Sunday, November 8, 2020

Saturday, November 7, 2020

LOL good night

 


Nevada has been called for Biden, but he's still short of 270

 


It's pretty funny how the media call the race for Biden Saturday morning after the Supremes intervene in Pennsylvania Friday night

 Meanwhile Pennsylvania ain't called nothin'.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-defeats-trump-win-white-house-nbc-news-projects-n1246912

https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/110620zr_g31i.pdf


Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Monday, November 2, 2020

Green New Deal in the hands of Democrats is a dagger aimed at the heart of the middle class

 Joel Kotkin here in The New York Post:

If these Democrats win both houses of Congress as well as the White House, things could get far worse for the already beleaguered middle class, which has been rocked by the pandemic, with an estimated 100,000 small firms going out of business. Particularly hard-hit by the recent urban unrest are inner city and minority businesses. ...

If the Democrats win on Election Day, the future for the middle class could be bleak. As a lifelong Democrat, this is not easy to write, but most of the party’s initiatives — such as the Green New Deal — are directly harmful to those in the middle and working classes, who’d be forced to face increased housing and energy prices and fewer upwardly mobile jobs in industries like manufacturing.

Sunday, November 1, 2020

US COVID-19 daily new deaths hit their lowest level since the Apr peak, measured monthly, in Oct, even lower than in June

COVID-19 deaths per day in the USA, monthly, as reported:

Mar    138
Apr  1,961
May 1,330
Jun     769
Jul      851
Aug    955
Sep    779
Oct     763.

The Oct 2020 rate would still exact a heavy toll if sustained over 365 days, 278,495 deaths. 

COVID-19 deaths in 2020 at 230k are already the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease deaths at 647,457 and cancer deaths at 599,108 in 2017.

The Oct 2020 rate shows that the lockdowns, even if extended too long in some places, provided the medical community with valuable breathing room in which to learn how to improve survivability and deliver it, in combination with social distancing, mask-wearing, testing, and tracing.


Remember, 1 year ago California Democrats preferred Pocahonky for president over their own Senator Kamala Harris by 3 to 1

 

Which is why Kamala dropped out on Dec 3, just days after this poll was released. 

Saturday, October 31, 2020

US COVID-19 deaths have crossed the 230k mark today in the Johns Hopkins data

 Don't let Joe Biden and Kamala Harris confuse you. There aren't 220 million dead. There aren't 120 million dead. There aren't 210 million dead.

230 thousand. Today.






Friday, October 30, 2020

Fake News from Drudge vs. Trump reminds me of Fake News from Rush Limbaugh for Trump: "Economy in same place as Great Recession..."

 Anyone with any brains can see that the economy is about where it was at the beginning of 2019, not where it was in 2009, at least on paper.

Rush was telling us for months that businesses were being destroyed by the lockdowns and that they would not recover. Now he's telling us "we can survive a massive unknown hit like this thing by the coronavirus" and calling for "even more stimulus", i.e. what Democrats always call for, spending money we don't have, which is anything but conservatism from "The Big Voice on the Right".

The entire GOP signed off on the massive deficit spending to purchase this V-shaped recovery Drudge doesn't want to recognize, but 8.4 million still don't have the full time work they had just a year ago. That's a massive hit which will take years to recover. As in 2009, however, older workers who lost their full time jobs this time around won't recover them either. Full time will recover only as population grows. 

Neither Drudge nor Rush Limbaugh think too much of the intelligence of their patrons. Their understanding is thimble-deep.

But neither do Democrats nor Republicans. They go into panic mode to preserve as much of the status quo as possible with bailout gimmicks, same as ever. And when the bailouts end, the dispossessed will face what they always face: disillusionment. 

Sad!





Trump v Biden has tightened dramatically

 Internal polls reported by both the Meijer campaign and the Scholten campaign in Michigan district 03 from September show Biden +2 in the district represented by Justin Amash.

Rasmussen has been publishing daily national polls since Monday, with Trump and Biden effectively tied:

Monday Trump +1
Tuesday Biden +2
Wednesday Trump +1
Thursday Biden +1.

Rasmussen's first weekly national poll from July 12 had Biden +10.

