Thursday, July 11, 2024

In the first half of 2024, overall prices are up 3.2% year over year on an average basis, and core prices are up 3.6%

 Prices on some important things you use everyday made new record highs.

core inflation


overall inflation

gasoline in the first half of 2024 is still Obama-like under Biden, not Trump-like

the high price of home heating, water heating, cooking, clothes drying ticked up in 1H2024

new high for chuck roast

new high for all purpose flour

fricken chicken came down a half penny: six bucks for a three pound chicken

new high for a loaf of healthy bread

new high for a pound of hamburger

new high for the electricity to keep everything running

Wednesday, July 10, 2024

The chutzpah of this guy: George Clooney takes $28 million of Democrats' money and gives it to Biden on June 15 and three weeks later says My Bad

Phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla.

 


 

 

Joe Biden just had a little Greek eruption

 


Do your own research

 


People forget that Joe Biden came in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire in 2020 and was still neck-and-neck with Bernie in the primary popular vote until March 14th



 

 

 

 

 

Democrats ended up with Joe because the alternative was a lefty, Bernie, who would surely lose to Trump.

The same calculus applies today. Possibly win with cognitively challenged Joe, or lose with lefty Kamala Harris.

Joe was extremely unpopular in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Joe endeared himself to Iowans by calling them fat liars.

 


 

And he endeared himself to New Hampshireites by calling them lying dog-faced pony soldiers.

The common thread is the projection. It's Joe who is the liar, along with all his accomplices in the DNC and the media.

 



Flashback June 30, 2004 NBC NEWS: One in ten students encounters sex abuse, schools are places where abusers come to prey


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More than 4.5 million children are forced to endure sexual misconduct by school employees, from inappropriate comments to physical abuse, according to an exhaustive review of research that reads like a parent’s worst nightmare.

The best estimate is that almost one in 10 children, sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade, are targets of behavior ranging from unprofessional to criminal, says the report for Congress by Charol Shakeshaft, a professor at Hofstra University’s School of Education.

... the American Association of University Women, whose surveys of students were at the core of the new report, stood by its research. ...

The report describes schools as places where abusers come to prey, targeting vulnerable and marginal students who are afraid to complain or unlikely to be believed if they did. It describes adults who trap, lie and isolate children, making them subject to unwanted behavior in hallways, offices, buses or even right in front of other students in class. And the offenders work hard to keep kids from telling, threatening to fail or humiliate them.

More.

 

Rate of public educator sexual misconduct is 10 times higher in a year than in five decades of abuse by clergy, two thirds of the predators are male, most of the victims are high school females


 

Given the roughly 50 million students in U.S. K-12 schools each year, the number of students who have been victims of sexual misconduct by school employees is probably in the millions each decade, according to multiple studies. Such numbers would far exceed the high-profile abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America. ...

“In any given year they have failed to report thousands of these situations, and instead they’ve papered them over, acted like it’s not an issue,” former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told RealClearInvestigations. Stunned by a 2018 Chicago Tribune investigation that found 523 incident reports of sexual misconduct by employees of the city’s schools during the past decade, DeVos during the Trump administration launched the process of including specific questions about such cases in the Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection, a process it undertakes every two years. Previously, the Office for Civil Rights asked only general questions about sexual misconduct incidents, without a breakdown of alleged perpetrators.

The Biden administration initially sought to remove those questions, saying it wanted to avoid data duplication, but it backtracked after fierce criticism it was doing so as a sop to teachers unions. Consequently, the question will be included on future questionnaires, but, as of today, the Department of Education “has no data,” a spokesperson told RCI. These days, from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, even a cursory review of local news reporting brings disquieting revelations of teachers accused of or arrested for alleged sexual relations with a student. ...

Pointing to research from Hofstra University that found roughly 1 in 10 students in K-12 schools have suffered “some form of sexual misconduct by an educator,” Terri Miller, head of the advocacy group SESAME (Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation), said the number of victims is staggering.

More.

Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Trump's RNC strong-armed the GOP platform committee, weakened its abortion provisions, pared it down from 66 pages to 16

“The 2024 platform is a decent statement of campaign priorities, but not necessarily the enduring principles of a party,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “Unfortunately, the process was unbecoming of constitutional conservatives which did not allow the document to be amended or improved.” ...

