All eyes will be on Virginia tomorrow. Everyone is wondering if Terry McAuliffe will find a way to win (steal) the election. Every poll shows him trailing big time and he can’t draw a crowd big enough to fill a phone booth. His opponent, Glen Youngkin, on the other hand appears to be surging. Few people would predict McAuliffe winning in an honest election. But those of us who watched clueless Joe Biden get 81 million votes are prepared for anything. Incredibly it seems possible that McAuliffe may still lose. He is clearly terrified, which is why his campaign has already sued the Post Office for allegedly not delivering 300,000 absentee ballots. No one seems to know what ballots they are even talking about, and the Post Office immediately dismissed this as nonsense.  Perhaps the real question is why, if McAuliffe thought he was winning, would they do this. Sure looks like absolute panic to me.

McAuliffe was allegedly leading or at least tied in every poll, until he got help from Barack Obama, Joe Biden and even Kamala Harris. Once people saw these performances, he began shredding potential voters in the polls and some show him losing by a huge margin. A margin so large that even 300,000 miraculous last minute absentee voters may not be enough.

Virginia used to be a rational state, but it is now dominated by the usual suspects commuting to Washington, D.C. The closer one gets to Washington, D.C. the less likely they are to exhibit rational thought and no place is closer than Virginia, although Maryland is lurking there to the north. In addition, remember that people like Joe Biden allegedly commuted to and from Washington D.C. on Amtrack.

In any event, if Youngkin wins in Virginia this will be the shot heard round the world. Even Kamala Harris stupidly admitted that in her failed attempt to help McAuliffe over the line. At this point, it is far from sure that Democrats can steal enough votes to stave off the inevitable.

By the way, in 1862 West Virginia had enough and literally left the state. Now normally when there is talk about part of a state moving to another state, it is just nonsense. But in West Virginia that actually happened, and  they have now sent Allegany, Garrett, and Washington counties an opportunity to accept the invitation first extended in 1862. That would truly be wild, but appears to be a real possibility:

Justice invites 3 Maryland counties to join West Virginia (msn.com)

In any event, we are headed toward virgin territory. If McAuliffe wins, we can expect widespread skepticism about the results. But if Youngkin wins, we can be sure Democrats will scream foul. The only thing certain is uncertainty. Frankly no matter how this turns out, the fact that it is even close screams loudly about the Obama, Biden and Harris fall from grace. No one is pretending that anyone cares about what they have to say, and some may be voting the other way, just to spite.

My own prediction is that is McAuliffe loses, it will cause widespread panic among any Democrat seeking re-election in 2022. It might even scare some of them enough to consider doing the right thing for the right reason, but it is never wise to predict this kind of behavior from an elected Democrat. Frankly, I think that will happen regardless of the results, but if McAuliffe bites the dust, it will happen at the speed of light. We will see material changes in the Democratic Party that will arrive faster than previously ordered Christmas Presents.

Remember the key principle in the Democratic Party. They can never lose, for any reason. But if they do, they always find someone or something to blame. In this case, all of that will fall on the sloping shoulders of sleepy Joe Biden. Hank Williams, the cowboy prophet wrote about this in July 1952.

 Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh

But if Joe goes, they get Kamala. “Me Oh My Oh.”

TDM

Governor Gruesome has a knack for getting everything wrote. His remarks in this article, prior to the recall, are coming back to haunt him.

Gavin Newsom warns California could turn into Florida or Texas on COVID if recall succeeds (msn.com)

“Newsom pointed to leading recall challenger Larry Elder’s assertion that he would end the state’s mask and vaccine requirements immediately if he is elected governor.

“His model is Texas and Florida, and Mississippi,” Newsom said. “We have among the lowest positivity rates in America. They have the highest positivity rates in America. We have one of the lowest case rates in America. They’re among the highest.”

Then he bragged that:

“California’s COVID test positivity rate of 4.6% is the seventh lowest in the country and a decrease from 7.1% several weeks ago, Newsom said.

In comparison, Texas, Florida and Mississippi all have seven-day positivity rates between 15% and 20%, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

These remarks did not age well. Today it was reported that Florida COVID cases, and the death rate have dropped to among the lowest levels in the U.S. Even MSN is covering this:

Florida COVID cases, death rate drop to among lowest levels in US (msn.com)

Every statistic, in recent weeks has shown Florida rates dropping steadily.  But the MSM just ignored this. Florida has a significantly older population than California, so the results should be much worse. They ignored that too. In addition, there are few mask mandates and even fewer lockdowns. Instead, Florida is wide open and focusing on things like vaccines for people who want them and Monoclonal antibody treatments.  Here is the official Florida website:

Home – Florida Department of Health COVID-19 Outbreak (floridahealthcovid19.gov)

Meanwhile Governor Newsom is jetting off to Scotland for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. It is too bad his route is unlikely to over fly Florida, because he just might get a glimpse of a state that is handling COVID very well, thank you, without all the unnecessary and annoying nonsense.

