Exaggeration is OK, over-exaggeration? not so much lol

 Everything is awesome.

Another example of the loss of the sense of proportionality:

Biden Campaign Co-Chair: Bernie Sanders Comparing Gaza War To Biden's Vietnam Is "An Over-exaggeration"

35 people who didn't get the memo braved -18F to vote for Chris Crispy Creme yesterday in Iowa, even though he had already dropped out

 The 108k who turned out under those conditions are a legitimate index of the proportional enthusiasm which exists.

Vivek got fewer than 9k votes and promptly, and properly, dropped out.

Change my mind.

 

Breaking: Ozzy Osbourne moving back to safer, stabbing-epidemic-plagued England

 Ozzy Osbourne moving back to England, doesn't want to 'die in crazy America'...

Meanwhile in England:

Last summer saw London’s worst period on record for violence, with knife-related attacks consisting of a large proportion of the horrific acts carried out in the capital. According to Metropolitan Police figures, there were 134 murders last year, 85 of which involved a knife (around 63 percent). ...

ONS data shows that in the first three months of the year, assaults involving an injury or an intent to harm actually increased to 120 percent of what they were at the same time last year (965 to 806). Attempted murders went down marginally from 13 to 11.

But threats to kill also increased from 175 to 226 when comparing the two periods. In the first half of 2022, 1,223 people in London were caught with a blade, compared to 1,415 in January to June last year – a reduction of just 14 percent. ...

One deterrent that has often been cited is 'stop and search,' . . . But it is an area that has “always been really difficult”, Mr Hedges said, toeing a fine line between law enforcement and racial profiling.

 

Hm, you don't say.

LOL Drudge, a one per cent Fed Funds rate hike from here would take it from 1.58 to 1.5958, silly

 A 100 basis point rise, as in the story, would take it to 2.58, an increase of 63%, which is the draconian kind of thing Cathie Wood likes to dramatize.

But no one understands draconian. In a world of superlatives where everything is awesome, the smallest changes are blown all out of proportion.

Draconian would be raising the rate at least to the level of inflation, now 9.1% year over year (not seasonally adjusted).

Actual draconian is necessary.

But these are not serious people. None of them.

Definitional breakdown: It's not just the New England Journal of Medicine, which thinks 18 and 19 year olds are children (for political reasons)

 Now The New York Post thinks 62 year olds are "elderly".

Before it was just Obama and Democrats who infamously and routinely seemed not to know the size, proportion, and meaning of things (when life starts was above his pay grade, 57 states, hundreds of millions getting Obamacare, 200 million dead from COVID-19, et cetera).

Now everyone is getting into the act.

Life expectancy in the US is about 77 years old. You are elderly when you are near that or exceed it.

 

 

 

Federal law prohibits FFLs from engaging in handgun commerce with anyone under 21 and longgun commerce with anyone under 18. Meanwhile 18 year olds can vote, be tried as adults, sign contracts, and get drafted to have their asses shot off in wars, and fry in the electric chair for shooting up schools. Let's have some of that, shall we?

And just in case you were wondering, a woman is still an adult human female, at least until it becomes Wokepedia.

 

I stand vindicated by Real Clear Investigations story about the high percentage of breakthrough deaths in Massachusetts, highest of eight states studied

State Data Shows It's a Pandemic of the Vaccinated Too

 

Clayton Fox, RCI

 

... thousands of Americans are dying from the illness even after having been vaccinated. Striking evidence comes from California, Georgia, and Illinois, where a third of people dying with COVID had been vaccinated – even some who had received a third booster shot. ...

The proportion of fully vaccinated and/or boosted deaths against the number of total deaths is substantial, and appears to have been gradually increasing in recent months at least in several states. 

 

Of the eight states publishing detailed, so-called "breakthrough" death data on the vaccinated to the present, RealClearInvestigations found that Massachusetts – with a substantial 75% fully vaccinated rate – suffered the highest percentage of vaccinated deaths: 55% from January 1 to February 12, 2022.

Follow my label "Massachusetts" for my reporting.

Maybe the shoplifting would decrease if we started chopping off their hands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Shoplifting reaches crisis proportions

• "It's out of control — it is just out of control," Lisa LaBruno, SVP of operations and innovation at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, tells Axios. ...
  
