Biden chooses England over New England

 

U.S. pledges to ramp up supplies of natural gas to Britain as Biden and Sunak seek to cut off Russia

 

 

 

The State of Georgia, population 10.9 million, is 33% black

 

Drudge right now vs. the truth

 ANOTHER MAGA DOWN

DEM WINS GA

KGRR climate update through Nov 2022

2022 mean average temperature eleven months through Nov = 50.4

Mean average temperature through Nov since 1892 = 50.0

28 inches of snow, second highest November on record, all melted now.

 

 

Meanwhile consumers of the really important things like food and energy are getting pounded with persistent, huge price increases

 

So-called "core" inflation rose to 5-ish percent from early 2021 and hasn't budged from there in twelve months

Puny Fed rate hikes have done nothing to stop it.

The metric was less than 2% under Trump.

 

The traditional 60/40 portfolio is now down only 13.76% in 2022 through November, not adjusted for inflation north of 6%

Total stock market index, VTSAX:  -14.51% through November

Total bond market index, VBTLX:  -12.64% through November

The dollar buys 12.5% less after two years of Joe Biden: The damage was already done by June when the Fed first hiked by 0.75

 

Jay Powell is a bitter disappointment, pledging today to moderate rate hikes when he's hardly begun to fight inflation after waiting a year to start

 Jay Powell is such a clown:

  ". . . it makes sense to moderate the pace of our rate increases as we approach the level of restraint that will be sufficient to bring inflation down,” he added. “The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting.”

Story.

Making sure his pals profit under the umbrella of inflationary pressures is worse than insider trading, because we all pay.

We're the marks!

I haven't been this disappointed in a federal official since Donald Trump betrayed his immigration promises in 2017-2018.

And how did stocks respond?

Before the election Biden declared the pandemic over, then he declared it on again afterwards but WaPo just ignores that

Biden still hasn't "shut down the virus".

 

 

Life insurance payouts soared past $100 billion in 2021 as pandemic took over 800,000 total US lives by year end

 Payouts rose 11% in 2021 to $100.19 billion, most likely due to the pandemic, according to the American Council of Life Insurers. The increase was on the heels of a 15% year-over-year rise in 2020, when death-benefit payments totaled $90.43 billion. ... The year-over-year increases are among the largest since the 1918 flu pandemic, when payments surged 41%. They are far above the 4.9% average from 2011 to 2021, the ACLI said. Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. jumped 20% in 2021 to approximately 460,000, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More.

An unappreciated factor in the relatively poor Republican performance in Election 2022 is the death of many of their voters due to the pandemic

 Older voters skew Republican, and COVID-19 victims skew overwhelmingly older.

A 3- to 4-point Republican advantage among a million deaths of older Americans is up to 40,000 voters nationwide who didn't vote in the election, which doesn't seem like much until you consider that 15 US House races were won by margins of 50% and a fraction.

Republicans won 6 of those races, with one additional race undecided with the Republican leading by just 600 votes.

But Democrats won 8 of those races, and each one by approximately 1,300 to 7,000 votes versus all competitors. In four of those races, with Republican opponents only, the Democrats won by just 1,300 to 3,000 votes.

The legacy of Pelosi's US House

Thus was the building left

Ridiculous; and the work confusion nam'd.

 

-- John Milton

Come and take it, Joe

Biden: "The Idea That We Still Allow" Semi-Automatic Weapons "Is Sick"

WaPo: We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated

For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine. 

 

Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

 

It’s a continuation of a troubling trend that has emerged over the past year. As vaccination rates have increased and new variants appeared, the share of deaths of people who were vaccinated has been steadily rising.

 

In September 2021, vaccinated people made up just 23 percent of coronavirus fatalities. In January and February this year, it was up to 42 percent, per our colleagues Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating. 

 

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cox told The Health 202.

 

Being unvaccinated is still a major risk factor for dying from covid-19. But efficacy wanes over time, and an analysis out last week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights the need to get regular booster shots to keep one’s risk of death from the coronavirus low, especially for the elderly. ...

 

Around 35 million people have received the updated boosters that became available to people 12 and over in September and to children as young as 5 last month. That’s a little over 10 percent of the U.S. population, amid concern that cooler weather will bring a surge of covid cases as people move indoors and respiratory infections spread.

 

More.

The progress of the pandemic has demonstrated the following facts.

There has been an annual increase in the percentage of the population infected every year, from 6% in 2020 to 10.5% in 2021 to 13.1% in 2022 to date, per Our World in Data and the US Census Population Clock.

Clearly the introduction of vaccines from early 2021 has not stopped the spread, and spread is probably a lot worse than the 2022 data suggest because of a complete breakdown in the testing regime.

On the other hand, while the percentage of the population which died from the pandemic surged by 35% in 2021 from 0.106% in 2020 to 0.143% in 2021, 2022 to date has marked a huge reversal with just 0.076% dead. That's down 47% from 2021 and 28% from 2020.

 

Why is that?

 

Vaccine advocates will credit the vaccines, yet vaccine uptake in the United States is at record lows throughout 2022. Since we know that vaccine protection wears out in mere months and requires repeated boosters, hence the continued drumbeat to get vaccinated, the dramatic decline in deaths cannot be ascribed to the low-uptake environment, especially with the transition from a pandemic of the unvaccinated to a pandemic of the vaccinated admitted publicly by the likes of Kaiser and WaPo.

 

There could be any number of other reasons for the decline in deaths which when combined account for the improved death numbers. These include fewer vulnerable people, more widespread natural immunity, and improved clinical practice and treatment, especially with drugs such as Paxlovid.

 

But perhaps the most important consideration continues to be virus mutation, which explains both the higher percentage of infections and the lower percentage of deaths.

 

The virus has continued to mutate to spread, at the expense of relative lethality.

 

That's what 254k record low deaths in 2022 with 43.6m record high cases tells you.

 

 

 

Republicans have won 220 seats in the US House and are expected to finish with a 222 majority over the Democrats with 213

 Frisch conceded to Boebert five days ago.

Non-binary queer man who threatened to blow up his mother's house last year shoots up gay nightclub in Colorado, liberals blame conservatives

Story.

The Trump witch hunt continues: Garland's new special counsel is linked to Lois Lerner while the wife is linked to anti-semitic Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib

 Mr. Smith set up a meeting in October 2010 with IRS official Lois Lerner “to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits.” ... Federal Election Commission records show that Ms. Chevigny contributed $1,000 each to Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign, Biden for President and the Biden Victory Fund super PAC, in September 2020. She also donated $150 to a campaign committee supporting Democrat Rashida Tlaib in 2008, when Ms. Tlaib was running for the Michigan House of Representatives.

More.

Apparently Al Franken has a new gig selling T-shirts online

 

You can't trust any headline at Drudge, including about the weather