Real Clear Politics just moved Michigan back into "toss-up" on the strength of a Trafalgar poll showing Trump +2 in the state.

Biden and Obama are scheduled to appear together in Michigan on Saturday, three days before the election.

It's a business trip.


Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Rush Limbaugh lies about COVID-19 right up to the bitter end

 Today, here:

Even with flu shots, the number of people who die every flu season is stunning. It is shockingly high. It’s greater numbers than people are dying of COVID. 

It is shocking, really. The Wuhan virus is the third leading cause of death in the US in 2020, 5.7 times worse than the flu, and there's Rush telling his listeners flu deaths are worse.



Sunday, October 25, 2020

Things noteworthy from my reading October 17-24

 US wildfires may have burned approaching 8 million acres by now in 2020 but tens of millions of acres used to burn in this country annually before World War II, especially in the late 1920s and early 1930s when it was much warmer in the US.













Jim Lee, a pollster with Susquehanna Polling and Research, said "There are a lot of voters out there that don't want to admit they are voting for a guy that has been called a racist, that submerged Trump factor is very real. I don't see this a blue wave. I don't see Biden winning in the states Trump carried in 2016."

Joe Biden, who said he is the Democrat Party now, said after the debate “No one is going to build another oil or gas-fired electric plant." Which is complete lunacy. California has power shut-offs during the wildfires because of its war on oil and natural gas generating capacity. It is dependent on power imported from other states. Renewables can't meet demand when temperatures are too hot, when the wind dies, and when the sun goes down. Biden will turn all of America into California. Who are we going to buy it from then? Mexico?!

Sen. Murkowski of Alaska will vote FOR Judge Barrett.

BLM rioters blocked traffic in San Bernardino CA and keyed cars trying to get through. Left is, in the final analysis, lack of respect for property, including intellectual property, the notional property shared by the citizens and represented e.g. in statuary. By tearing down statues everywhere they declare that they are our enemies. We should treat them as such.

Twitter locked the account of The New York Post on Oct 14 in response to tweets revealing Hunter Biden's emails which Twitter didn't like. Democracy dies in darkness, eh WaPo? One of Hunter's alleged emails said "Hunter to hold 10% of the equity for The Big Guy." A Hunter Biden business associate surfaced who contradicted The Big Guy by claiming he discussed a lot of the business with him.

Internal polling by Hillary Scholten (D) and Peter Meijer (R) in Michigan District 03 agreed that Hunter Biden's Big Guy is ahead by 2 points in this heavily Republican district. Quite the thing that. Of course, they disagree about which of the two of them, Scholten or Meijer, is going to win Justin Amash's seat. Fear of a blue wave in Michigan is not misplaced. I'm hearing lowly Republican county office holders campaign on radio. Can't say I've EVER heard that before. Smells like fear to me.

A liberal pastor in Michigan who has been trying since 2015 to steer his conservative parishioners away from Trump has thrown in the towel and resigned, exasperated that they won't listen.

In Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly is trying to unseat Republican Martha McSally in the US Senate race. Someone floated a yearbook photo of someone dressed as a Nazi, claiming it is Kelly. Kelly campaign denies it. AZ Central found a guy named Ed who claimed to be in the photo and to know that the Nazi was definitely not Kelly. Ed must know who the Nazi is, but dang, AZ Central didn't go there.

Meanwhile, same thing at CNN. Ms. Amanpour informed a GOP official it's not CNN's job to investigate the Hunter Biden laptop affair. No kidding. She said that's the GOP's job, and CNN is not going to help them. CNN is an arm of the Democrat Party.

Trump mentioned in the debate that wind turbines kill a lot of birds and are bad for that reason. The New York Times responded that wasn't true because house cats kill far more birds than turbines do.

I think I've detected a pattern from AZ Central to CNN to NYT.

Trump in his first term isn't going to come anywhere close to appointing as many judges as the King, Jimmy Carter, did.

Speaking of Carter, who helped Israel and Egypt make peace, Trump has now presided over the normalization of relations with Israel by Sudan, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates. Quite the feather in his cap.

