During the final week of 2021 every day is the Friday afternoon news dump for the Biden administration

 

Biden CDC: 10 days quarantine for Republicans, 5 days for Democrats

 

Sociologist writing for TIME Magazine caricatures First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, but doesn't interview a single actual member of the church

 Attending the event in person allowed me to appreciate how central Trump remains to white evangelicalism. ...

Standing in line 2.5 hours before the event, I chatted with a group of five elderly women who all came together. All were committed churchgoers in the Dallas area, but none were members at First Baptist. ...

There was Bill, a repairman who had taken public transportation to get to First Baptist. He was not a member either, but had always been a huge fan of Trump and was eager to see him in person. ...

And there was Carlos. Like Bill, Carlos was visiting First Baptist from elsewhere in the city along with a friend. ...

Trump’s appeal Sunday morning extends far beyond the First Baptist faithful. Evangelical visitors from around the city had come to cheer for their President. They were convinced he’d been treated unfairly. And they pined to see him back in office. ...

For the vast majority of white evangelicals in the U.S., like those visiting First Baptist Dallas on Sunday, Trump is still their warrior. ... over two-thirds of white evangelicals felt the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump.

More.

This guy should get out more and document the adulation directed at Democrats visiting America's black churches and insinuate in a column about how 92% of the nation's blacks voted for Joe Biden in 2020 because they're duped by religion or something.

Biden promised to shut down the virus, now says there's no federal solution

 Which is even more odd since he has mandated vaccines for the employees of large companies.

The guy is obviously too old upstairs for the job.

Story.

"There is no federal solution. This gets solved at the state level," Biden responded, before mentioning another Republican governor.

 

Because our better selves are optimists, we're musing today that COVID-19 will soon be a thing of the past, along with Donald Trump, his warp speed vaccines, and that clown Joe Biden

Christmas wishes do come true. You only have to believe.

FDA finally grants emergency use authorization to Pfizer's Paxlovid, a protease inhibitor which may dramatically reduce hospitalizations for people diagnosed with COVID-19

 From the story:

The U.S. has purchased 10 million courses of Pfizer’s treatment, Paxlovid, in a $5 billion deal. President Joe Biden said in November that his administration is working to ensure that the treatments are free and accessible. Biden said last month that delivery would start by the New Year and continue through 2022.  

Merry Christmas.

Egads, you knew it was coming: 6th Circuit Court of Appeals panel rules 2-1 that Biden's employer vaccine mandate, previously paused, can take effect

  Earlier this week, the circuit’s active judges rejected a move to have the entire panel consider the case, on an 8-8 vote.

More. 

Supreme Court next, which will allow the mandate.

They can make you buy Obamacare, right?

Sleepy Joe Biden played chicken with the debt ceiling legislation, waited until today to sign the bill hastily passed in the middle of the night yesterday

 Story.

LOL, Biden reimposes Trump's African Ban which he slammed in February 2020

 

Facts vs. hysteria: Pandemic year 1 vs. pandemic year 2 to date

If you date the start of the pandemic from the first announced US death on Feb 29, 2020, the first year of the pandemic looks like this:

1402 deaths per day, 78208 cases per day.

 

(There were already 70 cases by 2/29/20, but they have been included in the total anyway.) 

For the 265 days since Feb 28, 2021, the second year of the pandemic to date looks like this:

969 deaths per day, 71838 cases per day.

Deaths are down a whopping 31%, cases a much more modest 8%.

 

The Hill is showcasing the 2021 death toll to date exceeding the 2020 death toll, which is true, and is politically convenient to Joe Biden's opponents, but this completely misses how things are moving in the right direction.

 

Joe Biden famously promised to shut down the virus and not the country. He has not done the former and may in fact do the latter, for which he ought to be held responsible by booting his sorry ass.

 

But that's an entirely different matter.

 

Meanwhile the terrible outcomes predicted by experts from the still dominant India variant, for whatever reasons, are not panning out. At least not yet.

