Monday, July 4, 2016
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Grand Rapids, Michigan, has just logged its third warmest winter ever in terms of heating degree days in 2015-16
June 2016 is over and the data are in.
From 1892 Grand Rapids, Michigan, has just experienced its third warmest winter ever in terms of heating degree days for the winter measuring season ending in June. When we have fewer heating degree days here up north that means lower demand for heat during the typical eight month long period when heating is needed.
Mean heating degree days for the season from the beginning of the record to date now average 6713, but in 2015-16 Grand Rapids logged just 5617, a whopping 1096 below the long term mean, about 16.3% fewer heating degree days than normal. In my case that translated into a natural gas consumption reduction of about 10% compared with most winters I have experienced.
The warmest winter on record was actually quite recent and unrelated to an El Nino as now. In 2011-12 just 5253 heating degree days were logged in Grand Rapids. Second place belongs to the long ago winter of 1920-21, with 5520 heating degree days.
At the same time that we experienced these warmer conditions snowfall for the season came in only 5.6 inches lower than the long term mean of 66.7, at 61.1 inches.
Last November I predicted much less snow at 47.85 inches and many more heating degree days at 6148, both representing averages of previous observations in Grand Rapids during Very Strong El Nino periods in 1982-83 and 1997-98. But we were this season much snowier and warmer than those averages predicted.
Turning to the year to date categories, rainfall is actually running 1.41 inches above the mean to date of 16.54 inches, at 17.95. This is despite the extremely dry conditions in June which have left our lawns brown.
The cumulative average temperature year to date is running a total of 18.6 degrees F above the long term mean for the six months to date. That's about one tenth of a degree above normal per day to date.
The current Very Strong El Nino after fourteen months is averaging 1.5 monthly on the index. June data is not yet available. The most recent previous Very Strong El Nino averaged 1.56 monthly over thirteen months, in 1997-98.
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Friday, July 1, 2016
Matt Taibbi laments the first successful revolt in ages against one of the two major parties
Here:
But choosing a dangerous race-baiting lunatic as the vehicle for the first successful revolt in ages against one of the two major parties will have many profound negative consequences for voters. The most serious will surely be this burgeoning movement to describe voting and democracy as inherently dangerous.
Yeah, don't anger the jailers too much or you won't get any bread with your soup.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Why do Bush Republicans support Hillary Clinton when even the Manchester Union Leader calls her a lying liar?
Birds of a feather flock together maybe?
From the editorial today, here:
Hillary Clinton lied. ... Hillary Clinton lying is not breaking news. ... For weeks, the administration framed the [Benghazi] attack as a response to a YouTube video, lying to the American people. Hillary Clinton personally peddled that lie to the victims’ relatives. ... She’s counting on the tribalism rife in modern American politics to shield her from responsibility for her blunders and lies. The Obama administration lied about what happened in Benghazi to win the 2012 presidential election. The Clinton campaign is hoping that history repeats itself.
Lois Lerner committed a crime, sending 1.25 million pages of taxpayer returns to Obama's Justice Department
The crime occurred in October 2010, but Obama's Justice Department, which participated in the crime, decided in 2015 not to prosecute Lerner.
It is the most corrupt regime in the history of the republic.
The whole damn lot of them should be in jail, not in office.
Details here.
Rasmussen has Trump +4 over Clinton: 43-39
Here:
The tables have turned in this week’s White House Watch. After trailing Hillary Clinton by five points for the prior two weeks, Donald Trump has now taken a four-point lead.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
George Will leaves Republican Party over Trump: You know, the guy who predicted Mitt Romney to win in a landslide
Look up "tin ear for politics" and you will find George Will's picture: 321 Romney to 217 Obama, reported here November 4, 2012.
He's also a Cubs fan and an atheist, which somehow makes perfect sense: George Will believes in lost causes.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
No surprise: National Health Interview Survey finds just 2.4% of respondents, WHO WERE MUCH SICKER ON AVERAGE, were lesbian, gay and bi
Except the story never does the math to show how small a minority is LGBT, and never once mentions rampant sexually transmitted diseases among perverts because of their promiscuity, just "distress" from "discrimination" leading to increased alcohol and tobacco abuse.
