Oh for Pete's sake, the low temperature in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Feb 1, 2016 was +28F

 Only 14.4% of registered Republicans participated...

 

. . . in 2016, some 187,000 people cast ballots, a record high equating to 29% of registered Republicans.

Tesla will just have to install fossil-fuel-powered battery heaters to warm the batteries enough to charge in ARCTIC temperatures lol

 Tesla owners in freezing Chicago stuck in 'car graveyards' as vehicles won't charge

I mean, what could go wrong?

 

Drudge: Just updated but still misspelled lol

And things were so boring lately. I'm freezing to death in my cardboard box but this imbecile keeps me moving just enough to stay alive.

 

The world is drunk on debt: Global debt at all levels reached $307 trillion in 3Q2023

IIF CEO Tim Adams sounded the alarm on rising levels of debt while speaking to CNBC’s Silvia Amaro at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ... "We need sobriety . . .."

The global banking industry’s premier trade group said late last year that worldwide debt climbed to a record of $307.4 trillion in the third quarter of 2023, with a substantial increase in both high-income countries and emerging markets.

The IIF said it expected global debt to reach $310 trillion by the end of 2023, warning that elections in more than 50 countries and regions this year could usher in a shift toward populism that brings with it still-higher debt levels.

More.

Ridiculous: It was -18F in Iowa yesterday, you'd stay home too

 SITTING OUT '24? CAUCUS TURNOUT MUCH LOWER THAN EXPECTED...

Old Republicans in Iowa yesterday: Why should I bother to go, Trump's just going to win anyway.

'Lack of enthuasim'... lol

That'h eathy for you to thay:

 

 

 

 

 

Stupid is as stupid does.

smdh

We're $34 trillion in debt, so Congress unites to spend $70 billion more we don't have on "the children" and on "small business" because it's an election year

 You have the government you deserve.

Story here.

IA stands for Ignorant Actually

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I mean, I get it. Republicans are going to vote for Trump because he's been treated very badly by this country. And I don't blame them. He has been. 

But it is perilous to assume that non-Republicans share this animus in enough numbers for Trump to wrest control of the election in November. North of 40% of Republicans in Iowa don't share it enough to vote for their ex-president. Biden is a horrible alternative, but it still looks to me like we're going to get more of him, good and hard. 

Meanwhile, of Ron DeSantis:

Dilatory fortune plays the jilt

With the brave, noble, honest, gallant man,

To throw herself away on fools and knaves.

-- Thomas Otway (1652-1685)

 

This has got to be a record for Drudge lol

 

The theory here is that spell-check is disabled in all-caps, immortalizing ignorance, inattention, and sloth.

Nikki Haley can count about as well as Joe three-letter-word-jobs Biden

 Nikki Haley Says Third Place Finish In Iowa "Made This Republican Primary A Two-Person Race"

LOL Day

Today:

Martin Luther King, Jr. On the Nature of Love

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

One of the great public intellectuals in all of American history [who said] ... "Agape is more than romantic or aesthetic love. Agape is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. …"

 

But not for all women.

 

2019:

 

Biographer Garrow pens explosive report on Martin Luther King Jr.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

 “I always thought there were 10 to 12 other women,” Garrow said. “Not 40 to 45.” In many of the accounts that Garrow documents, the FBI reported that King had been drinking. ... The document does not say that King participated in the rape, but ... “looked on, laughed and offered advice.” ... King and the singer allegedly had sex with the prostitute in a hotel room, before the man that King called earlier showed up and had sex with her, “while both [the singer] and the Rev. King watched the action from a close-by position.” ... The prostitute allegedly stated to an investigator that “that was the worst orgy I’ve ever gone through.”

 

King was mistaken about agape, incidentally, simply repeating now discredited scholarship. He was no Greek scholar. Close readers of the New Testament know that agape isn't uniquely special, however special it remains in the fantasies of some theologians.

 

You can love darkness with agape (John 3:19), love the praise of men with agape (John 12:43), love worldly treasures with agape (Matthew 6:24), love the best seats in the synagogues with agape, love the shows of respect to you in the streets with agape (Luke 11:43), and love little with agape (Luke 7:47).

