VOTING WITH THEIR FEET RENTAL TRUCKS:

California’s tiny net population increase this year and last was due to foreign-born immigrants, although it’s difficult to determine how many are there legally.

HE’S ANGRY AND BITTER AND I KNOW I SHOULDN’T BUT I CAN’T STOP LAUGHING: Old Man Shouts at Cloud on Way out of White House. “HE’S FINE, according to people who appear on MSNBC, hosts of The View, and the shrinking numbers of permanent pants-wetters who still watch them.”

CHANGE: The end of an era: Russia loses its gas grip on Europe.

Claims that Asia could replace Europe as Russia’s primary gas market ignore several crucial realities. The Asian market remains a distinctly inferior alternative, even as a stopgap measure. Several factors make this evident:

  • Logistics heavily favor Europe – most existing infrastructure points westward, making European delivery both cheaper and faster than Asian alternatives.
  • European market dynamics historically yielded higher prices, as competition and environmental regulations made Russian imports particularly attractive.
  • Russia’s self-inflicted reputation damage through political manipulation and warfare has severely limited its negotiating position for long-term contracts in both Europe and Asia.
  • Asia enjoys abundant alternatives with shorter supply routes – China, the prime potential customer for Russian gas, has diverse options from Qatar to Turkmenistan, Iran to Southeast Asia and Africa.
  • Heckuva job, Vlad, losing gas revenue Moscow had enjoyed even during some of the tensest years of the Cold War.

    IN A NUTSHELL:

    KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: It’s a Shame Trump Can’t Deport Liz Cheney. “Despite their resounding defeat last November, Democrats still fail to grasp that the public is no longer in the market for their false narratives. Nobody outside of The New York Times Opinion section and the Biden White House thinks that Liz Cheney is a principled person. She’s a vile backstabber who only looks out for Liz Cheney. Republican voters in a state that has almost no Democrats sent her to a shameful primary defeat that the Dems have tried to spin as proof that she’s a — drumroll please — respected Republican.”

    To be fair, Wyoming voters basically deported her from the state.

    OF COURSE THEY ARE, IT’S GOING TO TURN OUT THAT HALF OF THEM ARE COMPLICIT IN THE RAPING: British Elite Seem Angrier at Elon Musk than About Migrant R@pe Gangs.

    Looking at this case, the Diddy stuff, Harvey Weinstein, Epstein’s Island, etc., and Andrew Breitbart’s demand of the left, “Stop raping people!” seems prophetic.

    HERO:

    I had no luck at all finding any news stories about Singh in the mainstream media.

    BUT AL GORE TOLD ME THEY WERE GETTING WORSE: New Evidence Reveals 30 Year Global Drop in Hurricane Frequency and Power.

    Reality rarely gets much of a look-in these days when fanatical Net Zero activism is afoot, but the paper, written by a group of Chinese meteorologists, makes its case by considering the facts and the data. The scientists apply a “power dissipation index” (PDI) which they consider superior to single measure indicators since it combines storm intensity, duration and frequency.

    Downward trends in the cumulative PDI can be seen in a number of Pacific regions, while the trend holds steady in the North Atlantic. The southern Indian ocean downward trend is particularly pronounced while the overall global line is also heading in a similar direction.

    So why does all this scientific twaddle get written by the green activists in mainstream media? Much of it arises from the new pseudoscience that claims it can tie individual weather events to human-caused climate change. Press releases peddling climate Armageddon are issued days after a natural disaster and are eagerly reprinted by activist journalists promoting the Net Zero fantasy. The distinguished science writer Roger Pielke Jr. is a fierce critic of this new pseudoscience, which he calls weather attribution alchemy. In a recent Substack post in the aftermath of Chido, he noted that the WWA at Imperial College simply assumes the conclusion that it seeks to prove by accepting that every storm is made stronger because of warmer oceans. Using this explanation, continues Pielke, it is straightforward to conclude that the storm was made more likely due to climate change. Or as Imperial states: “The difference in the storm intensity and likelihood of this storm intensity between the counterfactual climate and today’s climate can be attributed to climate change.”

    As the new Chinese paper shows, the matter is not quite so simple.

    Much more at the link.

    ICYMI: PREFERENCE FALSIFICATION REVEALED.

    KEVIN DOWNEY JR PRESENTS KDJ’s Bourbon-Inspired Predictions for 2025: Buckle up, Islam. “The ‘bourbon-inspired’ predictions are every bit as accurate as Sister Rita-Mary’s eraser-throwing arm as I learned at Saints Peter and Paul Elementary School in Detroit when I was experiencing what would later be called petit mal seizures.”