Monday, July 5, 2021

LOL, how does Clay Travis graduate from Vanderbilt Law and say "drug across the finish line" out loud in front of God and everybody?

Just now on the show which replaces Rush Limbaugh.

Joel Kotkin has come around, now calls it what it is: Global fascism

In 2018, Kotkin was still tip-toeing around the obvious, but not anymore:

Mussolini’s notion of fascism has become increasingly dominant in much of the world . . .

Mussolini, a one-time radical socialist, viewed himself as a “revolutionary” transforming society by turning the state into “the moving centre of economic life”. In Italy and, to a greater extent, Germany, fascism also brought with it, at least initially, an expanded highly populist welfare state much as we see today.

Mussolini’s idea of a an economy controlled from above, with generous benefits but dominated by large business interests, is gradually supplanting the old liberal capitalist model. ...

fascism — in its corporate sense — relies on concentrated economic power to achieve its essential and ideological goals. ...

China, in many aspects the model fascist state of our times, follows Il Duce’s model of cementing the corporate elite into the power structure. ...

But in the battle between the two emergent fascist systems, China possesses powerful advantages. Communist Party cadres at least offer more than a moralising agenda; they can point to the country’s massive reduction of extreme poverty and a huge growth in monthly wages, up almost five-fold since 2006. At a time when the middle class is shrinking in the West, China’s middle class increased enormously from 1980 to 2000, although its growth appears to have slowed in recent years.

Like Mussolini, who linked his regime to that of Ancient Rome, China’s rulers look to Han supremacy and the glories of China’s Imperial past. “The very purpose of the [Chinese Communist] Party in leading the people in revolution and development,” Xi Jinping told party cadres a decade ago, “is to make the people prosperous, the country strong, and [to] rejuvenate the Chinese nation.”

Kotkin recognizes at least that American right-wing libertarianism is part of the problem, not part of the solution:

the consolidation of oligarchic power is supported by massive lobbying operations and dispersals of cash, including to some Right-wing libertarians, who doggedly justify censorship and oligopoly on private property grounds.

Regrettably, however, Kotkin still does not connect this failure of the old liberal order in the West with the failure of the old moral order which gave it birth and on which it depended. This is because Kotkin still sees things in primarily materialistic terms.

Kotkin is oddly politically correct when he denounces possible recourse to nativism, which blinds him to the nativism which is at the heart of Chinese state capitalism and gives it much of its appeal and strength. He calls for "a re-awakening of the spirit of resistance to authority" in the West, not realizing that it was Protestantism which made that even possible in the first place.

The problem of the West is spiritual, and Catholicism will never be able to rise to the occasion of refounding it as long as globo-homo defines Rome. The whole idea is inimical to the notion of founding a nation "for our posterity".

Friday, July 2, 2021

America continues in decline, undershooting its potential by 13 million full-time jobs

Full-time employment in June 2021 in the US, not seasonally adjusted, was 48.7% of civilian noninstitutional population. The average level had been 50.4% in 2019, historically anemic. That's a deficit of 4.6 million full-time jobs in June 2021 compared with the 2019 average.
 
If you can imagine full-time employment at 53.6% of civilian noninstitutional population as in the year 2000, you are talking about 140 million with full-time jobs today instead of the actual 127 million. America continues in decline undershooting its potential by 13 million full-time.
 
Sad!

 
 
48.7% June 2021

Thursday, July 1, 2021

LOL, Florida ranks 44th for daily new cases of coronavirus: What happened? Is everyone on vacation for five days in a row, or was the counting office in the condo collapse?

 

 

You don't go from reporting 1,800 cases a day, day after day, and suddenly have zero for five days in a row.



Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Batshit crazy Australia goes into lockdown over a coronavirus trickle

By comparison the US is experiencing a flood, but we're cutting loose even though new cases per million in the US registers a rate 30x worse than in Australia.
 



 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, June 27, 2021

June 2021 to date is 2nd rainiest June ever in Grand Rapids, MI, and one of just 23 months since 1892 with 8 inches of rain or more, ranking 14th so far

June 2021 to date is the 14th rainiest month in Grand Rapids, MI, since 1892:
 
Jun 1892: 13.22
Sep 1986: 11.85
Apr 2013: 11.10
May 2001: 10.01
Oct 2017:  9.69
May 2000: 9.59
Sep 2008:  9.54
Sep 1981:  9.52
May 2004: 9.29
Sep 1961:  9.15
Jul 1992:   8.83
Aug 1987: 8.46
Jul 1950:   8.42
 
Jun 1-26, 2021: 8.40
 
Oct 1954: 8.32
Apr 1909: 8.29
May 1981: 8.29
Jun 1967: 8.21
Sep 1993: 8.20
Sep 1915: 8.11
Jul 1994: 8.07
Jun 2010: 8.04
Jun 1928: 8.03.
 

