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My own comments on the current scene:
a) When an entire country thinks their president is a Doofuss, even if he is clueless, those around him should be concerned.
a) When an entire country thinks their president is a Doofuss, even if he is clueless, those around him should be concerned.
b) This Halloween we left an empty bowl instead of candy and told the little "woke" offspring blame it on Biden's supply chain issue. Maybe next year Biden will have built back better.
c) A neighbor asked weren't we afraid they would toilet paper our house and we replied toilet paper is too expensive to waste and besides, there are no rolls in the grocery store.
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We were with Blake and Dagny for Halloween and then today we watched Dagny and her 4th grade class perform a musical play all about the history of Florida.
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Biden criticized for falling asleep. Can't blame the poor guy. He was probably worn out by his trip to Rome, then to the Climate Meeting which had to be boring as hell:
Joe Biden Draws Criticism After Closing His Eyes at Climate Meeting
Since he took office in January, many Americans have wondered if President Joe Biden has what it takes to lead the United States during such an intense and complicated time. Leading the free world demands immense energy and backbone, after all. But, it seems the travel and speeches became a little too much for the president to handle when a reporter appeared to catch him dozing off during the COP26 climate summit in Scotland.
On Monday, November 1, Washington Post reporter Zach Purser Brown caught a video of Biden repeatedly closing his eyes during a speech at the climate summit. While he has his eyes shut, a White House aide comes up to the president for a quick word before the speech ends, and Biden joins in the applause.
Fox News shared the incident on Youtube:
The House Republicans called the commander-in-chief out on his heavy eyelids, declaring, “America is in crisis, and Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel.” Many Americans and lawmakers echoed this sentiment, although a few also came to Biden’s defense, highlighting the difficulty of staying awake while jet-lagged during a monotonous speech.
Either way, Biden reflected a sleepy tone at this global summit, drawing many questions about whether or not his leadership is right for the US.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++There is nothing I can say that has not been said about the election. In essence common sense defeated stupidity.
A businessman Republican proved if you stay focused, talk sense to American Voters, who are tired of being called bigots, racists and offered proposals that are totally insane, you have been given an opportunity. The question is can Republicans replicate what Youngkin proved works?
Biden's response to the election warning is Virginians are too dumb and were too confused to distinguish a simple message from Youngkin versus the one from McAuliffe.
As for the mass media , who are in shock, they remain totally tone deaf and believe Biden and his Merry Dwarf advisors need to double down and dole out more freebies.
It is nice to see Democracy still works with the right candidate but we cannot afford to wait every two years because the dangerous radicals are at work 24/7.
McAuliffe was able to prove one thing. Virginians are not as stupid as Californians because they did not buy McAuliffe's attack on Trump as did the "sun worshippers" who bought Newsom's attack on Trump.
To win involves talk sense, offer legitimate solutions, stick to your commitments. Trump did that but he could not let his accomplishments win the day. He just could not keep at what worked because he could not keep his grating personality from overcoming his achievements.
Finally:
Apparently people in New Jersey love being taxed. Perhaps they love driving the wealthy out of New Jersey or perhaps they believe Biden is right. When you spend money there is no cost.
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Republican Glenn Youngkin Defeats Democrat In VA Governor Upset
Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s gubernatorial election, a shocking upset for a state that Biden carried by 10 points in 2020.
“Alrighty Virginia, we won this thing,” Youngkin said in his early morning victory speech Wednesday. “Together, we will change the trajectory of this commonwealth.”
Youngkin took the race with 51% of the vote to Gov. McAuliffe’s 48.3%. With 97% of the expected vote in, he won by more than 85,000 votes out of the over 3.1 million ballots cast. The result came as a surprise, when only two months ago, Younkin was trailing McAuliffe by nine points in the polls.
Democrat heavy hitters President Biden, Vice President Harris, and former President Obama stumped for McAuliffe, who spent months comparing the former equity CEO to Trump.
“Youngkin’s entire campaign has been a full embrace of Donald Trump’s dangerous extremism: divisive culture wars, racist dog whistles and bigotry,” McAuliffe accused on Monday.
The incumbent governor’s campaign stumbled during a Sept. 28 debate, when the topic turned to parental discontent with schools over critical race theory, sexualized curriculums, and pandemic mandates, which have been hot button issues in area school districts.