 

 

 

I'm not sure it was actually Billy Pilgrim who appeared in my dream the other night

 But the theme for today sure does seem to indicate that.

I mean, Biden told businesses to vaccinate anyway even after the Fifth Circuit Court for Appeals stayed his OSHA mandate. Trump would have been lynched in a second for that.

I mean impeached.

So it goes.

Everything is horrible and I don't think it really matters.

Deconstruct that, Pete Booty Judge.

LOL, "He is supposed to be committed to reducing emissions", the story opens

An informed source has told The Mail on Sunday that Camilla was taken aback to hear Biden break wind as they made polite small talk at the global climate change gathering in Glasgow last week.

'It was long and loud and impossible to ignore,' the source said. 'Camilla hasn't stopped talking about it.'

More.

Bipartisan Senate infrastructure plan authorizing $550 billion in new spending passed the House late last night and goes to Biden for his signature

The bill was opposed in the House by almost all Republicans, and by six far-left Democrats who were outmaneuvered by thirteen moderate Republicans who threw their support to the plan, which 19 Republican US Senators had voted for earlier this summer. 

The House progressives had insisted that the infrastructure plan be voted on together with Biden's social spending plan in order to force moderate Democrats to go along with the latter. The House Republican votes for the Senate bill ended up thwarting that linkage, making it even more likely that the House version of the social spending plan will have to be much less ambitious.

A small group of House Democrats have insisted the Congressional Budget Office score the impact of the separate social spending plan, which would have been standard operating procedure under Republicans but which Democrats under Pelosi have been avoiding until now. They don't give a damn about the true costs. They've even claimed absurdly a $3.5 trillion social spending plan will cost NOTHING. Ha ha ha ha ha.

That ranks among the most shameless attempts to change reality through a talking point ever attempted.

Whatever comes out of the House on that will face the hard scrutiny of Democrat Senators Manchin and Sinema regardless. 

Roll Call:

The bipartisan bill would reauthorize surface transportation and water programs for five years, adding $550 billion in new spending. 

It includes $110 billion for roads, bridges and major projects; $39 billion for transit and $66 billion for rail; $65 billion for broadband; $65 billion for the electric grid; $55 billion to upgrade water infrastructure and $25 billion for airports.

WaPo:

The bill includes more than $110 billion to replace and repair roads, bridges and highways, and $66 billion to boost rail, making it the most substantial such investment in the country’s passenger and commercial network since the creation of Amtrak about half a century ago. Lawmakers provided $55 billion to improve the nation’s water supply and replace lead pipes, $60 billion to modernize the power grid and billions in additional sums to expand speedy Internet access nationwide.

Many of the investments aim to promote green energy and combat some of the country’s worst sources of pollution. At Biden’s behest, for example, lawmakers approved $7.5 billion to build out a national network of vehicle charging stations. Reflecting the deadly, costly consequences of global warming, the package also allocates another roughly $50 billion to respond to emergencies including droughts, wildfires and major storms.

Tucker Carlson chalks up new illegal immigrant reparations scheme to Biden just acting in keeping with his other craziness, but this widely misses the mark

And of course, pretty much every morning, what we had assumed was a joke turns out to be entirely real. It's actually happening. The Biden administration really is that crazy. They really are firing thousands of nurses in the middle of a pandemic, firing thousands of cops in the middle of a crime wave. No, they're not kidding, even in the slightest, when they tell you that's a genuine female four-star admiral standing right there. Joe Biden isn't giggling. He tells you Rachel Levine's promotion is a victory for women everywhere, and he means it when he says it.

More.

Like the full court press by the federal government to exaggerate the January 6 debacle as an insurrection, the "reparations" scheme is designed to do just one thing: Paint the record of Donald Trump in the worst possible light.

One of the most distinctive features about America is how its leadership on both sides fails to take seriously the real problems facing the country while taking too seriously merely imaginary ones.

This is how a nation declines and falls.

Somewhere, out there, there's an iceberg, waiting for its moment.