Republican voter registrations have outpaced Democrat in Pennsylvania over Trump's term as average unemployment in PA fell one full point from 5.4% in 2016 to 4.4% in 2019. In 2018 the average was even lower: 4.3%. COVID wreaked havoc on this record, but will voters blame Trump?

President in waiting, Kamala Harris, said 220 million in the US have died of coronavirus, which should mean fewer votes to count, for sure. In June The Big Guy had said 120 million had already died, but he moved that up to 210 million by early October. cc: TalkingPointsMemo.

The Big Guy predicted only 200,000 more deaths by the end of the year, which comes as quite the relief. The worst is behind us.

Except that the CDC released data showing excess deaths to Oct 3 are running about 90k higher than accounted for by COVID-19 deaths reported so far. In other words, The Big Guy is half way there already!

Young twitter users this week were utterly befuddled in droves by the idea that illegal kids were coming across the southern border on coyotes. One such tweeter is an investment advisor, corporate attorney, and chief deputy whip of the Georgia House Democrats. She said, "How the hell does a coyote bring a whole human across the border?".

Somebody claimed this week that Democrats and Republicans polled about equally reluctant to express openly their political views. Clearly the coyote-perplexed people voting for the Democrat COVID death misoverestimators weren't part of THAT poll.

Santa cancelled his appearance at Macy's for the first time in 160 years because . . . 2020.

But wait, it gets worse than 2020. The Big Guy said in the debate he'd get to zero emissions by 2025. Everyone on Twitter caught it. Democrats excused it saying he meant 2035. But even that is horrifying lunacy. It isn't achievable because most people are like me.

I have a natural gas fireplace, a gas furnace, a gas stove and oven, a gas dryer, a gas water heater, and a gas back-up generator, not to mention 2 pretty old gasoline powered cars. And don't get me started on the power equipment. There's the riding mower, two walk behinds, an edger, a weed whacker, and two snow-blowers, one for light and one for heavy duty. Oh yeah, and a chain saw. All of it is old but works and is well maintained.

The Big Guy wants a buy-back program for AR-15s, which will be cheap compared to a buy-back of all my carbon-emitting equipment. Ain't gonna happen.

Natural gas is cheap and clean, but The Big Guy hates it. The Big Guy has a dagger aimed at all of it, 2025 or 2035 doesn't really matter. America runs on cheap energy, and he aims to make it more expensive. Which will mean only one thing.

America won't run. The only thing keeping industrial production above the water line in this country is the energy sector. Take that away and down the toilet we go.

50 years ago this month guns that the black communist Angela Davis bought were used in the execution of Judge Harold Haley. Davis is a forerunner of today's violent communist Black Lives Matter:"She was acquitted in '72 despite her proven ownership of the murder weapons & a cache of letters she wrote to Jackson in prison expressing her unambivalent solidarity with his commitment to political violence". Davis is also a prominent originator of the idea of systemic racism, a system rigged vs. blacks. "With her blanket dismissal of evidence as irrelevant in trials of (automatically innocent) minority defendants, Ms. Davis indicts the entire American legal system as a rigged farce." It's rigged alright . . . in her favor.

Democrat Kamala Harris argued that people can't afford their health insurance under Democrat Obamacare which was rammed down the people's throats by Democrats and that something must be done about it by electing Democrats again.

And if you don't like that, she'll lock you out like Twitter locked out The New York Post.

The person who died in the Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial got the placebo, not the vaccine.

The Big Guy also echoed Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York this week, who once said "America was never that great".

The Big Guy tweeted: "America was an idea. We've never lived up to it . . .."

The Big Guy also took the endorsement of the Boilermakers Union Local 154 in Pennsylvania, which promptly informed him that they had already endorsed Donald Trump. "Don't try me, pal" was heard in response from the Big Guy according to two clearly disgruntled anonymous sources, one of which sounded Hungarian and the other Polish, who obviously were making this up out of their rancor over The Big Guy calling NATO allies Poland and Hungary "totalitarian" states.

The 80s called. They want their foreign policy back. 

Jeffrey Toobin's one-eyed trouser snake got loose while he was in a Zoom meeting, now known as an erection simulation, and all the ladies saw him stroking the creature, trying to pacify the wayward beast. Toobin apologized to his wife for not including her in the special moment.