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe said at the event.
“I’m on the side of the parents and children and teachers, and I think this has become the big issue in this race,” Youngkin remarked on Tuesday. “I’ve just felt this great surge of momentum for the last six to eight weeks.”
He capitalized on the matter when Virginia’s wealthy Loudoun County school district reportedly covered up the sexual assault of a female student by a boy wearing a skirt in the girls’ bathroom, and her father was arrested and labeled a “potential” domestic terrorist for confronting the school board about the alleged assault in early October.
“On day one, we’re going to work,” Youngkin stated during his victory speech. “We’re going to restore excellence in our schools … We’re going to embrace our parents, not ignore them.”
Younkin was congratulated by top Republicans including Sen. Rand Paul, former Vice President Mike Pence, and Trump.
“His win tonight is a clear and much needed signal for personal freedom and that parents are the deciders of their children’s education and future,” Sen. Paul tweeted.
“Glenn will serve the people of Old Dominion well with common sense Conservative policies that will benefit parents, families, and hard-working Virginians! The Conservative Comeback is HERE!” Pence shared.
Trump credited his base of supporters for electing Youngkin. “Without you, he would not have been close to winning. The MAGA movement is bigger and stronger than ever before. Glenn will be a great governor. Thank you to the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia and most particularly, to our incredible MAGA voters!”
On Wednesday morning McAuliffe officially conceded and congratulated Youngkin on his victory, according to Fox News.
“While last night we came up short, I am proud that we spent this campaign fighting for the values we so deeply believe in,” McAuliffe said.
“Congratulations to Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin on his victory. I hope Virginians will join me in wishing the best to him and his family,” McAuliffe added.
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Ross Rants Again:
The Fed blew it again by claiming inflation is transitory. So did many in Wall St. Many still believe it is transitory. There were many sophisticated fund managers who agreed with the Fed. I do not. I guess if you put no time line on when inflation would stabilize and decline, you can say it is transitory, but now we know the supply situation has only gotten worse, the labor shortage is not improving as fast as needed, and prices of everything are now rising. For low income workers this is becoming a serious problem as gas, heating energy, and food are now rising faster than wages. That will impact consumer spend on other goods as we move forward. Consumer spending data may look like they are rising, but we will need to look at the underlying numbers to take out food and energy to see what is happening, and to see when the inflation affect is removed, what they look like. Just a higher gross number because unit prices are rising is not a good thing. I don't see any end to this supply situation for many months as the administration is dong nothing of real value to help. The private sector can fix this if the regulations on truckers are eased, especially in CA. That is the real bottleneck. Getting empty containers off the chassis, stacking the empties higher, and letting independent truckers into CA driving one more hour and with bigger loads will go a long way to fix the problem. The longer this goes on, the more inflation becomes embedded in people's minds, the longer it then gets built into expectations and actions by consumers and producers. That is very bad if it gets embedded as it did in the seventies. Inflation is the major issue as to where the stock market goes from here, and what Fed reaction will be. The general view of top investors now is that 2022 will likely not be a good year for stocks, and has the potential to be a bad year. The inflation rate and Fed response is key. If the ten year gets to 2.5% as a result of inflation vs being due to real growth, the market is in trouble. Keep your eye on the ten year and PCE. They are the key indicators.
I don't know what happened to Yellen, but she has gone from a respected economist to a political hack. She actually said the massive spending bill would reduce inflation. How she could say this is beyond me. She is also pushing the raise taxes script. I get that she is Treasury Secy, but she has lost all credibility. Mnuchin pretty much just did what he believed was right.
Congress not able to pass the reconciliation bill would be a very good thing for inflation expectations. They need to be reducing spending, not vastly increasing it. Fiscal irresponsibility is one of the main drivers of inflation, and hopefully a couple more Dem moderates will find that out before tomorrow's vote. Right now they seem to have zero understanding of economics and how it works. The main issues for voters now are gas and food prices, and the destruction of education with CRT and the false narrative of 1619, as well as sex ed for little kids. The tide has turned, and the VA election and Louden county was the trigger. When that girl was attacked by a boy in a skirt, that was a major event that turned the whole thing. Weeks ago I said don't piss off the soccer moms or momma bear will attack. They really pissed off the soccer moms. If Trump does not ruin it, the Republicans are on their way to reversing what is happening. Have faith, the left, academia, the teachers union, and the press over played their hand, and we are seeing the start of a better day. It will take until Nov 22.
