Traffic through the Suez Canal to and from the Red Sea remains down 60%, Egypt is losing billions of dollars on transits still rerouted around the southern tip of Africa

 The New York Times reports here:

... The cease-fire, which began May 6, ended a U.S. campaign that involved over 1,100 strikes against the Houthis in Yemen and became a source of embarrassment for the Trump administration after group chats about the strikes inadvertently became public. The Pentagon had planned on a monthslong bombardment, but President Trump ended it after about 50 days.

“If the intention was to restore freedom of navigation, which is what they stated it was, then the results speak for themselves: The shipping industry has not gone back,” said Richard Meade, editor in chief of Lloyd’s List, a shipping publication. ...

 

American inability to guarantee freedom of the seas is a serious turning point for the world.

USAID was not just great in the opinion of the old Marco Rubio, both Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump thought so too, deploying millions of its dollars for their pet projects under Trump I lololol

 

A bunch of phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas, but I repeat myself.

 

Melania and Ivanka's close ties to USAID exposed as Trump goes scorched-earth on the 'corrupt' agency:

Melania and Ivanka Trump used thousands of dollars from USAID to fund pet projects during Trump's first term it's been revealed as the agency's spending comes under scrutiny from the president.

The president has gone scorched-earth against the USAID this week, berating its use of tax-payer dollars and saying it had to be 'corrupt' in its spending.

But despite Donald's disdain for the aid agency, it has maintained close ties with his wife and daughter for years by investing in their government ventures. 

USAID helped fund Melania Trump's Be Best program and Ivanka Trump's Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative during the first Trump term.

And each woman traveled with the agency on separate trips to Africa, where they praised the investments it was making on the continent.

Ivanka Trump travelled with then-USAID administrator Mark Green to Africa in April 2019, where they met with women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia and rural cocoa farmers on the Ivory Coast.

USAID oversaw $265 million per year in spending Ivanka Trump's women's business initiative and an associated antipoverty program.

Melania Trump partnered with the agency on her 2018 trip to Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt.

In Malawi, the first lady promoted USAID's national reading program, which was donating on Trump's behalf 1.4 million textbooks to the more than 5,600 primary schools in the poverty-stricken nation.

'I am so proud of the work this administration is doing through USAID and others,' the first lady said at the time, 'and look forward to the opportunity to take the message of my Be Best campaign to many of the countries, and children, throughout Africa.'

In his first term, Trump heavily cut funding for the aid agency but it still found money to invest into his family's government ventures.

Ivanka Trump used USAID for her program to promote women in business, claiming 12 million women around the world had been helped by it.

She travelled with the agency to Colombia in September 2019 to run a workshop for women entrepreneurs.

That same year, she also used over $11,000 from the agency to buy video recording and reproducing equipment for a White House event, its records show.

Meanwhile, USAID was one of the first agencies to name an ambassador to Melania Trump's Be Best initiative.

When Melania Trump first announced her signature program in May 2018, she asked government agencies to name a liaison to her group. USAID immediately did so.

At her one-year anniversary celebration in May, Melania acknowledged the agency and thanked it for naming the first Be Best ambassador.

'For the first time in history, the United States Agency for International Development has appointed a Be Best ambassador,' she said.

'On this one year anniversary of my initiative, I call on all of our partner agencies to appoint a be best ambassador who will serve as a liaison between my office and their respective agency to better highlight and promote the programs and services offered to parents and children on behalf of the US government,' she added.

Donald Trump was sitting in the audience listening.

Neither the East Wing, the West Wing, nor Ivanka Trump's office responded to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

USAID delivers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid overseas.

The Trump administration is threatening to shut it down or bring the independent agency under the umbrella of the State Department.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now acting director of the agency it's been announced this week.

Hundreds of USAID contractors were placed on unpaid leave and some were terminated. Elon Musk, who is running Trump's Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE program, said the agency would be eliminated.

Its Washington D.C. office is closed and employees were either put on leave or told to work from home.

Trump has said of the agency: 'It's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.'

He also claims it 'had to be corrupt' to approve certain initiatives. 

The president has berated the agency for its spending practices, including having a subscription to Politico Pro, a service that tracks legislation and other government news.

And his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, gave a blistering account of USAID's spending. Speaking to reporters at the White House last week, she held up a sheet of paper giving details of the astonishing ways in which taxpayers' money had been doled out.

It was an apparent reference to a story in Daily Mail, which first outlined the shocking expenditures related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), on which President Trump has ordered a crackdown.

'I don't know about you. But as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going toward this crap. And I know the American people don't either. And that's exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do. To get the fraud, waste and abuse out of the federal government,' Leavitt said.