 

Another CR lol: They may have to do this over and over until the election because the Republican majority in the US House is now so razor thin

 Congressional leaders reach short-term spending deal to keep government open until March

The deal would keep the government funded until March, buying legislators more time to craft longer-term, agency-specific spending bills, following the agreement last weekend to set the overall spending level for fiscal year 2024 at $1.59 trillion. ...

The short-term bill, known as a continuing resolution or “CR,” will need to pass both the House and Senate before Friday at 11:59 p.m. to avoid a partial government shutdown.

 

Reuters got it right, CNBC green lunatics try to soften the blow: "Rental giant Hertz dumps EVs, including Teslas, for gas cars"

Jan 11 (Reuters) - Rental firm Hertz Global Holdings (HTZ.O) is selling about 20,000 electric vehicles, including Teslas, from its U.S. fleet about two years after a deal with the automaker to offer its vehicles for rent, in another sign that EV demand has cooled.

Hertz will instead opt for gas-powered vehicles, it said on Thursday, citing higher expenses related to collision and damage for EVs even though it had aimed to convert 25% of its fleet to electric by 2024 end.

More.

 

Hertz makes ‘agile’ decision to shift strategy and sell EVs, Teslas

American wing of the Houthi rebels reprises November attack on the White House, this time destroys new barrier fence

 It's going to be a long hot summer in Washington DC if this is what Joe Biden's going to allow in the dead of winter.

No one was arrested for this destruction, just as no one was arrested last time for damage done to the White House gate.

Delaying his response to the Houthis for months of their Red Sea attacks until last week only encouraged them to keep it up. Joe Biden's doing the same with these malcontents.

Meanwhile Joe Biden continues to hunt down leisurely non-violent Jan 6ers and put them in the slammer.

November 2023:

January 2024:

Blonde Joy Reid sees herself as part of the elite fair-haired 2% of the US population, black folks as "Palestinians" lol

 Joy wants to be white like Antifa.

Drudge is still on the cutting edge of societal evolution lol

 

Like they weren't members already

 Passenger arrested for asking flight attendants to join 'mile high club'...

Almost 24hrs later, Drudge still has no clue, but it is in BLUE now lol because, you know, the weather

 

Drudge must pay federal minimum wage to some dolt to write these illiterate headlines

 ARTIC BLAST SET FOR USA...

Coordinated Western attack on Houthi rebels said to be imminent

Biden is annihilating Trump in Pennsylvania among those 65+ in new Quinnipiac poll yesterday which Real Clear Politics still doesn't link to lol

Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania, here:

Question 5: Biden 60% Trump 37% among those 65+ (2-way race)

Question 6: Biden 53% Trump 34% among those 65+ (5-way race)

Question 8: Biden favorable rating is highest among those 65+ at 54%

Question 9: Trump favorable rating is lowest among those 65+ at 33%

Question 20: Biden's job approval highest among those 65+ at 55%.

 

Older Americans haven't forgotten what a disaster Trump was for them personally.

Trump lost older people already early in 2020 because he minimized the pandemic, which ended up victimizing older people the most, whose deaths were north of 70% of the total.

Brad Parscale tried to warn him. He got fired instead.

Jay Powell's inflation has been bery bery good for corporate profits and a federal government drunk on debt

 

Jay Powell's wimpy response to inflation let core CPI inflation run ahead of the US 10-year for an unprecedented five consecutive years 2019-2023 on an average annual basis

 Jay Powell is much worse than Burns.

Jay is the money men's best friend ever.

 

Maybe they should stop legalizing it

 More Teens Who Use Marijuana Are Suffering From Psychosis...

So that's why we can't afford it

 Wealthiest 10% own 93% of stock market...

The market capitalization of the S&P 500 on Dec 29, 2023 was about $42 trillion, each point of the index worth about $8.80535 billion.

8.80535 billion x 4,769.83 SPX 12/29/23  = 42,000 billion. 

One share of VFIAX on 12/29 cost $439.99. 