Note the setting for the UN Climate Change conference:

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin contains a stark, scientific message for climate change negotiators at COP26,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said of his agency’s annual report on heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. “At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (2.7-3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.”

Further proof that when they say climate change, they ALWAYS mean global warming. The truth is we don’t even know what effect rising CO2 levels are having on climate and no one predicts that reducing them will change anything anytime in the near or even distant future.

The following article from MIT, while attempting to explain the greenhouse theory, instead explains why they can’t even measure this. In other words, they are guessing.

Radiative Forcing | MIT Climate Portal

“Radiative forcing measures how much energy is coming in from the sun, compared to how much is leaving. The analysis needed to pin down this exact number is very complicated. Many factors, including clouds, polar ice, and the physical properties of gases in the atmosphere, have an effect on this balancing act, and each has its own level of uncertainty and its own difficulties in being precisely measured. However, we do know that today, more heat is coming in than going out.”

The only thing they really know is that it has been getting hotter and even that is debatable, because temperatures did not actually rise for several years. This was unacceptable, of course, so places like Stanford rearranged the data to get the desired results.

Global warming ‘hiatus’ never happened, Stanford scientists say

I will let them explain:

“If you wanted to determine the likelihood of getting 15 marbles of a certain color pattern, you could repeatedly pull out 15 marbles at a time, plot their average color on a graph, and see where your original marble arrangement falls in that distribution,” Tsiang said. “This approach is analogous to how many climate scientists had previously approached the hiatus problem.”

In contrast, the new strategy that Rajaratnam, Romano and Tsiang invented is akin to stringing the marbles together before placing them into the jar.

“Stringing the marbles together preserves their relationships to one another, and that’s what our subsampling technique does,” Tsiang said. “If you ignore these dependencies, you can alter the strength of your conclusions or even arrive at the opposite conclusion.”

Let me paraphrase. If at first it doesn’t fit, get a bigger hammer. They didn’t like the results, so they changed the assumptions until they got the result they wanted and needed. This is easy to understand. If your research supports climate change (global warming) you get more money. If not, then good luck getting more funds.

The arctic has more ice this year:

Current State of Sea Ice Cover | Earth (nasa.gov)

What makes this even more remarkable is that in March 2021, the Arctic Sea ice extent was the ninth lowest in Satellite records:

Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag (nsidc.org)

I am hardly a scientist, but it seems pretty obvious that things in the Arctic are getting colder and it is happening FAST!

In the meantime, the Antarctic has the coldest winter on record.

Global Warming? Antarctica Has Coldest Winter On Record | Principia Scientific Intl. (principia-scientific.com)

We need less “California Dreaming” about things that cannot and will not work and pay more attention to places like Florida which did at least and well and potentially better at handling COVID by using common sense. While Gruesome Newsom was arrogantly lecturing us on following the science and destroying our economy in the process, Santos just ignored the nonsense and said let’s focus on what actually works. Lesson learned.

Sunday, we got the highest rainfall ever recorded in a 24/hr. period. It broke a record set in 1880. 1880?  Before the industrial revolution? Here is Folsom we got 7 inches of rain. So, what was the response? A reminder that mandatory water use restrictions are still in effect, we all need to do more to conserve water, and it will take several more storms to change anything. Those doing this California Dreaming might want to check the conditions in the Arctic and watch those low pressure systems start to pile up before predicting permanent drought. Sometimes I really think God has a sense of humor since his response to the warning about drought was to send rain, a lot of rain, but not enough to stop California Dreaming or should I say “California Scheming.”

TDM

I have always been fascinated by terry cloth, for obvious reasons. But for a long time, I really didn’t know what terry cloth meant. If you read the definition, it is a fabric covered in tiny loops designed to be both highly absorbent and soft to the touch. What the heck does that mean?

https://profadeapparel.com/history-and-production-of-terry-towels/

Some people consider terry cloth to be almost the same as towel. It does appear most, but not all, towels are made from terry cloth. The name “terry” allegedly comes from the French word “tirer” which means to pull out, referring to the pile loops that were pulled out by hand to make traditional Turkish toweling. Some think terry cloth was invented by accident when a weaving machine malfunction. My mother used to reflect on my childhood behavior as motivating her to shrieking and pulling her hair out, so maybe there is something to this.

The modern version of terry cloth, although the real thing still exists, is happening in Virginia. Terry McAuliffe, former Governor of Virginia, is running again. McAuliffe is famous for being an FOB (Friend of Bill) and has enormous support among the Democratic establishment. But recent polls show that he may lose this election and that is terrifying a lot of people. Joe Biden even showed up to offer support and according to some reports literally spit on at least one of the two known McAuliffe supporters. Even Barack Obama showed up and he promptly doubled down on insanity. Both McAuliffe and Obama have tried to paint this as similar to the California recall election, which was described as a Republican recall power grab organized by irrational Trump supporters. Governor Newsom was also running scared, until the early mail-in voting seemed to come solely from Democratic districts, assuring him of victory. Frankly that may be more indicative of the problems with wide-spread mail-in voting than actual support for gruesome Newsom. Since Newsom beat the recall, he has quickly reverted to the left-wing jerk that convinced so many people he needed to go in the first place. This is unlikely to end well. In my opinion it is mostly evidence of the pathetic inability of the Republican Party in California to do anything right.