So, we won't have Democrat Senator Bob Menendez to kick around anymore

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted of all charges Tuesday in a sweeping corruption trial in which he was accused of accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as an agent for the Egyptian government.

A jury in Manhattan deliberated for parts of three days before finding the Democrat guilty of 16 crimes, including bribery, extortion, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. ...

Two co-defendants were also convicted. The New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were accused of paying bribes. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty prior to trial and testified against the others. ...

Prosecutors said serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on tape that bound together the stacks of cash were traced to Hana and Daibes.

Complete story here.

Few things are as funny as a WaPo ignoramus blaming the Christians for Moses turning the Nile to blood

 Christianity was a particularly blood-obsessed religion, with the Nile transformed to a river of blood in the Old Testament plagues of Egypt . . ..

It's going to be even more funny when The Washington Post blames the Christians for the fires in town.

Joe Biden is a victim of elder abuse

Laura Rosen Cohen, parent of a special needs child in Toronto, for Newsweek here, who calls this the Abuse That Dare Not Speak Its Name:

Recent reports confirm what's obvious to everyone on the planet: President Joe Biden is a frail 81-year old who requires physiotherapy daily for his increasingly stiff gait and must wear slip proof sneakers to prevent frequent falls. Staff reportedly can only schedule important meetings for him from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, because that is when he is most lucid.

This is a pattern in keeping with many dementia patients, as are other symptoms: Rarely does a day go by without video of Biden looking completely confused. He also frequently shouts angrily at reporters and confuses things, like Mexico and Egypt, or the names of dead leaders with current ones.

It's increasingly alarming, and the general consensus in America and around the world is that Biden is both too old for the job and not well.

In most normal families, a frail 81-year-old grandfather insisting on working but showing clear signs of diminished mental capacity and repeated episodes of falling and physical fragility would be encouraged to quit, enjoy his retirement, golf and garden to his heart's content. Quit your day job, Gramps, they would rightly say. And it's not like the Biden family is strapped for cash. Aside from any potential extended family business earnings, Joe Biden himself is reported to be worth approximately $10 million.

President Joe Biden faces a clear and present physical danger to his person due to his decline. But the public spectacle of his enfeebled nature also begs a different question: Why is the First Lady not putting an end to her husband's repeated and consistent public humiliation? Why aren't his children or grandchildren doing the right thing for their loved one? ...

If insisting on keeping a frail and doddering senior in the White House (or any job for that matter), exposing him to daily physical risk, demanding he perform tasks beyond his mental and physical capacity or stamina and world ridicule isn't elder abuse, what is? Are there any adults in the Biden family "room" who will finally call a lid not just on the President's repeated public humiliations but on his tenure writ large?

The leader of the free world is now an actual physical representation of the decline of American power and the American Republic. The President's diminished capacity is being willfully and purposely ignored by those closest to him, something that is very well-appreciated by America's enemies. As a result, the world is in chaos.

President Biden's disastrous Thursday Feb 8, 2024 news conference the White House hopes you forget, or never see

 In my opinion the president actually acquitted himself quite well for an old man in a difficult job, however much he avoided the controversial conclusions of the special counsel as to what he did with the classified materials, who saw them, and about his mental state. If only he had not returned to the podium after ending his remarks he wouldn't be in the same mess he's in, immediately proving the special counsel correct when he mixed up Mexico and Egypt.

For a change, the press acted like the jackals they always were with Trump. Its Hamas wing thinks this is their opportunity to oust the befuddled old man who stands between them and their enemy Israel.

The White House has de-listed the video.

Just absolute shit journalism from The Wall Street Journal, by Egyptian American Nancy A. Youssef: "the Oct. 7 start of Israel's war in Gaza"

Administration officials have asked Beijing to convey messages to Iran about avoiding a broader conflict in the region, since the Oct. 7 start of Israel’s war in Gaza.

More.

What happened on October 7th, Nancy?

Israel did not start this war.

This so-called history appearing at Bloomberg pretends that the Yom Kippur War, a surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria, didn't happen

Conflict is like nothing that's happened before...

The ugly Americans' ugly children

 

Overall, adults in the U.S. are least likely to say that kids having good manners is an especially important quality — just 52% of them said so in 2017, according to a report released this month by King’s College London. That makes the U.S. the country least likely, of the 24 countries surveyed in recent years, to believe good manners are crucial for kids.

This is a significant drop from 1990, when 76% of U.S. adults said it was a very important quality for children to possess, the data shows. …

Another factor that falls under the broader idea of kids being well behaved is if they listen to their parents or other adults. But even fewer U.S. adults said that obedience was a key quality for kids — in fact, it fell far behind in all countries compared with having good manners.

The country that values obedience the most is Nigeria with 58%, followed by Mexico and Egypt with 57% and 56% respectively. The U.S. falls into the second half of the table with 21%.

