Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

And from the other side of the aisle, the political ads in Alabama are hilarious. Everyone is trying to out right wing each other and show that their fealty to Trump is more devout than their opponents.

The latest ad is by Debra Jones who is running for the State Supreme Court. Her opponent, Greg Cook, went to Harvard law and is pretty far right but her ad is, “WHY WOULD YOU TRUST A GUY WHO WENT TO A LIBERAL LAW SCHOOL IN MASSACHUSETTS WITH OBAMA AND CHUCK SCHUMER??”

It’s just hilarious theater.

[Hannibal]

He's run headlong into Joe Manchin so "delivering" is hard. But, he touted the fuck out of BBB and that $3T spending spree. He did everything he could to get that through including, as you will surely recall, noting that it would help fight the once transitotry inflation. He also did his damndest to pass the Federal takeover of voting laws in the name of ending "Jim Eagle" or Jim Crow 2.0" or "Jim Crow on STEROIDS!!!"

He did deliver on Covid relief, infrastructure and, of course, throwing the doors open at the border. He did also did his damndest to extend Federal takeover of landlord-tenant law.

What he hasn't done, yet, is cancel student debt. Unitlaterally. That's the big Prog wet dream. And I don't even know if The Chairman has it in him to do something politically unpopular and obviously unconstitutional/illegal under the existing statutory framework.

There is no doubt he's lost support amongst younger folks, but I wonder how much of that is their preposterously unrealistic dreams/reality kicking them in the teeth and how much of it is their sense that The Chairman is doddering a boomer knucklehead/reality kicking them in the teeth.

This is one of the most important political questions of the next decade. The reality of "Climate Crisis" mitigation, versus the science fiction propaganda that has been sold to the country vis-a-vis carbon footprints, electrification, and renewable fuels. The inflation that we are seeing today is at least partially driven by rapidly increasing amounts of edible sugars and oils being burned as fuel in lieu of fossil fuels.

[Dr. Strangelove]

And from the other side of the aisle, the political ads in Alabama are hilarious. Everyone is trying to out right wing each other and show that their fealty to Trump is more devout than their opponents.

The latest ad is by Debra Jones who is running for the State Supreme Court. Her opponent, Greg Cook, went to Harvard law and is pretty far right but her ad is, “WHY WOULD YOU TRUST A GUY WHO WENT TO A LIBERAL LAW SCHOOL IN MASSACHUSETTS WITH OBAMA AND CHUCK SCHUMER??”

It’s just hilarious theater.

Dr. Oz was running some ads of him shooting guns in the woods that were pretty hysterical.

[Mike]

As an aside: Kills me to see everyone with a a chief diversity officer championing DEI. DEI is a weaponized version of wokeness. The main issue is that “equity” in that group has come to mean ‘equality of outcome’ as opposed to ‘equality of opportunity’. It sounds, on the surface, like a minor distinction, but it is not. Not even close.

Nope. It's just dressed up Marxist bullshit. My wife had her weekly 2 hour "anti-racist"/implicit bias "training" again last evening. I eavesdropped a few minutes and had to chuckle when the host asked the attendees for some examples they've experienced in their field of whatever nonsense she was rambling about. The response was dead silence for well over a minute until the host broke back in and tried to use the fact that black folks have higher rates of diabetes as an example of racism in our healthcare system. Really riveting stuff.

[Hannibal]

Clay Travis at Outkick has the best analysis on ESPN, Disney, and streaming services that I have seen to date:

https://www.outkick.com/espn-lost-8-...bscriber-base/

tl,dr; ESPN is screwed and, by extension, the sports bubble is going to pop.

[Mike]

Fantastic.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Fuck ESPN and their Wokeism. I will piss on their grave.

Fuck them.

[crashcourse]

I wish you were in a grave

[THE_WIZARD_]

No you don't. Stop lying.

[Dr. Strangelove]

This story keeps changing for the worse. Initially sounded like a gunman killed some people then hid at an elementary school. But seems increasingly obvious now the school was the target. Looking like over a dozen dead. Authorities initially not saying much so they could contact parents first. Shooter is dead, possibly an 18-year-old.

EDIT: We'll see, there's supposed to be a press conference soon. Details from ABC could be wrong

Multiple fatalities, including several children, after 'active shooter' incident at Texas elementary school: Sources - ABC News (go.com)

[Da Geezer]

I'll never understand why a business like an insurance company or a sports network or a bank for that matter would have anything to do with politics given the bitter divisions in the country. Michael Jordan had it right when he said "Republicans buy shoes too".

[THE_WIZARD_]

Geezers buy shoes too.

[Da Geezer]

This from today's WSJ



HSBC executive Stuart Kirk gave a presentation at an investor conference last week, taking banking regulators to task for overbaking the financial risk of climate change. What was he thinking? As punishment for his heresy, the British bank has sent him to re-education camp.

Mr. Kirk is, or at least was, the bank’s global head of responsible investing, so his candid presentation titled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk” naturally attracted attention. We understand why banking regulators and businesses that hope to make money off the coming tidal wave of climate regulation might be offended by his truth-telling.

But he merely said what many in his industry believe but are too timid to say: Climate change poses a negligible risk to the global economy and bank balance sheets. Oh, and central bankers are partly to blame for the current economic turmoil because they’ve focused too much on climate change while ignoring far greater, more immediate risks such as inflation.

“Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong,” one of his slides noted. He highlighted sky-is-falling quotes from banking potentates such as Mark Carney, the former Bank of England Governor, who recently said the damage from climate change will dwarf the current pain from rising prices. Tell that to the working folks dealing with 8% inflation.

If climate change poses such an enormous economic threat, Mr. Kirk asked, why did asset prices surge as doomsday warnings increased? Either climate risk is negligible, climate risk is already in the prices, or all investors are wrong, he said. If you believe the latter, then you don’t believe in markets and shouldn’t be regulating them.

He also pointed out that global GDP growth over this century will by far eclipse the impact of climate change, and humanity will find ways to adapt. Yet he said banks are focusing too much on mitigating climate change—i.e., force-feeding a transition to green energy—rather than financing adaptation.

Mr. Kirk warned that climate regulation has diverted bank resources from lending. The Bank of England’s climate stress tests (whose results are expected to be released Tuesday) are rigged to make bank balance sheets look less resilient to climate policy changes. This allows regulators to justify more aggressive financial regulation to punish fossil-fuel investment.

The Financial Times reported Monday that the content of Mr. Kirk’s presentation had been approved internally at the bank. But after a political uproar, HSBC suspended Mr. Kirk pending an investigation. CEO Noel Quinn denounced Mr. Kirk’s remarks as “inconsistent with HSBC’s strategy.” What a profile in pusillanimity.

Credit to Mr. Kirk for exposing the hubris of the regulatory climate emperors even as his superiors shrink in fear.

[Hannibal]

This from today's WSJ



HSBC executive Stuart Kirk gave a presentation at an investor conference last week, taking banking regulators to task for overbaking the financial risk of climate change. What was he thinking? As punishment for his heresy, the British bank has sent him to re-education camp.

Mr. Kirk is, or at least was, the bank’s global head of responsible investing, so his candid presentation titled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk” naturally attracted attention. We understand why banking regulators and businesses that hope to make money off the coming tidal wave of climate regulation might be offended by his truth-telling.

But he merely said what many in his industry believe but are too timid to say: Climate change poses a negligible risk to the global economy and bank balance sheets. Oh, and central bankers are partly to blame for the current economic turmoil because they’ve focused too much on climate change while ignoring far greater, more immediate risks such as inflation.

“Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong,” one of his slides noted. He highlighted sky-is-falling quotes from banking potentates such as Mark Carney, the former Bank of England Governor, who recently said the damage from climate change will dwarf the current pain from rising prices. Tell that to the working folks dealing with 8% inflation.

If climate change poses such an enormous economic threat, Mr. Kirk asked, why did asset prices surge as doomsday warnings increased? Either climate risk is negligible, climate risk is already in the prices, or all investors are wrong, he said. If you believe the latter, then you don’t believe in markets and shouldn’t be regulating them.

He also pointed out that global GDP growth over this century will by far eclipse the impact of climate change, and humanity will find ways to adapt. Yet he said banks are focusing too much on mitigating climate change—i.e., force-feeding a transition to green energy—rather than financing adaptation.

Mr. Kirk warned that climate regulation has diverted bank resources from lending. The Bank of England’s climate stress tests (whose results are expected to be released Tuesday) are rigged to make bank balance sheets look less resilient to climate policy changes. This allows regulators to justify more aggressive financial regulation to punish fossil-fuel investment.

The Financial Times reported Monday that the content of Mr. Kirk’s presentation had been approved internally at the bank. But after a political uproar, HSBC suspended Mr. Kirk pending an investigation. CEO Noel Quinn denounced Mr. Kirk’s remarks as “inconsistent with HSBC’s strategy.” What a profile in pusillanimity.

Credit to Mr. Kirk for exposing the hubris of the regulatory climate emperors even as his superiors shrink in fear.

Emphasis on that bolded part. "Climate Crisis" prevention has been rebranded as "Sustainability". Now every company has a "Sustainability" section of their annual report. In it, they boast about how they are spending lots of money that produces no profit, and/or producing goods that are more expensive and passing along the cost to the customer or the taxpayer.

Ford, for instance, is going to make every European Ford electric by 2030. An electric vehicle currently retails for approximately double its comparable model in the gasoline engine market, gets maybe half of the range, and takes at least a few hours to charge. Unless you are at a "fast' charging station, which probably costs somebody a shitload of money to install and charges the vehicle in about 15 minutes. That's all assuming that the electrical infrastructure even exists for people to charge their cars (spoiler alert -- it doesn't). That's "Sustainability" -- doubling the cost to the consumer (maybe even more than that) while producing less utility.

I have said this before, but we are in uncharted territory with capitalism. There has never been this level of corporate suicide before. It is being largely driven by Wall Street, who is wiling to flush hundreds of billions of dollars down the toilet to pursue its woke agenda. They have hoodwinked a lot of investors and executives into this scam, and the ones who don't fall for it are far too scattered and powerless to stop it.

[THE_WIZARD_]

:::still waiting for Biden/MLB/Manfred/Abrams to apologize to the State of Georgia/ATL/Braves/Hank Aaron for their fucking BS lies and fucking them over::::

Obviously they hate black people.