Kamala Harris has more
than enough pledged delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential
nomination, following an extraordinary two-day blitz that saw the vice
president consolidate her party’s backing to challenge Donald Trump in
November.
Harris
sealed her status as the presumptive nominee Monday night after crossing
the magic number of 1,976 pledged delegates, according to an unofficial Associated Press tally.
While delegates who indicated their support are not required to back
her nomination, the achievement — and lack of credible opposition —
underscores the vice president’s hold on the Democratic ticket.
But look at those big stretches of light blue in places like New York, Michigan, and Illinois, among others. The resistance to Kamala Harris is real, even in California.
The Gulf state’s National Center of Meteorology dispatched seeding planes from Al Ain airport on Monday and Tuesday to take advantage of convective cloud formations, according to Ahmed Habib, a specialist meteorologist. The NCM on Wednesday said the seeding had taken place on Sunday and Monday, and not on Tuesday. ... The latest storms followed heavy rains earlier this year, according to Habib at NCM. The seeding planes have flown seven missions, he added. “For any cloud that’s suitable over the UAE you make the operation,” he said.
One couple, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to speak freely in a country with strict laws that criminalize critical speech, called the situation at the airport “absolute carnage.”
The heavy rains that caused widespread flooding across the desert nation came after cloud seeding. The UAE has been carrying out seeding operations since 2002 to address water security issues, even though the lack of drainage in many areas can trigger flooding.
Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina are the hardest hit, with more than 3.5 million cases, 83% of which are concentrated in Brazil, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden said his $20 billion award to Intel Corp. demonstrated his investments in US industries that had withered under Donald Trump’s tenure, touting a flurry of government spending he hopes will help him defeat his Republican rival in a general-election rematch. ...
Biden trails Trump in several crucial states, including Arizona, as voters remain skeptical of the president’s handling of the economy. Biden is responding by using his bully pulpit, as well as federal dollars, in states to show the public the results of his plans. The president said Wednesday’s announcement would support 10,000 manufacturing jobs, including 3,000 in Phoenix. ...
Intel is the first company to land a preliminary funding deal from
the Chips Act for advanced manufacturing facilities. The law provided
$39 billion in grants, plus loans and guarantees worth $75 billion to
persuade companies to build factories on US soil and reverse a
decades-long shift of semiconductor production to Asia.
The historic Gold Coast, featuring 100-year-old mansions, opulent condos and designer boutiques, has lost some of its most illustrious residents and appeal in recent years as the city’s high taxes and crime encouraged the wealthy to relocate. Those staying in Chicago are opting for more modern homes in trendier areas, leaving Gold Coast properties sitting on the market for months.
Now a plan to boost taxes on the sale of homes of $1 million or more could further depress deals in the neighborhood, whose residents include the billionaire Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. Known as the “mansion tax,” the measure will be on the ballot during the Illinois primary on Tuesday. ...
It’s unclear what impact the tax will have on property prices and whether it will generate the revenue that the mayor’s office expects. Los Angeles passed a similar measure increasing transfer taxes for properties over $5 million in 2022, but the measure only generated $142 million, a tiny fraction of the over $900 million it was expected to bring in. ...
The Gold Coast currently has 113 homes on the market at $1 million or more, according to Zillow. Only Streeterville, directly south of the Gold Coast and along the famous Michigan Avenue shopping strip, has more.
In the broader area of the Near North Side, which includes the Gold Coast and Streeterville, homes over $1 million have spent an average 123 days on the market, almost double the average in the rest of the city, according to Chicago Association of Realtors data collected from 2021 to 2023.
Less than half of respondents said his almost-certain rival, 77-year-old Donald Trump, was too old. Still, Trump faces his own vulnerabilities with swing-state voters, with a majority saying the former president is dangerous. ...
Almost six in 10 swing-state voters labeled Trump as dangerous — a concern far more pronounced among undecided voters, who make up less than one-tenth of the swing-state electorate. Even 28% of those who plan to vote for him in November agree that Trump is dangerous. Fewer than half as many Biden supporters said the same about their candidate.
Swing-state voters who volunteered that they had heard something about his recent comments degrading NATO were especially lopsided in thinking Trump was the more dangerous of the two candidates.
I use ... and [ ] to weed out and address some of the propaganda still displayed in this slanted and quite abbreviated story, here, which still tries to minimize the danger inherent in these vaccines:
Vaccines ... against ... a coronavirus infection were linked to small increases in
neurological, blood, and heart-related conditions in the largest global
vaccine safety study to date.
The rare events — identified early in the pandemic [but systematically minimized, questioned, vilified, and censored] — included a higher risk of heart-related inflammation from mRNA
shots made by Pfizer Inc., BioNTech SE, and Moderna Inc., and an
increased risk of a type of blood clot in the brain after immunization
with viral-vector vaccines such as the one developed by the University of Oxford and made by AstraZeneca Plc. ...
The new research, by
the Global Vaccine Data Network, was published in the journal Vaccine
last week, with the data made available via interactive dashboards to show methodology and specific findings. ...
Myocarditis,
or inflammation of the heart muscle, was consistently identified
following a first, second and third dose of mRNA vaccines, the study
found. The highest increase in the observed-to-expected ratio was seen
after a second jab with the Moderna shot. A first and fourth dose of the
same vaccine was also tied to an increase in pericarditis, or
inflammation of the thin sac covering the heart.
The study vindicates the many European countries which stopped recommending the shots for young men under the age of 40, but the story doesn't mention this.
The story laughably claims 1 million lives in Europe alone were saved compared with 13.5 billion doses administered worldwide, which is an improper comparison on its face.
Over 3 million people in Michigan alone never got one single jab and OMG they are still alive.
“The external position is about the same, but I think the governance
has weakened and the fractiousness of the political settings is much
worse, and that has led to government shutdowns, it’s led to fears that
the government might default on its debt because of the debt ceiling,
and it’s led to a failed coup d’état on the 6th [of] January, 2021.”
"I don’t think the chance of a default because of a debt ceiling is that
high as long as the Democrats control both Congress and the White House,
that won’t always been the case. That could reemerge."
The Wall Street bean counter who trashed America’s global credit reputation is a New Yorker who never studied economics, majored in literature and philosophy, and has a master’s in English lit. ...
Chambers grew up outside Kansas City, Kan., and went to liberal
Grinnell College in Iowa, where he was a star on the swim team, ranking
eighth in school history in the 1,000-meter freestyle. After graduating in 1977 with a bachelor of arts in literature and
philosophy, he went Ivy League, enrolling at Columbia University, where
he got a master’s degree in English literature. ...
S&P was found to have made an estimated $2 trillion error in its 10-year deficit projection but brushed that aside, citing instability
in Washington and the fact that the deficit-reduction cuts fell short of
S&P’s recommended $4 trillion.
Germany now generatesmore than a thirdof 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.
