Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Monday, March 15, 2021
COVID-19 hospitalizations fell only about 3,000 in the last six days in the University of Minnesota Carlson School data
I'm looking for more like 25,000 total hospitalized before I feel better about this, which was their count last September at the lows before the second wave hit and which crested over the Christmas/New Year period. The equivalent level at The Atlantic at the time was about 29,000.
And how come New York Governor Andrew Cuomo isn't taking heat over being in first place? Again. Huh? Huh? Huh?
Trend for Tanana River Ice-Outs 1917-2020 continues to show them occurring much earlier after 104 years
This is a corrected chart and supersedes all previous iterations. Data in the chart has been double-checked again against printed versions of the data available from the Nenana Ice Classic. One or two dates were incorrectly shown in previous versions of my chart through 2018.
The overall trend earlier in those charts remains unchanged, however, and has been reinforced by the record-setting early Ice-Out in 2019 on April 14. This is because of the preponderance of relatively earlier Ice-Outs April 30 through May 7, of which there are forty-five. With or without the record early Ice-Out on April 14, 2019 and the relatively early 2020 Ice-Out on April 27, the median date remains the same: May 4. Half the Ice-Outs occur before that date, half after.
Otherwise from April 14-29 there are 27 early Ice-Outs vs. May 8-20 with 32 late Ice-Outs:
April 14-21: 3
April 22-29: 24
April 30-May 7: 45
May 8-15: 29
May 16-20: 3.
Is "global warming" at work?
If you back out all data from the year 2000 onward, here's what you get:
April 14-21: 2
April 22-29: 14
April 30-May 7: 37
May 8-15: 28
May 16-20: 2.
Median date: May 5.
Obviously the biggest impact since 1999 has been on the week April 22-29, adding ten early Ice-Outs, moving the median date earlier by one day after 20 years.
Another thing it does, however, is balance out the data surrounding April 30-May 7, which otherwise was weighted heavier later, with far more Ice-Outs in the second week of May than the last week of April. It could be that over the long course of history prior to 1917 we're missing a lot of early Ice-Outs which recent warming has only now supplied.
For example, we know early 20th century temperatures were warm enough for Roald Amundsen famously to make it through the Northwest Passage from east to west in his small wooden herring ship between 1903-1906. He finally traversed the western half of the Canadian island archipelago during 1905 after being ice bound in the heart of it for two winters. In August 1905 he put in at Herschel Island 5 miles off the north coast of Canada due to ice. From there he skied 500 miles south to Eagle, Alaska, in order to send a message by telegraph wire of the news of his singular achievement. The wire was sent on December 5, 1905. Amundsen spent two months in Eagle before skiing back to his ship and sailing on to Nome in 1906, where his ship then remained until 1972.
Eagle, AK, incidentally, is about 200 miles due east of the Fairbanks Area, which includes Nenana. The mean average temperature for the Fairbanks Area since 1999 is 28.6 vs. 26.3 1904-1999.
The data for Ice-Outs since 1999 is what it is, evidence of warming.
Sunday, March 14, 2021
Saturday, March 13, 2021
Coronavirus cases have been in headlong retreat in the UK and USA since peaking in early January, weeks before vaccination levels became comparable to present day European levels where cases continue to rise
Besides that, new cases also fell dramatically from early January in both Europe and South America before ticking up again after February 15th. Both regions were then and still remain far behind vaccination levels in the UK and USA. There must be some other explanation apart from vaccines why cases fell so precipitously.
Damned if I know what it is, save for "seasonality". But it sure as hell ain't vaccines. The US hit the lackluster present day European vaccination levels in the first week of February, and the UK did the same a week earlier, yet daily new confirmed cases were already in free-fall in both.
As vaccinations had nothing to do with the drop in cases in the US, UK, Europe and South America in January, it is likewise doubtful their relative paucity in Europe and South America now has anything to do with the uptick in cases since Feb 15.
Psychiatry is such a joke when it's the patient who determines the diagnosis of major depression
Imagine your dentist doing that for a cavity.
Dentist: "Do you feel a hole in your tooth with your tongue?"
Patient: "Yes".
Dentist: "How large is it?"
