Honestly, I don't know how Staten Island does it

 

The landfill site operated from 1948-2001.

Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina now get New York's garbage.

The rest of the country gets California's.

There is a solution to Puerto Rico's landfill problem

 

Joe Biden sucks all the air out of Kamala Harris' closing argument in DC by calling Trump's supporters garbage, CNBC accurately reports what he said

 

Audio.

Joe Biden earlier today called Trump supporters floating garbage because a comic said something in bad taste at a Trump rally, and by evening Joe was walking that back

 So you know he really did say it.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico really does have a garbage problem.

 

Record 549 cases of dengue fever in Puerto Rico

 Story here.

There have been nearly 25,000 cases so far this year in Peru, double the 2023 year to date figure.

LOL, the brains behind Trump's fake electoral scheme wasn't Eastman, it was liberal Democrat Ken Chesebro according to none other than Laurence Tribe

 Trump is the biggest fool who ever hit the big time, and liberal Democrats have played him like a fiddle.

WaPo, here:

VEGA ALTA, Puerto Rico — The blinds were drawn at a handsome villa in an oceanfront gated community on the northern coast of this Caribbean island. Inside, a woman’s voice could be heard calling out “Ken” — but no one answered the door. 

Records show this is the tropical refuge of Kenneth J. Chesebro, a lawyer who allegedly marshaled supporters of President Donald Trump to pose as electors in states won by Joe Biden in 2020, creating a pretext for Vice President Mike Pence to delay counting or disregard valid electoral college votes on Jan. 6, 2021. ...

The successful appellate lawyer studied at Harvard University under Laurence Tribe, the preeminent legal scholar who advised congressional Democrats on both of Trump’s impeachments. Chesebro continued working with Tribe for about 20 years, on wide-ranging litigation involving class-action claims and punitive damages. ...

Tribe called Chesebro “the brains” behind the fake electoral scheme. “If the pressure campaign on Pence had worked,” Tribe said, Chesebro and Eastman “would have generated a successful coup.” 

 

 

The bad news is exactly two weeks after Fri May 22, the kickoff to the Memorial Day holiday weekend, new daily COVID-19 cases are making records in 9 states and Puerto Rico

Michigan had an astounding 4,529 new daily cases added on Fri Jun 5, 2020.

Just 58 Republicans had the temerity to vote Nay on the $19 billion disaster relief bill

You'll notice that Democrat Ilhan Omar didn't bother to vote. Must have been busy washing her hijabs.

The bill showers more money on Puerto Rico, and spends nothing on the disaster at the US/Mexico border.

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 232

While the government is shutdown Democrat Senator Bob Menendez is hard at work in Puerto Rico inspecting the local fauna

Inflated death totals from Puerto Rico study not backed up by any names or cause of death

Julie Kelly, here:

There is just one little problem with the inflated death toll: There are no names of the newly-found victims or hundreds of bodies to be buried. The GWU research team reached the higher figure by comparing predicted fatalities to observed fatalities between September 2017 and February 2018. ... Also, the researchers did not specify how the nearly 3,000 people died. Lynn Goldman, the dean of the school that produced the report, confirmed the study’s limitations, telling the Washington Post, “we can come up with a hundred different hypotheses. What we don’t have is the ability today to tell you these are the factors that caused this.” The team also noted that mortality rates in low-income areas of the country were still elevated even past the study’s time frame, which could call into question the legitimacy of blaming all excess deaths on the storm.

Indirect deaths from hurricanes from 1963-2012 numbered 1,418 but Maria in Puerto Rico alone caused 2,911?

My mother died of old age related heart failure two days after Hurricane Gustav made landfall in Louisiana in 2008:

48 deaths in the state of Louisiana were blamed on Hurricane Gustav. Five were due to falling trees, two due to a tornado and the rest were indirect deaths.

My mother wasn't counted among the 41 indirect deaths in Louisiana, for the main reason that she died in a different state.

But . . .

Hurricane Fatality Reports Leave Out Thousands of Indirect Deaths, According to New Study:

Looking at 59 hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin from 1963 through 2012, the study found that those systems killed a combined 1,803 people directly – by forces like flooding and airborne debris that were caused by the storm itself. But there were also a slew of lingering impacts that proved deadly in those storms, which caused 1,418 "indirect" deaths, according to the findings. ... Nearly half of the indirect deaths attributed to these 59 hurricanes were heart attacks, according to the study's data. Automobile accidents were also a major threat to life, whether the crashes occurred during evacuation or after the storm.

So we're supposed to believe tonight that about 2,911 (2,975-64) Puerto Ricans died indirectly in consequence of one storm (Maria) over the next six months according to the new math of George Washington University and Harvard University when over the course of nearly 50 years' worth of hurricanes indirect deaths for all storms combined came to just 1,418.