• “They come in every day, sometimes twice a day, with laundry bags and just load up on stuff,” the Post quoted a store employee saying. ... 
• District attorneys in cities like Chicago and New York are considering harsher measures against shoplifters. ...
• Teams of "boosters" will throng a store with laundry bags, grabbing what they can and assaulting workers who confront them — sometimes fatally.

In Massachusetts breakthrough deaths must represent a shocking 25.5% of confirmed deaths since March 7, 2021

Cumulative confirmed deaths since the beginning of the pandemic: 20,884

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-response-reporting

Breakthrough deaths: 1,224 (5.86% of confirmed deaths to date)

https://www.mass.gov/doc/weekly-report-covid-19-cases-in-vaccinated-individuals-january-18-2022/download

Cumulative confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic: 1,418,149

Breakthrough cases: 348,510 (24.57% of confirmed cases to date)

Breakthrough hospitalizations: 5,437 (0.38% of all confirmed cases to date; cumulative hospitalization data is not available from Massachusetts)

Presenting the data this way, however, leads to mixing the breakthrough data with the data from the first year of the pandemic when there were no vaccines through which to break.

We have to subtract the first year data to see what is really going on since vaccinations began and were characteristic of the second year.

A convenient date to choose for the end of the first year is March 7, 2021, when The Covid Tracking Project ceased its pandemic data gathering efforts. That data helpfully included cumulative hospitalization numbers. And fewer than 10% of Massachusetts residents had been fully vaccinated by that date.

In the first year of the pandemic through March 7, 2021, Massachusetts had 16,085 confirmed deaths, 559,083 confirmed cases, and 19,713 ever hospitalized for COVID.  

The hospitalization rate in the first year was therefore 3.525% of confirmed cases, slightly higher than the national rate in the first year of the pandemic at 3.06%.

This means in year two to date since March 7, 2021 there have been only 4,799 additional confirmed deaths, but 859,066 additional confirmed cases and approximately 30,282 additional hospitalizations (I used the first year hospitalization rate of 3.525% as a proxy for this, which I grant is only an educated guess).

From those baseline figures from the second year of the pandemic to date, we get the following rates for breakthroughs since March 7, 2021 using the breakthrough data Massachusetts helpfully reports unlike most states:

Breakthrough deaths: 25.50%

Breakthrough cases: 40.56%

Breakthrough hospitalizations: ~17.95%.

In Massachusetts, the proportion of serious outcomes for vaccinated  people is much higher than people realize. This is certainly true for deaths.

CNN quotes Pfizer today lying to our faces that its vaccines are the best way to stop the spread of C19 when the latest from the CDC screams NO!

 CNN: 

"Although two doses of the vaccine may still offer protection against severe disease caused by the Omicron strain, it's clear from these preliminary data that protection is improved with a third dose of our vaccine," Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement. "Ensuring as many people as possible are fully vaccinated with the first two dose series and a booster remains the best course of action to prevent the spread of COVID-19."

CDC:

This investigation highlights that the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 can spread quickly through a highly vaccinated population and can be transmitted to others regardless of vaccination status. Although vaccination remains a key mitigation strategy to decrease illness and death associated with COVID-19 (25), the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 is highly transmissible (26), and several studies have suggested lower vaccine effectiveness during Delta variant predominance compared with earlier months (5–7,27), probably driven by waning immunity from increased time since vaccination (28). In this outbreak, 99% of cluster-associated cases that had available sequencing were caused by the Delta variant, and 81% of cluster-associated cases were classified as vaccine breakthrough infections. The large number of breakthrough infections is probably representative of a highly vaccinated underlying population; as a greater proportion of the US population becomes fully vaccinated, vaccine breakthrough infections are likely to be more frequently observed (27,29). ...

In conclusion, major epidemiologic questions about breakthrough infections, such as the comparative infectiousness of fully vaccinated and non–fully vaccinated persons, duration of viral shedding, and duration of vaccine-derived immunity, remain. However, our findings underscore the need for persons who are fully vaccinated to take precautions to prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to themselves and others, such as wearing a mask in public indoor settings or crowded outdoor settings, particularly during substantial or high transmission. Vaccination, although critical to reduce illness and death from COVID-19, should be complemented by layered mitigation strategies to address the COVID-19 pandemic (25,31).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vaccinated people have been spreading COVID-19 all along.

Whitey gonna be hearin' about this: Community college enrollments down 14.1% in two years, elite college enrollments are back up to pre-pandemic levels

There were roughly 17.5 million students enrolled as of the last tally.

