Power outage due to ice storm just gets worse for Consumers Energy customers in Michigan, so they run PR ads on YouTube while it's happening

 Earlier in the day there were 137k without power.

Tonight there are 139k. 

I wouldn't have thought about it again today but for the YouTube ad which interrupted my evening video.

Consumers Energy should spend more money actually helping people instead of running a propaganda operation.

People are freezing their butts down there. It's 25F in the outage area.

DTE in the Detroit area is actually making some progress restoring power. Looks like ~200k have been restored since earlier in the day, but hundreds of thousands remain without power.

 

 

She was between jobs

 

Three years into the pandemic, America is 2.4 times more vaccinated than Africa and 18.3 times more dead

 

Detroit Free Press admits 13 gun reform bills offered by Michigan Democrats would not have stopped MSU killings, and that it doesn't matter

 It's pure emotional posturing which ignores the emotional posturing which caused the tragedy in the first place.

The progressive prosecutor could have charged the future killer with weapons violations which would have prevented him from legally buying the new weapons used in this crime.

Existing laws might indeed have prevented the crime, if only liberals had followed them. But misplaced feelings of white guilt overrode doing what the law demanded.

Republicans better man up because Democrats sure won't.

Here:

If these laws would not have stopped this shooting, well. They might stop the next one.

Biden's daring visit to Kiev had more to do with repairing his own image at home as a bungler than with helping Ukraine

The visit, combined with VP Harris' labeling of Russia guilty of crimes against humanity, has resulted today in Russian suspension of the last nuclear arms treaty remaining.

The Democrats are playing a very dangerous, impetuous, self-serving, unnecessary, game. 

Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris said the U.S. has determined Russian forces have committed “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine.

Putin pulls back from last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the US

"Talk softly and carry a big stick" would be a much better policy right now than this.

The US COVID-19 booster vaccine initiative has flopped so spectacularly we continue almost six months without any new data

In 2023 through 2/14, just 780,000 Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. If that rate keeps up just 7 million will get the jab this year.

In 2022, just 24.31 million received at least one dose.

This drop-off represents a stunning repudiation.

In 2021 238.68 million received at least one dose after 5.56 million did in 2020 (remember the rollout began late in the year).

As of 2/14 229.91 million have completed the initial 2-step protocol, leaving 39.42 million having received just one dose, equaling 269.33 million receiving at least one dose through 2/14/2023.

Meanwhile daily new deaths per million of population have remained buried below 2 for almost 11 consecutive months even as Americans walked away from the vaccines.

Clearly that outcome is not correlated with vaccination, since we know that the rationale for boosters is predicated on the admission by the authorities that the vaccines stop protecting recipients after a few months.

Why aren't more people dying, dammit?!, said someone at Big Pharma.

All data per Our World in Data.

 

Sweden is still the Nordic COVID-19 death leader and has been since the early days of the pandemic

Recent upticks in deaths in both Sweden but especially Finland must have something to do with an influx of refugees from the Russia-Ukraine War.

 

Tests used by hysterical sociologists show conservative Presbyterian who says the church should stay out of politics to be a Christian nationalist

 Like economics, sociology also is not much of a science.

If a conservative Presbyterian who has long argued that the church should stay out of politics tests positive for Christian nationalism, someone could wonder if sociologists need an equivalent to what epidemiologists have in asymptomatic carriers of COVID. Can a class of Christian nationalists exist who have no strong symptoms of this political virus? If so, do they need to be in political isolation?

Story.

Liberal death wish: The Valentine's Eve Massacre at Michigan State University is the fault of a progressive prosecutor who reduced previous charges which allowed the killer to buy weapons again

 The woman on the left, Democrat ex-prosecutor for Ingham County MI Carol Siemon, reduced 2019 felony firearms charges v McRae to misdemeanor for equity reasons, which allowed the Monday MSU killer, who was black, to legally purchase weapons again.

 

 

The purchasing power of the US dollar has fallen 12.6% since Joe Biden was installed two years ago

 Let's go, Brandon.

 

The only Republican who gets it that it's pointless to elect a lame duck and say it is Mike Pompeo

 Trump's delusional Republican base does not understand politics at all.

“We will nominate someone who is decent and serious and thoughtful and ready to crush it for eight years,” Pompeo said on the “Good Morning New Hampshire” radio program.

More.

Michael Savage: Liberalism is a mental disorder

 

Peggy Noonan sees a lot of inauthenticity out there

 But what else would you expect from a nAtIoN oF iMmIgRaNtS?

 

Peggy is nothing if not the quintessential American who hates everything "stuck in the past", creepy or no. "Someone needs to make it new".

 

America’s Longing for Authenticity

Blood and soil nationalism

 A nation properly signifies a great number of families derived from the same blood, born in the same country, and living under the same government.

-- Sir William Temple (1628-1699)

US tracked balloon from Hainan China from the moment it launched like Rush Limbaugh was behind Donald Trump from the moment he stepped down that elevator

 

A spate of high profile resignations by women sparked by New Zealand's Ardern in January?

