Good news for Biden: Core pce inflation in May 2024 falls to 2.57% year over year

 

NATO chief concedes Trump has a point lol

 Stoltenberg knows damn well he might have to deal with Trump again if he's elected in November, and isn't about to alienate him now. After the election and Trump loses? Yeah, maybe then, but not now.

Reported here:

NATO chief concedes 'valid point' of spending criticism as allies up defense budgets

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg

Susana Vera | Reuters

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg conceded to criticism that some members have been underfinancing the coalition’s defense budget, saying he expects a record 18 allies to meet their military spending goal this year.

His comments come on the footsteps of the controversial remarks of former U.S. president and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who said he would not protect NATO nations from Russian hostilities if they fall behind on their membership payments.

Trump’s statements kindled widespread ire from the international community, including from fellow Republicans, drawing Stoltenberg to earlier this week accuse that such a suggestion “undermines all our security.”

“The criticism that you hear is not primarily about NATO, it’s about NATO allies not spending enough on NATO. And that’s a valid point,” Stoltenberg said during a press briefing on Wednesday, in response to a question on whether Trump’s comments aligned with the broader views of Republican officials that the NATO chief has engaged.

“It’s a point and a message that has been conveyed by successive U.S. administrations that European allies and Canada have to spend more, because we haven’t seen fair burden sharing in the alliance,” Stoltenberg added. “The good news is that this is exactly what NATO allies are now doing.”

She's got shingles, they say, which is good news for patriots seeking to block Biden's appointments

Schumer Seeks Sub For Feinstein on Judiciary Committee, GOP Says No

CNN thinks November core inflation at 4.7% yoy is good news

There's never any discussion about how core inflation vaulted to the current levels well before the war in Ukraine even began.

The reason for the inflation surge is Biden's war for green energy, the one input which makes everything cost more because green energy costs much more than conventional energy from coal, oil, and natural gas.

Add trillion$ in COVID stimulus chasing too few goods and it's a recipe for the disaster which is ongoing, not moderating.

Some people get it. Most don't.

 

 

 

The Fed's Favorite Gauge Shows Price Increases Are Moderating

The good news is COVID-19 deaths per million were 4-5x worse a year ago than they are now in the US

Deaths per million stabilized 8 months ago at the current level and haven't really budged since then.

Those who predicted an endemic situation developing appear to have been right.

1.2 deaths per million presently represents about 398 deaths per day at current population, or about 11.9k dying per month since mid-April.

Actual cumulative deaths over the period have averaged about 12.25k per month, or 98k.

If that rate persists like this for a full year we'll get something like 147k deaths, which would then still be 4x worse than the average influenza deaths year.

92% of COVID-19 deaths in California continue to be among those 50 and older, and 72% are among those 65 and older.

That's the bad news.

Seems like an unacceptable new normal to me.

Concentrating efforts on vaccinating people younger than 50 seems pointless and highly inappropriate for the situation.

 

Good news for Baltimore, maybe

 Woke social justice prosecutor Marilyn Mosby roundly defeated July 19th, leaves abject destruction in her wake:

In her first year in office, homicides surged 62 percent, jumping from 211 to 348. Murders have remained above 300 for each of her seven years in office—now surpassing 2,500 victims, of which at least 92 percent have been black. The sustained increase in murders is directly connected with Mosby’s pro-criminal policies.

Last year was the deadliest in Baltimore’s history, with a per capita homicide rate of more than 58 per 100,000 residents. And 2022 has been even worse, with the homicide rate increasing faster than anywhere other than New Orleans and with 215 murders already on the books. ...

Not one Democrat, elected or appointed, ever criticized or opposed Mosby’s policies, no matter how many black bodies piled up. 

More.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just lies right out of the box about "longstanding" use of ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin

Isn't that what Election 2020 was all about? Lying? Lying absentee ballots and the lying voters who cast them? And lying media?

It used to be a good newspaper, but those days are long over:

The 4-3 ruling, coming four weeks before statewide primaries Aug. 9, is a win for Republicans who now oppose the longstanding use of ballot drop boxes after their use proliferated during the coronavirus pandemic and was heavily criticized by former President Donald Trump, who alleged with no evidence that absentee voting was rife with fraud and led to his reelection loss in 2020.

Here.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court found that there was no evidence of longstanding use, presented by the Wisconsin Election Commission, or otherwise:

¶65 The record evidence WEC cited does not support its argument that ballot drop boxes have been in common and longstanding use in this state. 

Read the whole thing here.

A bit of good news from North Carolina

 NC cops fatally shoot man who threw Molotov cocktails at precinct...

The incident started around 1:20 p.m. when the unidentified suspect began lighting cars on fire in the police parking lot with the incendiary weapons, officials said at a press conference.