Peter Strzok of FBI Trump-Russia Russia Russia! fame is now an adjunct professor at Georgetown. He'll probably find some young chicks there to replace the adulation, and other things, he used to get from Lisa Page. Parents, you have been warned. 

Some asshole pointed out that Trump's point four of America First in 2016 was to "end sanctuary cities".

What a jerk!

US COVID-19 update for Sunday 25 October 2020

Deaths per day in October remain below the lows achieved in June.

COVID-19 deaths per day in the USA, monthly, as reported:

Mar    138
Apr  1,961
May 1,330
Jun     769
Jul      851
Aug    955
Sep    779
Oct     748 (thru 10/24).

The compound daily growth rate measured over 7 days for COVID-19 deaths ticked up 10.6% in the last week from 0.329% to 0.364%, still near the lows but rising.

Click any image to enlarge.
















As cases of COVID-19 have shot up since mid-Sep, hospitalizations are up about 55%.















14 US states show >1k hospitalized for COVID-19 on 10/25. Currently worst hit Texas, shown in the graphs in pink, relative to worst hit ever New York shown in gray, was still a lot worse in the summer than it is now. And improved clinical treatment nationwide has meant fewer deaths.

Rhetoric aside, America is coping better and learning to live with the pandemic.













In California about 71% of cases but only 7% of deaths affect those aged 0-49.

About 30% of cases but 93% of deaths affect those 50 or older.

Younger people should definitely be social distancing and wearing masks around people 50 or older to prevent transmission to them. 

Latinos in California have more cases and deaths than any other ethnicity, by far.

The story is similar in Texas.

Nearly 40% of cases and almost 56% of deaths in Texas affect Latinos, more than for any other ethnicity.

In California it's 61% of cases and 49% of deaths affecting Latinos.







Climate update for KGRR: September 2020

    Climate update for KGRR: September 2020


Everything was sub-mean in September 2020.

Max temp 85, Mean Max 88
Min temp 36, Mean Min 37
Av temp 61.5, Mean av 62.7
Rain 3.07, Mean 3.59
Cooling degree days 36, Mean 76
Heating degree days 133, Mean 134

Cooling degree days to date 829 vs. mean to date 691 puts the summer measuring season, almost over, so far about 26th warmest on record. Whoopdeedoo.

Heating degree days to date (yes, we start measuring in July) 135 vs. mean to date 161. The furnace and the fireplace don't have much work to do yet.


Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Stock market performance under Trump has been good in comparison with his predecessors, but best ever remains Eisenhower by far, followed by Truman


The post-war boom was almost inevitable and had little to do with the individual man and his policies. The income tax code's punitive elements at the time drove money into domestic investment, which received favorable tax treatment.

For America to be great like that again we must punish foreign investment and reward domestic. That's what creates jobs for Americans and expands markets for housing, autos and everything else here at home, with the result that companies make money and stocks do well.

But everyone in both parties, it seems, still want everything for themselves, investing abroad where labor is cheaper and regulation lax.

The only person in politics even remotely open to reversing the status quo remains Trump.

Monday, October 19, 2020

US COVID-19 deaths crossed the 220k mark this evening in the Johns Hopkins data

 


LOL, The Associated Press just redefined "suburban white woman" faster than "sexual preference" became offensive to Crazy Mazie Hirono

 Key descriptors from the LOL story, "Suburban women lead the charge vs. Trump", here:

yoga pants

sneakers

left her Lincoln Aviator idling [climate change for thee but not for me]

Lori Goldman

could not have described the branches of government

white

started her group Fems for Dems in early 2016 [Hillary partisan]

→the stereotype of a suburban woman [uh huh]

She’s hungry because she often doesn’t take the time to eat [see below]

Her knee aches from a replacement surgery six months ago [see below]

Often the houses have Trump flags hanging from the porch rails 

[oops, how'd that get in there?]

“But this is war,” she says, and she considers herself a street fighter

a $2 million house

fancy car

American Express black card that she always loses because she keeps it in her bra

"mansplaining...it’s happened since Adam and Eve"

Sometimes she stands up in the middle of Starbucks and bellows [I'll bet she does].






