Thursday, September 5, 2019
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
New summer "Time of Use" rate coming for millions of Michigan customers of Consumers Energy in 2020 between 2pm and 7pm Monday through Friday: Penalty electricity rate rises 13.7% over summer 2019 penalty rate
The smart meter installation roll-out everywhere in recent years now affords the utility the ability to measure usage of each customer for the designated five hour period. In future customers are promised that ability also, in order to monitor their own usage hour by hour, through an online dashboard for their accounts.
Presently penalty electric rates are imposed in the summers for all use above 600 kWh without regard to time of day. Once you hit the threshold, you pay at a higher rate for the electricity. In my case that usually happens by day 20 of the month. This new way eliminates the 600 kWh threshold. Use energy during the five hour window on day one and you pay the penalty rate, period.
Some will be able to game this because they aren't home during the day anyway. For the rest of us, however, it will be a different story, shifting energy use to the mornings before 2pm and the evenings after 7pm, or to weekends, and perhaps turning off the A/C and shifting activities to the basement to beat the heat.
August 2019 climate update for Grand Rapids, Michigan
August 2019 climate update for Grand Rapids, Michigan
Max temp 89, mean 92
Min temp 49, mean 47
Av temp 70.7, mean 70.2
Precip 3.41, mean 3.07
HDD 8, mean 19
CDD 193, mean 189
Using cooling degree days, the month was about 2.1% warmer than normal, going back to the beginning of the record, failing to make even 48% of the August record, which is 404. Average temp was less than 1% warmer than normal. Max temp lagged the mean while min temp exceeded the mean. In other words, 'twere a wee bit warmer sleeping than normal.
IBD poll has Biden, Sanders, Warren and Harris all beating Trump in 2020
Elizabeth Warren Narrows Joe Biden Lead Among Democrats: IBD/TIPP Poll:
In a head-to-head 2020 election contest of Biden vs. Trump, the
IBD/TIPP Poll found a 54%-42% advantage for Biden. A month earlier, Biden led Trump by 13 points. Sanders had a narrow 49%-45% edge over Trump, while Warren and Harris had slimmer 49%-46% leads.
Independents preferred Biden vs. Trump, 55%-37%. Warren edges Trump
with independents, 47%-45%, while Sanders has a 51%-42% advantage.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Matt Taibbi spends 35 minutes talking about Trump's appeal in 2016 with Bernie leftist R. J. Eskow, never once mentioning illegal immigration
The enthusiasm for Trump from the time he announced in mid-2015 until August 2016 revolved around the illegal immigration issue, and these guys want it to be about anything but.
If Democrats had any brains they'd run on Trump's Issue Numero Uno because Trump has miserably failed to deliver on it, but Democrats have no brains.
Replacing that enthusiasm has been Trump's biggest problem, and its absence will spell the difference between victory and defeat in Election 2020.
Replacing that enthusiasm has been Trump's biggest problem, and its absence will spell the difference between victory and defeat in Election 2020.
Gold looks good compared to negative-yielding bonds because its 0% yield plus the cost of holding it can still be less
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The gold break-out began in May with an average price of about $1284 the ounce. Yesterday's London PM Fix was nearly $1526, to put gold up almost 19% over the last three months.
Monday, September 2, 2019
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Canadian court dismisses Michael Mann's libel claim with prejudice, Mann withholds his climate data to this day
A prominent skeptical climate scientist in Canada named Tim Ball accused Mann of fraud in generating the Hockey Stick graph. The famous quote, from a February 2011 interview of Ball, was “Michael Mann should be in the State Pen, not Penn State.” In March 2011, Mann sued Ball for libel, focusing on that quote, in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver. Here is a copy of the Complaint. (Note: In British Columbia, the Supreme Court is not the highest appellate court, but rather the trial-level court for larger cases.) The case then essentially disappeared into limbo for eight plus years. But on Friday, August 23, the British Columbia court dismissed Mann’s claim with prejudice, and also awarded court costs to Ball. As far as I can determine, this was an oral ruling, and no written judgment nor transcript of the ruling yet exists. I have asked Ball to send them along as soon as they exist.
The story of Ball’s vindication, and of Mann’s shame, is a somewhat long one, and turns on Mann’s flat refusal to share publicly the data and methodology by which he constructed the Hockey Stick graph. In about 2003 a very talented Canadian mathematician named Steve McIntyre began an effort to replicate the Mann/Bradley/Hughes work. McIntyre started with a request to Mann to provide the underlying data and methodologies (computer programming) that generated the graph. To his surprise, McIntyre was met not with prompt compliance (which would be the sine qua non of actual science) but rather with hostility and evasion. McIntyre started a blog called Climate Audit and began writing lengthy posts about his extensive and unsuccessful efforts to reconstruct the Hockey Stick. Although McIntyre never completely succeeded in perfectly reconstructing the Hockey Stick, over time he gradually established that Mann et al. had adopted a complex methodology that selectively emphasized certain temperature proxies over others in order to reverse-engineer the "shaft" of the stick to get a pre-determined desired outcome.