Jacinda Ardern resigns: Departure reveals unique pressures on PM

Sen. Feinstein makes it official: She will retire at the end of her current term

Brainard resigns from the Fed to head to White House economics role

U.S. FTC commissioner Christine Wilson to resign 

Nicola Sturgeon announces shock resignation as Scottish first minister

 

 

LOL, purchasing power of the US dollar FALLS a whopping 2.3% in January 2023 compared with last year's average

 From 34.2 average annual 2022 to 33.4 in Jan 2023.

That's on top of the 7.3% average fall between 2021 and 2022.

Inflation. It's what's for dinner.

LOL WaPo, stroking Gen Z for not driving cars because of "significant effects on carbon emissions"

Here:

If Gen Zers continue to eschew driving, it could have significant effects on the country’s carbon emissions. Transportation is the largest source of CO2 emissions in the United States. There are roughly 66 million members of Gen Z living in the United States. If each one drove just 10 percent less than the national average — that is, driving 972 miles less every year — that would save 25.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from spewing into the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent to the annual emissions of more than six coal-fired power plants. 

Six!

Oooh. Sounds like a lot.

 

 

Purchasing power of the US dollar is down 96.61% from 1913 in 2022 on an average basis

 The index average for 2022 is 34.2.

Here.

WaPo: US military fails to detect slow-moving objects like balloons because speed gate, velocity gate, altitude gate sensors and the like aren't set to detect them

 The Chicoms are obviously testing us to see what we are NOT looking for.

 

From the story here: 

The incursions in the past week have changed how analysts receive and interpret information from radars and sensors, a U.S. official said Saturday, partly addressing a key question of why so many objects have recently surfaced. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that sensory equipment absorbs a lot of raw data, and filters are used so humans and machines can make sense of what is collected. But that process always runs the risk of leaving out something important, the official said. “We basically opened the filters,” the official added, much like a car buyer unchecking boxes on a website to broaden the parameters of what can be searched.

But you said you would bring a return to normalcy

 

QAnon mating call

 

What fresh hell is this, Drudge?

 

Right, right, that's why they voted for Democrat tool Joe-they told me no more questions-Biden

 Totally garbage poll.

The poll questions don't match the rhetoric about them . . . by a long shot. Nothing anti-democratic asked at all.

Pure fantasy masquerading as truth.

POLL: Many Americans Want Strong, Anti-democratic Leader...

From balloons The Chicoms get clearer pictures and intercept signals satellites otherwise cannot obtain in preparation for global conflict

 China Sends Spy Balloons Over Military Sites Worldwide, U.S. Officials Say... 

Nice to see the GOP going to war with the US Chamber of Commerce

 . . . not over immigration, but hey, I'll take it.

Count me in on abolishing the State of the Union addresses to Congress

They're embarrassing enough anyway, on both sides, without the antics from the peanut gallery.

Dog and pony shows, trottin' out their acts. 

Bret Easton Ellis has moved up to zero

 "I’m nothing." 

Interviewed here.

82% of parents of millennials have regrets

 

82% of millennial first-time homeowners have regrets — here’s how to avoid the most common one

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Killer earthquakes in Turkey make five 7.0+ so far in 2023, but frequency was actually down in 2022 to 11 from 19 in 2021

 

Both full time jobs and overall civilian employment in Jan 2023 remain relatively strong but both are far from US potential: 12 million more could be working but are not

Full time as a percentage of civilian population dropped to 49.32% in January 2023 from 49.77% in December.

 

Peak full time at 53.6% in 2000 applied to 2023 would mean 10 million more working full time than actually do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Civilian employment as a percentage of civilian population dropped to 59.67% in January 2023 from 59.99% in December.

 

Peak employment at 64.4% in 2000 applied to 2023 would mean 12 million more working at all jobs than actually do.

 

Pathetic underperformance.

 

The shortfall with peak manufacturing jobs in 1979 at 19.4 million was 6.6 million in 2022. 

 

 

Natural gas prices have collapsed from the summer on unseasonably warm January temperatures meeting 2022 high production levels

 

top lines show full 2022 and start of 2023

 

Grand Rapids, MI, had its 5th warmest January by average temperature in Jan 2023 since 1892. Case is similar in many US cities which broke into the top 10 warmest Januaries on record, including Indy, Syracuse NY, Columbus OH, and Madison WI.

Meanwhile Joe Biden says half the women in his administration are women

 President Biden: 'More than half the women in my administration are women'

Good to know.

 

 

The damn fool Biden administration can't even shoot down a Chinese spy balloon

 

Chinese spy balloon flying over U.S. ‘right now,’ Pentagon says

The "tight" US labor market is a complete myth, the deleterious effects of globalization on US workers since 2000 the sorry reality

 Part of Trump's success in 2016 was his appeal to the former greatness of America, which resonated most with those who remembered what it was like in this country before the elites shipped their jobs to China.

Americans are not working up to their potential because it's not worth it. They have voted with their feet. 2019 was but a shadow of what might have been.

No cash, no hope, no jobs, no bacon. Alcohol, drugs, and accidental death.

