Saturday, April 29, 2023

Biden's doing the same thing as Obama in making the 2020 crisis spending the baseline for his future spending proposals

 Obama did it in 2009 and Republicans acquiesced, running trillion dollar plus deficits for four straight years until Republicans enforced some fiscal discipline in Obama's second term.

The author below, a Republican, doesn't mention that.

Will Republicans acquiesce again?

If they do, the national debt will easily swell to in excess of $51 trillion by 2033, from $31 trillion at the end of 2022.

From the story, "Trillion-dollar deficits: Biden’s new normal":


The president and his White House have taken the 2020 COVID-19, one-time-only crisis budget as his administration’s working baseline, rather than the pre-Covid 2019 budget, which had a significant $4.4 trillion price tag.

In 2020, because of the pandemic, the budget jumped 47 percent to $6.5 trillion, as both Democrats and Republicans supported the need for emergency funding. That COVID funding was to sunset as the country returned to normal — as it did last year. Apparently, Biden decided to ignore that crucial point.

Friday, April 28, 2023

Latest inflation reads show entrenchment, Fed will have to go higher and stay higher for longer but Congress must cut spending and raise revenues

 The Fed can do only so much, but a Fed Funds Rate of 4.83 is hardly adequate for current conditions.

The fiscal side in this, however, has been completely ignored.

Outlays for 2020-2022 alone have topped $19 trillion vs. receipts south of $12 trillion.




Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Fauci: "So many people cannot be completely wrong"

Fewer than 19 million Americans completed the initial vaccine protocol in 2022. Fewer than 25 million received at least one dose.


FAUCI: "When you look around, nobody did great, except maybe one or two countries"


 


Fauci: "We also had a public-health system that we thought was really, really good. But it was really, really antiquated."

 


Wallace-Wells: "We had vaccines designed by the end of January 2020." Fauci: "Yes."

 


Fauci: "The gay community with H.I.V. is very, very different from the ultraright MAGA community with Covid. However, there is a bit of connection there."


 

Fauci: "We had to rely on conference calls in the middle of the night"

 



Suddenly in retirement Fauci is just another physician, not the embodiment of Science who presided over the deaths of 1.1 million Americans

Fauci's still in utter denial about the early timeline, and about the relative severity of the pandemic here in the United States vs. elsewhere.
 
The outcome in the US has been 3.6 times worse than in Norway, 6.02 times worse than in Japan. But Fauci, the former embodiment of The Science ™, has ZERO curiosity about why.
 
The vaccines were already designed by the end of January 2020 (really? sounds like a PLANDEMIC, uh oh), but Fauci behaved rationally at the time like we weren't going to have a global pandemic which would even require them?
 
Give me a break. That's astonishing.
 
The entire interview is full of dodgy shit.
 
The New York Times, here: 
 
“I’m a physician,” he told me in response to criticism that he had pushed the country too far. “That’s my identity. I’ve taken care of thousands of patients in one period of my life during the early years of H.I.V. I believe that I have seen as much or more suffering and death as anybody has in most careers. I don’t mean to seem preachy, but I don’t want to see people suffer and I don’t want to see people die."...
 
"Something clearly went wrong. And I don’t know exactly what it was. But the reason we know it went wrong is that we are the richest country in the world, and on a per-capita basis we’ve done worse than virtually all other countries. And there’s no reason that a rich country like ours has to have 1.1 million deaths. Unacceptable."... 
 
"When you look around, nobody did great, except maybe one or two countries. Most everybody did poorly."... 
 
"If it took three years to get a vaccine, we would have had five million deaths here."... 
 