But the Democratic scare tactic may not work as well in Virginia, hence the panic. Oh, we can be certain that the usual suspect votes are already being collected in the usual suspect places, but there may not be enough. Traditionally Democrats have always piled up votes in big cities, which is why every major metropolitan area in the country is run by Democrats. They then blame Republicans for the problems they create. But if Republicans can round up enough votes, in the rest of a state, they can actually win elections. I do not know who will win in Virginia, but I sure know who is showing signs of pure panic. Still, I am reminded that Republicans haven’t won a state-wide race there since 2009, so it is hard to be overly optimistic.

One thing is certain, if McAuliffe loses, the impact will extend far beyond Virginia. Whether correctly or not, a lot of people will believe this means Democrats are heading toward a world-class meltdown in the 2022 election. If Republicans win in both Virginia and New Jersey, then the DNC establishment will start experiencing serious bouts with night sweat. Even if these elections are close, it will have a major impact. This is easy to understand. Suppose you are a member of the DNC establishment. These people have their obvious faults, but they are not actually stupid.  They don’t really buy the nonsense they spew during campaigns; they just think this is necessary to appeal to the insane segment of their base. But most of all they like winning and they absolutely hate losing.

Hence the problem. One must question the mental capacity of anyone who thinks Joe Biden is remotely capable of being a good President. Some think Trump would be worse, but few pretend Joe is doing great. Things have deteriorated to the point that each public appearance by Joe shows signs of rapid mental decline. Joe was never all that bright and he has been famous for telling ridiculous lies from day one, so in reality there are limited grounds for optimism.

The hate Trump movement, while still delicious, doesn’t solve the problem. Even some in the MSM have noticed that while they still hate Trump, he isn’t President anymore. One would say that the world is “heading to hell on a handbasket,” but thanks to the brilliance of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, we have already run out of handbaskets.  By the way, if you are wondering where “going to hell in a handbasket” originated it was France, where they would capture the heads of guillotine victims in a basket, assuming that these “criminals” were headed toward a guaranteed red hot reception on the other side.

In other words, it is all about terry cloth. One will note that terry cloth is never used on coat tails. If even someone as connected as Terry McAuliffe goes down in flames, then no one is safe. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, will motivate the DNC more than the prospect of losing power. There have been times when this has terrified them to the extent, they actually pretended to propose things that made sense and backed candidates who were not certifiably insane. But there the rub. It is almost impossible for a Democrat to win a primary election because the inmates have taken over the institution. Perhaps terry cloth is the appropriate way to describe this because it sure looks like Democrats about to get soaked.

TDM

They were predicting a big storm yesterday. Instead, we got a real whopper.  Sacramento got over 5.28 inches of rain in 24 hours, breaking a record set back in 1880. Folsom got over 7 inches of rain and Auburn reportedly got over 15.9 inches. But in a time when everyone is worried about climate change, it is important to put this in perspective.  Here is a list of the previous major storms, along with the date. This is from the National Weather Service records in Sacramento.

Rank  Amount of rain        Date

1        5.28    4-20-1880

2        3.63    10-13-1962

3        3.35    4-07-1935

4        3.34    12-31-1890

5        3.21    2-17-1986

6        3.14    1-21-1943

7        3.14    9-13-1918

8        3.11    1-24-2000

9        3.10    1-04-1982

10      3.09    4-21-1880

One notes that three of the top ten storms happened in the 1880s. That obviously was long before the industrial revolution. While this storm was a record, it wasn’t actually that unique. Only one other storm hit this early in the season, that was 1918. Ironically, that was the year of the Spanish Flu.  Coincidence? Probably.  We can expect a lot of scary predictions all blaming climate change (global warming), all ignoring the fact that these kinds of storms have been happening since anyone started keeping records.

Study suggests that flooding could reach never-before-levels in Sacramento, Central valleys (fox40.com)

This article was written on October 21, 2021, and it doesn’t even mention the rainstorm we just received. Oops, missed that. It should have been obvious. I wrote “CRY ME A RIVER” because a lot of smart people were predicting this. He was obviously more concerned about the drought. This, predictably, predictably, blames everything on global warming. This quotes a University of California Professor, Nicholas Pinter, who says: “We’re getting larger floods and bigger, more frequent droughts.” Pretty interesting when you see all those major storms that obviously were long before the industrial revolution. Sea level has been increasing, by about 1/8^th of an inch per year. One will note that none of the places predicted to be underwater, are actually going underwater, but IF climate change (global warming) increases our great, great, great grandchildren may notice. My person opinion is that God doesn’t actually pay much attention to the predictions of college professors. He is certainly not impressed with people who ignore history. Sacramento gets a lot of rain, at regular intervals, and this has gone on and on since they started keep records in 1880. The ocean water this year is not warmer, it is colder. La Nina anyone.

