Things noteworthy from my reading October 17-24

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

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

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

Sen. Murkowski of Alaska will vote FOR Judge Barrett.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a jerk!

US COVID-19 update for Sunday 25 October 2020

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

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

Mar    138

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

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

Click any image to enlarge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The story is similar in Texas.

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

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

Climate update for KGRR: September 2020

    Climate update for KGRR: September 2020

Everything was sub-mean in September 2020.

Max temp 85, Mean Max 88

Min temp 36, Mean Min 37

Av temp 61.5, Mean av 62.7

Rain 3.07, Mean 3.59

Cooling degree days 36, Mean 76

Heating degree days 133, Mean 134

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

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

Here's Joe Biden's speech from 1993 using code for blacks: "born out of wedlock, tens of thousands of them" who are "predators on our streets"

Joe Biden's promise last night to get to zero emissions by 2025 means you have 11 days left to avoid a civilizational catastrophe

 The man is insane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

yoga pants

sneakers

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

Lori Goldman

could not have described the branches of government

white

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

→the stereotype of a suburban woman [uh huh]

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

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

Often the houses have Trump flags hanging from the porch rails 

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

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

a $2 million house

fancy car

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

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

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

Trend for first freeze date in Grand Rapids, Michigan since 1896 shows the date trending earlier, not later, because it was much warmer in America before World War II than it is now

 

On average 45% of the voting age population won't vote in Election 2020, and who can blame them?

 

US COVID-19 update for 10/11/20

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

Mar    138

Apr  1,961

May 1,330

Jun     769

Jul      851

Aug    955

Sep    779

Oct     733 (thru 10/10).

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The other powers that be thought otherwise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I said at the time, Tuesday Nov 1.

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

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

Trump won't lose because he dropped the f-bomb on the Rush Limbaugh Show, but it's a sign of the basic disrespect for his audience, his office and the American people which will be the reason

 Here.

White baby on a stick: That's the measured response to crime advocated by the supporters of the communist African National Congress in South Africa

Story.

US COVID-19 deaths hit 210,155 today in the Johns Hopkins data set

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kind of amazing Trump comes down with the COVID right after throwing the Proud Boys under the bus on Hannity

 

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

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

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

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

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

Rush Limbaugh is a horrible representative of conservatism. 

Today, here:

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

RUSH: Yeah, that would be great.

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

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

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

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