Here:
Overall, 67,150 survey respondents were heterosexual, 525 lesbian, 624 gay and 515 bisexual. The average age was about 47.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Smartest president ever says "forebearers" when he meant "forebears"
Once again, the smartest president ever hatchets the English language, but he'll continue to be portrayed as an intellectual giant in comparison to boobs like Sarah Palin. But "corpseman" lives, along with "intercontinental railroad" and other such gems. The press office transcript spells the word correctly, but of course Obama didn't pronounce it correctly.
As far as I can tell, only The Hill here accurately quoted Obama's mistake (which is on video here at about the 10:50 mark):
"We're going to have to make a decision about whether we are a people who tolerate the hypocrisy of a system where the workers who pick our fruit or make our beds never have the chance to get right with the law, or whether we're going to give them a chance, just like our forbearers had a chance, to take responsibility and give their kids a better future," he said.
Meanwhile The Hill leaves out the "e" and without a proper [sic] demonstrates it probably doesn't know it's a mistake.
Meanwhile The Hill leaves out the "e" and without a proper [sic] demonstrates it probably doesn't know it's a mistake.
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Like her husband, Hillary Clinton did not tell the truth under oath
From the story here:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Secretary Hillary Clinton failed to turn over a copy of a key message involving problems caused by her use of a private homebrew email server, the State Department confirmed Thursday. The disclosure makes it unclear what other work-related emails may have been deleted by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. ...
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said the November 2010 email cited in the inspector general audit was one of several work-related emails that his group identified that Clinton sent or received but later failed to turn over the State Department.
"Contrary to her statement under oath suggesting otherwise, Mrs. Clinton did not return all her government emails to the State Department," Fitton said. "Our goal is to find out what other emails Mrs. Clinton and the State Department are hiding."
Friday, June 24, 2016
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Today was the first day Trump ever asked me for a campaign contribution
That's a year without a request, until now.
Monday, June 20, 2016
Dilbert knows liberals have to have the presidency because without the Court they've got bupkiss
Hm. Maybe they did knock off Antonin Scalia.
Here:
When you encounter a rabid anti-Trumper, ask her what are the biggest concerns of a potential Trump presidency.
If “Supreme Court nominee” is one of the top objections, discontinue your persuasion for ethical reasons. This person has put some thought into the decision and has a legitimate opinion that is at least partly based on reason. I don’t recommend changing that person’s mind.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Janet Daley finds the Cameron-Osborne leadership rather oddly out of touch about Brexit and gay marriage
Here:
This disconnect with the people has confirmed the widely accepted view of the Cameron-Osborne Tory leadership as – how to put this? – rather odd. On the one hand, they are so self-consciously modern and anti-traditional that they made gay marriage one of their flagship policies. But on the other, they seem so loftily contemptuous of the real‑life concerns of ordinary people that they make comic misjudgments about the effects of their public pronouncements.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Trump throws social conservatives overboard, marginalizes opposition to homosexuality as anti-American, anti-Western
Which would come as quite a shock to the founding generation, whose colonies made homosexuals "universally subject to the death penalty."
From the story here:
Trump also called on Muslim-Americans to turn in members of their community that they suspect of terror links, saying radical Islam isn’t compatible with “Western values and institutions” because it is “anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-American.”
Unfortunately, Trump is wrong on banning weapons purchases and Ryan is correct: It'll become a backdoor to disarm conservatives
If you want to know what could stop me from voting for Trump, this is it.
From the story here:
“A mid-level bureaucrat can put anybody on a no-fly list with no due process rights,” Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told a local Wisconsin newspaper in December, as Democrats tried unsuccessfully to move the bill following a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Visa overstays: ICE official concedes there were 480,000 last year, 5 million total living here illegally, mostly from Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and Italy
Craig Healy, Assistant Director for National Security Investigations at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, featured here.
When trying to explain election outcomes, when trying to explain the polling data . . .
. . . don't forget that 30% of the adults in this country are taking psychiatric medications: 72 million adults over the age of 17 in 2013, approximately 30.1% of the 239 million adults over the age of 17 at the time.
Uh oh, there are more white voters than the exit polls show, and they'll be votin' for Trump
 |
| h/t RobeGuy |
Gee, do ya think anyone has an interest in suppressing the white vote?