Sure we are.

Habeas corpus: Puerto Rico study showing 2,975 deaths not "a traditional death-toll accounting"

Normally one counts up the bodies, makes a list and checks it twice. But nothing in Puerto Rico is normal.

Reported here:

Researchers at George Washington University determined last month that Hurricane Maria alone resulted in 2,975 'excess deaths' in Puerto Rico. 

That finding wasn't the result of a traditional death-toll accounting, but a public health study that compared mortality in the six months following the storm with the number of deaths that would have been expected if it had not hit the island.  

'The difference between those two numbers is the estimate of excess mortality due to the hurricane,' the scientists wrote. 

It's taken incompetent Puerto Rico eleven months to raise its official death toll from 64 to 2,975, just in time for the election

But in all that time incompetent Puerto Rico still hasn't made use of the millions of water bottles still sitting on a runway in Ceiba.

Possibly millions of water bottles meant for Hurricane Maria victims left on tarmac in Puerto Rico:

Puerto Rico's governor last month raised the U.S. territory's official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975. The storm, which devastated the territory last September, is also estimated to have caused $100 billion in damage.

Flashback to the story from 2 November 2017.

Puerto Rico's water woes raise fears of health crisis six weeks after Hurricane Maria:

Bottled water can be hard to find and gets expensive, said her aunt, Maria Ortiz, 66. “If you are lucky to find some, a pack of 24 water bottles that used to be $3.99 now is about $7.50,” she said. 

They can't count, and they can't even drink.

The Hill: "Puerto Rico's government raised its official death toll which previously sat at 64"

But the culture of complaint that is Puerto Rico wasn't satisfied with the low number, so they commissioned a study to add deaths six months out from the post-hurricane period:

[A] George Washington University study commissioned by Puerto Rico's governor examin[ed] the effects of Maria in the six months following landfall in September 2017.

The long time period was used to determine the hurricane's lingering effect on deaths on the island. It compared the death rates in the post-hurricane period to other periods not affected by natural disasters.

Only in the minds of lunatics is the number of deaths from Maria 1,175 worse than from Katrina (1,800 estimated total deaths). This new methodology of liberal math is just in time for the politics of the current hurricane season, and coincides with Obama's ridiculous claim that this economic recovery is his, not Trump's.

The story is here.

Over three months after Hurricane Maria, electricity won't be restored to all of Puerto Rico until May 2018

Way to go, Brownie!

Story here.

Despicable Paul Ryan, Congress and Obama stiff-arm Puerto Rico bondholders who will end up fronting the inevitable taxpayer bailout

Paul Ryan is the establishment all the way. And he hasn't changed since 2008. He is not Tea Party, he is not Freedom Caucus, he is not for the taxpayer, period.

From the story here:

In essence, the bondholders will front the money for the bailout while taxpayers would have to pay them back for this cash advance.

This is something that Speaker Ryan and his allies, including the Obama Administration, don't want you to know. 

After New York, under Winner-Take-All it would be Trump 1089, Cruz 433, Kasich 66 and Rubio 57

And everyone would be telling Cruz and Kasich "GET OUT!"

Instead it's Trump 845, Cruz 559, Kasich 148 and Rubio 171. The also-rans are being enriched at the expense of the front-runner, mostly by allocations of delegates from congressional district wins which chip away at the overall winner of the states.

They won't divide the vote this way when Trump faces Clinton in November. Think of the electoral college votes from each state as delegates. Representing House and Senate seats held by both Republicans and Democrats, the winner of the popular vote in your state gets them all, regardless of political party affiliation.

It'll be winner take all in November. It should be now.

Congressmen aren't even elected this way.

If you win the popular vote in your district, you win the seat in the House. It's not because you won more delegates in the precincts.

If you win the popular vote in your state, you win the seat in the Senate. Senators don't get seated because they won more delegates in the congressional districts. They get seated because they won more votes.

But Republicans for some reason want to divide their primary votes for president along (already highly gerrymandered) congressional district lines, making the candidates creatures of the districts, not of the states. They do this out of fear that the more populous liberal urban areas will have an unfair advantage over conservative rural ones in choosing their candidate. So they interfere with the process instead of insuring the integrity of their party membership and of its primary elections.

Meanwhile Trump's won the popular vote in 21 states so far, Cruz in 9, Rubio in just 2 and Kasich in only 1, but the Chicken Party won't even take a popular vote in Colorado, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Wyoming, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and North Dakota.

Republicans need to decide if they want to continue to be the Chicken Party, or if they want to take the fight to the enemy.

They already have a leader who is doing just that, if only they had the courage to follow him.