Patient: "Feels really big".
Dentist: "Well, I'm afraid that one's got to come out".
For the study, published in JAMA Network Open, the team looked data from eight waves of surveys conducted between June 2020 and January 2021.
Respondents were narrowed down to 3,904 individuals who said they had been infected with COVID-19 in the past but had since recovered.
They were asked to rank how severe their illness was and if they had any persistent symptoms since testing negative.
All of the participants filled out the Patient Health Questionnaire–9 (PHQ-9), which is a diagnostic instrument used to diagnose mood disorders such as depression.
Patients are asked about their mood or behavior over the last two weeks including whether they've had 'little interest or pleasure in doing things' or have been 'feeling down, depressed, or hopeless.'
Those filling out the survey can choose one of the following 'not at all,' 'several days,' 'more than half the days,' or 'nearly every day,' which are scored from zero to three.
On a scale of zero to 27, people who scored 10 or greater are considered to be moderately or severely depressed.
Of the participants, 2,046, or 52.4 percent, scored high enough to be considered to have symptoms of major depression.
Friday, March 12, 2021
Climate Update for KGRR: February 2021
Climate Update for KGRR: February 2021
Max T 48, Mean 50
Min T -12, Mean -2
Av T 20.8, Mean 24.5
Precip 1.84, Mean 1.79
Snow 30.6, Mean 13.3
Heating Degree Days 1231, Mean 1136
HDD to date 4644, Mean to date 4890, season to date 5% below mean
Mean annual HDD 6702, Max was 7712 in 1904 (15.1% above mean, coldest ever), Min was 5253 in 2012 (21.6% below mean, warmest ever)
Feb 2021 was the 30th coldest Feb on record in Grand Rapids, MI, bringing the year to date down to 5% warmer than normal from 9% last month.
Thursday, March 11, 2021
Death toll after COVID vaccines climbs to 1,637, CDC denies link
They never got the chance to offer the lifesaving gift. Doctors were doing everything they could to get Kurill stable, but nothing seemed to work. Hawley said his daughter’s liver, kidney and heart shut down. Hawley, who was with his daughter when she died, said it didn’t make any sense. She died, he said, 30 hours after they arrived in the emergency room. ...
“Over 92 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through March 8, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 1,637 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC and FDA physicians review each case report of death as soon as notified and CDC requests medical records to further assess reports. A review of available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records revealed no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths. CDC and FDA will continue to investigate reports of adverse events, including deaths, reported to VAERS.“, the CDC reported on its website.
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Current hospitalizations for COVID-19 have dropped by about 11,000 between March 1-9, 2021 in the US
 |
| California (blue), Texas (pink), Florida (green), New York (gray) |
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.
Friday, March 5, 2021
The list of adverse reactions to Pfizer's COVID vaccine in the US makes for interesting reading
Some reactions to Pfizer's COVID vaccine reported to US VAERS for 14,649 events through 2/26:
Blindness: 20
Blurry vision: 122
Chest pain: 361
Chest discomfort: 485
Cardiac arrest: 70
Thrombosis/stroke: 30
Spontaneous abortion: 30
Facial paralysis: 199
Death: 475
Sense losses: touch (671), smell (129), taste (134)
Swelling: lymphatic (362), lips (182), throat (160), face (203), tongue (181), peripheral (206)
Severe itching: 787
Rash: 781
Hives/urticaria: 572
Tingling sensations: 873
Oral tingling: 418
Joint pain: 760
Tight throat: 315
Anaphylactic reaction: 143
Fever: 2,018
https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html
Full-time employment in the US in February 2021 continues to SUCK
47.5% of the civilian US non-institutional population had full-time jobs in February 2021. The average level in 2020 was 47.3%.
Missing full-time in February relative to the 2019 average of 50.4% is 7.5 million.
Relative to the all-time high in 2000 at 53.6%, missing full-time is a whopping 15.87 million.
Thursday, March 4, 2021
Monday, March 1, 2021
US COVID-19 update through Feb 2021
Daily new cases have dropped dramatically in February 2021, but still average 85,863 per day and remain higher than for any month before last November when the country was still in a fit of hysteria about the pandemic.