From Michael Barone, here:
The CPS [Current Population Survey by the US Census] and Catalist report that the 2012 electorate was 74 and 76 percent white -- higher than the exit poll's 72 percent. They say that only 15 percent of voters were under 30, not 19 percent as in the exit poll, and that 61 and 62 percent were 45 or older, not 54 percent as in the exit poll.
Most significantly, they peg the proportion of non-college-graduate whites over age 45 -- Donald Trump's core group -- as 30 and 29 percent of voters, significantly higher than the exit poll's 23 percent.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
WaPo disagrees with Obama, lists 10 Islamic countries where punishing homosexuals with death is normal
Nothing radical or extreme about it, only to Obama and other liberals.
Here:
Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is voting for Brexit because EMU is the greatest economic crime of modern times
From his remarks, here, where it's everywhere else a wonder that he was able to work up the nerve to side with the Leavers:
There has been no truth and reconciliation commission for the greatest economic crime of modern times. We do not know who exactly was responsible for anything because power was exercised through a shadowy interplay of elites in Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels, and Paris, and still is.
Why Trump will win: Idiot typist at Fortune, Daniel Gross, blames poor May 2016 jobs report on . . . Donald Trump!
And Trump's not even president yet.
Did Obama ever get blamed for anything in eight years?
Not by Daniel Gross, here, a striver of the Democrat sort who's getting a head start on the return of making the future Republican president responsible for everything:
Donald Trump seems to revel in fomenting uncertainty. Trump has consciously set out to violate or alter the norms surrounding political campaigning, and has succeeding [sic] (beyond everyone’s wildest expectations) in doing so.
As a result, all of that uncertainty is likely to give pause to a large number of companies and employees in a range of industries. In fact, it’s possible that May’s poor jobs numbers – only 38,000 payroll jobs were added in the month despite the fact that there were a record 5.8 million job openings at the beginning of the month – have something to do with this trepidation.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
The Obama trifecta in Orlando
His beloved queers, slaughtered.
His beloved Muslims, the perpetrators.
His beloved anti-gun zealotry, now unexcelled in history for impotence.
Hillary the Lawless, Schoolgirls & Co. at the State Dept. acted as a law unto themselves: Expect worse as president
From the New York Post here:
But the coverup goes beyond Team Hillary. Marie Harf, State’s top spokeswoman under John Kerry, started lying the day the scandal broke: “There’s no prohibition on using this kind of e-mail account,” she said.
That backs Clinton’s repeated claims that “It was allowed.” Yeah — by her. As the IG report notes, Hillary never sought an OK for her e-mail setup from State’s legal professionals — who never would’ve given one.
“Harf is implying that State approved this practice,” John Bellinger wrote his successors at State’s legal department. He urged them “to defend the credibility” of the legal staff and not let Harf give them “a bad name.” State ignored him.
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Trump isn't off-message: Right now Trump IS the message
No one gives a damn about the off-message until things get serious, like two months before the election . . . you know, like October.
Meanwhile, Trump is makin' 'em JUMP!
It's the Trump Jump.
NYT: Tens of thousands of American workers lose their jobs to H-1B temporary visa abuse by American employers, some start to speak up
Does anyone read The Times on Saturday?
Here:
According to federal rules, temporary visas known as H-1Bs are for foreigners with “a body of specialized knowledge” not readily available in the labor market. The visas should be granted only when they will not undercut the wages or “adversely affect the working conditions” of Americans. But in the past five years, through loopholes in the rules, tens of thousands of American workers have been replaced by foreigners on H-1B and other temporary visas, according to Prof. Hal Salzman, a labor force expert at Rutgers University.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Wow, first time ever surveyed by Rasmussen by telephone
It took almost nine minutes.
Lots of questions about gender and sexuality, nothing about Trump or Clinton.
Ickkkkkkkkkkky.
Obama's Justice Sotomayor is the total and complete racist Americans should be worried about
New York Times transcript of 2001 Sotomayor speech, here, where she says physiological differences may and will make a difference in the administration of justice and make decisions better:
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
Senate Republicans Alexander, Bond, Collins, Grahamnesty, GreggTARP, Lugar, Martinez, Snowe and Voinovich voted to confirm her, 68-31.
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