Biden is fixated on passing the left wing agenda and climate change instead of on the inflation and supply issues which are getting worse. Where does Pelosi go from here to get a deal done. She is now desperate, but the radicals have shown they have the power to force their agenda, and that is very possibly going to kill the whole thing. Biden has nothing to show in Glasgow this week. That is a good thing. His speech claiming there was a "framework" agreed was nothing more than another lie so he could go to Europe and make believe he had a deal. Everyone knows it is all BS. The real issue is not the amount, but the bill is filled with numerous terrible sections that waste huge sums on socialist and far left ideology that would change American culture, and make the labor shortage even worse. It is hard to believe that all of the Dems, other than just Sinema and Manchin, are going to go along with all of this as it will mean they lose the 2022 election big. My sense is the moderates may not vote for all of this as they read the real detail wording of the bill, which is why Pelosi wants to vote before it is all finalized. Bernie and the squad are misreading their power, and think they can force all their demands to be met. I believe they are over playing their hand. We also have not seen what McConnell and McCarthy may pull in parliamentary moves to try to further delay the whole thing into the Thanksgiving holiday which possibly will kill it. We will have to wait to see how it all plays out tomorrow. Once Youngkin wins by 5 pts or more, the Dems are going to have to rethink their positions. If the Republican comes anywhere closer than 7% in the NJ governor race, that will be a real wake up. That is why Pelosi is rushing to get the vote by Tuesday, before the election. She understands if Youngkin wins big it could be all over for the bill.
The continuing uncertainty about Powell getting renominated is beginning to create real concerns. If there is no announcement as soon as Biden returns, then it becomes much more concerning. The appointment in past administrations is always done by first week in November. Keep watching this. Powell is likely to stay, but it is unclear now.
There is becoming a view among a growing number of top investors that the market could drop by over 20%, or more, in 2022. I share the concern that it could possibly happen. I use could, not will, so don't rush to the exit. I remain fully invested in equities for now. There are a lot of moving parts, so it is possible the market has more upside and SPX could rise to 5000, which would be an 8% gain. I don't think that will happen, but it could as Covid goes away in the coming weeks. It is very unclear right now. The gross incompetence in the administration, and the sharp turn to the left, do not bode well as inflation and shortages continue, and as Congress might move to a far more generous welfare state economy which will materially deter getting people back to work. It seems I keep thinking something will get resolved so we can better judge where from here, but the Dem chaos and the Biden incompetence just go on, making it hard to come to any real conclusions yet.
As I have mentioned before, there will be lots of scare statements about a pending crisis, lots of speeches and press releases in Glasgow, and lots of promises to do this or that, but it is all meaningless. China and India continue to build coal fired plants, and will go on doing so for several more years. Xi and Putin are not even attending, and India has not developed a plan-the G20 that just happened did not reach any real agreement on cutting fossil fuels, China said it will build coal plants until 2030-so that is the end of any actual steps to end fossil fuels, and the whole Glasgow event is a publicity stunt and farce. The US could shut the few remaining coal plants (just a little over 200 and dropping rapidly) and build lots more windmills, cap dead wells, and sell lots more electric cars, but the impact on the whole earth will be nil. The US is already doing a lot to reduce CO2 and leads the world, but the overall impact remains not much. In my opinion, the biggest driver of climate change is natural, and there is nothing man can do now to change that part of the causes of the minimal rise in temperature over the next decades. Nobody really knows how much of the climate change is due to man, and how much is the natural cycles of the earth shifting on its axis which has happened for 4 billion years. The world will still be much like it is now in 20 years, and oil wells will still pump oil, and maybe even more as the world economy grows. Even that child Thunberg is not attending, and says it is all talk and no real action. The wonderful irony is Biden is asking oil and coal producing countries and OPEC to produce more to avoid the coming energy shortage in the western world, which may hit the US as well this winter due to a shortage of gas and coal now that these have been curtailed by the administration and capital markets under pressure from the left and the White House. Let's see how the left explains this when people do not have enough power for heat this winter. At the G20 they all agreed to do something more on climate change, but then could not agree on what any of that meant in specifics. So will go Glasgow.