Combined with last autumn’s declines, the number of undergraduate students in college is now down 6.5% compared to two years ago — the largest two-year enrollment drop in the last 50 years, the report found. ...

Only the most selective colleges notched enrollment gains — up 4.3% — to return to pre-pandemic levels. ...

Community colleges remain the most adversely affected sector, experiencing a 14.1% total enrollment decline since fall 2019. ...

Community college students likely are older, lower-income and often balancing work, children and other obligations — and they are also disproportionately students of color. These are all groups that the pandemic hit especially hard.

More.

Breakthrough cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in wretched data manipulating Tennessee in Sep 2021: 16%, 13%, 15% respectively

Breakthrough hospitalizations and deaths showed modest declines compared to August proportions of 14% and 17% respectively. Since hospitalizations and deaths are lagging indicators, however, the rise in breakthrough cases from 14% to 16% may be a harbinger of more bad news in Tennessee.

The data isn't presented in a straightforward manner. Subtract the percentages shown in the table from 100 to get the breakthrough figures. I can imagine some idiot looking at that table, wondering what the hell he's lookin' at.

Vaccines do not make one bulletproof, as story after story makes plain. This is especially the case for the elderly, for whom the risk of death is the highest, vaccinated or not. Waning vaccine effectiveness is only the second biggest concern facing this group.

But in Tennessee you wouldn't know risk of death is highest if you are old anyway, if you relied on Tennessee's COVID statewide dashboard, hilariously entitled "unified command". You won't find death information visualized anywhere, let alone by age. Cases are visualized by age, which is even more misleading to the elderly since cases abound among the younger tranches, not the older.

You really have to hunt for the death data on a different page and download the data in XLS format from a long list of available data sets entitled "Daily Age Group Outcomes- Statewide case outcomes by age group", and then do the math. And do you see the word "death" in there anywhere?

It's really irresponsible. It's almost like Tennessee is trying to hide the deaths from its old people, and throw shade on the vaccines, by publishing the breakthrough data in a weird way, at the same time. A conspiracy theorist would say they're tryin' to get rid of 'em, real quiet like.

I count 13,119 deaths in TN to date from COVID in people 61 years of age or older, which is about 82% of all the pandemic deaths in the state.

Tennessee really, really sucks at this.

 

 

Suddenly Oklahoma is not showing breakthrough data like it had been

Last week's PROPORTION OF BREAKTHROUGH CASES BY MONTH OF ONSET AS OF OCTOBER 11, 2021 showed the percent of cases vaccinated for October to date at 9.8%, the highest for any month yet.

This week the table is missing, with this message:

At this time, we are currently working on refining the process for identifying breakthrough infections and reinfections. Once we have finalized this process, we will resume providing tables on breakthrough infections and reinfections.

I'm sure it's nothing. 

 

The big news in the huge Qatar study of 907k is NOT that Pfizer effectiveness against infection fell to only 20% in months five to seven after the second dose

In a huge Qatar study of 907k, Pfizer effectiveness against infection fell to only 20% in months five to seven after the second dose, which is admittedly pretty shocking (but don't get distracted by the shiny object -- boosters!):

The results indicated that vaccine effectiveness against any SARS-CoV-2 infection was 36.8% (95% CI, 33.2-40.2) in the third week after the first dose, peaking at 77.5% (95% CI, 76.4-78.6) in the first month following the second dose. Effectiveness gradually waned thereafter, then dropped after the fourth month to reach about 20% in the fifth through seventh months, according to the researchers.  

“These findings suggest that a large proportion of the vaccinated population could lose its protection against infection in the coming months, perhaps increasing the potential for new epidemic waves,” Chemaitelly and colleagues wrote.

More.

But these claims fly in the face of the Provincetown incident of July 4th, where there was mass infection among fully vaccinated individuals, a plurality of whom had received Pfizer. Loss of protection against infection appears to be coterminous with vaccination "protection", not something which occurs after month seven, for example. The median interval from completion of vaccination to symptom onset in that incident was 3 months, which means half of the infected symptomatic cohort had been recently vaccinated (6-86 days!):

Among fully vaccinated symptomatic persons, the median interval from completion of ≥14 days after the final vaccine dose to symptom onset was 86 days (range = 6–178 days).

