I hate the greedy bastards of summer

 

Tim Carney doesn't mention why the bad polling results for Republicans and Trump on the economy started already in May 2025

The word "tariff" does not appear in this column lol.

The Impending Republican Collapse

Tim Carney, Washington Examiner

  

... But the bad polling trends for Republicans and Trump generally started late last year, before the attack on Iran. The right-track-wrong track numbers started souring last May.

It’s reasonable then to suspect that Trump’s other problems — including stubborn inflation (aside from gas prices) and his family’s sketchy business dealings — are harming the GOP. This pre-Iran trend also suggests that the numbers won’t simply reverse if the Strait of Hormuz reopens and gas prices fall.

The Republican Party’s problem is deeper than gas prices, and so things won’t get better before November. The only question is whether things get worse.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (LA-4) was for the ban on insider stock trading in Congress before he was against it

 My favorite part about his new position is that if we don't allow our representatives to make money somehow, we'll stop attracting talent to Washington, D.C.

You know, like Trump, whose primary talent is corruption. 

💋 

 

Speaking of corruption, Trump makes Biden & Co., Clinton & Co., et alia, look like pikers

 Democrats blast Trump over ‘slush fund’ in possible IRS lawsuit settlement

... “This administration is dripping with corruption from top to bottom, but rushing a settlement to steal $1.7 billion taxpayer dollars for a slush fund before a judge can toss your junk lawsuit would be among the most corrupt acts in American political history,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

“This lawsuit has never been anything more than a shakedown of the American people by a crook president and his crook lawyers,” Wyden said.

Trump, his two eldest sons, and his family business sued the IRS and the Treasury Department in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida over the 2019 leak of the president’s tax returns. It was an unprecedented move that raised concerns about conflicts of interest at the time. ... 

News of the potential settlement comes ahead of a May 20 deadline set by U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams, who asked the Justice Department and Trump’s legal team to explain whether the case with the president on both sides can even be heard by a federal court.

″(A)lthough President Trump avers that he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction,” Williams wrote in a court filing in April.

“It is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other so as to satisfy” the constitutional requirement that federal cases only adjudicate cases or controversies. ...

Trump is as corrupt as the day is long

 Trump touted Palantir on Truth Social after buying the company’s stock, records show

Trump went big on tech stocks in first quarter of 2026, new filings show 

In all four corners of the world, Trump's name is a household name for . . .

... childish, dumb, embarrassing, ignorant, idiot, immature, incompetent, joke, moron, ridiculous, silly, stupid, uneducated, unfit, unpredictable, and unqualified ... bigot, corrupt, crazy, delusional, disastrous, disgrace, evil, greed, hate, horrible, insane, prejudice, racist, sociopath, trash, unstable, and vile ... “ass” or “asshole”, bad, bully, crass, disgusting, disrespectful, jerk, liar, mean, obnoxious, pig, rude, and stubborn ... arrogant, cocky, confident, egomaniac, loud, megalomaniac, narcissist, and selfish. 

And that was in May 2020.

Take your pick. 

Trump's corrupt state capitalism, but I repeat myself, is anti-American, anti-competitive, and advances long-standing Democrat objectives, which is one reason big business is keeping its big yap shut

When the Democrats can't get what they want, a Republican chump comes along who does it for them.

The power of existing businesses will only get stronger thanks to Trump, so mum's the word.

 

Trump administration equity stakes pose risks to U.S. companies and markets 

The Trump administration’s portfolio of equity stakes in U.S. companies has reached a scale that is unprecedented outside economic crisis or wartime.... 

“It is a invisible barrier to startups and new market entrants,” said Scott Lincicome, an international trade lawyer affiliated with Cato Institute. “Why would you ever want to enter a market that you know your chief competitor is backed by the U.S. government?”...

The Trump administration’s approach is a major ideological departure for the Republican Party, which has traditionally championed free market capitalism and excoriated government intervention. The Democrats have typically been the party of industrial policy and intervention in markets.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, introduced an amendment to Biden’s CHIPS Act that would have allowed the government to take stakes in companies that accept federal funding for semiconductor manufacturing. The measure ultimately died in the Senate....

Top executives have voiced virtually no public criticism of the Trump administration taking stakes.... 