Whenever very short rates start to pay as much or more than the longest rate, recession follows in short order
The 3-month Treasury now pays more than the 30-year in the last four days of August 2019.
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Friday, August 30, 2019
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Trump's in denial when he says we're great again, Democrats are in denial saying we were never great in the first place
Flashback to one year ago this month when Andrew Cuomo, Democrat Governer of New York, said it plainly.
Both sides are in denial, which is one reason why little is changing for the better.
Back when America was great, Q2 real GDP used to average 4.4%, under Trump it averages 2.6%
From 1982 to 2000, coincident with the great Reagan bull market in stocks, the average report of real GDP for the second quarter was 4.4%.
Trump was going to make America like that again.
At an average report of 2.6% so far, he has no grounds for saying America is back, let alone greater than ever before. He's doing better than Obama at 2.3%, but that's about it.
The economy shrank dramatically after 2000, and no one has figured out how to fix it.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
US crude oil production in 2019 is at record high levels never before experienced in the post-war
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all time high of 12162 BBL/D/1K in April of 2019 |
U.S. Oil Production Hits 12 Million Barrels a Day for First Time
YouTube's Susan Wojcicki wins Hypocrite of the Year Award: Purges Vdare et alia to please ADL, VERY NEXT DAY says controversial and even offensive content OK on platform
Martin Luther wrote "Against the Jews and their Lies" for a reason.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
US on its way to becoming a net exporter of oil, dominating global oil market and securing the dollar as global reserve currency
Note to Chris Irons: This is not bullish for gold.
The US is about to send a lot more oil into an already oversupplied world market:
“It will be 4 million barrels a day by six or eight months. Four million barrels a day is a lot bigger than the North Sea as a whole. That crude oil is going to go everywhere. It goes to Asia, Europe, to India,” said Edward Morse, Citigroup global head of commodities research. “If the U.S. gets to 6 million barrels a day in three years, it will be hands-down the world benchmark.” ...
“Add on the amount of petroleum products that are exported and add on the amount of natural gas that is exported. The U.S. becomes the biggest hub for energy trading in the world,” said Morse. “It has dramatic implications for the U.S. dollar.”Morse notes there are those who doubt the dollar’s future as the global reserve currency. But in a scenario where the U.S. grows into an energy powerhouse, “the dollar becomes more entrenched.”The U.S. had been the world’s dominant oil producer, prior to World War II. “This will be back to the future for the Gulf Coast,” said Daniel Yergin, IHS Markit Vice Chairman. Yergin said the U.S. would not have had the opportunity to increase production as much, were the law not changed in 2015 to allow for U.S. oil exports.
Biden net favorability in Aug 2019 down 42% since Jan, Beto -41%, Clobber-You-With-A-Binder -40% and Sanders -18%
The fake Indian is now tops among Democrats, the George McGovern for our times.
Chotiner interviews Wax in The New Yorker, but it couldn't possibly be that she was sent to make WASPs look bad just in time for you know what, no, no way
C'mon, it's election season, people, and the narrative-building is well underway.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Meanwhile in New Hampshire, future president Joe Biden says Vermont is very beautiful
Which I'm sure will really help him in the New Hampshire primary.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Black Dems in PA admit revulsion for Hillary made them not vote in 2016
More than a dozen African Americans who said they usually vote Democratic - but didn't vote at all in 2016 - blamed unease with Clinton's candidacy. They also expressed support for Biden, frequently citing his past as Obama's vice president as a major positive, and occasionally others. ... Jason Saffore, 43, an African American Democrat working in Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market, said he couldn't bring himself to vote for Clinton in 2016 and so didn't vote at all. Next year, he said, will be different. "The guy we have in office now is not serving our country and it's time for a change," he said, as he arranged a stack of onions in a crate. "We need a president who is for all Americans. Last time I didn't really care for the Democratic field at all, so I stayed out of the mix. I think a lot of people did."
The growth in retail was a one-off in late 2017, early 2018, and the long term trend remains down
At 1.6% year over year in July 2019, we're still nowhere near the high 2s of last year which actually still disappoint because those failed to match previous more robust growth spurts even under Obama.
The Trump tax cuts went to the wrong folks. Too bad they weren't really his, but his Republican handlers'. Think of them as NeverTrump's revenge: "We'll sandbag this guy with tax cuts which will help our friends but hurt his re-election chances".
The consumer is running on empty and emptier.
I'll tell you exactly what would have happened, Joe
Obama would have been buried, and beer sales would have gone through the roof from all the people celebrating and filling up to piss on his grave, that's what would have happened.
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