Friday, August 9, 2024
Thursday, August 8, 2024
Electric vehicle in South Korean underground parking spontaneously combusts, eight hour fire destroys vehicles, causes building evacuations for hundreds
It took just seconds for an underground South Korean residential parking lot to be engulfed in flames. The culprit: a Mercedes-Benz EQE electric vehicle that hadn’t been charging.
The blaze incinerated dozens of cars nearby, scorched a further 100 vehicles and forced hundreds of residents to emergency shelters as the buildings above the parking lot lost power and electricity. Nobody died, but the fire took eight hours to extinguish. ...
The country had already been on edge about battery-related fires, after a blaze at a lithium-battery factory in late June that killed nearly two dozen people. The Mercedes EV blaze, in the port city of Incheon, occurred last week. Then, on Tuesday, a Kia EV6 caught fire in a parking lot in a central South Korean town.
More.
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
Since Biden dropped out July 21 and endorsed Harris, Virginia, Michigan, and Wisconsin have flipped to Harris in the Real Clear Politics No-Toss-Ups map
The Trump Electoral College lead is down to 287 v. Harris 251.
Here.
What a dope!
The Tim Walz COVID deaths in nursing homes story is a window on the scandal of the pandemic: We victimized old people as a matter of public policy, and we're still doing it
Early in the pandemic Minnesota's Tim Walz sent many COVID victims back to nursing homes where the death toll was huge, but the real nursing home slaughter happened later, in the fall of 2020.
By the end of May 2020, 80% of the COVID deaths in Minnesota had occurred in long-term-care settings such as nursing homes, according to the story here, which quotes Tim Walz defending sending back all "recovered" cases:
"I think it's important to remember these are folks that went to the hospital, they recovered, but they're still in that mode, and they're going back to their home, and this is where they live," said Gov. Tim Walz during an afternoon press conference. "The rest of us, we may self-isolate, but where are we going to put (these) people?"
"This was federal guidance," Walz said. "This was what everyone was doing. This was not a mistake. It wasn't like no one thought about this. There was complexity in how you deal with this."
But everybody's missing how much worse it got in those settings in December, when deaths from COVID in those places in Minnesota soared to 3.16 per 100 vs. 1.88 nationally, 68% worse at peak.
Just look at these charts of nursing home deaths from COVID in Minnesota available from the AARP dashboard, zooming in year by year.
Deaths calmed down rapidly in 2021, not because of vaccination, but because so many were already dead.
And you would expect things to be under control after that, right?, except the fall outbreak pattern of deaths reoccurs like clockwork at the end of 2021, but worse: The peak rate of death from COVID in nursing homes was 153% worse than the national average.
But all those nursing home residents were vaccinated by the end of 2021. The whole country was.
The same story played out in 2022, except nursing home deaths from COVID were consistently higher through most of that year, and then even more wildly so in 2023, with a spring and a fall outbreak of way-above-average deaths in nursing homes from COVID.
The December 2022 rate of death was 170% worse than the national average.
The March 2023 rate of death was 400% worse, and the December 277% worse.
Vaccination did not stop the spread of the disease. Close proximity to sick people spread the disease. It's that simple.
It is a crime that we're all OK with that, but especially for our political leadership and medical elites who continually lie to us that vaccination prevents death. The nursing home data proves that it does not.
They all knew what they were doing, and it's still going on right now.
The only thing which will prevent future deaths is getting old people the hell out of there.
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2021 |
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Gun-banner Tim Walz lies, he never carried weapons of war in a war
He had a chance to go to Iraq with his field artillery regiment in 2005, but he decided to retire instead after 24 years of service.
He exaggerates his military experience, and reminds me of no one so much lately as Peter Meijer, who did the same.
It is disrespectful to veterans who actually were in combat.
Tim Walz was arrested on a DUI charge in September 1995
After flunking a field sobriety test, he submitted to a breath test, which pegged his blood-alcohol level at 0.128%, well above the state’s legal limit of 0.08%.
He was a teacher in Nebraska at the time, and had been newly wed in 1994. In 1996 they moved to Minnesota.
Walz served in the Army National Guard from 1981-2005, first in Nebraska and then in Minnesota.
The background coming out on Tim Walz shows he's a left wing kook just like Kamala, not a "centrist", which is why she picked him over the Jew Shapiro from Pennsylvania
Some say he's a sacrificial lamb for a losing proposition and that Democrats are saving their A-team for the next time.