Wallace-Wells: Let’s talk about the vaccines. It was the fastest rollout in history, a miracle of modern medicine. But we had vaccines designed by the end of January 2020. The Phase II safety trials were completed by early July. Could we have accelerated the rollout from there and blunted that awful first winter surge? Could we do it faster in the future?
Fauci: Yes. The G7 talks about it: the hundred-day mission, to have distribution within a hundred days. Not that everybody gets vaccinated, but that you start doing it. Is that easy? No, it’s going to be really hard. Is it possible? I think so. ...
Wallace-Wells: But if you go back in time, if you put yourself in February 2020, you’re telling Helen Branswell,7 for instance, that this virus was low-risk and that you didn’t want to stake your credibility on what could be a false alarm. Do you wish you had said then more emphatically that this is a real, urgent threat and that we need to stand up our defenses immediately?
Fauci: Yeah, I think, retrospectively, we certainly should have done that. If you look at what we knew at the time, though — we didn’t know that in January. We were not fully appreciative of the fact that we were dealing with a highly, highly transmissible virus that was clearly spread by ways that were unprecedented and unexperienced by us. And so it fooled us in the beginning and confused us about the need for masks and the need for ventilation and the need for inhibition of social interaction.


 

Saturday, April 22, 2023

Climate Update for KGRR: 1Q2023

 Climate Update for KGRR: 1Q2023 since 1892

 



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Average temperature, mean:  27.5F.
Average temperature, actual:  32.7F; Anomaly: 19%.
Compare 2012 actual: 37.4F; Anomaly 36%.
January 2023 was the fifth warmest January on record by average temperature.
February was the thirteenth warmest February on record by average temperature.
The March average temperature anomaly was comparatively insignificant at 3.8%.

Heating degree days, mean: 3354.
Heating degree days, actual: 2880; Anomaly: 14%.
Compare 2012: 2505 actual; Anomaly: 25%.
January ranked fifth for fewest HDD in January.
February ranked tenth for fewest HDD in February.
The March heating degree day anomaly was comparatively insignificant at 4.4%. 

Snowfall, mean: 40.8".
Snowfall, actual: 42.5".
March 2023 was the fourth snowiest March on record with 23.3".

LOL, 73-year old tranny calls 26-year old tranny fringe, apparently because of the bulge

The beef has been simmering for months and began long before Mulvaney’s string of brand-name endorsement deals. In October 2022, Jenner took issue with Mulvaney’s campaign to “normalize the bulge” — a reference to “women” who have male genitalia. “Dylan …congrats you’re trans with a penis,” Jenner snapped in a tweet. 

Getting a chopadickoffame is good enough for The Post apparently, which calls Mulvaney a biological male but not Jenner.

That won't cut it for most folks, for whom the two principals and The Post make three who are all umbday in any language.

Story


 

 

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Drudge is running one negative story after another about Ron DeSantis for one simple reason

 The left desperately wants and needs Donald J. Trump to be the Republican candidate because they know they can beat him.

End of story.

Dan Bongino, who reportedly had the most successful Saturday cable show, is canceled at Fox in contract dispute after 10-year run

 Story.

Experts say EV fires can take hours, rather than minutes, to extinguish

 

 For more than a century, first responders have quite easily extinguished vehicle engine fires by popping the hood and drowning the area in water. That playbook doesn’t work with EVs.

More.

Imagine being on an all electric airplane at 35,000 feet.

Nice try, Jill, but just one of these incidents occurred in a driveway

The real headline to every CNN story about guns is the money line.

 

Republicans want the guy who got them the Supreme Court to resign

 

16-year old genius went to unwelcoming white neighborhood on 115th Street instead of 115th Terrace looking for his younger siblings, didn't recognize that it wasn't his friend's home

Ralph Paul Yarl, 16, was shot just before 10 p.m. Thursday when he went to pick up his younger twin brothers from a friend's home, police said. But Yarl went to 115th Street instead of 115th Terrace and was shot twice after ringing the doorbell, his family’s attorneys, Lee Merritt and Ben Crump, said. ... Yarl went to three houses before someone finally helped him, his aunt, Faith Spoonmore, wrote on a fundraising page for the teen’s medical expenses. 


