Data here.
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
Drudge relentlessly repeats the relentless lies of WaPo on a Tuesday in May, or any other day, that's how much the Republican victory in 2022 stung
Six months after midterm losses, election deniers mount new efforts...
As far as WaPo is concerned, all Republicans are election deniers and didn't win the House, dammit:
And:
Monday, May 8, 2023
Fidelity Investments: Average retirement account in 2022 fell to $104,000
And most retirement nest eggs are much smaller now than a year ago. By Fidelity’s estimate, the average retirement account lost one-fifth of its value in 2022, dwindling from $135,600 to $104,000.
More.
Saturday, May 6, 2023
Full time jobs rebound in April 2023
Full time employment as a percentage of civilian population in April 2023 came in at 50.2%, smartly ahead of 1Q2023 at 49.7 and ahead of 2022 whole year average 50.1%. Full time peaks in summer.
Recession delayed again.
Incompetent lab inspectors from CDC completely missed rusting wastewater system at Fort Detrick Army biolab which spilled 2,000-3,000 gallons of contaminated water into Carroll Creek, USAMRIID response took 6 days until photo emerged
Unsterilized laboratory wastewater from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, spewed out the top of a rusty 50,000-gallon outdoor holding tank, the pressure catapulting it over the short concrete wall that was supposed to contain hazardous spills.
It was May 25, 2018, the Friday morning before Memorial Day weekend, and the tank holding waste from labs working with Ebola, anthrax, and other lethal pathogens had become overpressurized, forcing the liquid out a vent pipe.
An estimated 2,000-3,000 gallons streamed into a grassy area a few feet from an open storm drain that dumps into Carroll Creek — a centerpiece of downtown Frederick, Maryland, a city of about 80,000 an hour’s drive from the nation’s capital.
But as the waste sprayed for as long as three hours, records show, none of the plant’s workers apparently noticed the tank had burst a pipe. This was despite the facility being under scrutiny from federal lab regulators following catastrophic flooding and an escalating series of safety failures that had been playing out for more than a week. ...
Lab inspectors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had apparently failed to recognize the plant was in such disrepair. The CDC offered no explanation of how the problems were missed, but after the incident it created a new policy and task force for overseeing labs’ wastewater decontamination systems.
Samuel Edwin, director of the CDC’s select agent regulatory program, did not grant an interview. Two years before the plant flooded and failed, the CDC had hired Edwin from USAMRIID, where he had spent eight years as the biological surety officer and responsible official in charge of making sure USAMRIID’s labs complied with federal regulations.
The whole story is a comedy of incompetence which would be funny if it weren't so serious, here.
Friday, May 5, 2023
World Health Organization declares global public health emergency over today, a week ahead of the US
WHO declares end to Covid-19 global public health emergency
The spread of Covid-19 is no longer a global public health emergency, the World Health Organization declared Friday.
“For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing, and the pressure on health systems easing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference in Geneva.
“This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before Covid-19,” Tedros said. “It’s therefore with great hope that I declared Covid-19 over as a global health emergency.”
Nearly 7 million people have died from the virus worldwide since the WHO first declared the emergency on Jan. 30, 2020, according to the U.N. organization’s official data. Tedros said the true death toll is at least 20 million.
The WHO’s decision comes as the U.S. is set to end its national public health emergency on Thursday.
Tedros said there is still a risk that new variant could emerge and cause another surge in cases. He warned national governments against dismantling the systems they have built to fight the virus.
“This virus is here to stay. It’s still killing and it’s still changing,” he said.
But the WHO chief said the time has come for countries to transition from an emergency response to managing Covid like other infectious diseases. ...
“Covid-19 has been so much more than health crisis,” Tedros said. “It has caused severe economic upheaval, erasing trillions from GDP, disrupting travel and trade, shattering businesses and plunging millions into poverty,” he said.
“It has caused severe social upheaval with borders closed, movement restricted, schools shut and millions of people experiencing loneliness, isolation, anxiety and depression,” Tedros said.
More.
The pandemic wraps on May 11
US Covid Case Count to Go Dark as Public Health Emergency Ends
(Bloomberg) -- The US government’s count of new Covid-19 cases has been dropping for months. Soon, it will disappear entirely.
Thousands of Americans are still contracting the coronavirus each week. But when the public health emergency ends May 11, laboratories across the country will no longer be required to report Covid test results to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That will eventually mean no more weekly infection, transmission and community-level numbers in CDC’s Covid Data Tracker.
Concern about the pandemic is rapidly flagging as infection levels fall to those seen in the earliest months of the outbreak. The World Health Organization also moved to end its global health emergency Friday, lowering its alert level for the pandemic three years after the lethal disease was first seen in China.