Daily new deaths had their third worst month in February 2021 and are still higher than in April last.
Hospitalizations have dropped dramatically in February to 48,871 on Saturday 2/27. Peak Saturday level was January 9th at 130,781. The Saturday peak last summer occurred on 7/25 with 59,301 hospitalized. The Saturday peak last April occurred on 4/18 with 57,761 hospitalized.
The Covid Tracking Project at The Atlantic will unaccountably stop collecting such data on March 7th. I say unaccountably because the absolute low in Saturday hospitalizations after the April outbreak was 27,967 on June 20th and the October lows never matched that. We're not even close to those levels yet. It's WAY too early to conclude that data collection should cease when the previous lows haven't yet been taken out.
Meanwhile, the hospitalization data collected by the University of Minnesota continues to show the second wave still in decline at the end of February. The worst states (NY in gray, CA in blue, TX in pink, and FL in green) for hospitalizations are shown in the graphs. The declines are welcome, but levels remain elevated.
Daily new case data in a number of countries, e.g. Brazil, Finland, Hungary, Czechia, France, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, in recent weeks has turned upward to one degree or another. This could be a harbinger of a coming seasonal surge.
Meanwhile about 7.5% of the US is fully vaccinated, and 15% partially vaccinated.
It remains to be seen how effective the vaccines will be against mutations, and how durable the vaccines will be over time.
Sunday, February 28, 2021
Friday, February 26, 2021
Thursday, February 25, 2021
Despite non-stop recruitment propaganda, the LGBT share of the US population rises to only 5.6%, and most of that is bi, and most of that is female
5.6% of US adults are LGBT, up from 4.5% in 2017.
3.1% of Americans identify as bisexual, 1.4% as gay, 0.7% as lesbian and 0.6% as transgender.
The rise in Americans saying they are bisexual is driven by women:
[O]ver 3% of US adults say they are bisexual (a sexual identity in which someone is attracted to people of their gender or other genders). This is up from just over 1% in 2008. (The GSS allowed individuals to self-classify as “heterosexual or straight,” “gay, lesbian, homosexual,” “bisexual,” or “don’t know.”) An analysis of the GSS data by the sociologists D’Lane Compton and Tristan Bridges shows that the change has been almost entirely due to an increase in the number of bisexual women . . ..
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Tiger Woods' father groomed him for golf, but inserted a self-destruct device in the training
"A close family friend said Woods learned his philandering ways from watching his father have sex with blondes in a Winnebago RV that he parked next to golf courses when they practiced in his childhood."
Monday, February 22, 2021
Sunday, February 21, 2021
Hospitalization data from the states worst affected by COVID-19 show two distinct waves of the pandemic, the second more severe in California and Texas and less severe in New York and Florida
Florida, Texas and California all lagged the outbreak in New York, but the experience of all four coincide in the second wave, which is clearly now receding.
The Spanish Flu pandemic had three waves.
1918 Pandemic Influenza: Three Waves
 |
| New York (gray), Florida (green), California (blue), Texas (pink) |
LOL, The Atlantic has declared the pandemic over and will stop collecting data on March 7, 2021
It's good to be a Democrat.
Meanwhile through Feb 20 2,802 people in the US have died of COVID-19 every single damn day in February, the second highest daily death rate measured monthly since the beginning of the pandemic.
Everyone thinks the recent big drop in cases means it's over? What a joke.
New cases in Feb just through 2/20 total 1.873 million, far exceeding May 2020's 1.799 million. The country went into SHUT DOWN mode with far fewer new cases in March 2020: 188,461. In April when so many Americans perished there were just 1.075 million new cases.