Seems like the country isn't yet learning the lesson not to disturb old white men at 10pm

Donald J. Trump running for re-election on his warp speed roll out of an ineffective vaccine seems like a great idea, for a loser

LOL, there have been 70 million additional cases in the United States since Fauci said two years ago that every vaccinated person becomes a dead end for the virus

The "true number" is probably much higher, according to Our World In Data, due to "limited testing".

 



Wednesday, April 19, 2023

The right of center elites are unusually public about their pessimism all of a sudden

 

Unless it's George (NY-3) Santos' favorite song

 STUDY: Listening To Music For Hour Prevents Dementia...




LOL Emma Newburger writing for CNBC wants to make sure you know that it was evil Republicans on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals who overturned Berkeley's ban on natural gas hookups

 Emma is CNBC's go-to green ideologue on staff.

“By completely prohibiting the installation of natural gas piping within newly constructed buildings, the City of Berkeley has waded into a domain preempted by Congress,” Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump appointee, wrote for the panel. ...

All three judges on the panel were Republican appointees. The ruling reversed a 2021 decision by a U.S. district judge who had blocked the challenge to the city’s ban.

More.

The thing will probably go to the full 9th Circuit next, and then possibly to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sunday, April 16, 2023

Donald Trump betrayed the right on immigration, and tried to on guns, twice

The New York Times, May 27, 2022, here:

Unbeknownst to the public, however, Mr. Trump again pushed inside the White House for significant new gun-control measures more than a year later, after a pair of gruesome shooting sprees that unfolded over 13 hours. Those discussions have not previously been reported. On Aug. 3, 2019, a far-right gunman killed 23 people at a Walmart store in El Paso. Early the next morning, a man shot and killed nine people outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio. Both assailants used semiautomatic rifles. At the White House the next day, Mr. Trump was so shaken by the weekend’s violence that he questioned aides about a specific potential solution and made clear he wanted to take action, according to three people present during the conversation. “What are we going to do about assault rifles?” Mr. Trump asked.

Now, our whole pot-pickled city is that campus

 I gave a guy at Pret a Manger a $20 bill for an $8 cup of soup. I asked for a bag. He took the $20 and promptly forgot the soup, my change, the bag — and me. He wandered off, inexplicably waving my Andrew Jackson like a flag, until I appealed to his colleagues.

I haven’t seen so much pot-induced lethargy since my Vietnam-era college days, when so many fellow students were high that their panicked weed-flushing during a rumored police raid overwhelmed the campus pipes.

More.

How the popular vote works


 Look, as I blow this feather from my face,
And as the air blows it to me again,
Such is the lightness of you common men.

-- William Shakespeare, Henry VI

Saturday, April 15, 2023

Donald Trump Jr. is afraid Republicans will lose lots of campaign contributions if conservatives keep opposing Bud's Tranny Fluid

 “So here’s the deal. Anheuser-Busch totally shit the bed with this Dylan Mulvaney thing. I’m not, though, for destroying an American, an iconic company for something like this,” Trump declared, perhaps unaware that A-B is now owned by Belgian beer giant InBev.

More.

 


 

 



Thursday, April 13, 2023

Electricity cost a lot less when Hitler was president, just a few short years ago

 


Services inflation above 7% when services is 77% of the economy is a PROBLEM

 


Now your garden is evil: Privileged Swedish communists from Uppsala University say elites' use of water must be altered and redistributed to the poor

 What a shock, right?

From the story "From swimming pools to gardening, the rich’s privileged lifestyles are driving urban water crises, study says":

The study, which was led by Elisa Savelli at Uppsala University in Sweden, proposes a new approach to preserving water resources centered around “altering privileged lifestyles, limiting water use for amenities and redistributing income and water resources more equally.”     

Meanwhile lol:

The entire (100%) population of Sweden has access to a safe-drinking water source. 

GUILTY MUCH? The place is still 60% Lutheran.