Price on 3/9/2009 was $62.66.

When Chris Christie said he was in it for the long haul, he meant two, maybe three months lol

 Chris Christie is set to drop out of the 2024 presidential race

 

 

Trump promised to build the wall, Biden promised to end fossil fuel lolz

 

First it was a window which blew out, then it became a section, now it's a panel, but it will never be a door, which is what it really was

 Boeing shares tumble after panel blows out, FAA grounds 737 Maxes

 

 

Wow, just wow

 Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion and mayor of Kyiv since 2014, was a “core shareholder” and active participant in a Hunter Biden-chaired subsidiary of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, according to emails and an associate with direct knowledge who spoke with The Post. ...

Klitschko issued a blanket denial of involvement in a statement provided by a spokeswoman.

“I am surprised by such questions. Because: I have never been a partner in the project you are talking about and had nothing to do with it,” Klitschko told The Post.

“Accordingly, there is no question of any compensation. I had no ties to Hunter Biden. And I did not discuss the company you are asking about with Joe Biden.”

The mayor’s spokeswoman declined to provide answers to follow-up questions, writing in an email, “The answer I sent before is the most comprehensive one we can provide.”

More.

The United States is not working up to its potential

 

If it weren't for double standards, Democrat minority leader Hakeem Jeffries would have no standards at all

 

Jan 6 wasn't an insurrection, except in some minds . . . and on both sides

Everything is so small and ridiculous, because we are.

 

When you asked for a window on your model but got the door anyway

Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 for checks after window blows out in midair

Reportedly a boy lost his shirt out the "window" and a bunch of cell phones got sucked out at 16,000 feet, and:

It later emerged that Boeing staff, in internal messages, were cavalier about FAA regulations and critical of the Max's design. One said it the aircraft was 'designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.'

 Look at this update to "section" lol:

Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 fleet after section blows out midair

 

Kim Strassel: Everyone remembers that Joe Biden invited all these illegals here who are pouring across our border unimpeded by his administration

 Biden invited them all during his campaign:

Biden promised millions of them amnesty and citizenship during his debate with Trump:

Kim Strassel, here, on Biden now pretending there's no problem with the millions streaming across.

Kim's lookin' good:

Joe Biden eeks out another good year for jobs as 2023 ends with 50.2% employed full time as a percent of population on an average annual basis

 December 2023 came in at 49.5%. Full time usually peaks in summer, and bottoms in winter. January and February 2023 had come in at 49.3% and 49.7% respectively.

Still not quite as good as Trump 2019, which itself wasn't close to what we are capable of as a country:

The media in India is as full of it as ours

 Israeli News Anchor Wields Gun Live On Air Amid Fear Of Another Attack...

"appeared on air Tuesday with a gun tucked inside her pants".

This is wielding:

Biden loses in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and the Red Sea

 

She gone lol

 

Off again on again Maersk is off again on Red Sea/Suez Canal transit, freight rates triple

 From the story:

Uncertainty remains despite a U.S.-led military effort to curb the attacks. Maersk had resumed the Suez route, but suspended it again in recent days after one of its ships was targeted by missiles and small boats.

Asia-Europe is Maersk’s biggest trade lane, and freight rates on the route have roughly tripled from their early December levels, the Goldman Sachs analysts said, while “the impact on annual contract rates is likely to be positive, albeit dependent on how the security situation evolves.”

Maersk’s other major routes are seeing “positive second-order effects from the Suez disruption.” Global trade is also being stymied by drought in the Panama Canal.

However, analysts do not currently foresee the same level of global supply chain disruption and capacity constraint as experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic, which triggered a huge spike in freight rates and record profits for companies including Maersk.

Contact your utility commission and complain about natural gas and electricity prices not coming down

 Utilities Get an Inflation Shock

Electricity and gas providers are encountering a pushback on rate increases:

 

Utilities get to pass through fuel prices, which means customers have been bearing the burden of higher natural-gas prices that surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On average, monthly electricity prices rose 13% in 2022 from a year earlier and 6% in the first 11 months of 2023, according to data from the Labor Department. ... Utility commissioners are either appointed by elected officials or elected themselves, which means they are sensitive to the financial pressures that ratepayers face. ... utilities were quick to ask for an increase on the allowed return on equity when market measures of capital cost rose yet slow to adjust rates when those measures declined.     