It's way too early to stop collecting data, unless of course you have an axe to grind, like the neo-cons did when Goldberg at The Atlantic insisted Iraq had WMD.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Now that Rush Limbaugh is dead, The Daily Beast fills the gap with a chopadickoffame story
Inside the World of Backstreet Castrators, Cutters and Eunuch-Makers :
Some people born with penises and testicles want to keep the former, but lose the latter—though some choose to keep their empty scrotums. (There is a dedicated Reddit forum for the latter group to share photos of their genitals: Empty Sacks, “for those who had the balls to give theirs up.”) Others want to keep the genitalia they were born with and add new genitalia on top. ... (Mexico and Thailand have both been hot spots for quick-and-easy but largely unregulated clinical castrations, penectomies, and similar procedures for at least a couple of decades now.) ... the greater availability of open and official care—far more than horror stories and crackdowns—has led to a drastic decline in demand for cutters, which means there are now fewer of them practicing than there were five or ten years ago.
Friday, February 19, 2021
Peggy Noonan has second thoughts, recalls with fondness the crabbed public square of Fairness Doctrine infamy
What a shock, right? Roman Catholic from Brooklyn thinks Methodist hick from Missouri should have been shut up long ago.
Rush Limbaugh’s Complicated Legacy :
By the 1980s it was being argued that the doctrine itself was hurting free speech: It was a governmental intrusion on the freedom of broadcasters, and, perversely, it inhibited the presentation of controversial issues. There were so many voices in the marketplace, and more were coming; fairness and balance would sort themselves out.
In 1987 the doctrine was abolished, a significant Reagan-era reform. But I don’t know. Let me be apostate again. Has anything in our political culture gotten better since it was removed? Aren’t things more polarized, more bitter, less stable?
I’m not sure it was good for America.
Imagine if religion were similarly circumscribed.
From 17 distinct religious groups in 1776 and about 3,200 congregations, today there are north of 300 groups and 300,000 congregations.
The lack of unanimity surely bothers devout believers in one or the other, some of whom are certain everyone else is going to hell, and something should be done to stop it.
I suspect the one true church of Peggy Noonan feels the same way, except its liberalism has invented the half-way house of Purgatory to roast malefactors until ready for Valhalla.
Deal with it, Peggy. It's still a Protestant country.
Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Rush Limbaugh dead at 70, FOX obituary includes famous "preamble to the Constitution" blunder from CPAC 2009
Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio pioneer, dead at 70 :
"We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness."
The mistake is fairly typical, both of Rush, and of Rush's audience the Baby Boom for whom basic knowledge of civics had long been in decline. For Rush, and for them, conservatism was always more aspirational than actual, often conflating present perspectives with historical realities.
An example is the Straussians who in our time explicitly argued for the unity of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, giving Thomas Jefferson's more revolutionary, Enlightenment-tinged views in the former too much sway over the interpretation of the latter.
The irony of that fusionism was always that Jefferson sought for the United States "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them", not the "exceptional" American position touted by Limbaugh as an heir of America's post-war position of global domination.
The Constitution's preamble expressed a matter-of-factly self-interested goal, "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", a country of Americans, by Americans, and for Americans, not a nation of immigrants, by immigrants, and for immigrants, not a nation of heroes marching forth in search of monsters to destroy. America's founding was above all modest, which is perhaps the surest indicator of its inherent conservatism.
If Rush Limbaugh slaughtered the important details on a regular basis, what made the show so enjoyable was the entertainment, which largely came from the sheer pleasure Rush derived from doing it and communicating it, "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have". If nothing else, Rush Limbaugh was a conservative of enjoyment, and who doesn't want to be around people having a good time? It is one reason for Rush's tremendous success in a career spanning more than three decades.
Students of conservatism might think this a whimsy, not to be taken seriously, but no less a figure than Russell Kirk devoted a chapter to such conservatism in his "The Conservative Mind". Rush himself, from time to time, in his own non-academic way had observed how liberals are not funny and don't have fun, and in this he was on to something. Generally speaking conservatives possess contentment to a far greater degree than do liberals, derived from a judiciously formed view of the self as sinners saved by grace. It is a freeing thing which allows people to accept things as they are, even as God accepts sinners as they are.
Of course in the post-war there has been a tremendous amount for Americans to enjoy, to the point that we have become completely distracted by this. One may rightly say we have overdone it, and that enjoyment has frankly become conservatives' Achilles' heel. It has produced a myriad of problems, not the least of which has been a failure to reproduce, inattention to religion, and a proclivity for the easy politics of the executive where we look for one man to save us. As America was not built by Protestants enjoying religious entertainments and all-you-can-eat brunches on Sundays, it will not be recovered, if that is still possible, but by serious, religious people who work hard, deny themselves, and save.