Before the U.S. took its stake in Intel, Trump said CEO Lip-Bu Tan was “highly conflicted” and called for his resignation over his ties to Chinese companies. The comments sparked a brief sell-off of Intel shares.... 

               

Trump bought 433.3 million shares of Intel in August 2025 at $20.47, about $3 off its recent lows around $17.66, risking taxpayer money, not his own.

Who needs to run if elections are suspended in yet another phony national emergency?

Trump is not allowed to stop spending money which was lawfully appropriated by the Congress for specific purposes, or to spend it on other things, but that's exactly what he's doing anyway.

He's illegally taxing every American with his tariffs under a phony emergency power granted him by our servile Congress. 

He's not allowed to shake down and detain citizens on the pretext that they may be illegally present, but that's exactly what he's done. He's made a mockery of citizenship.

He's not allowed to search without a warrant, but he's doing it anyway. You let him do it every time you fly, so what's the big deal if now he's invading homes and businesses without warrants in search of illegal aliens? You don't care.

He uses his bully pulpit literally to bully people, to suppress their speech. He threatens investigations of his opponents, and makes good on them with actual probes and charges. Some in Congress admit they are afraid of him.   

No one made him the judge, jury, and executioner, but that's who he thinks he is. He is in fact murdering non-combatants pure and simple every day, and Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio are his accomplices, as is the U.S. military, to its everlasting shame.

Trump is the greatest . . . violator of civil rights and the rule of law since Lincoln.

He's made an ass of the law.

He's flooded the zone with illegality, impropriety, personal corruption, crime, and ugliness. 

And Congress just lets him. The courts just let him. The people just let him.

They all just shrug. They're the French, and he's their Napoleon. 

 

Trump: "It's Pretty Clear, I'm Not Allowed To Run" For Third Term

Obamacare's chickens have come home to roost!

David Dayen should have entitled this The Planned Failure of Obamacare Is Now Upon Us. 

The Health Insurance Cost Crisis Is Now Upon Us 

... We should be clear that this premium apocalypse is a function of returning Obamacare subsidies to where they were in the original version of the law. That was poorly designed to target the middle class with bearing the bloat in the health care system, and no work was done on basic health plans or other public options at the state level. (A federal public option was stripped from the legislation by the threat of that exemplary moderate, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, to withhold his support unless it was dropped.) Now, Democrats are effectively warning that a return to their original vision of Obamacare spells doom. (And what we’re really talking about is how much the government should send to private insurance companies, a horribly inefficient way of ensuring health for American citizens.) ... The ACA was seen as a “starter home” that could be built on, and Democrats built on it. It’s Republican neglect that is taking the wrecking ball to it, with all the political fallout on their backs. ...

Yes, Obamacare was the enemy of the middle class, making it "bear the bloat". Communists have always hated the middle class because the middle class stands in the way of the revolution. Obamacare was designed this way on purpose, by Democrats and Obama who were the communists we always said they were. Senator Max Baucus rightly called it what it was, income redistribution.

Premiums have steadily risen along with deductibles, to the point that everyone pays their premium, then pays out of pocket, no one ever reaches their deductible, and the plan never pays anything. Most people never reap any benefit under Obamacare. Now premiums will explode without the subsidies, making dropping it more attractive than ever.

And No, Republicans had no duty to "build" on Obamacare. It was rammed down their throats in the first place. No Republicans ever voted for this goddamn commie boondoggle. 

The best thing which could happen right now is for the millions imprisoned in this system to opt out of it and let Obamacare implode. That would force the Congress back into the corner it was in in 2009.

Not one more penny should be spent to prop up this system which benefits only the insurance companies. Can you say Luigi Mangione?

Obamacare should be repealed, and nothing done to replace it. It would be painful, but it is the only way.

In the aftermath, someone will start to sell real insurance again out of the ashes, and the current greedy bastards of the insurance industry will scramble to follow them as they lose business and market share. That, the capitalist option, is the only public option which makes any sense, but currently that is against the law.

Just repeal it. 

 

 

 

Senator Ron Johnson squeals like a pig for the Gang of Nine

 ...  none of us were ... targets of this investigation. There's no predicate. ...

Ha ha ha. 

Here.

Johnson is not telling the truth about his role in the fake elector scheme.