The article, unfortunately, is correct is saying that our flood infrastructure is not up to the task. Folsom Lake, for example, currently has about 250,000 acre feet of water. But in a normal year, that can approach 1,000,000 acre feet. Actually, that is all the water Folsom Lake can hold, so they will release water to prevent that. This is something that actually happens quite often. The question is not really how much water we get, but rather how much we save. The people who operate the dam know that.  Folsom Lake rose 9 feet yesterday, and we haven’t even begun to receive the water runoff from this storm. My hunch is that sooner, rather than later, we will see the gates open, again, to release water, to prepare for winter, when we usually, but not always, get a lot of rain. They spent about a billion dollars building an emergency bypass for Folsom Dam. That is designed to release even more water, to prevent the lake from overflowing. In other words, the same people warning you about global warming and endless drought spent a billion dollars  to build that emergency bypass to protect Folsom Dams from storms, like this.

But what they don’t discuss is what happens if they release too much water at once. Folsom Dam can release close to 800 cubic feet of water per second. The levees on the American River can handle about 120 cubic feet of water per second. Anything above that and Sacramento has the potential to look a lot like Lake Sacramento.

If you live anywhere near a lake, pond, levee, creek, or river, seriously consider buying flood insurance. Flood Insurance is cheap, but there is a 30 day waiting period. If you wait until the next storm is forecast, you may have waited too long. Don’t sell your raincoat.

TDM.

According to weather.com “Climate Change Driving Tuna From Regular Habitats Toward Colder Waters.”

Climate Change Driving Tuna From Regular Habitats Towards Cooler Waters | The Weather Channel – Articles from The Weather Channel | weather.com

This is from April 2019

“On average, tuna habitat distribution limits have shifted poleward 6.5 km (4 miles) per decade in the Northern Hemisphere and 5.5 km (3.1 miles) per decade in the Southern Hemisphere,” the researchers wrote. “Larger tuna distribution shifts and changes in abundance are expected in the future, especially by the end of the century.”

Big Apple anglers are landing ‘monster’ tuna close to shore (nypost.com)

Whoops. It turns out that the Tuna aren’t moving north, they are moving south. So, what changed, the tuna? Or did the temperature of the water off Long Island change. Perhaps it’s just me, but this sure looks like a sign of the ocean getting COOLER. How is that possible, when so many people are warning us, that death is imminent because of climate change (global warming). Oops, I  forgot. Anything that happens, including colder weather is evidence of climate change. That is why it is so much better than global warming.  I know, when this other article talked about climate change it only talked about the water getting warmer and the tune moving closer to Canada. But, never let the facts get in the way of a good story, otherwise people won’t buy the need to heat their homes with electricity powered solely by solar panels and wind farms. Why the next thing you know, people will even argue about the need for getting a vaccine and wearing worthless masks.

Hmmm. Antarctica has record cold temperatures. The Arctic has more ice this time of year then any time since 2014. We are having a “La Nina” for the second year in a row. “La Nina” is defined by cold water. This year the “La Nina” appears to be delivering cold weather and rain. If this continues, people are not going to be all that terrified by climate change (global warming.) So, I predict that within days, if not hours, some genius will explain why the cold water off Long Island and the cold wet weather in California is further evidence of climate change (global warming) make it even important to get your COVID vaccine booster shot, AND WEAR A MASK!

Perhaps it’s time to TUNA those people out.

TDM

Not only is the storm door open, but we also officially have an atmospheric river aimed right at California. This is not new, this happens quite often, but the number of times this happens during a year varies significantly.  While our politicians are focused on reducing HO2 emissions to stop climate change (global warming) they are ignoring far more serious threats. No one living in Northern California has seen a really wet winter. We have had some whoppers. In 1999 my wife and I decided to take the kids skiing. We were living in Novato at the time. We had rented a condo in Incline Village. While driving on Hwy 80 by the time we got to Sacramento it started to rain, buckets. I told everyone that rain here means snow in the mountain, so I sped up to try and beat the storm. By the time we got to Donner summit there had been about a foot of snow. Just as we came down from Donner Pass, the radio announced that Hwy 80 was now closed. We got more snow before we picked up the keys to the condo in Truckee and even more snow before we got to the condo in Incline Village.  We had a Ford Expedition with 4 wheel drive, but the first time I also had to put on chains. We were shoveling snow off the deck at the condo every couple of hours, so it wouldn’t collapse, and I would drive the Expedition out the driveway every couple of hours, so we could get out in the morning. We went to the ski resort in the morning, and they literally laughed at us.  They told us they were still digging out the ski lifts. We thought this was a world record, but it wasn’t even close. Sugar Bowl reported  a mere 168 inches of snow or 14 feet during the period from February 6 – 9, 1999. The real record happened in happened in 1921 at Silver Lake, Colorado when they got 76 inches in 24 hours. Coming in a close second, was in 1982 when Echo Summit got 67 inches of snow in 24 hours.