Rush Limbaugh was an optimist about America because he still believed there were enough individual Americans remaining who exemplified the old virtues. America's future will depend on Rush having been right.
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Monday, February 15, 2021
It would be silly for Republicans to waste any time on a Trump candidacy in 2024
Who in their right mind wants to go to all that trouble just to elect a lame duck?
Republicans need a president who can get something accomplished in office. Only the threat of re-election to a second term gives force to a first term. That no longer applies in Trump's case.
He is a spent force who would be a mere place-holder.
By definition, anyone's prospects are better than his.
It would be a colossal waste of time and money to spend either on someone who has already been given the opportunity and come up short. If Trump were worthy of the office again, he would acknowledge that.
Sunday, February 14, 2021
Friday, February 12, 2021
Thursday, February 11, 2021
NeverTrump lunatics, led by Evan McMuffinhead and themselves fractured, hold ZOOM call to form 3rd Party in headlong rush to formalize GOP fracture over "nativism"
Add in a new "Patriot Party" and the GOP will be an utter shambles.
EXCLUSIVE-Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party :
More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of "principled conservatism," including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law - ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump. ...
Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters that he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trump's grip on Republicans and the nativist turn the party has taken.
Three other people confirmed to Reuters the call and the discussions for a potential splinter party, but asked not to be identified.
Among the call participants were John Mitnick, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; former Republican congressman Charlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff in the Homeland Security Department under Trump; and Miles Taylor, another former Trump homeland security official. ...
Call participants said they were particularly dismayed by the fact that more than half of the Republicans in Congress - eight senators and 139 House representatives - voted to block certification of Biden's election victory just hours after the Capitol siege. ...
McMullin said just over 40% of those on last week's Zoom call backed the idea of a breakaway, national third party. Another option under discussion is to form a "faction" that would operate either inside the current Republican Party or outside it.
Libertarian survey: Republicans are sharply divided over Trump, the QAnon child sex conspiracy, and the use of force
Among Trump voters 53% view themselves as GOP supporters vs. 47% who view themselves as Trump supporters.
29% of Republicans believe Trump was fighting a global sex trafficking ring whereas 30% do not. 43% of Republicans were . . . uncertain about this, which is kind of shocking when you consider that . . . Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
55% of Republicans support the use of force to stop the decline of the traditional American way of life and its values, but 43% oppose this. A clear majority of Republicans, however, oppose using violence to achieve political ends even when elected leaders fail to act to "protect America", whatever that means.
The survey, a project of the libertarian American Enterprise Institute, notably fails to ask any questions about immigration, which was the beginning, middle, and end of the Trump 2016 run for the presidency and also his most colossal failure.
It's more expedient for libertarians who want to fling open the borders, in league with Democrats, to have Trump "major in the minors" and paint him in the worst light at those things than to expose the widespread popular support for immigration restriction at which he failed.
That issue lurks underneath the survey's result which found that:
There is bipartisan agreement that the American system of democracy is failing to address the concerns and needs of the public. Nearly seven in 10 (69 percent) Americans agree that American democracy serves the interests of only the wealthy and powerful. Seventy percent of Democrats and 66 percent of Republicans hold this view.
After the ballots are counted: Conspiracies, political violence, and American exceptionalism
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Sunday, February 7, 2021
V is for victory, V is for violence: Molly Ball never tells you the meaning of her election 2020 story, but you can figure it out
The meaning is that the left threatened violence if Trump got re-elected, and made good on that threat with the summer down payment in the George Floyd riots. The threat created the default attitude at every level of the process to capitulate and avoid a repeat: Either accept the results of an election where nearly half the votes cast were of a kind most susceptible to fraud, or else.
That's what made the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Evangelicals cave to the left's long active operation one week before Nov 3.
It's all in there, but you have to think about it because Molly isn't going to just hand that narrative to you.
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election :
The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.
About a week before Election Day, Podhorzer received an unexpected message: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wanted to talk.