Among the 23 months with 8 inches of rain or more in Grand Rapids, MI, since 1892, June 24-26, 2021 stands out as one of just five 2-3 consecutive day rain events with 5.5 inches or more:

May 10-11, 1981: 6.51 inches of rain
Sep 9-11, 1986:    6.43
 
Jun 24-26, 2021:  6.17
 
May 14-16, 2001: 5.97
Jul 5-7, 1994:       5.54.
 
74% of the 23 months with 8 inches of rain or more in GR occurred after 1960, consistent with the higher rainfall trend generally in the graph below.
 
The June 2021 event caused a run on portable submersible pumps needed by homeowners to evacuate pooling water in low areas and basements due to saturated ground. Flood warnings remain in effect for the area through Monday.
 
Even so, Grand Rapids is still running over 2 inches behind on mean rainfall year-to-date.
 
June 26, 2021 ranks 7th for daily maximum rainfall on a single day in June since 1892 at 2.81 inches.
 
The most rain ever to fall on a single day in Grand Rapids is 4.22 inches, occurring on June 5, 1905 and again on August 19, 1939. Those extreme events are associated with the hotter, dryer pre-1960 half of the graph.
 
Mean annual daily maximum precipitation in GR is 2.27 inches, with June ranking the highest month at 1.29, followed by September at 1.26.
 

 

Saturday, June 26, 2021

Flood watches, flood warnings, and rain, oh my!

Heat watches, heat warnings, and wind! Oh my!



Friday, June 25, 2021

COVID-19 trends in England in the last month are not encouraging despite being one of the top three or four countries in the world for vaccinations

Cases per million are up 560% since May 23.

Hospitalizations are up 64%. As a measure of severity of illness, this increase is damning for authorities everywhere who keep insisting that vaccinations will reduce severity.

Deaths per million, while still puny, are up 175%.

All this with 47% fully vaccinated, 64% with one dose.

Click any chart to enlarge.







Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Reported STDs Reach All-time High for 6th Consecutive Year

More than 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea & syphilis reported in 2019

Press Release

Climate Update for KGRR: May 2021

Climate Update for KGRR: May 2021
 
Max T 86, Mean 86
Min T 30, Mean 32
Av T 57.5, Mean 57.9
Rain 1.92, Mean 3.47
Snow 0, Mean 0.2
Heating Degree Days 281, Mean 253; HDD season to date 6144, Mean season to date 6648
Cooling Degree Days 59, Mean 39 

The heating season has been about 7.6% milder than the mean. There have been well over 50 years in the record since 1902 which have been milder still.

Coronavirus deaths in Africa's "ivermectin" states are a fraction of what they are in their counterpart countries Brazil, Peru, and Spain

Brazil: 3.3m sq mi; population 213m
Nigeria: 357k sq mi; population 211m; deaths 0.42% of Brazil's
 
Peru: 496k sq mi; population 33m
Angola: 481k sq mi; population 32m; deaths 0.45% of Peru's
 
Spain: 195k sq mi; population 47m
Kenya: 224k sq mi; population 48m: deaths 4.3% of Spain's
 



Monday, June 21, 2021

Let's compare what happened to cases in India after vaccinating just 3.6% of its population against C19 with what happened in the US with just 3.6% vaccinated

TL;dr : The same thing.

India reached 3.6% fully vaccinated against C19 on about June 19th.

India's cases per million metric fell 83% from its May 8th peak to June 18th (from 283.5 to 48.07).

Vaccines had nothing to do with the drop.

The US reached 3.6% fully vaccinated against C19 way back on Feb 12th.

US peak cases per million occurred about a month before that, on about Jan 8th, at 758.56.

On Feb 12th cases per million had fallen to 293.61, or by 61%.

Vaccines had nothing to do with it.

Virus gonna virus.

Click any chart to enlarge.








US policy to vaccinate children under the age of 18 against COVID-19 is not following the science, according to the World Health Organization.

 

Link.

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Daily new cases of COVID-19 have plunged in India 82% from peak with just 3.5% of the population fully vaccinated to Jun 17

Barely 15.5% of the population of India is vaccinated with at least one dose.
 
The Vaccine Church is silent.