The whole thing is here.

The decline was inevitable, I suppose, with the decline of religion.

But things were already bad enough in 1958.

They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They are loud and ostentatious:

 

 

 

LOL, The Grauniad just lies that electric vehicles aren't heavier and don't produce more tire pollution than conventional vehicles

The average weight of all cars has been increasing. But there has been particular debate over whether battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which are heavier than conventional cars and can have greater wheel torque, may lead to more tyre particles being produced. Molden said it would depend on driving style, with gentle EV drivers producing fewer particles than fossil-fuelled cars driven badly, though on average he expected slightly higher tyre particles from BEVs. 

More here, in "Car tyres produce vastly more particle pollution than exhausts, tests show".

Meanwhile, the great Scotty Kilmer was all over this like white on rice a couple of days ago:

 

IHME in Washington State estimates US COVID-19 dead at 905k, world dead at 7 million

Some countries evidently are lying to save face, others are simply overwhelmed:

Covid-19 deaths in India, Mexico, and Russia — countries with the second, third, and fifth highest tolls (the U.S. has the number one spot) — were also vasty undercounted. ... Researchers additionally found that the tolls in Japan, Egypt, and several other countries are 10 times higher than the reported numbers.

Mediaite has the story here. 

Update for COVID-19 English-speaking world case fatality rates as of 1/19/21

 Per Johns Hopkins University (data changes slightly as we write):

Global totals:

deaths 2,044,445 / cases 95,703,104

Case fatality rate 2.13%

G-7 nations Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US, plus Australia and New Zealand:

deaths 713,992 / cases 36,041,142

Case fatality rate 1.98%

Rest of the world 2.23% 

Ten other nations with the largest English-speaking populations (India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Philippines, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Russia, Thailand, South Africa / data quality obviously varies):

deaths 295,121 / cases 17,399,153 

Case fatality rate 1.69% 

South Korea, not shown above, is a good example of how no matter what nations seem to do to stop the spread of the disease, case fatality rates everywhere seem to be ending up in the vicinity of 2%.

Early on South Korea was impressing with a rate well below 1%, but today it is at 1.75%. Japan is up to 1.33%. Much vaunted New Zealand is up to 1.10%.

Compared with Canada 2.51%, France 2.38%, Germany 2.32%, Italy 3.45%, the UK 2.61%, and Australia 3.16%, the good ole USA 1.657% is doing much better than the hysterical headlines would have you believe.

That said, in the US COVID-19 is still sixteen and half times more deadly than influenza. This is a serious crisis, the long term health effects of which are not known.

A recent long term study from May to November in the US showed an alarming rise in hospitalizations for COVID among children. Another study from the UK indicated an alarming rise in the death rate for individuals six months after recovering from COVID. The impact of the disease on the human vascular system is typically acute in the lungs, but remains a still not well understood threat to the rest of the body and its organs.

You don't want to get it. 24 million in the US already have, just 7% of the population.  

Hm, why on earth should there be growing anti-Semitism in New York City?

Israel practices a little reverse BDS, Boycotts Dumb and Stupider by barring Tlaib and Omar from visiting

Laugh of the Day: Linda "Sarsour" = "cockroach" in Arabic

Ten shit-hole rivers in Asia and Africa responsible for 90% of plastic polluting the world's oceans

 Seven of the ten are communist with Chinese characteristics:

Yangtze River, China (1.5 million tonnes annually and worst offender)

Hai he River, China 

Yellow River, China 

Mekong River, China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam

Pearl River, China and Vietnam

Indus River, China, India and Pakistan 

Ganges River, India and Bangladesh

Amur River, Russia and China 

Nile River, eleven countries including Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya

Niger River, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Benin and Nigeria 

Just 10 rivers carry 90% of plastic polluting the oceans

 

Democrats' new US House anti-Semitic birds of a feather flock together with Jew-hater Linda Sarsour

Hm, CNN followed the Women's March organizers for a whole year and completely missed their anti-Semites

Egyptian American Abdul El-Sayed came within 3 points of beating Gretchen Whitmer in Kent County MI in the Democrat primary for governor

Whitmer overall captured the nomination for governor among Democrats in Michigan with nearly 52% of the vote, but Democrats in the county around Grand Rapids, Michigan, are clearly very divided. El-Sayed crushed Whitmer in the city itself, 49% to 36%, and beat her also in the city of Wyoming.

El-Sayed is an accomplished individual, who however has the support of very far left people like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Linda Sarsour, and of the far left The Nation magazine.

Linda Sarsour, co-chair of Women's March on Washington, says fighting Trump is Jihad, must protect the Muslim Community and not assimilate

Here.