You might be interested to know that in 1906-07, Tamarack, California, got 884 inches of snow (73.7 ft) in just one winter one winter.  As recently as the winter of 2018 to 2019 Sierra at Tahoe reported getting over 500 inches of snow. Few remember that because the geniuses in charge of our reservoirs did not save that water. Instead, they tried, unsuccessfully, to save a handful of salmon and the threatened delta smelt.

The point being that it would be foolish to underestimate the potential for very wet winters in Northern California. What makes this storm remarkable is that it is happening in October. Most of the big storms seem to happen in January, February, or March. So, this could be the start of something big, or it could be nothing more than an early storm.

I do not pretend to know what will happen this year, but I do know that one of these years we are going to get a very wet winter. It happens more than you think, but as far as I can tell, the last time really big storm occurred during the winter of 1861-62. Between the period between November 11, 1862, and January 14, 1862, Sonora got 72 inches of RAIN. The entire central valley of Sacramento and San Joaquin was reportedly flooded for a distance of 250 to 300 miles long and 20 miles wide.

This is from the Journal of William Brewer who wrote about this in San Francisco in 1862.

California Rains Winter 1861 – 62 from the Journal of William H. Brewer (socminco.com)

Here is another report of the Great Flood of 1862 in Wikipedia:

Great Flood of 1862 – Wikipedia

One will note that it was a series of atmospheric rivers that caused this mess.

The weather pattern that caused this flood was not from an El Niño type event, and from the existing Army and private weather records, it has been determined that the polar jet stream was to the north as the Pacific Northwest experienced a mild rainy pattern for the first half of December 1861. In 2012, hydrologists and meteorologists concluded that the precipitation was likely caused by a series of atmospheric rivers that hit the Western United States along the entire West Coast, from Oregon to Southern California.

It is interesting to note that the Indian story tellers have stories about floods much bigger than this:

“Native Americans knew that the Sacramento Valley could become an inland sea when the rains came. Their storytellers described water filling the valley from the Coast Range to the Sierra.”

I have talked to many experts very familiar with our existing flood control structures. None of them even hint that the existing structures are remotely capable of handling this much water. It will happen again, sometime, hopefully not this year. When it does imagine being in a home, high and dry, surrounded by water, with no electricity to keep your new green deal all electric home warm. No one can possibly predict these kind of events. They are by definition, very rare. But they have happened before, and they will happen again. And when it does happen, few people will be overly concerned about CO2 emissions.  Sometimes, when it rains, it pours. Cry me a river.

TDM

It rained last night. For people living in Northern California, rain is a really big deal. This is because for much of the year we don’t get any rain at all. There is this handy dandy high pressure cell that parks just offshore from San Francisco that conveniently pushes all the summer weather events up to places like Washington & Oregon. In most years we don’t get any rain between April and October. The weather announcers here typically talk about heat waves and weather in other parts of the country. But they get excited when “the storm door” opens and they can talk about rain. Well, last night, one of the local meteorologists said the magic words: “The storm door is open.”

The change is remarkable and fast. Two weeks ago, I was playing golf with the weather in the high 90’s, wearing shorts and drinking lots of water. Today the high is 63 and the high this week will be 69, on Thursday. They are also predicting rain on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday.  Since we are in a drought and literally subject to mandatory water rationing, this is received as good news by most people.

What makes this ironic is that we just saw a report, from scientists, that Lake Tahoe is dry and warning of dire consequences. For the record, it is snowing in Lake Tahoe. The LA Times wrote a report saying this was the driest water year in more than a century and experts fear the coming 12 months could be worse.

California records driest year in a century (msn.com)

The good news is that experts are very good at getting things very wrong. One will note that the last time the state reported so little rain and snowfall was in 1924. Perhaps it is just me, but my first reaction was: “oh, it was really hot in 1924, long before ‘global warming’, excuse me, ‘climate change’, was threatening our very existence.” Thank goodness we switched to all electric cars back in 1924 or we would probably all be dead! Oops, that didn’t actually happen. Instead, we built all those freeways and purchased lots of gas guzzling SUVs.

If you read the entire article, you will note that:

“The history of California has been written in long droughts,” said Bill Patzert, a retired climatologist who worked for decades at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory studying the effects of climate change. “There’s a lot of water, but it comes down to how it’s used.”

Bingo. There’s a lot of water, what matters is how it is used. Two years ago, in 2019, Folsom Lake was over 100% of normal and we were told this was enough water to last through five years of drought. This summer, Folsom Lake has very little water. So where did it go. It sure didn’t all evaporate. What happened was that water was released to try and save about 1,000 salmon.

This is not a new problem that requires a new solution. The story of Joseph is recorded in Genesis, chapters 37-50. To make a long story short, Joseph convinced Pharoah that there would be seven years of plenty and seven years of drought. He suggested building warehouses to store up the excess grain during the good years, so there would be more than enough grain in the bad years. Pharoah listened and it worked brilliantly.

