Ohio back-filled hundreds of COVID deaths for Feb 11th totaling 721

 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths climb to 480k, 77,383 have died since Biden became president

 

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

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths hit 470k mark, 67,539 added since Biden was inaugurated president on Jan 20

 

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.”

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths passed through the 460k mark today

 

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.

 

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.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths hit 450k today

 

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)

Johns Hopkins: US COVID deaths climb to 440k

 

For now, the Pfizer vaccine appears to be the one to get, if you've got the choice, because the coronavirus is mutating

The new Novavax vaccine is just 49% effective vs. the new South Africa coronavirus strain B.1.351 which emerged last October and was just reported in two cases in South Carolina.

Johnson & Johnson's new vaccine is just 57% effective against it.

Moderna says its vaccine is "far less effective against the South Africa strain".

Pfizer's vaccine appears to be the most robust of them all, "only slightly less effective against the South Africa variant compared with the others."

Story here.

ROBINHOOD: WE HAD TO KILL THE STOCK TRADES IN ORDER TO SAVE THE STOCK TRADERS

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev: Had To Pause Trading On Meme Stocks Thursday To Protect Customers, Ourselves

 

Johns Hopkins: The COVID-19 case fatality rate to date in South Africa is 2.99% vs. 1.68% in the US

 Virus variant from South Africa detected in US for 1st time:

The variant first found in South Africa was detected in October. Since then, it has been found in at least 30 other countries.

It is not obvious that the mutation found in October is responsible for the outsized increases in cases and deaths recently observed in South Africa. Both rose in tandem not until the beginning of December, and the mutation could have been present earlier. Seasonal factors may be at work. July is South Africa's winter, January its summer. Elevation moderates summer high temperatures and latitude its winter lows.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths passed through the 430k mark today

 

Berman and Milanovic show increased "intersection between the top decile of capital-income recipients and labor-income earners" since Reagan 1986 tax reform has led to higher income inequality

Regrettably the study does not mention another factor, how free-trade, particularly with China and East Asia generally, helped drive wages in the US at the bottom ever lower. The Reagan era produced a perfect storm of screwed for the bottom half in America.

Here:

Where does homoploutia come from? The data do not allow us to determine that with certainty, but they allow to investigate what is consistent with individual hypotheses. There is strong evidence that increased wage-stretching that began around 1980 is associated with the rising homoploutia (the other alternatives that do not perform as well are rising inequality of capital incomes and rising capital share).

The link between higher inequality of labor incomes and homoploutia might have occurred in two ways. The first is that many high-earning individuals saved a large share of their wages, invested it, and after some years began receiving large capital incomes. The second is that many capital-rich people decided, perhaps because of changed social norms, or because top jobs became more lucrative as marginal tax rates were reduced, not to treat university education as “luxury consumption” but rather to use it to secure good jobs. It could be, of course, that both mechanisms were at work. 

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths climb to 420k

 

US COVID-19 Update for first 23 days of January 2021: January remains on track to be the worst month yet but may turn out to be a hump month

Total announced US COVID-19 cases, first 23 days of Jan 2021: 5,021,670 or 218,333 per day.

Dec 2020 cases per day: 206,809.

Nov 2020 cases per day: 146,872.

Self-reported mask compliance rates of 49% are probably still quite exaggerated. People who complain that health safety mandates don't work never contend with that fact. The virus wouldn't be spreading the way it is if it were really true that people are finally doing what's been asked of them. 

Total announced US COVID-19 deaths, first 23 days of Jan 2021: 71351, or 3102 per day.

Dec 2020 rate was 2516 per day.

Apr 2020 rate was 1961 per day.

Hospitalizations on Sat Jan 23: 113,609. Peak appears to have occurred Jan 6: 132,474.

Up-to-date charts for 2020:

Was QAnon started by this joker?