013 here, about how "despot" wines at least gave villains a face, unlike today's multinational corporations, whose scope for international fascism the likes of Adolf and Benito only dreamed of.

Now a hapless Austrian gets thrown in the slammer for six months just for owning a bottle or two.

The story, 'Austrian man jailed up for glorifying Nazism after cops found "joke" Hitler-branded wine in his home', is here.

Tens of thousands of refugees stuck in Italy

From the story here:

With France and Switzerland closing their borders to migrants since last year, the tens of thousands in Italy have nowhere to go. The EU came up with a plan to relocate around 160,000 asylum seekers stuck in Italy and Greece but so far only 12,000 have been resettled. Italy says it can no longer be expected to deal single-handedly with the vast number of asylum seekers, most of them economic migrants, streaming across the Mediterranean. ... 

The Italian government has warned that after years of taking in hundreds of thousands of migrants, the country is now at breaking point.

Phyllis Schlafly correctly understood natural born citizenship to turn on the question of jurisdiction

Here is Schlafly in 2004:

The extensive litigation concerning American Indians illustrates that consent rather than place of birth is what controls citizenship. Indians did not receive citizenship until conferred by congressional acts in 1887, 1901 and 1924, long after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Constitution states that "no person except a natural born citizen" is eligible to be President. Everyone recognizes that this provision disqualifies the Governors of California and Michigan who were born in Austria and Canada, respectively.

On the other hand, then Michigan Governor George Romney, whose birthplace was Mexico, ran for president in 1968, and Senator John McCain, whose birthplace was the Panama Canal Zone, ran for president in 2000. Both were "natural born citizens" because their parents were U.S. citizens and subject to the jurisdiction of American sovereignty.

It's not the physical location of birth that defines citizenship, but whether your parents are citizens, and the express or implied consent to jurisdiction of the sovereign.

Middle Class: The 30-30-30 countries according to wealth distribution are primarily Germanic

The following are the countries with relatively equal sized lower, middle and upper classes in 2013, meaning roughly 30% have wealth under $10,000, roughly 30% have wealth $10,000 to $100,000, and roughly 30% have wealth in excess of $100,000 up to $1M:

USA: 31-33-31

Austria: 28-32-37

Germany: 29-33-35

New Zealand: 26-34-38

Qatar: 25-38-35

Taiwan: 23-45-31

Alt-right hero Julius Evola was essentially suicidal, at least until 1945

From the translator's introduction by Guido Stucco to Evola's The Yoga of Power here:

The first few years of Evola's life following the end of [WWI] were characterized by spiritual restlessness and by an intense search for an ideological self-identity. Evola began a personal quest for ultimate transcendence, which he believed could be found beyond the ethical and spiritual limitations of bourgeois prejudices. ... At this time his quest led him also to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. His longing for the Absolute, for radically intense feelings, for what the Germans call mehr als leben, ("more than living") which was frustrated by the contingency of human experience, almost induced him, at the age of twenty-three, to commit suicide. ...

He did not hesitate to espouse an epistemological solipsism (though he rejected the term as "inadequate") whereby the individual stands alone in a world of maya, in which nature, things, and people are nothing but an illusion. ...

In 1945 he was in Vienna when, as a result of a Soviet air raid on the city, he was wounded in the spinal cord by a shell fragment. He later told a friend that instead of taking to an underground refuge, he had been purposefully walking the deserted streets of the Austrian capital. After spending a year and a half in a local hospital, Evola returned to Italy, destined to spend the rest of his life, a long twenty-nine years, in a wheelchair.

Flashback January 1, 2013, 2257 hours: 151 House Republicans who voted against making the Bush tax cuts permanent

The roll call vote is here.

Adams Aderholt Akin Amash Amodei Austria Bachmann Bachus Bartlett Barton (TX) Berg Bilirakis Bishop (UT) Black Blackburn Bonner Boustany Brooks Broun (GA) Bucshon Burgess Campbell Canseco Cantor Capito Carter Cassidy Chabot Chaffetz Coffman (CO) Conaway Cravaack Crawford Culberson DesJarlais Duffy Duncan (SC) Duncan (TN) Ellmers Farenthold Fincher Flake Fleischmann Fleming Flores Forbes Foxx Franks (AZ) Gardner Garrett

Gibbs Gingrey (GA) Gohmert Goodlatte Gosar Gowdy Granger Graves (GA) Griffin (AR) Griffith (VA) Guinta Guthrie Hall Harper Harris Hartzler Hensarling Huelskamp Huizenga (MI) Hultgren Hunter Hurt Issa Jenkins Johnson, Sam Jones Jordan King (IA) Kingston Labrador Lamborn Landry Lankford Latham Long Lummis Mack Marchant Massie McCarthy (CA) McCaul McClintock McHenry McKinley Mica Miller (FL) Mulvaney Myrick Neugebauer Nugent Nunes