Tim Walz locked down Minnesota for 15 months based on an hysterical projection of COVID deaths, and presided over $500 million of George Floyd rioting damage and $250 million of Somali COVID fraud
On taking office in 2019, Gov. Walz was restrained by a one-seat Republican majority in the state Senate—until Covid hit in the spring of 2020. He declared a state of emergency on March 25, 2020, and ruled by decree for 15 months. He proclaimed the emergency on the basis of an allegedly sophisticated Minnesota Model projection of the virus’s course in the state. In fact, the projection reflected a weekend’s work by graduate students at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Relying on their research, Mr. Walz presented a scenario in which an estimated 74,000 Minnesotans would perish from the virus. The following week the Star Tribune reported that with the lockdown Mr. Walz ordered, 50,000 would die. Maybe it would have been preferable to address the virus through democratic means.
Having destroyed jobs and impeded life routines, including family get-togethers and church attendance, Mr. Walz finally let his one-man rule lapse on July 1, 2021. When the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped counting in March 2023, the deaths of 14,870 Minnesotans were attributed to the virus. (In 2020 I successfully sued the administration for excluding me from Health Department press briefings on Covid.)
During the state of emergency, protests broke out in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020 following the death of George Floyd. That Thursday, rioters burned Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station to the ground. Mr. Walz didn’t deploy the National Guard until the weekend. Riots, arson and looting throughout the Twin Cities caused about $500 million in damage.
Minnesota leads the nation in Covid fraud. Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, its founder, Aimee Bock, allegedly recruited mostly young Somali men to seek reimbursement for millions of meals supposedly served to poor students and families. According to indictments handed up by a grand jury to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, Ms. Bock and others allegedly defrauded the state and federal government of $250 million. Ms. Bock has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges.
Oh yeah, and Tim Walz thinks Ilhan Omar is just wonderful.
Tuesday, August 6, 2024
Squad member Cori Bush defeated in Missouri primary, the second to lose after Jamaal Bowman
Good.
The Hill has the story.
The UK rioting is being blamed on free speech, so PM Keir Starmer aims to end it with . . . totalitarianism
From UK Riots: The agenda becomes clear…
Whatever the truth of this latest incident, and whatever long term aims it might be used to further, this “strategy of tension” has an immediate political agenda already becoming clear – and it’s as predictable as ever.
- Further limit social media/free speech
- Normalise constant surveillance
Attacking free speech is the ever-present, eternal agenda that comes before everything else and it’s been a real pile-on the last few days. ...
You cannot begin to fathom how irritating it is to the ruling class that ordinary people are allowed to just say whatever they want whenever they want – including having the audacity to fact check the media in real time, with no repercussions at all. ...
... it fell to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to formally lay it out in his address yesterday afternoon [transcript].
Pledging to counter the “far-right” with a new police division, and increased use of surveillance and facial recognition technology to “limit their movements”:
Wider deployment of facial recognition technology…And preventive action – criminal behaviour orders…To restrict their movements…
And firing a warning shot across the bows of social media:
And let me also say to large social media companies and those who run them…Violent disorder clearly whipped up online…That is also a crime. It’s happening on your premises. And the law must be upheld everywhere.
He even pointedly made clear his response wasn’t just about now or about countering the “far-right”, rather it was about ALL civil disobedience, for any reason:
A response both to the immediate challenge which is clearly driven by far-right hatred. But also “all violent disorder that flares up […] whatever the apparent cause or motivation – we make no distinction…Crime is crime.”
That means everything.
The storm builds: K-12 employee sexual misconduct against minors produced $1.2 billion in settlements for school districts over the last decade
A review of insurance industry reports, legal blogs and media
accounts by RealClearInvestigations turned up $1.2 billion in
settlements for school districts in the last decade. And there are clear
indications that the pace and amount of legal liability has been
rising, along with the impact that has for taxpayers and schools. ...
“I think we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” Oregon attorney Peter Janci told RealClear-Investigations. “There has been a lot of abuse that happened in schools, and there are more coming forward every day as public education and the sentiment to support victims has grown.” ...
The Boy Scouts are insolvent after a $2.4 billion settlement on more
than 80,000 lawsuits, while the Catholic Church is still wrestling with
the fallout from its long-term harboring of predatory priests, with
their current legal bill standing at $3 billion. The totals for K-12
public school districts could potentially exceed those, given there are
nearly 17,000 such districts in the U.S. with close to 50 million
students today. ...
“In Washington, there’s been a series of laws that created a thriving industry of lawsuits,” Chamberlin told RCI. “Generally, there’s just a real fear of jury verdicts. They are awarding astronomical settlements and sooner or later it will be the taxpayer who is paying these.”
“You have to understand the fiscal landscape of all this,” he said. “So far, our [insurance] policy has been sufficient, but I do worry that at some point in the future we’ll be unable to get insurance. The lawsuits now cover a range of behaviors, and this has spiraled out of control nationally.”
More.
These are the costs of The Sexual Revolution. The final bill is still being tabulated.