But a lot of this is just far-north-garden-deprived envy:

 We English are often caricatured as garden fanatics but we have nothing on the northern Swedes. This gardening obsession is not uncommon up here. In the summer our local snowmobile dealership majors in ride-on lawnmowers. Locals fondle Husqvarnas the same way petrolheads caress Ferraris. Coachloads of northern Swedish townies criss-cross the countryside each summer visiting gardens.


Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Core inflation has been above 5% year over year for 16 months, overall inflation at or above 5% for 22 months

 



Biden signs bill ending COVID-19 national emergency one month earlier than planned


 Heh heh.
 
The measure ends the national emergency a month earlier than the Biden administration had planned. A separate public health emergency tied to Covid will remain until May 11. Biden had signaled his opposition to ending the national emergency but said he wouldn’t veto the legislation. The Senate passed the measure 68-23 at the end of March, with nearly two dozen Democrats supporting it.

5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans votes 10-6 to block Biden's 2021 executive order mandating Covid-19 vaccine for U.S. government workers


Heh heh.

Story.


Joe Biden's EPA wants to ram electric cars down our throats

Story.


Friday, April 7, 2023

What recession? Full time recovers to 50.1% of population in March 2023, last year's average level

 The average level for 1Q2023 is 49.70%.

Full time usually peaks over the summer months.



C'mon, man, The Wall Street Journal doesn't really believe "The Left Wins Big in Midwest"

First, Chicago.

Chicago is not the "Midwest".

Chicago remains firmly left-wing under new mayor Let's Go, Brandon Johnson.

It didn't just suddenly turn left this week.

The shit-hole will just get shittier under Johnson, instead of get slightly less shitty under Vallas.

As for Wisconsin, OK, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is now in the hands of four lunatic Democrat wymyn vs. three Republicans. Republican Dan Kelly was indeed resoundingly defeated, but by a nakedly partisan Democrat whose campaign may result in successful calls for her to recuse herself in certain future cases.

Abortion was indeed her campaign issue, but her main objective is rolling back former Governor Scott Walker's anti-government-union efforts.

But Kelly's defeat was a mixture of Republican stupidity combining with Democrat knavery.

Kelly was a Walker appointee, not a winner in his own right. He didn't win his seat in the first place, and he lost it in 2020. MAGA Republicans were STUPID to go with him a second time.

National Republicans: Note Well. Don't be STUPID in 2024 and go with an already defeated candidate.

And don't let Democrats select your candidate. Especially by putting him on trial.

The Wall Street Journal KNOWS Democrats spent $1 million to get the once-defeated Kelly nominated again in the primary instead of Jennifer Dorow, whose son became a political liability which unfortunately canceled her strong conservative record in the minds of enough voters.

Dorow, after all, had put away parade killer Darrell Brooks for life without parole. She is also allied with Chief Justice Clarence Thomas in her skepticism over Lawrence v Texas. But she gone.

Republicans in Missouri once let Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill select their candidate to run against her there. Now Republicans in Wisconsin have made the same stupid mistake and paid the same stupid price.

Meanwhile, Republicans more broadly in Wisconsin still firmly dominate its representation, the only state from Trump's 2016 Upper Midwest WI-MI-PA trifecta to do so.

They own the Assembly 64-35, and now the Senate 22-11. The GOP House delegation in Washington from Wisconsin is 6-2 Republican, the Senate 1-1. 

Wisconsin's GOP is hardly on the ropes, but the Wall Street Journal seems to think a Wisconsin Senate going Republican 21-12 because Mequon could have just as easily narrowly voted Democrat in a special election would have been a catastrophe.

Yes, Republicans nationally would be wise politically to stand for abortion compromise where abortion absolutism would result in defeat as in Michigan, but note that Michigan's Senate and House are still only narrowly Democrat, 20-18 and 56-54. Politics is the art of the possible, but bad candidates like the Dan Kellys and Donald Trumps of the world are no longer possible.

The Wall Street Journal should just say so.