 

Despite achieving 50% of population fully vaccinated by July 2 (59.3% one dose), new cases per 

 

million in Qatar nearly doubled by August 22, from 43.14 to 81.36. 

 

Fully vaccinated people can and do spread the virus right away, not six months later after their shots 

 

"wear out".

 

You idiots who attend the Vaccine Church have just helped mint 9 new pharma-billionaires

Pandemic sweeps the nation.

Fascist America under Trump mobilizes pharmaceutical industry to rush vaccines into development, investing billions of dollars in the efforts.

Industry resurrects a discredited drug delivery mechanism and calls it a vaccine. Smelling $$$, it prepares for mass vaccination but doesn't run trials proportionate to that effort, and then cuts off the placebo arm prematurely, making a complete hash of it.

Government gives Emergency Use Authorization, not FDA Approval, to permit these corporations to experiment on the US population during an "emergency".

The corporations, and the government, are exempted from liability.

A fearful population whipped into a hysteria by propaganda paid for with borrowed dollars lines up like sheep to take the vaccine under a new administration but the same old fascism.

Presto! 9 new billionaires:

The 9 new vaccine billionaires, in order of their net worth are: 

1. Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO (worth $4.3 billion)
2. Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech (worth $4 billion)
3. Timothy Springer, an immunologist and founding investor of Moderna (worth $2.2bn)
4. Noubar Afeyan, Moderna’s Chairman (worth $1.9 billion)
5. Juan Lopez-Belmonte, Chairman of ROVI, a company with a deal to manufacture and package the Moderna vaccine (worth $1.8 billion)
6. Robert Langer, a scientist and founding investor in Moderna (worth $1.6 billion)
7. Zhu Tao, co-founder and chief scientific officer at CanSino Biologics (worth $1.3 billion)
8. Qiu Dongxu, co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics (worth $1.2)
9. Mao Huihua, also co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics (worth $1 billion)

			The 8 vaccine billionaires who saw their wealth increase are: Name Role/description $ billions 2021 $ billions 2020 Jiang Rensheng & family Chair, Zhifei Biological products $ 24.40 $ 7.60 Cyrus Poonawalla Founder, Serum Institute of India $ 12.70 $ 8.20 Tse Ping Sinopharm $ 8.90 $ 7.30 Wu Guanjiang Co-founder, Zhifei Biological products $ 5.10 $ 1.80 Thomas Struengmann & family Portfolio includes Germany's BioNTech and Uruguay's Mega Pharma $ 11.00 $ 9.60 Andreas Struengmann & family Portfolio includes Germany's BioNTech and Uruguay's Mega Pharma $ 11.00 $ 9.60 Pankaj Patel Controls listed company Cadila Healthcare. The company now manufactures drugs to treat Covid-19 such as Remdesivir from Gilead. Its Covid-19 vaccine, ZyCoV-D, is undergoing clinical trials. $ 5.00 $ 2.90 Patrick Soon-Shiong ImmunityBio - selected for the US federal government's "Operation Warp Speed" to help quickly develop a Covid-19 vaccine. $ 7.50 $ 6.40

Nigeria, Kenya and Angola, all of which have widely used ivermectin for years against parasitical disease, all have enviable COVID records compared with their similarly sized counterparts Brazil, Spain and Peru

 

 

The constant drumbeat in the US is how coronavirus hurts people of color proportionally more than it does whites, when these African countries which widely prescribe ivermectin have done astoundingly better than their counterpart countries by population in the West, as shown in these case graphs. And Nigeria has the added disadvantage of the three comparisons of being far more densely populated than Brazil but Brazil is 2nd worst in the world for COVID deaths.

Deaths

Brazil v Nigeria: 295k v 2k

Spain v Kenya: 74k v 2k

Peru v Angola: 50k v 0.5k

Examples of US States back-filling death data from COVID-19 in recent days

Data from the following dates looks anomalous in the graphs, way out of proportion to daily experience. This has been a common phenomenon throughout the pandemic. It just sticks out more now. These aren't deaths all actually occurring on the dates indicated. I suspect that with the general decline in cases and deaths, states are both catching up on death investigations as well as finding this to be an opportune time to update the data. But in some states, like Missouri, the practice seems to be quite habitual.