WaPo: Republicans have taken vulgarity to a whole other level (maybe because Joe Biden sucks really bad?)

The current eruption of anti-Biden signs and chants, however, is on another level, far more vulgar and widespread. 

It's the widespread that upsets them, not the vulgarity.

LOL Trump is still president: Biden to reimplement Remain in Mexico policy for migrants after a federal court ruling in August

 Story.

 

 

Remember June 2020 when Joe Biden said 120 million had died of COVID?

 I remember.

Remember September 2020 when Biden said 200 million had died from COVID?

 I remember.

 

Year over year through Oct 4, 2021, the C19 vaccines have been a miserable failure, and Joe Biden hasn't shut down the virus

 Year over year through October 4, 2021, the C19 vaccines have been a miserable failure.

Year to date we've had 23.802 million cases and 0.357312 million deaths.

7.1% of the population has been infected, and 0.107% have died.

Population 332.809 million per the US Census clock.

 

For the same period in 2020 we had 7.445 million cases and 0.209606 million deaths.

2.2% of the population had been infected, and just 0.063% had died.

Population 331.868 million.

 

The full year 2020 comparison isn't much better.

There were 20.024 million cases in 2020, so 6% of the population of 332.084 million infected.

There were 0.346050 million deaths, so 0.104% of the population dead.

On October 4, 2021, we are already well past these 2020 full year benchmarks.

We already have 3.778 million more cases with 3 months left to go, and 11,262 more deaths. 

 

All C19 figures are from The New York Times.

 

 

 

Meanwhile Biden's nominee for Comptroller of the Currency is literally a commie

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board:

The Cornell University law school professor’s radical ideas might make even Bernie Sanders blush. She graduated from Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. Thirty years later, she still believes the Soviet economic system was superior, and that U.S. banking should be remade in the Gosbank’s image.

“Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world. Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best,’” she tweeted in 2019. After Twitter users criticized her ignorance, she added a caveat: “I never claimed women and men were treated absolutely equally in every facet of Soviet life. But people’s salaries were set (by the state) in a gender-blind manner. And all women got very generous maternity benefits. Both things are still a pipe dream in our society!”

Sure, there was a Gulag, and no private property, but maternity benefits!

Ms. Omarova thinks asset prices, pay scales, capital and credit should be dictated by the federal government. In two papers, she has advocated expanding the Federal Reserve’s mandate to include the price levels of “systemically important financial assets” as well as worker wages. As they like to say at the modern university, from each according to her ability to each according to her needs.

In a recent paper “The People’s Ledger,” she proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumer bank deposits, “effectively ‘end banking,’ as we know it,” and become “the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.” She’d also like the U.S. to create a central bank digital currency—as Venezuela and China are doing—to “redesign our financial system & turn Fed’s balance sheet into a true ‘People’s Ledger,’” she tweeted this summer. What could possibly go wrong?

Ms. Omarova believes capital and credit should be directed by an unaccountable bureaucracy and intelligentsia. She has recommended a “National Investment Authority,” with members overseen by an advisory board of academics, to finance a “big and bold” climate agenda. Sounds like the green infrastructure bank the Senate rejected.

She’d also like a politically and structurally independent “Public Interest Council” of "highly paid” academics with broad subpoena power to supervise financial regulatory agencies, including the Fed. The Council, she explained, would not be subject to the “constraints and requirements of the administrative process.” Ivy League professors know best. 

As comptroller, Ms. Omarova would supervise some 1,200 financial institutions. While she couldn’t enact her People’s Agenda without legislation, she would have sweeping powers to punish banks that don’t follow her diktats. Recall how financial regulators during the Obama Presidency pressured banks to cut off credit to pay-day lenders. ...

Ms. Omarova is the wrong nominee for the wrong industry in the wrong country in the wrong century.

Notes from the future:

The overthrow overtook the former shining light on the hill almost by accident, and in broad daylight, when an aging, decrepit, Paul von Hindenburg-like leader acquiesced in his dotage to the revolutionary impulses swirling all about him, like vultures waiting for him to die.