Today the US registered 120,036 deaths from COVID-19 at the Johns Hopkins University dashboard

Here's the progression:

50k 4/24

60k 4/29  5 days

70k 5/5    6 days

80k 5/11  6 days

90k 5/18  7 days

100k 5/27  9 days

110k 6/7    11 days

120k 6/22  15 days.

Stay-at-home orders, growth of clinical expertise, and increased mask-wearing among other things have all made a huge impact on the growth of deaths.

New daily deaths hit 275 on Sunday, which was last lower way back on March 25, with 270.

It looks like it will take something like another 20 days to add another 10k deaths, so 130k by roughly July 15.  On May 18 I projected 155k by then, so obviously there's been a big slow down since late May when the projected 100k deaths projected was met.

That's the good news.

The bad news is case counts nationally are rising again after bottoming on May 11. New daily cases were so high on June 20 that you had to go back to May 1 to find a higher single day. In key states in the South this increase is not attributable to increased testing, especially in Florida where testing has declined and in other states where hospitalization increases are outstripping testing increases. Texas, Arizona, California and the Carolinas are all pointed to as examples.

Expect death counts to pick up again starting roughly July 15 due to the mid-June turn higher in cases. It takes about 28 days from classification as a case to classification as a death, according to the modeling.

Death is a lagging indicator. Low deaths today are the result of good action taken many yesterdays ago.   

The good news is, outside China, the mortality rate from coronavirus is only 7x worse than for influenza, not 30x

Data.

Introducing the Trump/Limbaugh Big Fat Idiot Unemployment Rate, and the good news is in January 2020 we're back on track to more people not working but still eating, just like under the Carter Administration 40 years ago

Good news: Commie American Federation of Teachers finally dumps slavery propaganda as number one agenda item, replaces it with climate crisis propaganda

Progress, as in progressivism (a word my white privileged, carbon-consuming, capitalist spell checker underlines in red, appropriately).

Good news: Straight America is coming back under Joe Biden, like we used to be

Good News: Actor James Woods, in Twitter jail Sep 20 - Oct 5, 2018, has been released

Sorry Charlie: Jeff Cox of CNBC wildly exaggerates wages under Trump, "the last missing piece of the economic recovery"

Here in "Trump has set economic growth on fire":

Friday brought another round of good news: Nonfarm payrolls rose by a better-than-expected 201,000 and wages, the last missing piece of the economic recovery, increased by 2.9 percent year over year to the highest level since April 2009. That made it the best gain since the recession ended in June 2009. ... Indeed, the economy does seem to be on fire, and it's fairly easy to draw a straight line from Trump's policies to the current trends.

The wage series used by Cox for all workers differs little in August 2018 from the series for the 80% of workers who are production and nonsupervisory, except that the latter goes back much farther than 2006, giving a truer picture of where we are at. And where we are at is slightly better off than under Obama, but that's about it. It's still not as good as under George W. Bush, for crying out loud. And it's certainly not "on fire".

This is not an economic boom for most working people.

This is actually good news: Robots will be cheaper, more reliable, and less likely to try and kill us

Reid junked judicial filibuster, Grassley junks "blue slip" tradition, Trump to pack the courts

Jake Novak provides the good news, here.

Good news for pension plans: Reduced life expectancy means obligations could fall by up to 1 percent!

Every cloud has its silver lining.

From the story here:

The U.S. age-adjusted mortality rate—a measure of the number of deaths per year—rose 1.2 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the Society of Actuaries. That’s the first year-over-year increase since 2005, and only the second rise greater than 1 percent since 1980. ... Declining health and life expectancy are good news for one constituency: Pension plans, which must send a monthly check to retirees for as long as they live.

According to the latest figures from the Society of Actuaries, life expectancy for pension participants has dropped since its last calculation by 0.2 years. A 65-year-old man can expect to live to 85.6 years, and a woman can expect to make it to 87.6. As a result, the group calculates a typical pension plan’s obligations could fall by 0.7 percent to 1 percent.

More good news: Trump ends effective immediately $7 billion in funding for out-of-pocket medical expenses for low income insured under Obamacare

From the story here:

The cost-sharing funds, estimated at roughly $7 billion for this year, pays for low-income consumers' out-of-pocket medical expenses. Under Obamacare, insurers are required to offer lower costs for these services, for which the government then reimburses them. If they do not receive the funding, they must still offer discounts, and without an action from Congress they would be likely to sue for the money.

Good news: Trump does end run around Obamacare, expands ability of more associations to offer plans using Executive Order

From the story here:

The president signed an executive order "to promote healthcare choice and competition" Thursday morning at the White House. 

It is said to expand access to "association health plans" – group plans written by trade associations, small businesses, and other groups. Such large group plans do not have to abide by all the requirements of individual plans under 'Obamacare.' The order also tasks administration officials to develop policies to increase competition in the health insurance industry.