Minnesota: 140 (Mar 9)

Kansas:        73 (Mar 3)

Oklahoma: 167 (Mar 9)

Missouri:    105 (Mar 9)

                   163 (Mar 3)

Virginia:     383 (Mar 3, the crescendo of 12 straight such days)

Ohio:          160 (Mar 9)

                   752 (Mar 5)

Daily new deaths nationwide are averaging 1,597 per day in the first 9 days of March. Sustained over the course of the month that would lead to fewer than 50,000 deaths and make March at the worst the 5th worst month for new deaths.

Daily new cases are averaging 62,914 per day. That would lead to 1.95 million cases if sustained over the whole month and make it at the worst the 5th worst for new cases.

About 18.4% of the population 18 and over has received at least one dose of a vaccine through March 9th. That is roughly 46 million people. That should add big momentum to the case declines, and eventually to the deaths. 

Fred Upton, Republican chucklehead, MI-6, waits until the very last hours of the Trump administration to declare: "But it is time to say: Enough is enough”

What courage! What principle! What restraint!

Upton joined nine other Republicans in the US House, including my own freshman congressman Peter Meijer, Republican chucklehead, MI-3, and all the Democrats, 222 of them, to impeach Trump a second time 232-197. Four Republicans did not vote.

The roll call is here. Upton is quoted here.

Upton, 67, has spent his life as a useless heir to a Whirlpool fortune estimated under $10 million. Once an aspiring journalist with a B.A. in journalism, instead he became a staffer to the libertarian Republican Representative David Stockman in the late 1970s and followed him to OMB under Reagan in the early 1980s. He first ran for Congress in 1986, eleven years after graduating from the U of M. He has been a congressional pest ever since, aren't they all?, who has inflicted on the American people such things as lightbulb bans, eventually styling himself as a moderate.

Meijer, now 33, is embarking on a similar trajectory, but with a gappy resume. Reportedly worth $50 million from the Meijer grocery store chain, Meijer has landed in Congress also after a decade of searching for himself.

Meijer got in to West Point but ignominiously dropped out after one year, became an Army Reservist, and went to Columbia in 2008 where he salvaged himself with a B.A. in anthropology by 2012. He interrupted this period at Columbia with service in Iraq in 2010-2011 as a sergeant. Post graduation in 2012 he served with an NGO 2013-2015. He took a wife in 2016, and an MBA from NYU, apparently 2016-2017. Then there was a brief stint in 2018 with Ilitch Holdings of billionaire family fame as an "analyst" which ended in January 2019. When Justin Amash left the Republican Party in July 2019, Meijer announced his candidacy.

Just as Upton took up the occasion of the Capitol attack as a moment of historic gravitas which inspired him to rise to impeach Trump, Meijer similarly has over-dramatized it by relating it to the drama of his "combat" experience as an intelligence advisor in Iraq (insert smirk here). He also laughably pondered out loud the danger those in the order of presidential succession were in from the trespassers on January 6. He reminds one of no one so much as the ex-bartender become US Representative, AOC, who has similarly made it a point to appear distraught and blow everything completely out of proportion to the reality in keeping with her modus operandi everywhere. Think of red-lipsticked Alexandria at the border fence a while ago, clad in white, head in her hands, weeping, sporting her $600 wristwatch.

The lefty Michael Tracey has framed such over-the-top demonstrativeness as "unhinged threat inflation" in recent days, which is exactly what we're being subjected to for demagogic purposes. The manipulation of the American people is nothing new, it's just that these young people are probably less aware of it as a technique than they are themselves victims and mimickers of the technique.

No so with Upton. He is the old hand who is too grown up and knowing for this, who knows just when to say just enough in order to receive huzzahs as a statesman instead of the harangues for the seat-warmer he is in reality. 

Somehow the American people are content to let such people put us $28 trillion in debt. We chuckleheads have the chuckleheads we deserve.

Things to remember from the week that was, Sep 19-26, 2020, and none of it is about COVID-19

Democrat Senator Chucky Schumer tweeted on Feb 22, 2016: Attn GOP: Senate has confirmed 17 #SCOTUS justices in presidential election years. #DoYourJob.

But now that they're about to do just that, he's saying Ruth Bader Ginsburg "must be turning over in her grave up in heaven". RBG is actually on ice right now, until her burial this week at Arlington. The Senate Minority Leader, like a lot of Democrats, has problems with spatial, temporal, dimensional and proportional imagination, not to mention the American idiom.  

Democrat Senator Harry Reid tweeted on Nov 21, 2013: Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to consider filibuster reform. It had to be done.