Sunday, October 11, 2020

US COVID-19 update for 10/11/20

Deaths per day in the first ten days of October have slowed to 733. Extrapolated through the end of the year from Sep 30 that would result in ~272,822 total deaths by 12/31/20:

Mar    138

Apr  1,961

May 1,330

Jun     769

Jul      851

Aug    955

Sep    779

Oct     733 (thru 10/10).

The compound daily growth rate for deaths has ticked down for two months, but for a hiccup just before the official end of summer, to a new low level which may, however, be bottoming (click on images to expand):


Hospitalizations for COVID-19 hit a low at the official end of summer, but are on the rise again to levels comparable to the end of June when this data started to be reported. Keep in mind, however, that Florida did not begin reporting current hospitalizations until 7/11, when it had almost 7k, so the June data in this chart for 47 states is probably underreported by close to that, meaning current levels, though rising from recent lows, remain below June:


This snapshot shows current hospitalizations in Texas (pink), California (blue), and Florida (green) relative to New York (gray). Texas is concerning because it looks like it bottomed and is on the rise again:




 



California, which may be considered a proxy for the whole nation, continues to report high infection numbers among the young but low deaths. 71% of cases have been aged 0-49, but only 7% of deaths are 0-49. The troubling middle: 19% of cases to date there are 50-64, but also 19% of deaths are that age.

The civilian noninstitutional population 50 or older in the United States in Sep 2020 numbers 117.4 million. Those aged 16-49 number 143.3 million.

This has become a protracted conflict and looks to remain so, pitting those who experience only 7% of the deaths against those who experience 93%. The war seems to express itself mostly over Addition (of the facemask), as opposed to Prohibition (of alcohol) from a century ago.

Saturday, October 10, 2020

Just because Congress in 1869 stipulated a Supreme Court of nine doesn't mean Trump must appoint anyone

 Trump would be a fool not to make a Supreme Court appointment, of course, and he has done it, but the executive branch is co-equal and doesn't have an obligation to comply with the act of Congress from 150 years ago by appointing a replacement for RBG to make it nine if it doesn't want to make an appointment for prudential or even political reasons.

The executive can say the court costs too much and for that reason not make the appointment. The executive can say the court hears too few cases to require a ninth justice. The executive can say "eight is enough". Marbury v Madison, perhaps the most consequential decision ever, was decided by a Supreme Court 4-0 with a 6-member court (two were sick at the time). There was no magic odd-numbered formula which was required before that decision was made. No one today as a matter of politics views the decision as illegitimate for that reason, nor because the case was decided by too few members.

And FDR certainly is precedent for saying there were prudential reasons for believing the nine member court was inadequate for the historical moment. Just because he lost in this political quest doesn't mean it was illegitimate.

Consider that FDR wanted to pack the court in 1937 through a bill scheming to swell its numbers because the Supreme Court kept thwarting his New Deal legislation in Congress as unconstitutional from 1933. The Great Depression was a dire moment in American history, requiring, in FDR's mind, one attempt after another to alleviate it, no matter how unprecedented.

The other powers that be thought otherwise.

But eventually and fortuitously one justice on the Supreme Court, named Roberts !!! by the way, actually switched sides to favor a New Deal case pleasing to FDR, which ended up having the odd result of taking the wind out of FDR's court-packing sails.

The March 1937 5-4 decision came to be known for this reason as "the switch in time which saved nine". The court showed that it could, in fact, rule New Deal ideas constitutional. That removed the argument for packing the court, by effect if not by intent. The nine member court was adequate after all.

It's an interesting case showing the power of the Supremes, not just to rule, but to maneuver.

The presidential appointment power is a political matter because the president is elected.

But don't kid yourself that the court absolutely eschews politics when rendering its opinions. Though not politically conservative in nature, a March 1937 ruling upholding innovative, New Deal legislation, ended up preserving the traditional character of the Supreme Court reaching back to just after the Civil War. And it persists to this day.

The founders were genius in this respect, recognizing that political forces are inescapable and must be accepted, accounted for, and balanced in order to prevent a lurch into the absolute tyranny of a single one of the branches of government.

The imperative of the moment is the free exercise of politics within the constitutional framework, not tampering with the framework.