Nunnelee Olson Palazzo Paulsen Pearce Pence Petri Poe (TX) Pompeo Posey Price (GA) Quayle Rehberg Renacci Rigell Rivera Roby Roe (TN) Rogers (AL) Rohrabacher Rokita Rooney Roskam Ross (FL) Scalise Schilling Schmidt Schweikert Scott (SC) Scott, Austin Sensenbrenner Smith (NE) Southerland Stearns Stutzman Terry Tipton Turner (OH) Walberg Walsh (IL) Webster West Westmoreland Whitfield Wilson (SC) Wittman Wolf Woodall Yoder Young (IN)

Nathan Lewis thinks pretty highly of Judy Shelton's book on the gold standard

Here:

Today, the Federal Reserve, with the blessing of Congress, large banks, and many others, has embarked on an open-ended policy of printing money on a daily basis, basically to fund the Federal government's budget deficit although no one may speak such things in name. These situations tend to end badly, and are soon followed -- as was the case with the United States in 1789, immediately after the Continental Dollar hyperinflation of the 1780s -- by a rigorous gold standard system, more along the lines of the other four proposals that Shelton identifies.

The biggest gold standard advocates are those who lived through a hyperinflation. It is easy to forget that the hard money advocates of 1789 -- Hamilton, Jefferson, et. al -- were actually the same people that were printing money to finance Federal budget deficits in the 1780s, in the guise of the Continental Congress. Oops. More recently, people like Ludwig von Mises, who lived through the Austrian hyperinflation of the 1920s, became the biggest gold standard advocates of the 20th century.

Larry Kudlow likes her a lot, too, and had her on his show yesterday. You can listen to the podcast about an hour and twenty in at wabcradio.com: Go to the Saturday schedule and scroll down for the podcast.

Mark Steyn gives Kathy Shaidle a mention on the Rush Limbaugh Show

Quotes her hoping that Trump doesn't turn out like that other Austrian . . ..

How bad could it be if the leader of your country wasn't natural born to it?

Well, he could be a natural born Austrian, for example.

Muslim terrorists are smuggling weapons into Europe hidden deep inside cars

Reported here by Ian Traynor: 

"The man was stopped in a Volkswagen Golf with Montenegrin plates near Germany’s border with Austria on 5 November. Officials found a pistol under the bonnet, prompting them to take the car apart. In doing so, they uncovered a sophisticated smuggling operation, with automatic weapons, 200 grammes of dynamite, hand grenades and ammunition concealed in the car’s bodywork, according to Bavarian public radio.

"Examination of the suspect’s mobile phone and the car’s GPS system indicated the detainee was en route to Paris."

Bernie Sanders call your office: The poor have higher incomes in the US in real terms in most cases

Bernie Sanders' debate claims about poor US children are eviscerated here by an adherent of Austrian economics:

"Thus, the fact that the US has higher poverty rates says very little about the actual living standards of the poor. The poor have higher incomes in the US in real terms in most cases. The countries that should really give us concern are the countries that have high levels of poverty and low median incomes. ...  Greece, Mexico, Israel, Spain, Italy, Ireland, UK, and Portugal -- are the ones that have the least to offer the poor."

German Bunds make history, yields fall below 1%, poor GDP blamed on MILD winter!

Germany now joins Japan and Switzerland in the below 1% yield club. The rush into the safety of government bonds driving down yields is a sign everywhere of lousy productivity.

Meanwhile yields below 2% exist in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sweden, The Netherlands, Ireland, France, Finland, Denmark, The Czech Republic, Belgium, and Austria. Finland is the lowest of these presently at 1.14%.

CNBC reports here:

"Following disappointing growth data for the euro zone, 10-year yields finally broke through the 1 percent handle on Thursday—a first—dipping to an intraday low of 0.998 percent.  Yields then fell below 1 percent again on Friday, on reports that Ukrainian troops had attacked armed Russian military, which had crossed into the country near the border of Izvaryne. U.S. yields also declined, hitting a low of 2.333 percent, while the euro and European stocks turned negative."

German GDP fell in the second quarter from the first, at -0.6% annualized, which was, believe it or not, blamed on a mild winter there after poor GDP Stateside was blamed on an unusually harsh one.

The Wall Street Journal reported with a straight face here:

"Germany's economy, long Europe's growth engine, shrank for the first time in more than a year, a development economists largely attributed to a mild winter that boosted activity in the first quarter at the expense of the second. The bigger concerns, they say, are France and Italy, where respectable rates of growth aren't even in sight."

Oh well, at least they wrote "shrank".