In 2013, Reid was then asked if he was worried the GOP could change the filibuster on #SCOTUS, too. His response: "Let 'em do it".

So Mitch McConnell did, sooner than Reid was imagining.

The cannibal Reza Aslan was so hungry for human BBQ he called for the whole thing to be burned down if the GOP replaced RBG, who died at home and "lied in state" according to NBC News. That's one way of putting it. Democrats threatened riots if they didn't get their way, like that was something new.

Like the George Floyd protests which were mostly peaceful, except for the $1-$2 billion in damages caused so far, most of the fires out west recently have been wild except for at least four major ones caused by 13 people arrested for arson.

Ann Coulter tweeted that Amy Coney Barrett would be a "disastrous pick" for the Supreme Court because Barrett has stated that her Catholicism would require her to recuse herself on e.g. immigration and death penalty cases. Yes, what are we paying you for? Not to recuse yourself but actually to issue opinions. Plus it would set a terrible precedent for an appointee to add to the prohibition on religious tests such a prohibition of religion itself from the public square, as if religion has no legitimate contribution to make to our public life. 

This must come as quite a shock to the Catholic integralists of the "right" who seek an explicit Catholic hegemony over the Americas, because Amy is not their man, so to speak. It's probably more disappointing to such Catholics than to the millions of US Protestants who still don't have one justice on the court, completely dominated by Catholics and Jews as it is, even though Protestants still constitute the largest, though splintered, Christian group in America.

Ann Coulter also said Trump would lose if he picked Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy of RBG. I say, only if they let her talk in public. The woman's a bot. And a Karenbot to boot. I don't think she's going drinking with Brett Kavanaugh.

The New York Times is playing fast and loose with its own so-called 1619 Project, stealth-editing-out its claims that the "true founding" of America was in 1619, not 1776, after taking sustained in-coming from critics about it.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is in re-election trouble according to the polling. The guy flaps his gums about many things and so gets caught flipping and flopping quite a bit, which apparently is wearing thin down there.

Democrats like David Axelrod are basing many of their arguments for and against everything these days on what has the "popular vote" and what doesn't, saying things which don't have the popular vote create a tyranny of the minority.

In a republic like America the popular vote has always been subsidiary in order to prevent the tyranny of the majority. Representation in a republic means that you can have a voice to persuade, not a guarantee that you can get your way and impose. But rather than argue the principle head on, of course, they'd rather assert the claim that the majority wants this, the majority hates that, is what counts, as if all the republican institutions and the republican framework itself have no legitimacy any longer, almost as if they don't even exist. This is the ideological habit of mind in action: Denial of reality.

The reality is Trump won in 2016. His position in the Senate strengthened in 2018 and the impeachment trial failed in 2020, which means the voters have already expressed their assent to the president's prerogative to make judicial appointments and to Republicans' Senate role in approving or disapproving of those appointments.

The filibuster issue, however, is a fraught matter.

Some are saying about the issue of filling the current Supreme Court vacancy that the Court's legitimacy is on the line. Many of us already thought the Court lost its legitimacy in 1973 in Roe v Wade. We thought that again in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas. We thought that again in 2012 in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. We thought that again in 2013 in United States v Windsor. We thought that again in 2015 in Obergefell v Hodges. We don't think that in 2020 per se, but I mean, look at the thing. It's a mess. Liberals are only upset because for the first time in decades their ability to impose their undemocratic will on the American people is in jeopardy.

Meanwhile it's good to remember in the first place that RBG was appointed to the Supreme Court by a president who received just 43% of the popular vote. Talk about a tyranny of the minority, eh David Assholerod?

Speaking of minorities, RBG had just one black clerk in all those years from 1993-2020. A Jew practicing tokenism? I'm shocked. She was also a eugenicist, like the Nazis: "at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."

Oh really? 

In 2014 RBG told Reuters she wasn't going to retire because she didn't trust Obama to appoint a true liberal like herself to replace her, but she thought rather that he would appoint a compromise candidate. RBG must have reckoned in 2014 that Hillary would win in 2016, allowing her to retire safely knowing HRC would appoint another true liberal. Says a lot about RBG, but also about Obama, who by the end of 2009 had already alienated the far left. Yet by 2016 the far left supported Bernie, not Hillary.

And they say the Republicans are cracking up. The Democrats haven't finished cracking up.