People from other areas, who did not figure this out, had serious problems. Many of them fled to Egypt because it was the only place with food. Among them was the sons of Abraham, Joseph’s brothers.

But no one appears to have learned anything from Joseph. Instead of doing the obvious, like finding ways to STORE water, we have people recommending extremely expensive strategies, guaranteed to not work, in a desperate attempt to save mankind. It is literally insane, but incredibly popular. I am sure that we should all want to live in a cleaner world with less pollution, but there is little if any evidence that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has much impact. Currently the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is estimated as 415 parts per million or .0415% of the atmosphere. It is a trace element. Some really smart people are terrified by this.  Here is one example from bloomberg.com:

How Much Carbon Dioxide Is in the Atmosphere (bloomberg.com)

They aren’t even pretending this anything they are proposing will work anytime soon, even if we miraculously manage to eliminate all new CO2 emissions. No one expert predicts that, regardless of what we do, because there are other countries who are unlikely to do squat.

If new greenhouse-gas emissions ended tomorrow, CO₂ in the atmosphere would begin washing into the ocean, rolling the parts-per-million count backwards outside of the seasonal up-down cycle. This would start a very long process. Getting it back to pre-industrial levels would take thousands of years—unless we deploy technologies that can suck up vast quantities of CO₂ from the air.

So, this extremely expensive green new deal could reduce CO2 levels below the industrial levels in just a few thousand years, unless we deploy technologies that can suck up vast quantities of CO2 from the air. What? Even if we cut all new CO2 levels nothing will change for over 1,000 years.

We need something that sucks CO2 out of the air. Wait, don’t plant(s) suck CO2 from the air? Maybe, just maybe, instead of focusing on reducing the amount of CO2 emissions, we just grow more plants. What is the downside? People eating healthier food?

In the meantime, God is obviously not listening. Is it just me or it just seems that whenever someone starts talking about switching to electric cars to cut CO2 emissions, God responds by opening the storm door?

DON’T SELL YOUR RAINCOAT!

TDM

Today, on my way to work, I noticed a car driving exactly the speed limit resulting in a rather significant traffic jam. As I passed this car, I noticed a bumper sticker that said: “Vehicle speed monitored by GPS.” Then I reflected on other recent developments. As an insurance agent, I know that many companies now offer significant discounts if you agree to having your vehicle monitored. Here is one example of how this works. This is from American Family Insurance:

Car Insurance Monitoring Devices | American Family Insurance (amfam.com)

How Do Car Monitoring Devices & Apps Work?

We all would love to know that we’re driving as safe as we can. With car monitoring systems, or telematic devices, that’s actually possible now. Vehicle monitoring devices work through an app on your smartphone that gathers and analyzes key data about the way you drive. Details like your GPS location and driving speed are all fed into a database that records your performance on the road every time you’re driving. After a period of time, your auto insurance may reduce your premium if your driving habits are found to be safe.

Now this sounds great, but then I remembered that slow moving vehicle. I couldn’t help but notice that your smart phone can now track you every place you go and provide details like: “Your GPS location and driving speed.” In theory, this would just feed data into a database, to evaluate your driving. That is bad enough, but what if we get another Jimmy Carter who decides it would be wonderful if everyone drove 55 mph. Those of you too young to remember those days would be wise to pay attention. Imagine driving from Sacramento to Los Angeles on I-5 at 55 mph. First of all, when Carter did this, the speed limit was ignored, but it did significantly lower the speed at which you got a ticket. For example, now if you drive 80 mph on I-5 odds are a lot of cars will be passing you and you are unlikely to get a speeding ticket. But when the speed limit was 55, if drove 80 mph you would definitely get a ticket.

The push back against this was so severe that the 55 mph speed limit left along with Jimmy. But now, with these new devices, someone like, say, Joe Biden, could decide to lower the speed limit to 55 mph to reduce global warming. What’s more, he could actually enforce it by just monitoring your cell phone. In addition, don’t be surprised if cars already are capable of providing this information. If your GPS can tell you where to go, it can report where you are and how fast you are moving. The technology already exists, it is probably already installed in your vehicle, and it is only a matter of time before someone decides to use this to stop global warming.

In case you doubt this, the Governor of California just signed a bill banning gas lawn mowers and weed whackers by 2024, to reduce global warming. We currently have a whole class of politicians, we call them Democrats, who definitely want to micromanage your life. You can also be sure that they will create exemptions for themselves. This reminds me of a time I was in Manhattan on business. Suddenly a whole squad of motorcycle cops showed up. They quickly blocked every side street. Then, about five minutes later, a black limousine, surrounded by other motorcycles, went by at a high rate of speed. This was followed by another squad of motorcycles, forcing following traffic to slow down. I don’t really know who was in that vehicle, but suspect it was the mayor, because the President was definitely not in Manhattan. It was certainly someone unwilling to be slowed down by the notorious Manhattan traffic jams.