Never forget, one week before Election 2016 Trump was getting creamed in the polls in WI, MI and PA and ended up winning them all

"He's NOT going to retake WI (Clinton +5.7), Michigan (Clinton +6.7), Pennsylvania (Clinton +6), or New Mexico (Clinton +8.5)."

I said at the time, Tuesday Nov 1.

I said that it was dumb for Trump to be spending money in those states. Obviously Trump campaign internal polling must have indicated something quite different.

Today Biden is +5.5 in WI, +6.7 in MI and +7.1 in PA. 


Saturday, October 3, 2020

Election 2016's dirty little secret is that 52% of nonvoters were non-Hispanic whites, a huge untapped reservoir of votes feared by the identity politicians of the left

And Pew Research did its best to lie about them in this study from 2018, saying "nonvoters were more likely to be younger, less educated, less affluent and nonwhite. And nonvoters were much more Democratic".

Pew's own graph and statements show this not to be true.





























Nonvoters were more likely to be white, 52% vs. 46%, and fully 53% of them did not prefer Hillary Clinton in 2016: "37% expressed a preference for Hillary Clinton, 30% for Donald Trump and 9% for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein; 14% preferred another candidate or declined to express a preference". 

The American left fears this potential white vote, which is why it must lie about it, minimize it, drug it, demoralize it, and vilify it.

It is why you hear so much about mythical white supremacists in the news, and mythical violent white militias causing mayhem everywhere, even as media and Democrats deny Antifa is a thing or that BLM is violent. Meanwhile those leftist groups, anarchist and communist, are getting away with inciting and actually causing riots, arson, looting, injury, and murder on a previously unimaginable scale, now approaching a cost to the economy of $2 billion. Their foot soldiers are the half-educated, indoctrinated, young, poor products of America's unionized public schools.

The left demonizes whites in order to neuter them, knowing their deep-seated American cultural propensity for guilt derived from Christianity. It plays on that guilt and perverts it chiefly by outlawing religion in the schools and teaching white responsibility for slavery to your children qua white instead. Its greatest fear is whites who will no longer accept that new religion and that guilt and fight back. And it particularly fears any politician whose specific appeal is to them.

POLITICO knows the name of the game is suppressing Trump's white vote

 From the end of the story, which is intent on doing just that, here:

Even if the result is a margin of victory with noncollege-educated white voters that is smaller than it was four years ago, Trump will almost certainly carry that group. And if he can turn them out in greater numbers, he could shift the electorate toward him in several predominantly white states. Republicans and Democrats alike estimate there are hundreds of thousands of unregistered, noncollege-educated whites in key swing states that Trump could still pick up.

That fight for those voters was on display in Minnesota on Friday, where Trump and Biden appeared not in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs, but in more culturally conservative, northern reaches of the state. Republicans there and in some of the whitest counties in the country say they haven’t seen any falloff for Trump, and many of them suspect that polls are still underrepresenting his support.

Stephanie Soucek, chair of the Republican Party in Wisconsin’s Door County said she sees more Trump signs in her county than she did in 2016. Jack Brill, acting chair of the local Republican Party in Sarasota County, Fla., said “the base in Sarasota County is as strong as ever.”

In Duluth, the target of much attention from the Trump campaign, the city’s former mayor, Gary Doty, acknowledged that the president may have shed some support among some white women because of “the way he presents himself. He’s sometimes crude and rude, and I don’t care for that style.”

However, he said, “I think there’s this silent group of people” who support Trump and will turn out for him.

Doty said that after he endorsed Trump recently, “people that wouldn’t talk to me about politics … after they heard I had supported the Trump ticket, would come say, ‘Hey, I’m for him, too.'"

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Idiot caller from Michigan to Rush Limbaugh doesn't know Michigan's already a red state, claims Trump's $750 IRS payments were fees to file an extension when there are no such fees

LOL, when you file for an extension to file your taxes, it's entirely free. There are no fees. If you suspect you will owe taxes, however, you must make the payment at the time.

Crazy Michigan woman thinks she's a tax expert when even the IRS can't seem to decide how to finish its audit of Trump.