 

AI thinks Oliver Kornetzke is from Wisconsin, possibly a Democrat from Calumet County, who thinks America is from its inception arrogant, stupid, cruel, greedy, and corrupt

I'm guessing it's an alias, but for some communist from Dane County who works for the law firm Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short.

Calumet County voted for Trump over Harris 59-39, and spends most of its time milking cows and making cheese, and on a winter Sunday drinking beer and playing Sheepshead. They have never hurt a flea.

Some of my folk come from there.

 

Arrogant prick Vindman does Al Haig: I'm in control here at the White House

Barry Ritholtz doesn't live in Realville, calls recent wage gains "decent" when they are peanuts

The Economy Is Finally Coming Through for U.S. Workers:

Decent wage gains are showing up in paychecks. That should continue for a while. Workers had an average gain in hourly wages of 3.2 percent in December, well above the average of 2.4 percent during the past five years . . ..

There's nothing wrong with his facts, just his perspective, which isn't long-term. He's content to compare his data to the Obama era, which sucked big-time. Note how he doesn't say that, however, big New York liberal that he is. 

Year over year, the average gain in 2018 isn't even Bush-league let alone Clinton-league. And certainly not pre-Reagan-league, when workers in this country got much bigger raises on average than they do in this supposedly booming economy.

Barry likes charts. Here's the only one that counts, showing that raises for 80% of workers on average can't hold a candle to the late 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s (when Democrats couldn't stop complaining about George W. Bush's horrible economy).

Employers remain stingy, and there is no employment boom, or else they'd be hiring all the old people the greedy bastards fired in 2009 because they made too much money.

I KNOW.

Republican war on itemized deductions eliminates medical expense deduction

From the story here:

Under current law, the IRS allows individuals to deduct qualified medical expenses that exceed 10 percent of a person’s adjusted gross income for the year. The bill would repeal that itemized deduction, effective in 2018.

This is part of The Swamp's incremental war against taxpayer deductions.

For decades the threshold was 7.5% of AGI. Then under Obamacare it became 10%. Now it's gone entirely.

These greedy bastards must be stopped.

IRS' Doug Shulman, Arrogant Prick

The Greedy Bastards' Big Lie About Your Mortgage Interest Deduction

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Read the data for yourself, here, from the Joint Committee on Taxation's own estimate of the "cost" to the government of your mortgage interest deduction.

The JCT estimated that the government's biggest loss of revenue between 2007 and 2011 came from the exclusion of dividends and long term capital gains from higher tax rates. This does NOT include gains from selling real estate.

Tax losses from deductions for health insurance expenditures ranked second, tax losses from deductions for retirement plans third, all three of which range between $632 billion and $607 billion over 5 years.

The tax loss from deducting mortgage interest was a distant fourth, at $430 billion, yet the drumbeat from so-called conservatives to eliminate the deduction gets louder everyday.

Can you say, "Middle Class Tax Increase"?

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Please Send This To AttackWatch.com

Seriously:

Arrogant Prick

Confiscation of Your Retirement Funds is Unthinkable, Right?

Well, not in Europe, where private monies have already been taken by statist spendthrifts in Hungary, Bulgaria and Poland, according to this story in The Christian Science Monitor, originally posted at the Polish arm of The Ludwig von Mises Institute (here).

The same people greedy bastards in this country who brought you Obamacare are just as enthusiastic about taking your IRAs, 401Ks and the like, people like Democrat Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Political realities right now mean that the plan eyeing your savings will sit in some Democrat's desk until times change, just as Obamacare was really a bill long pre-dating him, sitting in Representative Henry Waxman's top drawer for over a decade until the moment was right.

The difference between liberals and Republicans in America is that liberals have a long term strategy to take over and transform the country, while so-called conservatives keep backing up, drawing new lines in the sand in a strategy of retreat, daring liberals to cross them, which they invariably do. The policies of these conservatives are offensive enough to liberals, but it is conservatives' cowardice which really inspires their contempt.

The failure to install gays in the military and Hillarycare in 1994 took 16 years to redress, but liberalism surely did so with its victories in 2010, overturning DADT and passing Obamacare.

Individual liberty, the foundation of which is in traditional values derived from revealed religion, has been under assault in America since the victory of Abraham Lincoln and the united States became the United States. The war between originalism and "a more perfect union" was decided long ago by force. The contemporary Republican Party will be a conservative party when it finally realizes this, but frankly, it doesn't have the nerve.