 

 

 

 

This is the third anniversary of Andersen telling Fauci that some of the features of the virus look engineered and that Andersen and three others doubted the genome evolved

The virus was most likely illegally engineered at Wuhan in sub-standard lab conditions funded against the rules in part by Fauci's NIH, subsequently accidentally escaped, and went on to kill millions and destroy the economies and livelihoods of millions more.

I think one low-level guy went to jail for the 2008 financial crisis, but so far no one is even being investigated for the travesty which occurred under Fauci.

Thankfully @R_H_Ebright of Rutgers University won't let go of this story.

 

US Treasury Department in fiscal 2021 said US fiscal policy is unsustainable because debt to GDP will reach 700% by 2096

 Caused by deficit spending.

In other words, required spending by legislated programs is not being matched by required tax increases to fund that spending. The gap produces the deficits naturally year after year.

Eventually it goes to the moon.

 

Here.

I suppose they want tanks and fighter jets, too

 

U.S. should pay $14 trillion in reparations to Black Americans, say authors Darity and Mullen

People think he's dumb

 

President Biden: "Wages Are Up, They Are Growing Faster Than Inflation"

Noted "bond king" Jeff Gundlach is unaware of the existence of the 27th Amendment, and wants to decrease bond supply to increase its value!

What a shock, huh? No deficit spending means no borrowing, and no new bonds, making the existing dwindling supply worth more and more!

Seriously, if we continued to pay interest on the debt out of current tax revenues as we do, and then amortized the debt principal of ~$32 trillion, you'd have to extract ~$3,212.85 in additional taxes every year for thirty years for every man, woman, and child alive now to have a hope of paying it off ($1.066 trillion per year).

Current federal receipts average in excess of $4 trillion already, so that's an increase of annual revenues to the federal government through taxation in excess of 25%.

About as likely as spending curbs.

Noted billionaire real estate investor predicts Weimar Republic hyperinflation if Fed continues to raise interest rates, LOL

 

Herr Sternlicht thinks you are a Dummkopf.

You can donate your own blood for your own use, you know

 

FDA proposal would allow gay men in monogamous relationships to donate blood

 

How would you know? Because they said so lol?

 

Gay people are the most promiscuous on the planet.

 

Meanwhile . . .

 

Autologous donors have long been permitted to donate blood for their own use even if they do not meet certain donor eligibility criteria that apply to allogeneic donors because autologous donors are not exposed to new transfusion-transmitted infections in receiving their own blood. 

More.

 

Employers with workers who think like this don't deserve your business

"Tipping is about making sure the people who are performing that service for you are getting paid what they're owed," said Schenker, who's been working in the service industry for roughly 18 years.

More. 

Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure a US attack submarine tracked it and practiced sinking it before it got anywhere close to 1,000km of the coastline

 If they weren't too busy checking their pronouns.

Those poor dears

LOL, VP Mike Pence found to have classified documents in his house

 Way to go, Brownie!

Turkey's Erdogan is back at it, trying to stop Sweden's entry into NATO

Finland Floats Solo NATO Entry After Erdogan Rejects Sweden

. . . on Monday, Erdogan ruled out supporting Sweden’s bid after a far-right activist burned Islam’s holy book in Stockholm.

 Erdogan has an election coming up, and needs the Koran crowd's vote.

Recent inflation optimism ignores that gasoline is up 11.8% in the thirty days since Christmas

 

Breaking News: Americans discover they put Biden in the right place at the wrong time . . .

 Whole lotta refried confusion goin' on.

LOL, classified documents he wasn't supposed to have in the first place were "filed in the wrong place" Biden says

 

“We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,” Biden explained Thursday during a tour of storm damage in California.

FBI found more documents Friday in a 13-hour search of Biden's home in the presence of Biden's attorneys. Trump's attorneys were not allowed to be present during the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

Biden has another classified document eruption: More material found in his house on Friday, dating to his Senate days and VP tenure

 The story broke less than an hour ago, here, just in time for the Sunday morning news programs.

 

There is no daylight between the IRS and today's left, which laughably presents The State as the chief check on wealth when it's the chief partner

 

It's Time To Defend--Not Defund--the IRS

 

Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation

Biden unlawfully possessed top secret documents for years before moving them to UPenn in 2018 and the FBI was never tasked with finding out how and why

 The initial documents, including some classified at the highest security level, were discovered in an office that didn’t open until 2018—meaning they were moved there from yet another unauthorized location and heightening the likelihood of more document finds. ... Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are handled with kid gloves. Carter Page and Donald Trump—not to mention low-profile suspects—face the bluntest federal law-enforcement tools. ... The Justice Department seems unlikely to be done bestowing conveniences on this president.

More.

LOL, griftor Louder with Crowder in $50 million contract dispute with griftee The Daily Wire

 “We here at Mug Club, we thought that we were all in this together, that we were fighting the media-entertainment industrial complex,” he fumed. “We thought that we were all genuinely taking it to Big Tech. But, too many of those in charge of the big conservative platforms are verifiably in bed with them. Big Tech is in bed with Big Con. The people you thought, the people I thought were fighting for you, a lot of it has been a big con.” ...  (Crowder, in his initial rant, failed to mention that he was offered $50 million over four years.)     

More.

There's a lot of money to be made in so-called conservatism.