US infection data had already become increasingly unreliable as Americans began opting for at-home, rapid Covid tests — which most patients don’t report — rather than laboratory assays, like PCR. CDC will turn its attention to tracking severe Covid illness via hospital admissions, officials said on a call with reporters, while continuing to analyze wastewater and tests of international travelers to determine how the virus is spreading and evolving.
More.
Thursday, May 4, 2023
LOL, Moderna's surprise quarterly profit plunged 97% per share amid collapsing vaccine demand, comes from Covid shot revenue deferred from 2022, first quarter sales tank 69%, CNBC says 30%
CNBC, here:
Moderna on Thursday blew past estimates for first-quarter earnings and revenue, posting a surprise quarterly profit, despite lower demand for Covid vaccines, its only marketable product.
The biotech company generated first-quarter sales of $1.9 billion, driven by Covid shot revenue deferred from 2022. That’s down more than 30% from the $6.1 billion it recorded in the same period a year ago amid a resurgence of Covid cases.
Moderna posted net income of $79 million, or 19 cents per share, for the quarter. That’s compared with $3.66 billion in net income, or $8.58 per share, reported during the same quarter last year.
Seeking Alpha got it right, noting the inventory write-downs of "excess and obsolete COVID-19 products" nobody wants:
I'll just put this here for the record in the event CNBC later corrects their reporting without saying so:
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Besides their bad character, what do Trump and Obama have in common in 2009 and 2020?
Trump and Obama signed off on the two most fiscally irresponsible periods in post-war history, and Biden two years in looks set to join them.
The Executive is supposed to be a check on irresponsible spending. But both Trump and Obama went right along with it instead of vetoing the outrageous spending of the periods.
What else do they have in common?
Two crises, both of which plunged the country into hysteria.
The Great Financial Crisis did not begin to end until March 2009 when the FASB signaled its intent to suspend mark-to-market rules. The stock market bottomed almost immediately, but as with all cases of mass hysteria it took time for the panic to pass as other sectors recovered "one by one".
The Pandemic Crisis gripped the country in March 2020, sending millions home from work, stocks plunging, toilet paper into shortage, businesses into bankruptcy, and on and on. With just about everyone vaccinated who was going to be by the end of 2021, the country gradually started to come out of it in 2022, eschewing jabs, masks, and social distancing as it became clear that the Omicron variant was infecting tens of millions despite all those measures.
2020 was the single most fiscally irresponsible year in the post-war since 1953. Federal expenditures, bloated by panicked bailouts, outpaced tax revenues by a whopping 216%.
Only 2009 comes close, at 210%, the second worst year on record.
Third, not shown, was 2010 at 196%, and fourth, not shown, was 2021 at 176%, each a part of the respective crisis periods.
Do you know what else those two years share in common?
Spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives.
In 2009 and 2020 its Speaker just happened to be the same person, as she was in 2010 and 2021.
Nancy Pelosi owns the four most fiscally irresponsible years in the entire history of the post-war. Her two speakerships literally busted out all over.
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
As usual the media and the Democrats, but I repeat myself, are portraying the House Republican bill which lifts the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion as a bill with "big spending cuts"
This is how NPR, who else?, frames the issue from the beginning:
The House of Representatives has narrowly approved a Republican bill to raise the debt limit. However, it ties the ability to raise that debt ceiling to big spending cuts. And this House bill rolls back several of President Biden's key policies.
The House Republican bill, now languishing in the Senate, rolls back spending levels to pre-COVID levels. That's not a spending cut. That's saying, as Biden himself says, the emergency is over.
If the emergency is over, the emergency spending should end, too.
Outlays in fiscal 2020 and 2021 ballooned because of the new pandemic spending. Deficits for just those two years soared to almost $6 trillion. Republicans seek to roll that spending back. Democrats want that spending to form the new baseline. If Democrats succeed, Katy bar the door. The national debt will absolutely explode.
NPR knows this. It just chooses to hide the facts about it all, how the pandemic spending created these massive deficits, and how that spending which flooded the economy with money contributed to the new inflation:
So it raises the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or through March of 2024, whichever comes first. It also sets spending levels for federal programs to those that were in place two years ago. It limits the growth of spending going forward to 1% annually. But as you said, it also targets a list of the president's policies. It repeals the president's student loan forgiveness program, which is tied up in the courts. It claws back unspent COVID relief money and rolls back key energy provisions that were in the Inflation Reduction Act. It also puts in place new work requirements for adults without children who receive federal assistance like food stamps or Medicaid.
Monday, May 1, 2023
Bank failure No. 3 of 2023: First Republic Bank of San Fran Freako, California
The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund will be about $13 billion. This is an estimate and the final cost will be determined when the FDIC terminates the receivership.
More.
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.
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.
Monday, April 24, 2023
If stupid people want to watch FOX News and vote for Donald Trump, they should be free to do so in a free country
It's the AOCs and Reichs of the world who are the threat to freedom.
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.
Friday, April 21, 2023
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.
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.
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.
More.
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
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.
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
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.
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