We learned this last week that in April the USPS and HHS were prepared to distribute 650 million face masks to Americans but that never happened because the Trump administration didn't want to cause a panic. Like we hadn't panicked already.

Senator Chuck Grassley used Twitter to identify the numbers on a tagged pidgin he found dead on his farm. Thank you, Chuck.

Video of RBG warning against court-packing emerged, but you probably won't see that.

As recently as July Ann Coulter was hashtagging #DefeatMcConnell in support of his Democrat challenger in Kentucky. In September she was appealing to McConnell to talk up someone other than Amy Coney Barrett to Trump.

Well make up your mind, lady.

In a September Quinnipiac poll McConnell has a comfortable 12 point lead and appears headed to another term in the Senate representing the Bluegrass State. They should change that to Badass State, in honor of Cocaine Mitch.

McConnell did join Republicans in voting 96-3 to confirm RBG in 1993.

Sad!

In Minneapolis a charter amendment to defund the police failed to get on the ballot. Crime is up dramatically in the wake of the riots . . . because police are afraid they'll be prosecuted for doing their jobs. Maybe next year the reality will sink in: George Floyd wasn't "killed by the police". He was killed by an overdose of illegal drugs he took.

In Seattle the Seattle Times is lying about why 126 businesses have closed downtown. The paper says it's due to COVID when it's really due to the rioters. Looted businesses are boarded up everywhere as law and order has broken down and riff raff own the streets. Who would shop there now?

"Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" has been trending but will be replaced soon by "no evidence of meaningful fraud" in the fall elections. Analysis that's a little bit pregnant from the Mother of Idiots, the media.

After ~17 weeks of $600 federal unemployment checks, a Trump executive order has resulted in follow-up checks for $300 for six weeks. Democrats filibustered a Republican relief bill for the unemployed in the Senate which would have made that superfluous. Another opportunity to make Trump appear small, squandered.

The stock market in the 20 years since the August 2000 peak has underperformed the previous 20 years by almost 68%, so No, this is not a bull market.

Joe Biden said 200 million have died from COVID so far, which makes it a good thing hundreds of millions of Americans in 57 states have Obamacare now. In 1991 he said that he'd probably be dead by 2020. Just pointing out that there's still time . . .

Not to be outdone, Kamala Harris on Friday night said 2Pac is the best rapper alive. This is the second time she's pandered on 2Pac, who was shot and killed in 1996.

Glenn Beck wants 1 billion Americans. We want fewer Glenn Becks.

The Chicoms, who have over 1 billion Chinese, are imposing Xi Jinping thought on private businesses and sending warplanes to buzz Taiwan.

We learned Hunter Biden got $3.5 million from a Putin stooge, but it's still "Trump-Russia!" 24/7.

Robert Curry pointed out that John Locke 'had made what philosophers call a “category mistake.” Property is alienable; unalienable rights are not property'. So among the unalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not to be thought of as property of which you can be deprived.

We were reminded that in late August Hillary urged Biden not to accept the election result under any circumstances. Well, if Trump wins and stays in the White House, Trump won't be wrong, but Hillary already is.

An article attempting to tout the benefits of the 2017 tax bill for the middle class contained this unfortunate line: "The average tax liability of millionaires was reduced by roughly $54,000 between 2017 and 2018", which way overtops the 2018 median wage of $32,838.05, meaning your average millionaire saved a minimum of $21,000 more than half the country's workers make in a year.

If we're going to have a limitation on SCOTUS power by limiting the terms of Supreme Court justices, it had better include limitations on House and Senate power, too, by limiting their terms of office. This hamstringing of the judiciary is in the service of the present Legislative Tyranny, where representatives and senators keep seats warm forever. It is a devious end run aimed really at the executive, which appoints the judiciary, to further weaken it.

Think about it. In 1929 the Congress grabbed power by stopping growth of the US House and limiting it to its then 435 members. In 1947 the Congress grabbed power by limiting the president to two terms. In 2020 Congress wants to limit the term of SCOTUS justices to 18 years.

The Congress does a lot of limiting, except of itself.

We have $27 trillion in debt for crying out loud! Congress has picked our pockets, our children's pockets, and the pockets to the third and fourth generation of them that hate the government of the United States. Debt is servitude. Debt is slavery. Debt is tyranny. And that debt is the secret of the Legislative Tyranny's success.

A tyranny of 218.