Gayle Ruzicka, a platform committee member from Utah, said the RNC staff “didn’t allow” a discussion on the language the platform used on abortion.

“I had planned to go up there to try and make an amendment and they said we could make amendments,” she said, adding that she had been on platform committees several times and found it “very unusual.”

“They didn’t even give us a chance to read it before we voted on it,” Ruzicka said. She didn’t know exactly how long they had before voting — staff had taken her watch, phone and laptop — but it was “maybe a couple of hours” filled by speakers.

“I’m very frustrated. I think we were treated very poorly. We spent a lot of money to get here. We were supposed to have the opportunity to study it and read it. We didn’t get even a chance to read it first,” Ruzicka said. “They gave it to us, but we kept waiting to go to our committee and then they didn’t ever do committees.”

More.

Monday, July 8, 2024

WaPo lol: Trump Doesn't Want Us To Know What He Stands For

 

The French election commentary on right wing twitter has been as laughably apocalyptic as left wing

 Meanwhile, here are the final election results from France's most-watched news channel BFM-TV, slanted pro-business instead of pro-worker, shown below.

As you can see Le Pen's "right wing" alliance RN has overwhelming support in terms of votes with 10.12 million in the 2024 Second Round (left column) vs. 3.58 million in 2022, and now enjoys 143 seats vs. 89 in 2022. It's now arguably France's biggest party.

RN has grown its support phenomenally in just two years.

Its problem is that its support is more diffuse, so that its supporters are frequently outnumbered by enough voters from other parties to win seats. And this time leftist NFP and Macron's centrist ENS  cooperated in the second round to reduce candidates so that voters had to choose more often than normally between just two sides.

In the end no one got even close to 289 seats to achieve control in the 577 seat National Assembly.

And Macron could easily lose a vote of confidence in the wake of this within weeks and send the voters back to the polls again.

RN is obviously a growing threat to the status quo all while Macron has been just bleeding out seats since 2017, when he had a comfortable lead with 350.

Even CNN recognizes this:

The RN’s success should not be underestimated. In the 2017 elections, when Macron swept to power, the RN won just eight seats. In 2022, it surged to 89 seats. In Sunday’s vote, it won 125 – making it the largest individual party. That unity means it will likely remain a potent force in the next parliament, while the solidity of the leftist coalition remains untested. 

Stay tuned. The fireworks are not over, not in the least because the lunatics of NFP are even more divided than France as a whole, primarily because of the presence of the anti-semitic communist Jean-Luc Mélenchon. 



Joe Biden calls in to Morning Joe and defies the Democrats who say he should drop out

It's been a week since the awful internal polling broke and Joe remains defiant and dismissive of the facts.

Trump is +3.3 in the Real Clear Politics national polling average and 312-226 in the no-toss-ups Electoral College vote. Biden's approval/disapproval spread is back up and is almost as bad as his -20.7 point spread from July 2022.

I suppose because it's not worse than that the Biden campaign figures it's weathered the storm of the debate exposing his condition.

Meanwhile the cognitive flubs have become a daily feature so routine it's downright boring.

 


 

 



Sunday, July 7, 2024

Final results of French election: "far right" up 62%, adds 55 seats in National Assembly, Macron loses 88

 And now the final results have arrived with the left-wing NFP alliance on 182, Macron’s centrists on 163 and the far-right RN and its allies on 143.

Here.



Macron loses nearly 100 seats in the French National Assembly and Drudge calls it a win lol, Le Pen gains many seats despite Macron deal with left to pull hundreds of candidates

 MACRON GAMBLE PAYS OFF

Macron has gone from 350 seats in 2017 to 251 in 2022 to a projected 160 now.

Macron calling this snap election in France when he didn't have to was just as dumb as Sunak calling one in the UK. Sunak had to resign as the left clearly won, but Macron will wish he had to resign as he faces three years of a hung parliament divided by left, middle, and right, each with 140-200 seats and no clear winner.

289 seats are needed for an absolute majority.

Le Pen's party increased its presence in the assembly from 88 seats to 140 to 160, depending on who you read tonight. Her influence is steadily growing while Macron's is withering.

The plot to sabotage Le Pen was hatched immediately in the wake of her party's stunning performance in the first round on Jun 30.

Everyone's pretending to be shocked by today's results because they don't want to admit what just happened.

Macron sold out to the left.