 

Has the natural gas portion of your utility bill dropped 60% like the price of natural gas in 2023 from 2022? Mine sure as hell has not.

Here are the average prices per year for Henry Hub natural gas:

2015: 2.62

2016: 2.52

2017: 2.99

2018: 3.15

2019: 2.56

2020: 2.03

2021: 3.89 +91.6%

2022: 6.45 +65.8%

2023: 2.53 -60.7%

That 92% jump in 2021 had nothing to do with Ukraine.

We're being gouged for green energy tomfoolery.

 

COMPLAIN, not to the utility, but to the utility commission. It's the only way.

 

In Michigan, go to:

 

https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why does Madcow keep talking like a dipshit? Because that's her audience at PMSNBC

 Rachel Maddow: Why Does Trump Keep Talking Like A Fascist? Because Polls Say That's What Republican Voters Want To Hear

Flying is safe, until it isn't

 Japan Airlines flight JL516 burst into flames after colliding with another aircraft at landing in Tokyo. Somehow they all got out alive.

Story. 

 

The 1.7k commenters to this Joe Biden-crude oil-puff piece at The Wall Street Journal are having none of it, call it a joke, which it is

 Meet America’s Newest Oil-Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden

 Oil prices have sputtered since the U.S. began selling its stockpiles

Danish shipper Maersk suspended Red Sea transit for 48 hours after late Saturday Houthi attack, U.S. Navy claims 1,200 safe transits in the last 10 days

 From the story here:

The events surrounding the Maersk Hangzhou represented the 23rd illegal attack by the Houthis on international shipping since Nov. 19, the Central Command said. It was the first time the U.S. Navy said its personnel had killed Houthi fighters since the Red Sea attacks started. ...

Since the Pentagon announced Operation Prosperity Guardian to counter the attacks just over 10 days ago, 1,200 merchant ships have traveled through the Red Sea region, and none had been hit by drone or missile strikes, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper told The Associated Press in an interview on Saturday.

Nuclear power plants nearest to the Japan quake today had already been offline for routine inspection

 Reported here:

Hokuriku’s Shika plant in Ishikawa, the closest nuclear power station to the quake’s epicentre, had already halted its two reactors before the quake for regular inspections and saw no impact from the quake, the agency said.

Japan starts 2024 with a bang with a 7.5 mag quake

 From the USGS here:

The January 1, 2024, M7.5 earthquake on the west coast of Japan, on the island of Honshu, occurred as a result of shallow reverse faulting in the Earth’s crust. Focal mechanism solutions for the earthquake indicate faulting occurred on a moderately dipping reverse fault striking to the southwest or northeast. Japan is a seismically active region, with most earthquakes occurring off the east coast, where the Pacific plate subducts beneath Japan. This earthquake occurred on the west coast of Japan where crustal deformation created by the broader plate motions is accommodated in shallow faults. Shallow earthquakes cause more damage than intermediate- and deep-focus ones since the energy generated by the shallow events is released closer to the surface and therefore produces stronger shaking relative to earthquakes located deeper within the Earth. This coastal earthquake produced both strong shaking on land and generated a tsunami.

While earthquakes are common in Japan, the region surrounding the January 1, 2024, earthquake sees lower rates of seismicity as compared to the major subduction zone along its east coast. Still, since 1900, 30 other M6 and larger earthquakes have occurred within 250 km of the January 1 event. Three of these occurred on or near the Noto Peninsula, where the January 1 event is located. On May 5, 2023, a M6.2 earthquake on the Noto Peninsula killed one person and damaged hundreds of buildings. On April 16, 1964, a M7.6 occurred 205 km east-northeast of the January 1 event, resulting in 36 fatalities and roughly 3,500 destroyed homes. 

