The Angry Bear

And if it continues to be this dry, it could become the most severe megadrought on this entire chart. “The only reason this drought is lagging behind that 1500s drought is because it’s so young,” Williams said. Via The Guardian comes this article on the current heatwave in the US…personally I have stories ranging from ducks not reproducing because of the heat and drought in Montana to severe water use restrictions in San Jose… What tree...

Commenter Fred Dobbs had much of this in the Open Thread, June 19th at 9:33AM. I highjacked it, added more up to date detail, and an opinion. I did find it interesting. Somewhere there is a print(s) and BOM for this structure along with specifications (which were alluded to as BD vs BC steel) for materials along with a comparison of structural strength necessary. The Chinese did not build this on a whim. And why Chinese steel and components?...

The news is that Joe Manchin has described a voting rights compromise which he supports. Also Republicans immediately said it was unacceptable to them. This reminds everyone that there will be no bipartisan compromise on an issue where the two parties have diametrically opposite interests. If there were any Republicans who did not equate democrats with Democrats, and pigs could fly, it would be different, but there aren’t. I am reasonably...

Bottom Line On The Biden-Putin Summit  According to Robyn Dixon of the Washington Post on 6/18/21 regarding the outcome of the Buden-Putin summit in Geneva, I shall simply quote directly from what looks to be the bottom line from Putin himself: Despite a packed European tour schedule, Biden “looked fresh” and was “fully aware of the materials” during the two hours of talks, Putin said: ‘Biden is a professional. One should be very observant...

May housing permits and starts continue down from recent peak In May housing permits (blue in the graph below), including the least volatile single-family permits (red, right scale), continued to decline from their January peak. Meanwhile, the more volatile and slightly lagging housing starts (green) increased, but remained below their March peak: The level of construction activity as high as or higher than its pre-pandemic peak is continuing....

The decline in new jobless claims stalls, as the “delta” variant is ready to strike the unvaccinated States New jobless claims continue to be the most important weekly economic data point, as increasing numbers of vaccinated people and outdoor activities have led to an abatement of the pandemic, with both new infections and deaths at their lowest point since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. I’ll have more to say on the intersection of the...

Commenter RJS and MarketWatch 666 blogger Seasonally adjusted retail sales fell 1.3% in May after retail sales for April were revised 1.4% higher . . . the Advance Retail Sales Report for May (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated that our seasonally adjusted retail and food services sales totaled $620.2 billion for the month, which was a decrease of 1.3 percent (±0.5%) from April’s revised sales of $628.7 billion, but 28.1 percent (±0.7 percent)...

Tags: open thread

Just catching up on my healthcare readings and ran across an article in my email account from MedPage Today. The articles come on a daily basis and I also get them from Modern Healthcare (which limits articles), Health Affairs, NEJM, JAMA, etc. It is more than I could read at any one time unless, I give up more time to read and absorb them. There has been much conversation and arguing on whether there should be vaccinations for children. I have...

Senator Whitehouse posted the clips of his presentation on the Powell Memo at youtube. Ken posted the text of it here. I have known about the Powell memo for a long time. People really do need to come to internalize just what this part of our political history means for our present day social structure and government. People might not be so gullible once they understood what he has been saying for years. Then again, to understand this history...