 


 

President Biden who is cognitively healthy just said Philadelphia helped him win his Senate seat from DELAWARE not just once but each time

 Someone should really look into that.



Two white guys named Castor and Pollux on Biden's speech writing team desperately work in the corner to light the fire of his presidency while the DEI hires mug for the camera

 


Friday, July 5, 2024

Holy cow, Biden's teleprompter told him Jackie Walorski was dead at the Sep 2022 event where he called out to her weeks after she had died


 

THEY MUST HAVE PUT THAT IN THE TELEPROMPTER FOR A REASON PEOPLE.

Gee, what could it be?

AXIOS here:

Other instances of trying to explain away Biden's lapses have gotten renewed scrutiny as potential evidence that top aides were covering up Biden slipping mentally.
  • In September 2022 at a speech on food insecurity, Biden tried to give a shout-out to Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), who had worked on the issue — but who had been killed in a car accident weeks earlier.
  • Biden had issued a statement of condolences. The White House flew flags at half-staff in honor of her death.
  • "Representative — Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie? I think she wasn't going to be here," Biden said at the event.

Biden's prepared remarks included a note that Walorski had recently passed away and thanked her for her contributions, two people familiar with the speech told Axios.

  • Biden didn't remember she had died, and either ignored the Teleprompter or had trouble reading it.
  • White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre deflected tough questioning the next day by CNN's Phil Mattingly, CBS's Steven Portnoy and others.
  • Jean-Pierre refused to acknowledge Biden made a mistake, and didn't commit to releasing the original version of the remarks.
  • She said at the briefing: "I don't think it's all that unusual to have someone top of mind, especially as there's a big event."
  • The White House didn't respond to questions about this incident.

James Carville to the rescue, reminds me of the pope lately

 


 Democratic culture has too many preachy females. Too much 'Don't eat Hamburgers, don't watch football, wear a condom'. Man, shit, leave me alone.     

Seen here.

Meanwhile in the US, full time employment as a percentage of population is in real trouble now

 The June level finally made it to 50.03% after six consecutive months below 50%, but the first half of 2024 averages a level now comparable to 1H2018, at 49.5%.

The total number of full time workers itself is down 1.36% in the first half, which is alarming, as in 2008 alarming. (I try to avoid comparisons to 2020 because it was a pandemic-induced anomaly.)

It's on the skids.

Jun 2024






1H2024






1H2018








down 1.36% in the first half of 2024

down 1.55% in the first half of 2008


I won 4.1 million votes and all I got was a lousy 0.6% of The House of Commons

 


Congratulations to Keir Starmer

 


Labour sweeps to UK victory on minor improvement to support as disaffected pro-Brexit and anti-immigration voters abandon feckless Conservatives for Nigel Farage's Reform Party

Keir Starmer to become PM. Have fun stormin' the castle!

Liberal Democrats and Greens made relatively huge gains while the Scottish National Party took it up the kilt. Sinn Fein utterly collapsed lol.

Turnout was low at 60%, the post-war low being 59.4% in 2001.

It's ludicrous. The UK Reform Party got all of four seats for all that damage done to Conservatives. Nigel Farage, 60, is gearing up to make his next big impact in 2029, when he'll be 65. Whoop-dee-doo. 

 

The UK Guardian


Thursday, July 4, 2024

Was it at The French Laundry?

 

Hey look, corporate profits are higher than ever under capitalist pig Joe Biden hehe

 


Biden gasoline prices are Obama gasoline prices

 


Speaking of mendacity, here's Buck Sexton insinuating that Kamala Harris deployed Christine Ford against Brett Kavanaugh when it was Anna Eshoo and Diane Feinstein

 But of course the lapdogs just lap up this rewriting of history, which is deployed now because Kamala Harris is on the cusp.

Kamala simply piled on the pig-pile after the fact and has never done anything notable either as a senator or as VP.

She's a Didn't Earn It hire who came in a distant fourth in November 2019 in presidential polling . . . in her own state of California. That's why she dropped out.

Not even California wanted her anywhere near the White House.

 


 


There's plenty of mendacity afoot on both sides, including from the isolationist click-farmers

 


The American Way: In order to save the owls we have to kill the owls

 


Tuesday, July 2, 2024

"Second bucket" Democrats say Biden's gotta go: 1 in 3 Democrats say Biden should step aside


A Reuters/Ipsos poll, published Tuesday, found 32 percent of Democrats think Biden should give up his reelection bid just days after he squared off against Trump in the first debate of the 2024 general election season last week. ...