Monday, August 5, 2024
New Zealand under Christopher Luxon will reverse a ban on oil and gas exploration, push the pricing of agricultural emissions back five years, and encourage more mining
The agricultural sector including fishing contributes 5% to the economy, and accounts for about 80% of total exports. The farmers who helped Luxon's government come to power had said the environmental policies that the coalition government are reversing would have made dairy and meat too costly to produce. ...
Climate Minister Simon Watts said the government expects to meet the 2030 target but admitted more work was needed to meet the 2035 target. "The Government is committed to meeting our climate change targets, but the way in which we do this will be different to former New Zealand Governments," he said. "This Government is using a least-cost approach to meet our climate targets. We will not shut down sectors that are boosting our economy and exports." ...
Other sectors the government is targeting are energy and mineral resources. It has said it would allow oil and gas exploration again, which former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern banned in 2018, in a bid to reduce imports of coal, boost fuel exports and keep energy prices for the public and small businesses low.
The LA Times wants you to know there are way fewer Trump signs in rural Michigan right now, perhaps because of the Trump assassination attempt
Some rural and suburban Michiganders also reported a general sense of unease and even fear, particularly those who say they were spooked by the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania last month. Kitchen said she “kind of shut down” her previously active Facebook account after the attack, because the political rhetoric got too heated.
Raffy Castro, 22, was fishing for bass from a dock over the Clinton River on Monday afternoon. Though this will be the first election the Sterling Heights resident has voted in, he recalled much higher enthusiasm in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
“I haven’t heard people talking about it,” he said. “I think people are scared, especially with the shooting. I guess people don’t want to portray who they support.”
More.
Buy my book: Seppuku for Bigyenners
Traditional safe-haven assets, such as the yen and the Swiss franc, surged on Monday, fueling speculation that some investors were seeking to quickly unload profitable carry trades to cover their losses elsewhere.
More.
US Treasury yields collapsed 6.5% week over week Friday Aug 2, 2024 and year-to-date percentage total return went green across the entire curve
Sunday, August 4, 2024
As Attorney General, Kamala Harris instructed her entire staff to stand every morning as she entered the office and say, “Good Morning General”
Here:
Four short episodes I would like to share of his month-long internship for Kamala Harris:
Senator Harris vocally throws around “F-bombs” and other profanity constantly in her berating of staff and others. The staff is in complete fear of her and she uses her profanity throughout the day.
As Attorney General, Senator Harris instructed her entire staff to stand every morning as she entered the office and say, “Good Morning General.”
Never once during the month-long internship did Harris introduce herself to our son (as he was only in an office with 20 paid employees) and staff was too intimidated by her to introduce him. The only acknowledgment was a form letter of “thanks” signed by Harris given to him on his last day of service.
Gregory was also given instructions to never address Harris nor look her in the eye as that privilege was only allowed to senior staff members.
I don’t know about you but this is not the workplace of someone who respects her staff. For a woman of color to have employees stand when she enters the room smacks of a bygone era that we, as Americans, deplore and find demeaning. Furthermore, that she didn’t show the quality of leadership skills or even being a decent boss — much less the “class” to approach Gregory at least once during the month to say “Hi, I’m Kamala Harris and I want to thank you for volunteering in my office” — is really troubling. Finally, what is up with the “don’t look her in the eye” instruction? I know I wouldn’t want to work in that hostile environment!
Saturday, August 3, 2024
Friday, August 2, 2024
The percentage working full time in the US now averages 49.63 for the first seven months of 2024, down from both 2022 and 2023
The percentage working full time in the US rose to 50.26 in July from 50.03 in June and now averages 49.63 for the first seven months of 2024. That's down from 50.06 in the first seven months of 2022, and down from 50.20 in 2023.
Not a good sign.
Michael Anton lol: Leftists argue that the otherwise implacably racist US statesmen of the 19th century left us one instance of openhearted liberalism in the 14th Amendment called birthright citizenship
The idea that the framers intended to extend citizenship to anyone whose parents snuck across our border is absurd and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nineteenth century American mind.
I note, however, how convenient it is for leftists who constantly attack all past American statesmen for being implacably “racist” to suddenly discover this one instance of their openhearted liberalism. Really? The same bewhiskered, frockcoated “racists” up to their eyeballs in white supremacy nonetheless decided to open America’s borders to the entire world? It’s an obvious lie of convenience and should be dismissed with contempt.
More.
Kim Strassel: the GOP needs to be engaged in a whole-of-election message reminding Americans of the ugly Biden policies of past and present, and Kamala’s promise to carry them into the future
The libertarian-inclined in the GOP want the message restricted more or less to the economy, inflation, immigration, and crime.
Strassel points out Biden is continuing or proposing the following to help cement support for Harris on the left: