Surprise: Grocery Store Shelves Are Empty Again

Hey, remember this?

Stetler and lots of other liberals were doing this while attempting to protect Biden (even though CNN contradicted Mr. Potato). It’s not getting any better

Grocery stores still have empty shelves amid supply chain disruptions, omicron and winter storms

The new year hasn’t stopped ongoing food shortages.

Shortages at grocery stores across the country have grown more acute in recent weeks as omicron continues to spread and winter storms have piled on to the supply chain struggles and labor shortages.

The shortages being reported nationwide are widespread, impacting produce and meat as well as packaged goods such as cereal.

While items are harder to find, many also cost more with rising inflation.

The consumer price index jumped 7% last year, the fastest pace since 1982, the Labor Department said Wednesday. That’s up from 6.8% annually in November, which was also a nearly four-decade high.

The Lidl I go to was decently stocked, though seemed down on milk, bread, and eggs. The Walmart near me was wiped out on milk, juice, eggs, yogurt, and lunch meat the other day.

As the world reaches the two-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic, more items are becoming scarce because of global supply chain disruptions such as congestion at ports and shortages of truck drivers and service workers.

Part of the scarcity consumers are seeing on store shelves is due to pandemic trends that never abated – and are exacerbated by omicron. Americans are eating at home more than they used to, especially since offices and some schools remain closed.

And Biden is doing what, to help? Mostly getting in the way, implementing rules and regs that hurt.

U.S. groceries typically have 5% to 10% of their items out of stock at any given time; right now, that unavailability rate is hovering around 15%, according to Consumer Brands Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman.

So, you might not notice it as much for some things, but, take a look at the quantity. Where there might have been 10 on the shelf, you now have 5. Anyhow, the article goes through many items which are in short supply, like cream cheese, baby food, cat and dog food, chicken tenders (wasn’t a problem last night at Lidl, but, there were a lot less on the rack), toilet paper (wasn’t a problem at Lidl. Didn’t look while I was at Walmart last week), and others. But, you’re also getting into pricing

I noticed ground beef prices way up. And there are fewer sales on stuff at the grocery store (and other places). You can thank China for all this, for messing around with a coronavirus then releasing it, intentionally or unintentionally. Again, though, Biden is making things worse.

Read: Surprise: Grocery Store Shelves Are Empty Again »

Bummer: Only Five Percent Are Looking To Buy An Electric Vehicle

For all the talk from Biden and other Democrats, such as California gov Newsom, about making people buy EVs, there’s not a lot of interest in doing so. For all the manufacturers who are talking about how many EVs they’re going to be producing, consumers are not clamoring for them. Which is why the two biggest automakers, Toyota and Honda, the ones who make the best vehicles, the ones who pay the best attention to what consumers want, are not really involved with this whole EV push. They’re happy to make good, reliable, dependable, affordable, long lasting, great residual fossil fueled vehicles and hybrids

Does Anyone Even Want an Electric Car?

electric vehicleWhatever the technological promise or pitfalls of electric vehicles, the real challenge lies in getting consumers eager to buy them. And that’s proven to be at least as difficult as making batteries last and building out a comprehensive charging infrastructure. A new report from the big-time, grownup-pants Deloitte consulting firm indicates just how big an undertaking that is proving to be.

Deloitte’s “2022 Global Automotive Consumer Study” goes into granular detail about the buyer expectations that will drive the automotive market in the coming years. It’s all based on a survey of 26,000 consumers in 25 countries. Road & Track has been reliably informed one of those countries is the United States, which is still located in North America. The whole report is available at this link as a PDF.

Much of what Deloitte reports is unsurprising. People still vastly prefer personal vehicles over public transportation; are willing to embrace high technology as long as they don’t have to pay for it; still want to buy new vehicles in-person and not over the internet; and are fine with electric vehicles as long as they’re affordable and at least as good as those relying on internal combustion.

Of course, consumers also know EVs aren’t. When the least expensive one is a Mini at $31k with a range of 110 miles, that doesn’t fly. Not when they can get the top end Civic, the Touring model, for less. Same for Toyota and their Corolla. Especially not when so many are going into SUVs, including the subcompacts (like the HRV, CHR, Kona, Crosstrek, and others), which were the fastest growing segment of car sales prior to COVID. People were moving from compact cars to the subcompact SUVs, which are the same size.

The big insights come with the subject of intentionality. That is what consumers expect to buy next. In the U.S., fully 69 percent of consumers expect their next vehicle to be powered by internal combustion. Another 22 percent will go for some sort of hybrid. But still, amid all of this, only about five percent of Americans expect their next vehicle will be a fully-electric, battery-fueled machine.

Oops! The average price of an EV is $54000. You can get a fully loaded Accord or Camry hybrid for around $37K, and know it will last, and you won’t get range anxiety.

Governments are driving forward with aggressive plans for converting the vehicle fleet to alternative fuels. What prominently emerges from the Deloitte report is that ambitions are one thing, and reality is something else.

It is. Just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come. Further, forcing everyone into an EV is not the job of the American government. Not their business. Not their duty.

BTW, just for comparison, that photo above, which I’ve used plenty of times, is a BMW i3. MSRP starts at $45K (also looks to be cancelled for 2022 model year). I see an ad at the moment at Carvana for a 2018 with 32k miles for $23990. So, it dropped about 50% in this used car climate, while my 2018 Accord Sport with 26k miles is worth almost what I paid for it. Meaning that when it goes on a lot for sale it will sell for as much if not more than MSRP. EVs do not hold value, because few want them used.

Read: Bummer: Only Five Percent Are Looking To Buy An Electric Vehicle »

Senate Democrats Switch Tactics, Want To Have A Public Debate On Federal Voting Takeover Bill

Well, this is interesting. Shouldn’t there be a public debate on any big bill? Shouldn’t elected officials be telling their constituents what the bill does? Shouldn’t they be have a long debate on the floor of Congress?

Dems switch strategy on voting bill as Biden pushes action

Senate Democrats are trying to force a public showdown over their sweeping elections legislation, aiming to launch debate on a key party priority even though there’s no assurance the bill will come to a vote.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined the plan in a memo obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, on the eve of President Joe Biden’s visit to meet privately with Senate Democrats about the path forward. It still leaves the Democrats in need of a way to force a vote on the legislation, now blocked by a Republican filibuster.

“We will finally have an opportunity to debate voting rights legislation — something that Republicans have thus far denied,” Schumer wrote in the memo to his Democratic colleagues, which described a workaround to avoid a Republican filibuster that for months has blocked formal debate over the legislation on the Senate floor. “Senators can finally make clear to the American people where they stand on protecting our democracy and preserving the right of every eligible American to cast a ballot.”

They’ve had plenty of time to debate it. They could debate it on the floor of the Senate. Easy. Because saying they want to debate now makes it look like they were hiding things. And they were. They really will not like what Republicans have to say in rebuttal. Besides the notion that if the bill passes and is signed by Brandon, Constitutional lawsuits will fly fast and furious.

The strategy does little to resolve the central problem Democrats face — they lack Republican support to pass the elections legislation on a bipartisan basis, but also don’t have support from all 50 Democrats for changing the Senate rules to allow passage on their own. But the latest tactic could create an off-ramp from their initial approach, which was to force a vote by Monday on Senate filibuster changes as a way to pressure Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to go along.

Not sure how, since the GOP won’t vote for it, Manchin and Sinema won’t vote for it, and there are reports that several other Democrats do not support killing the filibuster. They know that there’s a good chance the GOP takes the Senate in 2022, and, if not then, they’ll get it in the future.

By setting up a debate, Schumer will achieve the Democrats’ goal of shining a spotlight that spurs senators to say where they stand. The floor debate could stretch for days and carry echoes of civil rights battles a generation ago that led to some of the most famous filibusters in Senate history.

And how many citizens will get behind the federal government taking over all state and local elections? These people in far off D.C. with little connection to the average citizen controlling all voting. Senate Democrats are overestimating the support. Especially when things like Voter ID is popular, and required in 35 states. Biden is out there going thunder and brimstone (and lies, plenty of those), which should tell you a lot about the Democrats intentions, because they really cannot discuss the bill on what it actually does, just demagogue rhetoric. Is the public clamoring for this? Not in the least. They care about the collapsing economy.

Marco Rubio had an interesting speech on why this bill is bad, which includes

They don’t seem concerned that Americans will be fired or not allowed into a restaurant without papers, a vaccine card. The real problem is how dare you ask them to produce a voter I.D., a photo I.D. in order to vote. That’s the real problem.

How can this be? How can there be such an enormous disconnect between what real people in the real world care about and are talking about on the daily basis? And what we’re going to spend time talking about here in the speeches over the last week, it isn’t about the Capitol riot. Everyone agrees the Capitol riot was terrible and shouldn’t have happened. I think most everyone does.

But these are some of the same people that downplayed it. Over 700 riots, thousands of cases of looting that happened in America in the summer of 2020. It most certainly isn’t about election laws passed in the last year. They’ve been pushing these same bills with different titles and names, they’ve been pushing all of this for the better part of a decade.