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online July 1-2 and surveyed 1,070 U.S. adults nationwide. It has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, per Reuters. 

More.

Marine Le Pen won 39 seats of 577 outright in the first round on Sunday

 Thirty-nine National Rally candidates have already been elected to parliament after winning over 50 percent of first-round votes -- a tour de force by a movement that never before managed to win a parliamentary seat in the first round of voting of a two-stage election before.

They include the party's longtime leader Marine Le Pen and party vice-president Sebastien Chenu. ...

Among the losers was Communist Party leader, Fabien Roussel, who lost his seat to an RN candidate in a constituency that had been held by the Communists for over 60 years. ...

The party's [NR's] worst scores were in Paris, where all its candidates were eliminated in the first round.

More.

The panic in Democrat circles this afternoon is palpable, showcased by Trump judge Juan Merchan postponing Trump's sentencing until Sep 18th, which gives them time to figure out what the hell is going on

 


I'll be surprised if Joe Biden is still the Democrats' candidate a week from now

 


Joe Biden 2018 in his own words: Voters should judge me on my vitality, can I still run up the steps of Air Force Two, am I energetic, am I in good shape, do I have all of my faculties?

Joe couldn't run up those steps already in March 2021 and humiliatingly switched to the shorter, lower stairs used by the help:

 



 

Hear Joe in his own words starting after the three minute mark in this clip:

 


The Party wants to assure you that Joe just has a cold

 















Brezhnev, 75, died in 1982, followed by Andropov, 69, in 1984, Chernenko, 73, in 1985, and the whole Evil Empire, 72, in 1989.

Monday, July 1, 2024

That didn't take long: If they say you are the King you have to look like the King

 


Democrat gaslighting in the headlines

 

Ew, so that's how we learned that in the 1980s

 Some NDAs include carve-ins allowing you to talk to a therapist or close friends; others include carve-outs for specific friends with loose lips. The terms can expire at the end of a project or on a specific date. David Bowie’s divorce NDA ended after ten years, at which point his ex-wife, Angela, went on TV and said she was now free to let the world know she had once walked in on Bowie in bed with Mick Jagger.

More


Now [2012], adding fuel to rumours that have for years abounded, a new book claims that Mick Jagger, 68, and David Bowie, 65, arguably the most dynamic and influential rock stars of their generation, were once lovers.

The incendiary claims, neatly timed with the 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones' first gig, have been made by Christopher Andersen, author of Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger.

Speaking with friends and family of the seemingly ageless rockers, at least four of the showmen's glamourous set have recalled stories of the men's antics. The two had a deep respect for each other, Mike (as Bowie knew Mick) admiring Bowie's creativity, and Bowie admiring Jagger's "financial genius" as the frontman of the Rolling Stones, writes Andersen. ...

The men frequently engaged in threesomes, but had a deeper emotional bond too, said Ava Cherry, a backing singer. She recalls some of their steamier moments together: "Even though I was in bed with them many times, I ended up just watching them have sex."

Bebe Buell, a Playboy model who had daughter Liv Tyler with Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, recalls being pursued by Jagger, and went on to sleep with both men. She too claims that bedroom activity was wild and far from monogamous. "I used to get some pretty strange phone calls from Mick and David at three in the morning," she told Andersen, "inviting me to join them in bed with four gorgeous black women ... or four gorgeous black men."

But it was the moment that Bowie's wife Angie caught the two men in bed together that seems to cement the rumours. The blonde, with whom the singer had a son in 1970, Zowie Bowie (now Duncan Jones), says she one day found the men curled up in bed together, asleep. She said she "felt absolutely dead certain that they’d been [having sex]. It was so obvious, in fact, that I never even considered the possibility that they hadn’t been".

The rest is here.

Hysterical Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor declares 6-3 decision now makes President Joe Biden a king above the law

 ‘The President is Now a King Above the Law’: Sotomayor Says She Fears For Democracy in Scathing Dissent to Trump Immunity Decision

It is upsetting for this unqualified justice to contribute to the general air of distrust for our republican institutions which already provide adequate mechanisms for the removal of political offenders through the political means of impeachment, the 25th Amendment, and defeat at the polling booth.