The AFL-CIO and the Chamber have a long history of antagonism. Though neither organization is explicitly partisan, the influential business lobby has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns, just as the nation’s unions funnel hundreds of millions to Democrats. On one side is labor, on the other management, locked in an eternal struggle for power and resources.
But behind the scenes, the business community was engaged in its own anxious discussions about how the election and its aftermath might unfold. The summer’s racial-justice protests had sent a signal to business owners too: the potential for economy-disrupting civil disorder. “With tensions running high, there was a lot of concern about unrest around the election, or a breakdown in our normal way we handle contentious elections,” says Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer. These worries had led the Chamber to release a pre-election statement with the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based CEOs’ group, as well as associations of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, calling for patience and confidence as votes were counted.
But Bradley wanted to send a broader, more bipartisan message. He reached out to Podhorzer, through an intermediary both men declined to name. Agreeing that their unlikely alliance would be powerful, they began to discuss a joint statement pledging their organizations’ shared commitment to a fair and peaceful election. They chose their words carefully and scheduled the statement’s release for maximum impact. As it was being finalized, Christian leaders signaled their interest in joining, further broadening its reach.
The statement was released on Election Day, under the names of Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and the heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African American Clergy Network. “It is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws,” it stated. “We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual.” The groups added, “Although we may not always agree on desired outcomes up and down the ballot, we are united in our call for the American democratic process to proceed without violence, intimidation or any other tactic that makes us weaker as a nation.”
Saturday, February 6, 2021
Indiana did a massive COVID deaths back-fill on Feb 4, skewing the averages
South Carolina and Iowa also appear to have backfilled 230-250 deaths on each of three recent occasions. It's fairly common for this to happen around the country as death investigations conclude, but the Indiana backfill is a real whopper.
Friday, February 5, 2021
In January 2021 just 47.4% of the civilian population had full-time jobs, compared with 2020's average of 47.3%
Biden reportedly said in response to the employment situation summary today:
"At that rate it's going to take ten years to get back to full employment. That's not hyperbole that's a fact."
The fact is employment has never recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, and Biden is as little likely to fix that as were Obama and Trump.
The Reagan era tax reforms hollowed out the labor economy.
Before Reagan, high marginal tax rates on ordinary income steered that income into capital investment, gains from which received preferential tax treatment if held long enough. The investment grew the economy, providing good jobs for Americans and tax revenues for government at all levels. The arrangement distrusted rich people to do the right thing with their money, but rewarded them if they did.
Reagan libertarianism changed all that.
We were sold the idea that lower taxes on high ordinary incomes would still result in capital investment because we could trust people to do the right thing with their own money.
Guess what? Libertarian trust of human nature turned out to be as false as liberal trust of human nature.
Under the influence of libertarian free trade dogma and growing globalization, that investment went abroad where there was far cheaper labor, lower taxes and less regulation. Profits soared for the few, bringing the number of billionaires from less than fifty in the 1980s to nearly 800 today. Meanwhile the good jobs gradually disappeared and income inequality soared.
Ordinary people today cannot afford cars, educations, health care, and houses as a result.
Add in cheap labor competition from immigration at a clip of 1 million a year and you can understand how Trump was so popular, however incompetent and narcissistic he was.
Trump may be gone, but the people remain screwed by these problems and by the time serving politicians and 2.8 million federal bureaucrats working for pensions who stand in the way.
Returning to the status quo ante might fix it, but it would take a generation to start feeling it. And who among us has the vision and the cojones to pull it off?
Certainly not the women and snowflakes who cry crocodile tears of fear on the House floor. Certainly not the sailors on board the Chafee who are in a panic because the cooks are infected with COVID.
The country is rotting from the inside out. All it will take to bring it down is . . . a series of unfortunate events.
Wednesday, February 3, 2021
Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Climate Update for KGRR: January 2021
Climate Update for KGRR: January 2021
Max T 41, Mean 48
Min T 11, Mean -3
Av T 28.1, Mean 23.8
Precip 1.37, Mean 2.07
Snow 9.9, Mean 18.4
HDD 1136, Mean 1269
HDD season to date 3413, Mean 3754 (season to date 9.08% below the mean)
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