Humans will adapt. The best example is Covid. It suddenly swept the world and shut the world economy to a great degree. Millions died. Hospitals were overwhelmed. But here we are with the vaccines, and the world is recovering and moving on. You can use WWII as another example. Europe was destroyed physically and politically, but it adapted and rebuilt. Oceans may continue to rise a little, days in some places may get warmer, glaciers will melt, and one day reform as they have over hundreds of millions of years, and man will figure out how to deal with IT. Whatever IT is. Man has been doing that very successfully since cave man days, and during the ice ages 12,000-20,000 years ago when there was real massive climate change and humans had none of the technology and knowledge we now have. I looked at hurricane data going back decades. If you take out Katrina, which was an anomaly, and by far the worst, then the frequency and damage costs of hurricanes has not really changed much over decades as a percentage of GDP. 2017 was a bad year because we had three cat 4 and 5 storms, but the damages per storm were nothing out of the average. In fact Andrew in 92, and Agnes in 72, on an inflation adjusted basis, were worse. Wildfires as to damages and occurrence, have declined over decades worldwide. It is simply that there is grossly incompetent forest management in CA, negligent maintenance of power lines, too many houses built in deep woods. If they fix the power lines and do proper forest clearing management, the problem will be far better. It is not climate. Droughts happen everywhere periodically. Recall the dust bowl days. Millions of years ago the Sahara was a jungle. They just had record rain on the west coast. No more drought, no more fires, full reservoirs. How about that, old Mother Nature comes through again.
Mark Carney, former head of BOE and Bank of Canada, is now in charge of trying to get lenders to stop loaning to companies that are deemed non-compliant with the green eco agenda. He has mostly failed luckily. Banks are not the eco police. They are needed to use their judgment to assess risk, not to implement the latest political fad. If there were to be no funding for fossil fuels and certain kinds of mining, the world would stop dead. There is a lot of pressure on lenders not to do loans the radicals disapprove of, but for the most part that pressure has had little impact. Reality is where there is a strong demand and profit opportunity, someone will find a way to fill that demand. It is called greed, and it always works.
Congress needs to start paying attention to the power of Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock. His company, through its various funds, controls the voting in many public companies. He alone has far too much say over policies adopted by boards. Same with Vanguard and two or three other institutions that control vast numbers of votes through their funds. Fink in particular is a very liberal guy, and is a major influence in board rooms. Talk about concentration of power- he is the top of the list, and in some cases, not for the better. Congress needs to investigate this.
Facebook is now Meta Platforms. Metaverse is a concept rooted in science fiction, and is an extensive online world that exists across various tech platforms at once. You will be able to "hang out' in an immersive shared digital space using avatars to attend concerts or try on clothes virtually. Then there is virtual reality, and another called omniverse. Snap has augmented reality overlaying the real world with digital experiences that encourage us to engage with the real world. I bet you have no idea what that means. Being demographically old, I have no idea what all of this means either, but if I figure it out I will let you know. I prefer my real world. I worry a lot that in a few years kids will be living in a make believe world where their minds are molded to whatever the metaverse controllers like Zuckerberg wants them to think. That is really scary -1984 come alive for real.
Delta is going away rapidly, (US down another 15% last week) so now we have mandates that have resulted in firehouses being closed in NYC and cops off the beat. Meantime almost 93% of all over 12 are at least one shot vaccinated, or have had the virus and so natural immunity. Cases are down 58% from September, and dropping very fast. With kids over 5 cleared for shots, things will get even better faster. Just like they did in the economy and school shut downs, the mandate cure is far worse than the disease. Mandates are not getting everyone vaccinated, but they are causing havoc. The EU and UK have rising cases and a new variant, so the US could bump up again in December, maybe. Get vaccinated. I am boosted.
The worst, stupidest outrage of all time-Biden intends to pay $450,000 per person to illegals. They should have been charged with child abuse for dragging their little kids all the way here, and then they should have been deported. Some of the kids were not even really their own. Who is doing the negotiation and decision making- George Soros, or maybe Omar. I bet all the families of dead soldiers think this is really a great way to screw American heroes, and victims of 9-11, but reward illegal aliens with much more than they received. They could drag this out in court for years and in the meantime deport all these illegals instead of rewarding them. The big bill includes $100 Billion for illegals- just so you understand how your hard earned money is being given away.
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