I wonder what this is all about

Because it’s about power. Not just the power to change election laws. We’ve seen it. It’s about the power to tell you what you’re allowed to say. It’s about the power to tell you where you’re allowed to go. About the power to tell you what you’re allowed to do. It’s about the power to intimidate, destroy, smear, to call a racist, bigot, hater — anyone who dares get in your was I or disagree with you. It’s about the power to do that. Let me tell you something, I was raised by and have lived my entire life alongside people who lost their country, the country of their birth to power-hungry people just like that. I warn you, do not stand by and allow it to happen to this one.

Couldn’t be, right?

Read: Senate Democrats Switch Tactics, Want To Have A Public Debate On Federal Voting Takeover Bill »

Priorities: DHS Launches “Climate Change Professionals” Program

Cool. The government teaching mush brain idiots how to be activists to make the government change/sue the government. While doing jack squat about and illegal alien invasion

Homeland Security launches ‘climate change professionals program’ amid historic illegal border crossings surge

The Department of Homeland Security has announced a “climate change professionals program” while the historic number of illegal border crossings continues to increase.

Officials expect illegal crossings at the southern border to hit 2 million in 2021 for the first time in history, but DHS officials announced a program to tackle the “growing focus on adapting to climate change and resilience.”

“The Climate Change Professionals Program will be instrumental in helping the Department adapt to our changing climate by providing hands-on experience and guidance to young professionals interested in climate adaptation and resilience,” said Secretary Mayorkas.

“This program will develop the next generation of climate experts, improve climate literacy throughout the Department, and help us execute our Climate Action Plan to remain mission-resilient while reducing our own impacts on the environment.”

What does any of this have to do with the mission of DHS? How does any of this safeguard the U.S.A.?

“The Biden Administration is living in an alternate reality,” Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital in a statement. “We’ve seen multiple reports of sex criminals and known terrorists trying to cross the border and cartels are funneling lethal drugs into our country in droves.”

“The Administration needs to focus on stopping the surge of illegal immigrants & prioritize supporting our border patrol agents.”

Defund DHS. It’s becoming just another cult agency.

Read: Priorities: DHS Launches “Climate Change Professionals” Program »

If All You See…

…is horrible carbon pollution caused rain, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jo Nova, with a post on coal use skyrocketing.

Read: If All You See… »

Justice Dept To Create Special “Domestic Terrorism” Unit Or Something

I wonder what they will be called? Maybe Stazi? That would be a good name. Who will they go after? Perhaps parents daring to question school boards? Those with MAGA bumper stickers? Those who write #LetsGoBrandon?

Justice Dept. creating unit focused on domestic terrorism

The Justice Department is establishing a specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism, the department’s top national security official told lawmakers Tuesday as he described an “elevated” threat from violent extremists in the United States.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, testifying just days after the nation observed the one-year anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, said the number of FBI investigations into suspected domestic violent extremists has more than doubled since the spring of 2020.

“We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies,” Olsen said.

In other words, they’re using J6, where most attending did nothing wrong, except maybe wander around the building they own in Washington, as an excuse to spy on Americans for nebulous reasons. For Wrongthink. Will there be any oversight? How soon till we learn they’re spying without warrants, that they’re targeting Americans who aren’t doing anything actually wrong, they’re just not conforming to Biden’s agenda? For all Democrats cheering this unit, you should remember that the DOJ unit could next be sicced on you by a Republican president.

But the issue remains politically freighted and divisive, in part because the absence of a federal domestic terrorism statute has created ambiguities as to precisely what sort of violence meets that definition. The U.S. criminal code defines domestic terrorism as violence intended to coerce or intimidate a civilian population and to influence government policy, but there is no standalone domestic terrorism charge, meaning prosecutors have to rely on other statutes.

So, accuse someone of domestic terrorism and then charge them with something else. There was a Senate hearing on Tuesday, and

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the panel’s top Republican, showed video of the 2020 violence as a counter to the Jan. 6 footage that Durbin showed.

“Those anti-police riots rocked our nation for seven full months,” Grassley said.

The FBI and Justice Department say they treat domestic extremist violence the same regardless of ideology. Sanborn said the FBI has opened more than 800 investigations tied to the 2020 rioting and arrested more than 250 people. Attorney General Merrick Garland said last week that the Justice Department had arrested and charged more than 725 people for their alleged roles in the Jan. 6 attack.

So 250 vs 725, despite all those months of riots. Huh. This is a politicized DOJ declaring war on its own citizens. Not specifically authorized by the Legislative Branch. Can’t wait for the Constitutional lawsuits.

Read: Justice Dept To Create Special “Domestic Terrorism” Unit Or Something »

Your Fault: Climate Disasters Were Deadly In 2021 Or Something

Bang that cult drum, folks, bang it

2021 was a deadly year for weather: 20 disasters killed more than 600 Americans

2021 was another catastrophic and deadly year for weather and climate disasters in the USA, federal scientists announced Monday. There were 20 separate disasters that each cost at least $1 billion in damage, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported.

Overall, the U.S. disaster cost for 2021 exceeded $145 billion, which is the third-highest cost on record.

It was also a deadly year: At least 688 Americans died in disasters. That’s the most disaster-related fatalities for the contiguous USA since 2011 and more than double last year’s number of 262.

The deaths were mostly the result of extreme summer heat in the Pacific Northwest, extreme cold across the South during the February freeze, Hurricane Ida across many states and the December tornado outbreak in the South, according to NOAA.

Wait, what was that?

The disasters of 2021 include eight severe weather events, four tropical cyclone events, three tornado outbreaks, two flooding events, one drought/heat wave event, one winter storm/cold wave event and one wildfire event, which includes the devastating Marshall Fire on Dec. 30 in Boulder County, Colorado.

Yes, they are blaming the big Texas freeze even on what are supposed to be heat trapping gases. As for the Marshall Fire, remember, it is under investigation as arson or idiocy right now. Tornadoes? They’ve always happened. Same with tropical cyclones.

Jonathan Overpeck, dean of environmental studies at the University of Michigan, who wasn’t part of the NOAA report, said, “That’s exactly what I’d expect with climate change because climate change is essentially supercharging many types of extreme weather, making heat waves, droughts, wildfires, intense rainfall, flooding and storms more severe, destructive and deadly.”

Well, of course it does. They’ve manufactured the cult talking points that everything that happens is Your Fault.

Read: Your Fault: Climate Disasters Were Deadly In 2021 Or Something »

Surprise: Scientists Thought COVID19 Escaped From Chinese Lab, Didn’t Want To Disrupt International Harmony

Why isn’t this information all over the news media around the world?

Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab – but feared debate could hurt ‘international harmony’

surprise surprise surpriseLeading British and US scientists thought it was likely that Covid accidentally leaked from a laboratory but were concerned that further debate would harm science in China, emails show.

An email from Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, on February 2 2020 said that “a likely explanation” was that Covid had rapidly evolved from a Sars-like virus inside human tissue in a low-security lab.

The email, to Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Francis Collins of the US National Institutes of Health, went on to say that such evolution may have “accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission between humans”.

Oh, so Fauci knew about this information even before the world public started freaking out? Huh

But a leading scientist told Sir Jeremy that “further debate would do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular”. Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony”.

By “international harmony” they mean “don’t demonize China”. Unfuckingbelievable. Seriously. How many millions have been killed and harmed over this? Economies damaged, businesses destroyed, people’s lives messed up. All to protect China, which released this.

Viscount Ridley, co-author of Viral: the search for the origin of Covid, said: “These emails show a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons.”

Yet another conspiracy theory which has come true.

And it makes you wonder, how much was hidden in order to hurt President Trump?

Read: Surprise: Scientists Thought COVID19 Escaped From Chinese Lab, Didn’t Want To Disrupt International Harmony »

Your Fault: Kidney Stones To Get Worse From Climate Crisis (scam)

Thanks, you horrible carbon pollution spewing person wants to force Other People to practice what you preach

From the link

Rising temperatures from climate change will lead to more kidney stone cases, a new study has found.

Dr. Gregory Tasian is a pediatric urologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the lead author of the study, which was published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports.

“While it is impossible to predict with certainty how future policies will slow or hasten greenhouse gas emission and anthropogenic climate change… our analysis suggests that a warming planet will likely cause an increased burden of kidney stone disease on healthcare systems,” Dr. Tasian said in a press release.

Kidney stones are hard mineral deposits that can be very painful when passed through the urinary system. They can form for a variety of reasons, including diet, genetics, obesity and taking certain medications and supplements. According to the study, heat also plays a factor.

Are we able to compare this to kidney stone incidence during previous Holocene warm and cool periods?

To see how climate change could impact the prevalence of kidney stones, the researchers created a model based on South Carolina kidney stone case and climate data from 1997 to 2014. That information was then used to create two forecasts: one based on aggressive greenhouse gas reductions, and another based on unhindered emissions.

Computer models. Sigh. So, literally using data from a generally warm state during a limited time period, and blaming ‘climate change’. What happens if this doesn’t happen? The people involved with the study will most likely be gone, so, who gets blamed for the scaremongering?

Read: Your Fault: Kidney Stones To Get Worse From Climate Crisis (scam) »

If All You See…

…is horrible carbon pollution created heat snow, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Sister Toldjah, with a post on the Washington Post deleting a tweet after the White House complained.

Read: If All You See… »

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