The Midwest is not going left, just anti-Trump because he did not follow through on his promises to the working class, about which The Wall Street Journal cares nothing.

And by the way,  Democrats don't care either.

I hope Ohio's J. D. Vance is paying attention.

 



Thursday, April 6, 2023

Trump's so-called movement has been bankrolled by the likes of Peter Thiel, whom The New Criterion, lol, is about to honor with its Edmund Burke Award for Service to Culture and Society just weeks after one of his bimbos erupted, so to speak


The so-called conservative movement is rotten to the core.
 
From the story here:
 
Thiel will be honored and presented with the Edmund Burke Award for service to 'culture and society' at a fancy black tie gala at the Metropolitan Club in New York on April 27 by celebrating The New Criterion's fifth decade. Thiel will deliver remarks on 'The diversity myth.' Tickets to the event start at $15,000 to $100,000.The tribute to Thiel will be taking place the same week – possibly the same day – as Thomas, who was cremated, will be memorialized at a service held in his hometown of Frisco, Texas.

Monday, April 3, 2023

Obama's EPA caused the Gold King Mine Disaster, Biden's Forest Service set the Hermits Peak Fire in New Mexico destroying over 400 homes and Biden's FEMA has botched the response

And people wonder why many Hispanics who were affected by these disasters are cooling on the Democrat Party.

Neither incident was much publicized by the media at the time because both were highly embarrassing to the media's Democrat men in power for the sheer scale of the incompetence on display, but there'd be no end of stories about these incidents had Trump been president.

Of the New Mexico fire I hardly remember any news a year ago.

A recent Slate story which attacks the religious groups actually making a difference in such disasters can't omit some details, they are so undeniable:

 Wildfires ripped through the northern part of the state after a prescribed burn by the U.S. Forest Service grew out of control, tearing through nearly 350,000 acres and destroying hundreds of homes, farms, and irrigation canals that had sustained its rural communities for centuries. . . . the actions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency left New Mexicans infuriated. . . . Even after the Biden administration greenlighted $2.5 billion in wildfire recovery funds for New Mexico last summer—an unprecedented sum for an ongoing disaster—FEMA’s molasses-paced bureaucracy has kept much of that money from actually reaching those affected by the wildfires. Edwards said in an email that the agency is opening three new claims offices in New Mexico by late March [nearly a year later] and is developing new policies to “guide and simplify the claims process.” But while many New Mexicans have sympathy for FEMA and feel the agency is in an impossible position, they want relief now so they can rebuild their houses and lives. 

Reuters in July 2022 said this in "After Starting New Mexico Fire, U.S. Asks Victims To Pay":

 After the U.S. government started the largest wildfire in New Mexico's recorded history in April, it is asking victims to share recovery costs on private land, jeopardizing relief efforts, according to residents and state officials. The blaze was sparked by U.S. Forest Service (USFS) prescribed fires to reduce wildfire risk. The burns went out of control after a series of missteps, torching 432 residences and over 530 square miles (1373 square km) of mostly privately owned forests and meadows, much of it held by members of centuries-old Indo-Hispano ranching communities.

The gist of this story at the end of March is that an awful lot of people are still not made whole despite billions of dollars being allocated for them:

A lawsuit seeking unspecified damages was filed in June against the U.S. Forest Service in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque. Originally, about 50 plaintiffs were party to the suit, but hundreds more later joined. The lawsuit was dismissed after the Hermits Peak Fire Assistance Act was passed, which will help compensate people who suffered damages.     

But hey, at least Donald Trump is being prosecuted, right?

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Ramadan for the infidel

 


Ho my beer

 


Notes from the future


 Some say the revolution began when the patriots disguised as Muslim women wearing burqas hijacked 342 semis full of Bud Light and crashed them into the rivers, lakes, and oceans on the night of July 4th.

These people are defeated before they even begin

  Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment, that parchment, being scribbl'd o'er, should undo a man?