Supreme Court rules Obama can't be prosecuted for executing American citizens by drone while he was president, Democrats shaken, dismayed, hopeless

 

 Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have broad immunity, dimming chance of a pre-election Trump trial

 US Supreme Court rules Trump has immunity for official, not private acts

 

President Clouseau of France just took a beating in the polls from Le Pen

 This clip from early June at the Normandy anniversary with President Applesauce Brains is just hilarious.

 




Jill Biden is under attack because Joe's closest aides, often led by Jill Biden's top aide, Anthony Bernal, and deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, took steps early in his term to essentially rope off the president

 Reported here.















It's amazing how Drudge has turned on a dime:




If 72% of registered voters think Biden does not have the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, then he should resign . . . immediately

 



Sunday, June 30, 2024

Missing us by 180k miles yesterday, asteroid 2024 MK was only discovered on June 16 and was one of the 60% larger than 140 meters still unknown


 

Gee that's . . . not a happy thought.

The asteroid, named 2024 MK, is estimated to measure about 480 feet (146 meters) across, which is greater than the height of a 40-story building or the Great Pyramid of Giza.

More

A sucker that size could destroy London, England:

"If [an asteroid as big as Dimorphos] were to fall on the city of London, windows would break over the whole south east of England and the damage in [the Greater London] area would be very extreme," Collins said. "There would be no survivors in the center of London because of the impact itself and also because of the severity of the air blast." ...

While asteroids of this size crossing the path of our planet are rare, astronomers estimate that 60% of near Earth asteroids larger than 140 meters are still unknown. 

NASA said it came in at 152.4 meters.

European Space Agency said it came as close as 180k miles.

Talk about giving two weeks notice.

Democrats' new strategy: Lie harder!

 

There's an easy way to recognize if the Democrat you are talking to is a "first-bucket" Democrat

 


 First-bucket Democrats believe Joe had a cold on debate night, an excuse trotted out mid-way through the debate by the Biden campaign when everyone realized in the first minute that Joe was cratering.

Magically, Joe recovered overnight and made a relatively robust appearance in North Carolina on Friday in front of a supportive crowd using his trusty teleprompter!

Sources have described three buckets of Democrats: those who will defend Biden under any circumstances, those who are ready to dump him, and those who are waiting to see what he does — and what his poll numbers look like in the coming days and weeks — before passing judgment. It’s the third bucket that Democratic insiders are monitoring closely.

Germany's Alternative für Deutschland is against EU bailouts of Greece and Italy and against EU membership for Ukraine

 


In discussing the party's policy platform, Weidel said AfD's future allies in the European Parliament should oppose the disbursal of taxpayer money to the "debt states" of Europe - a reference to countries such as Italy and Greece - and the idea that Ukraine belongs to the European Union, after it opened membership talks this week.

Reported here.

British conservatives are still blind to Nigel Farage's truth, which is identical with Henry Kissinger's long-held position that Ukraine should not join NATO

Zoe Strimpel, UK Telegraph

Last week, Nigel Farage outed himself as deeply unfit for leadership by piping the same line as other populists in Europe and the United States: that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is effectively our fault because, through Nato expansion, we had “poked” the Russian bear . . ..

Henry Kissinger was US Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford.

This position has nothing to do with populism, except by the accident of thinking correctly.

DNC chair Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez gaslight DNC committee members in Saturday conference call, disable chat function and disallow questions

Here:

Multiple committee members on the call, most granted anonymity to talk about the private discussion, described feeling like they were being gaslighted — that they were being asked to ignore the dire nature of the party’s predicament. The call, they said, may have worsened a widespread sense of panic among elected officials, donors and other stakeholders.

Instead, the people said, Harrison offered what they described as a rosy assessment of Biden's path forward. The chat function was disabled and there were no questions allowed.

“I was hoping for more of a substantive conversation instead of, ‘Hey, let’s go out there and just be cheerleaders,’ without actually addressing a very serious issue that unfolded on American television for millions of people to see," said Joe Salazar, an elected DNC member from Colorado, who was on the call. “There were a number of things that could have been said in addressing the situation. But we didn’t get that. We were being gaslit.” ... “This should not be a close race,” Salazar said, pointing to Trump's criminal record and long history of falsehoods. “They’re the ones who should be looking for a new nominee, not us. And unfortunately for us, because of our president’s performance on Thursday night, that is now an open discussion.”