 

Paraprosdokianism in the news: Colorado and Maine move to destroy democracy in order to save it

Do we really want another pre-civil war election, where one candidate doesn't appear, for whatever reasons, on the ballots of ten Democrat states, as Lincoln did not and became president despite 60% of the country wanting anybody but Lincoln?

Radicalism is in the air.

Please wear a mask.

 

 

 

 

 

Destroying democracy to save it: Maine shows the danger of zealots in our legal system:

Maine’s Shenna Bellows issued a “decision” that declared Trump an “insurrectionist” and ineligible to be president. She joined an ignoble list of Democratic officials in states such as Colorado who claim to safeguard democracy by denying its exercise to millions of Americans. ...

One columnist wrote that “Democrats may have to act radically to deny Donald Trump the 2024 Republican nomination. We cannot rely on Republicans to do it…Trump must be defeated. No matter what it takes.”

OK John

 US NAVY SINKS 3 HOUTHI BOATS
DEFENDS RED SEA MERCHANT SHIP :

The U.S. does not seek to escalate the conflict, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on "Good Morning America" on Sunday.

"We don't seek a conflict wider in the region and we're not looking for a conflict with the Houthis," Kirby told ABC News' Whit Johnson. "The best outcome here would be for the Houthis to stop these attacks as we have made clear over and over again."

OK Steve

 DODGERS great's plan to save CA from crime, squalor and Adam Schiff...

 Garvey, 74, said his experience with baseball has trained him how to put together a winning team, saying he's"been able to do it in Los Angeles and San Diego and in the community. ... I'll be a one-term, six-year senator who will step up to the plate every day and go to bat for the people of California who know there's a better life and need somebody to be their voice. They'll be the wind beneath my wings, too," he added.

 

VOX says 2.5 million children in the U.S. experience homelessness every year, The Wall Street Journal says the homeless number just 653,000

 VOX.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Why I won't fly, 2023 edition

 Boeing urges inspections of 737 Max planes for ‘possible loose bolt’

And they say I'm the one with a screw loose.

Foreign affairs specialist says Christmas is a feminist holiday lol

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walter Russell Mead, here:

Jesus is unique, and women are free and equal in God’s sight. That is what we should take away from this [virgin birth] story.

Christianity, like many world religions, has often been less than fair in its treatment of women. But at the heart of historical Christianity, there has always been the idea that Christmas is a feminist holiday, a feast that celebrates the choice of an autonomous woman. As Christianity has risen to become the largest and most widespread religion in the world, women are coming into their own. It cannot be otherwise.

God didn’t send Jesus into the world because He was satisfied with the status quo. God sent Him here because things needed to change—and right at the top of the list of the things God wanted to change was the position of women. The change didn’t happen overnight, and even today we haven’t seen the full consequences of giving half the world its rightful due; but from the day that Mary answered Gabriel, a new force has been at work in the world. The rise of women to new freedom and new dignity, which is one of the primary developments of our time, is the blossoming of a tree that was planted a very long time ago.     

His truth is marching on.

If Tesla were a toaster oven they'd ban it

 Firefighters use 36,000 gallons of water to extinguish flaming car...

Ukraine destroys another Russian warship, CNBC runs Ukraine is losing story instead

 With hopes of victory fading, Ukraine’s fight against Russia could get harder

UKRAINE DESTROYS RUSSIAN WARSHIP
 

Navy of India releases photo of damage to chemical/oil tanker M/V CHEM PLUTO from drone attack launched by Iran on Saturday

Hey, just like Colorado!

 Anti-war challenger Duntsova barred from running against Russia’s Putin

Drone launched from Iran attacks chemical tanker in Indian Ocean 200 nautical miles off the coast of India, its seventh such attack on commercial shipping since 2021

 “The motor vessel CHEM PLUTO, a Liberia-flagged, Japanese-owned, and Netherlands-operated chemical tanker was struck at approximately 10 a.m. local time (6 a.m. GMT) today in the Indian Ocean, 200 nautical miles from the coast of India, by a one-way attack drone fired from Iran,” a Pentagon spokesperson told Reuters. 

More.