Trump has won the popular vote in 20 of 32 states, should have 924 delegates under winner take all, gets only 743 under Republican rules

To date Donald Trump has won the popular vote in 20 of the 32 primary/caucus contests, entitling him to their 924 delegates on the winner take all principle, but the Republican "rules" made at the state level give Trump just 80% of these overall, while enriching others with undeserved delegate allocations at his expense.

Imagine if that happened in actual presidential elections, where the winner of the popular vote in a state normally wins all the state's electoral college votes representing both political parties. Under the current Republican rules applied to the presidential election, the Republican candidate and the Democrat candidate might so split the electoral college vote between themselves that the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives under the 12th amendment because no one happened to reach the majority of 270. Think of that at the federal level as the equivalent of a party convention at the state level deciding the outcome because, in the case of Trump, he failed to reach 1,237. The more likely outcome would be Republicans losing national elections because of close contests in traditionally Republican states where Democrats still lose but cut into their electoral college allocations if winner take all goes by the roadside. Republicans at the state level are actually paving the way in practice for Democrat reform efforts of electoral college rules.

The unfairness of that is self-evident. Winner take all in a state in presidential elections is designed to smooth the way to national unity. But the Republicans have instituted "proportionality" rules to the extent that they can't, in their mad factionalism, unite along lines which are similarly simple, reasonable and attractive to people who wish to embrace the party, and their country. Donald Trump has brought hordes of new voters to the Republican Party, but all Republican Party elites can do is turn up their noses at them. 

Ted Cruz, who has won the popular vote in just 9 contests so far compared to Trump's 20, is entitled to only 433 delegates using winner take all. But he has 545 at this hour, 26% more than he should have, some of which come from states and territories where the people themselves aren't even allowed by the Republican elites to formalize their opinion by voting.

There is no popular vote taken this year so far in Colorado, North Dakota, Wyoming, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or American Samoa. Republican elites from these places decide who gets their combined 153 delegates. And #NeverTrump factions in these and other states have worked hard to make sure Trump gets as few of them as possible, if any.

To make matters worse, obvious losers like Marco Rubio and John Kasich are playing spoiler roles out of all proportion to their standing because of these rules.

Kasich has a legitimate claim on the delegates of only the one state he has won, Ohio. Instead of the 66 delegates he's entitled to, the Byzantine rules of Republicanism give him 143, 117% more than he should have.

In the case of Little Marco, he's still trying to bind his allotted 171 delegates to himself when they should be free agents because he's dropped out of the race entirely. Entitled to only 57 delegates from winning just two contests in Minnesota and DC, Rubio's unfair influence has been magnified 200% beyond what he's legitimately won because of proportional allocation rules in this year's contests.

The message being sent by Republicanism is obvious to everyone. The Republican Party is an exclusive club which has complicated, intricate rules for membership designed to keep out the riffraff, not win national elections.

Unfortunately, those rules will continue to keep the executive power far out of reach for them.

If they want to win the White House, Republicans should embrace the new voters, and Trump.

To do otherwise is political suicide.

Does Mark Steyn actually oppose Donald Trump?

It seems so.

He just said in the opener today that Trump needs 58% of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination, which to Steyn appears to be too difficult to accomplish.

This just isn't so.

Trump needs 53.6% of the remaining, the least of all the candidates and close to his level of support through Super Tuesday.

That's 853 delegates, after Rubio won Puerto Rico yesterday, out of 1592 remaining.

Cruz needs 937, which is 58.9% of the remaining.

Steyn appears to have Cruz mixed up with Trump.

Was that on purpose?

United Parcel Service again to raise rates broadly beginning December 29th, by nearly 5%

When's the last time you got a 5% raise?

Story here:

UPS says it is raising rates for a number of its shipping services by an average of 4.9 percent for 2015. The Atlanta-based company said Monday it is increasing rates for its ground, air, international, UPS Freight, and UPS air freight rates within and between the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. The increase goes into effect on Dec. 29.

Similarly-sized rate increases occurred in both 2011 and 2012, reported here:

According to company officials, non-contractual 2012 rates will be comprised of a net increase of 4.9 percent for UPS ground packages and a net increase of 4.9 percent on all UPS air services and U.S. origin international shipments. This increase is identical to the one the transportation bellwether rolled out a year ago for 2011 rate hikes.

Uh huh.

The all-items CPI rose by 1.4% in 2010, 3.02% in 2011, 1.76% in 2012 and just 1.5% in 2013, despite all the federal interventions to target inflation at 2.0%. The average rise was 1.9%.

Average hourly earnings nationwide, meanwhile, over the exact same periods increased by 1.7% in 2010, 1.98% in 2011, 2.11% in 2012 and 1.94% in 2013.  The average rise was also 1.9%.