The New York Times article says Trump filed extensions to file and made various tax payments. He made payments totaling $5.2 million for the two years in question, 2016 and 2017, $1 million when he filed for an extension in 2016 and $4.2 million when he filed for an extension in 2017. His accountants carved out a nominal tax liability of $750 for each year when actually filing the two returns, on the assumption that the $5.2 million would be construed by the IRS as overpayments pending resolution of the claims made in the returns. Those moneys would then constitute pre-payment carry forwards for future tax years.  

The worst part of this call is that Rush Limbaugh just let this woman's BS out there without questioning it. He's as uninformed about this stuff as the next guy, and won't lift a finger to educate himself. It's irresponsible, but this is the same guy who calls the Minneapolis police "killers".

Rush Limbaugh is a horrible representative of conservatism. 

Today, here:

CALLER: Greetings from Michigan, Rush. We hope to be a red state soon.

RUSH: Yeah, that would be great.

CALLER: That would be great. You know, watching the debate was, you know, made your eyes want to bleed, but Chris Wallace set the pace with that first question about taxes. And don’t tell me he didn’t know that that $750 was the fee for an extension, not what he paid.

RUSH: He might not have known. I don’t know.

CALLER: How? If I know, it was in the news, he is the news —

RUSH: There we go. We’re making the assumption that people in the news business know more than you do. Don’t make that assumption.

It gets tiresome fact-checking Rush Limbaugh: Reagan "I'm paying for this microphone" was in Republican debate in New Hampshire 1980, not vs. Carter

 


Five weeks out from Election 2020 Biden is ahead of Trump by as much as Hillary was ahead of Trump five days before Election 2016

What, me worry?



Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Sunday, September 27, 2020

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.

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

The polls haven't budged at all for Trump since July: He's still getting crushed by Biden and winning just ~185 Electoral College votes

These maps, one from July 15 still showing Ohio tied, and one from today, were created at Real Clear Politics simply awarding the toss-ups to whomever has the polling advantage.

The result is the same. Trump is getting crushed.





Monday, September 21, 2020

US COVID-19 deaths are closing in on 200k today

Here follows COVID-19 deaths per day in the USA, monthly through Saturday 9/19/20. As you can see, September to date is a lot like July:

Mar    138

Apr  1,961

May 1,330

Jun     769

Jul      851

Aug    955

Sep    825 (19 days).

If you average 850 daily new deaths, after a year you easily rack up 300k dead. That's what June to September tells us. We've got to get this number down.


Meanwhile, US COVID-19 daily new deaths fell to 213 for Sun 9/20/20 (a new low since day two of summer on 6/21) just two days before summer ends.

That summer thingy is kinda freaky:

9/20: 213

Mon 9/7 (Labor Day): 263 (revised up from 261)

7/5: 262

Sat 7/4 (Independence Day): 261

6/28: 271

6/21: 257.

The 20th anniversary of the end of the Reagan bull in August 2000 shows stock market return hasn't been just sub-bull, it's been sub-normal

Average per annum real return from the S&P 500 in the last 20 years has underperformed the 100+ years up to the beginning of the Reagan era by 36.8%.

Don't even begin to THINK return has compared with the era of the Reagan bull. This isn't a bull market, let alone a normally performing market.

Remember, this is real return, not nominal. 


 

Sunday, September 20, 2020

Democrats are squealing like pigs over Cocaine Mitch's supposed Supreme Court hypocrisy, but there isn't any

Americans put Republicans in control of the US Senate again in 2018, with Trump in the White House, so Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for what's about to happen, and Harry Reid in particular for trashing the filibuster rule for judicial appointments.  

From the story here, which explains it all:

The reason is simple, and was explained by Mitch McConnell at the time. Historically, throughout American history, when their party controls the Senate, presidents get to fill Supreme Court vacancies at any time — even in a presidential election year, even in a lameduck session after the election, even after defeat. Historically, when the opposite party controls the Senate, the Senate gets to block Supreme Court nominees sent up in a presidential election year, and hold the seat open for the winner. Both of those precedents are settled by experience as old as the republic. Republicans should not create a brand-new precedent to deviate from them.

Rick Wilson, a Republican who supports Joe Biden and opposes Mitch McConnell, had some amusing opinions about them both in the recent past