Brutus tried to warn us in 1787:

[I]n reality there will be no part of the people represented, but the rich, even in that branch of the legislature, which is called the democratic. — The well born, and highest orders in life, as they term themselves, will be ignorant of the sentiments of the midling class of citizens, strangers to their ability, wants, and difficulties, and void of sympathy, and fellow feeling. This branch of the legislature will not only be an imperfect representation, but there will be no security in so small a body, against bribery, and corruption — It will consist at first, of sixty-five, and can never exceed one for every thirty thousand inhabitants; a majority of these, that is, thirty-three, are a quorum, and a majority of which, or seventeen, may pass any law — so that twenty-five men, will have the power to give away all the property of the citizens of these states — what security therefore can there be for the people, where their liberties and property are at the disposal of so few men?

It will literally be a government in the hands of the few to oppress and plunder the many. You may conclude with a great degree of certainty, that it, like all others of a similar nature, will be managed by influence and corruption, and that the period is not far distant, when this will be the case, if it should be adopted; for even now there are some among us, whose characters stand high in the public estimation, and who have had a principal agency in framing this constitution, who do not scruple to say, that this is the only practicable mode of governing a people, who think with that degree of freedom which the Americans do — this government will have in their gift a vast number of offices of great honor and emolument. The members of the legislature are not excluded from appointments; and twenty-five of them, as the case may be, being secured, any measure may be carried.

The rulers of this country must be composed of very different materials from those of any other, of which history gives us any account, if the majority of the legislature are not, before many years, entirely at the devotion of the executive — and these states will soon be under the absolute domination of one, or a few, with the fallacious appearance of being governed by men of their own election.

The more I reflect on this subject, the more firmly am I persuaded, that the representation is merely nominal — a mere burlesque; and that no security is provided against corruption and undue influence. No free people on earth, who have elected persons to legislate for them, ever reposed that confidence in so small a number. The British house of commons consists of five hundred and fifty-eight members; the number of inhabitants in Great-Britain, is computed at eight millions — this gives one member for a little more than fourteen thousand, which exceeds double the proportion this country can ever have: and yet we require a larger representation in proportion to our numbers, than Great-Britain, because this country is much more extensive, and differs more in its productions, interests, manners, and habits. The democratic branch of the legislatures of the several states in the union consists, I believe at present, of near two thousand; and this number was not thought too large for the security of liberty by the framers of our state constitutions: some of the states may have erred in this respect, but the difference between two thousand, and sixty-five, is so very great, that it will bear no comparison.

Oh. So now it's BHLM, huh? What about the Asians? BHALM? How about BLAHM instead (goes with all the noise they make while rioting, right)? Native Americans? BHANALM? NAHBALM? (heh, rhymes with napalm)

So all lives do matter, unless they're white. Got it, chief. Got it, jefe. Got it chīfu. Got it kungo.

Here:

"Strikers are demanding sweeping action by corporations and government to confront systemic racism and economic inequality that limits mobility and career advancement for many Black and Hispanic workers, who make up a disproportionate number of those earning less than a living wage."

Johns Hopkins University shows 130,007 US deaths from coronavirus just minutes ago

On Jun 22 I estimated we'd see 130k by about Jul 15, so we are nine days early.

So it took 14 days to add another 10k vs. 15 days from 110k to 120k in this data set.

The problem is we had big death data dumps both on Jun 25 and Jun 30, adding 3,766 old deaths from the past which had never been counted in the totals.

I think that sped up the climb unrepresentatively.

New deaths are actually accumulating at a slower pace.

In the 15 worst states for coronavirus deaths, average daily new deaths counted from the very beginning of the pandemic totaled 852 for those 15 states on Sat Jun 27, and declined to 828 on Sat Jul 4. That includes all those data dumps, too.

We've observed four days recently where total US new deaths have been below 300, levels we haven't seen since late March just as the pandemic was kicking into high gear:

Jun 21 257

Jun 28 270

Jul 04 264

Jul 05 262.

With case counts rapidly rising in Florida, Texas, California, Arizona and many other places in the south, it is feared we'll be seeing a rise in deaths in coming weeks. We'll have to see. Since such a high proportion of deaths occurred in nursing and assisted living facilities in the north, it is difficult to say if we'll experience the same thing in the south. They've had time to learn.

With new deaths actually hitting new lows, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Stay away from crowds, especially in enclosed spaces, keep your distance and wear a mask. It's easy if you try.