The point being that people in power are very good at making exceptions for themselves. They don’t ever try to hide it. That is why they fly all over the place, in private jets, so they can lecture the rest of us regarding our carbon footprint. Now previously this was somewhat tolerable because we still had our freedom and especially our own vehicles. We could drive anywhere we want, and we could even ignore the speed limit with little risk of consequences.

There is now risk that this will change, and sooner than you think. The same people who feel they can require you to get vaccinated, whether you want it or not and whether you need it or not, will not hesitate to force you to drive slower. They may also limit where you can go. It would be so easy, just use that handy dandy GPS to stop people from traveling too far. Then they will use the same argument for mandatory vaccines, that making everyone, other than them, move slower and travel less, will save lives, and do wonders for the environment.

So, while some people saw a car, moving slowing, with a weird bumper sticker this morning, I saw a glimpse of the future and it is a very dark picture. A very sad sign of the times.

There are, however, other things that really matter. The pilots for Southwest Airlines decided enough was enough so they are fighting back against the vaccine mandate. Southwest had to cancel over 1800 flights and left people stranded all over the country. The lucky ones could drive to their next location by just renting a car and driving for about 12 hours. But others don’t have that option. Southwest blamed this on the weather and air traffic control, but miraculously this didn’t appear to impact other airlines. Newsweek bought this nonsense, but then that is hardly a surprise.

So while that bumper sticker is a sign of the times, so are all those stranded Southwest Airlines passengers. Freedom is the most contagious disease of all, and it appears to be spreading rapidly.

TDM

The Daily Mail (UK) is not exactly a conservative rag. But they are more willing that American media outlets to report inconvenient facts. The following article should go off like a bomb, but will probably be ignored by the MSM:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10070677/No-cases-influenza-RSV-detected-Ohio-2020-21-season-just-2-cases-B-strain.html

“during the 2020-21 season, no cases of influenza A were detected and just two cases of influenza B were found”

Here is the graph.  It is beyond obvious:

This of course was explained away by the experts saying that mask mandates and social distancing instituted to protect from COVID-19 may have inadvertently stopped flu transmission.

I know Kaiser Permanente is not buying this, because they are sending me notices to get my flu shot.

One will note that there are numerous reports of false positive COVID-19 tests. At least some of these people had, RSV or the flu. The question is did the flu disappear or was it camouflaged as COVID-19, which is more useful in scaring people.

The doctor interviewed viewed this as evidence about the great effect of wearing masks, proper hygiene, and isolation. Then he says: “‘It can be a simple non-medicinal way to save lives.”

The following article from Health Impact News published in 2014, is very interesting because it claims the CDC was over stating the number of deaths from the flu because it wanted to sell the necessity for flu shots.

CDC Inflates Flu Death Stats to Sell More Flu Vaccines (healthimpactnews.com)

Did 80,000 People Really Die from the Flu Last Year? Inflating Flu Death Estimates to Sell Flu Shots (healthimpactnews.com)

Reading these now, in view of how the CDC has handled COVID, definitely raises some very important questions.

The attempt to scare people into fearing the flu did not work. This concerned people like Dr. Fauci who thinks it would be wonderful if every one got a flu shot and he complained that people didn’t understand the danger from flu.

The following article is from the Gateway Pundit, which sometimes exaggerates things but, in this case, they published a transcript that seems to be verified by multiple sources:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/explosive-video-emerges-fauci-hhs-officials-plotting-new-avian-flu-virus-enforce-universal-flu-vaccination-video/

Incredibly, this shows that Fauci and others “WANTED” a COVID-19 kind of illness because people weren’t scared enough by the flu.

The follow excerpt from the transcript is mind-blowing:

Fauci: In order to make the transition from getting out of the tried-and-true egg growing which we know gives us results that can be beneficial, I mean we’ve done well with that. There must be something that has to be much better. You have to prove that this works and then you’ve got to go through all of the clinical trials: phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, and then show that this particular product is going to be good over a period of years. That alone, if it works perfectly, it’s going to take a decade.

Bright: There might be a need or even an urgent call for an entity of excitement out there that’s completely disruptive, that’s not beholden to bureaucratic strings and processes.

Fauci: So we really do have a problem of how the world perceives influenza and it’s going to be very difficult to change that unless you do it from within and say, I don’t care what your perception is, we’re going to address the problem in a disruptive and in an iterative way because she does need both.

Bright: But it is not too crazy to think that an outbreak of novel avian virus could occur in China somewhere. We could get the RNA sequence from that.. to a number of regional centers if not local, if not even in your home at some point, and print those vaccines on a patch of self-administer.

The MSM is ignoring this. But one way or the other, this screams for investigation. This appears to show intent to overstate the danger from the flu, (consistent with the previous report) and Rick Bright, Director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) literally dreamed about an outbreak of a novel avian virus, from someplace like China, that would create the opportunity for a brave new vaccinated world.

In addition, it appears as though at least one Democrat is thoroughly disgusted with the extreme partisanship in his own party.

Manchin Shakes And Holds Head As Schumer Blasts Republicans After Debt Limit Pass – Bing video

Shortly after hearing this Manchin literally got up and walked out. The comments by Manchin later seem to confirm his disgust with Chuck Schumer.

Then, today, Joe Biden declared victory after a shockingly bad jobs report was issued. This report was so bad that even CNN shuddered. We expect politicians to lie about things, it is in their DNA. But lying is one thing, trying to present a totally false reality is something else. If Joe Biden believes this, he is totally delusional. Sadly, that appears to be the most likely explanation. But I am reminded that these are the same people who argue that both extremely cold weather and extremely hot weather is caused by man-made climate change, by which they mean global warming.

The best way I could think of to describe this mess is to create a new word. “Fluey”

TDM

In 1968, David Clayton-Thomas wrote a song for Blood Sweat & Tears called spinning wheel.  The first line of that song is:

“What goes up, must come down, Spinnin’ wheel got to go round.”

spinning wheel lyrics – Bing

I was flying combat missions in Vietnam at the time. I underestimated how much things were destined to change.

Everything on this planet moves in cycles. We sometimes forget that, when we feel we are on top of the world. We also forget it during times of trouble. Today a lot of supposedly smart people are shrieking about climate change. Some are proposing taking insane action to save us from global warming. President Biden and John Kerry refer to climate change as an existential threat to humanity. They say climate change, but they always mean global warming. The cold hard truth is that it doesn’t look like the earth is actually getting warmer. For example, on September 16^th, the Arctic Sea ice reached its annual minimum of 4.72 million square kilometers. Now one will note that 4.72 million square kilometers of ice is quite a bit larger than the ice free arctic predicted by that eminent scientific scholar, Al Gore. But this is also the most ice we have seen in the arctic, at this time of year, since 2014.

Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag (nsidc.org)

Just in case you were wondering, the Antarctic is not exactly experiencing a heat wave either. The following article from the Seattle Times explains why the South Pole is experiencing record cold, which is an anomaly in a warming world:

South Pole posts most severe cold season on record, an anomaly in a warming world | The Seattle Times

The average temperature at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station between April and September, a frigid minus-78 degrees (minus-61 Celsius), was the coldest on record, dating back to 1957. This was 4.5 degrees lower than the most recent 30-year average.

And, by the way, there is more ice there too!

The extreme cold over Antarctica helped push sea ice levels surrounding the continent to their fifth-highest level on record in August, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

So, the best evidence of climate change (global warming) is that both poles are getting significantly colder. You probably don’t know this because CNN is not covering the story.

This type of logic explains why Joe Biden is shutting down pipelines in the U.S., encouraging pipelines in Europe, discouraging drilling for oil in the U.S. and demanding we switch to electric vehicles that will be serviced by a grid using far fewer fossil fuels. If this seems insane, it is because it is insane.

It is also insane to demand everyone get vaccinated, because vaccinations protect vaccinated people from getting terribly sick from COVID, but they must still wear a mask so that vaccinated people don’t spread COVID to unvaccinated people. This, of course, includes people who have already had COVID and have at least 20 times more immunity that people who have merely been vaccinated. This is all necessary to continue following the science.

The same logic is used to demand that all school age children, get vaccinated, before they can go back to school where they will still need to wear masks, to protect the teachers. This is because the only people exempt from getting vaccinated are teachers who are members of the teachers union.

Our healthcare system is improving daily by requiring all health care works to get vaccinated. This has resulted in numerous healthcare workers getting fired or quitting. This has resulted in some healthcare systems rationing care. This, of course, is all designed to help us end the pandemic and return to normal life. Once again, following the science.

This same logic is used to demand that all future elections be conducted only with mail-in ballots, which both Democrats and Republicans agree are a recipe for fraud, so that we can all have more confidence in our elections.

The good news is that spinnin’ wheel keeps on spinnin’ and no amount of false logic changes that. Democrats were publicly humiliated when they couldn’t stop spitting at each other long enough to pass the “Biden Agenda.” Every time Biden tries to show why he is President, and everyone should listen to him, he only provides more evidence of his own senility and incompetence. A level of incompetence exceeded only by his designated replacement, Kamala Harris.

The San Francisco Giants, predicted to win, perhaps 72 games this year, if they were lucky, just finished the season with 107 wins, the most in franchise history. That would be 1 win more than the Los Angeles Dodgers, who also had their best year in franchise history, winning 106 games, only to come in second. They now face a one day sudden death playoff game with the hottest team in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals. The Giants only exceeded expectations by a mere 35 games, proving once again that many of the people we rely on to predict things have zero credibility. They are guessing and one reason they are often very wrong is that they forget about that “spinnin’ wheel.”

“What goes up, must come down. Spinnin’ wheel got to go ‘round.” True about the weather. Also true about politics. No amount of spin by the MSM can stop that wheel from going “round.” Don’t sell your coat.

TDM