Trump's two-faced positioning on the H-1B Visa Program in 2024 is mirrored by his two-faced positioning on DACA from 2015

 

 Trump was NEVER all-in about his immigration positions, which went back and forth from the beginning. 

People forget that he and Ann Coulter had a knock-down drag-out fight in the Oval Office about immigration sometime in late 2017, early 2018. The newly elected president had done NOTHING about the border wall, deportations, and the Dreamers. He had used her book about immigration to distinguish himself from the numerous other GOP candidates and get himself elected, and promptly tossed her aside like all the other women he has cheated on.

Trump is nothing if he's not a user.

People also forget the blow up in August 2016 before he was even president, when Trump toyed publicly with the idea of a DACA amnesty. NeverTrump noticed:

Donald Trump ... is suddenly embracing the idea of working out a way to give legal status to undocumented immigrants who have been here a long time and have kept out of trouble. ... Trump's latest comments that it makes no sense to deport millions of people who have lived in the U.S. for a decade or more -- which constitutes two-thirds of the undocumented immigrants here now -- are a far cry from what he had been saying for the previous 14 months.

MAGA ignored this. Conservatives like Coulter were demoralized, months before they were actually betrayed. Trump only narrowly defeated Hillary. 

And few remember how he blew himself up in the 2018 elections, losing the House, in part because he used DACA as a bargaining chip in early 2018 in a failed attempt to get his wall funded, shutting down the government in the process. His lone achievements in his first two years were a modest and temporary tax cut package, and a massive defense spending bill to restore what Obama had gutted.

The legions of disaffected young men hoping Trump-Vance would bring a new era of opportunity for native born Americans over cheaper foreign workers are sadly experiencing buyer's remorse because of Trump's capitulation to the Tech Bros, discovering anew that Trump is the snake in the parable he always used to talk about on the campaign trail.

Welcome to hell part deux.

 

The president with the largest popular vote mandate over his opponent in the post-war was Richard M. Nixon in 1972 over George McGovern

 1.61 votes for Nixon for every vote for McGovern, the real reason Democrats hated him so much.

The smallest popular mandate belonged to JFK over Nixon in 1960 at 1.0033. Democrats stole that election but Nixon let it pass for the good of the country.

There were smaller mandates, if you count Bush 2000 at 0.98 (Gore 1.01), or Trump 2016 at 0.95 (Hillary 1.04), lol, but those aren't really popular vote mandates now are they?

LBJ was second in 1964 with 1.58, because JFK had been assassinated in 1963. I don't think Jesus himself could have won it for the GOP in 1964.

Third overall was Reagan in 1984 with 1.44, followed by IKE at fourth and fifth with 1.36 and 1.24 respectively in 1956 and 1952.

If back-to-back terms is your yardstick, Reagan was tops with a combined mandate of 1.335, followed by Nixon at 1.31, IKE at 1.30, Bill Clinton at 1.17, and Obama at 1.115. Bush 43 brings up the rear at a distant 1.015.

People who think Trump is a repudiation of Bush 43 Republicanism should consider that Trump's not-back-to-back combined score is now 0.99.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Trump is a transitional figure for the GOP, and certainly not a nationally transformational one like Reagan who destroyed the bipolar world, IKE who re-moralized a victorious but demoralized nation, and Nixon who fatefully opened the door to China.

Unfortunately for the GOP, Trump is mostly just a wrecking ball who is wrecking his own HDQ, and the Democrat threat remains just decimal points away.

 

 

 

 

The UK Daily Mail thinks Joe Biden dropped out on June 21, not July 21 lol

 Those UK reporters really don't have a firm grasp of the timeline. They prefer to concentrate on the gossip and innuendo.

A particular target for the First Couple is said to be former house speaker Nancy Pelosi, who led the effort to push Biden out of the 2024 election race – personally calling him and demanding he quit in the hours before he withdrew on June 21.

More.

No one really knows what Pelosi said to Joe, or when she said it, but it wasn't on June 21 lol.

CNN reported on Wednesday July 17 (updated Thursday July 18) that Pelosi had been in California since Friday July 12, one day before Trump was shot in Butler, PA, and that she claimed she hadn't spoken to Joe Biden from July 12-17 even though CNN said it had four sources saying she had: 

This phone call would mark the second known conversation between the California lawmaker and Biden since the president’s disastrous debate on June 27. While the exact date of the conversation was not clear, one source described it as being within the last week. Pelosi and Biden also spoke in early July. ...

A Pelosi spokesperson told CNN that the former House speaker has been in California since Friday and she has not spoken to Biden since. 

The CNN timeline leaves room for Pelosi talking to Joe Biden as described in the story on Friday July 12, or even the day or two days before that.

CNBC reported on Sunday July 21, the day Joe dropped out, and relying on one source, that Pelosi spoke with Joe on Saturday July 20, but Pelosi's spokesman also denied this, consistent with the denial to CNN:

A spokesman for Pelosi later told CNBC after publication of this story “not true. Speaker Pelosi has not spoken to the president since she left Washington more than a week ago.”

Pelosi was in North Carolina on Saturday July 20 giving a tepid pep talk about the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris ticket:

In her roughly half-hour speech, Pelosi said the president’s name only sparsely, and primarily in reference to his role in passing legislative priorities.

It's good to know that Luigi Mangione's new lawyer thinks assassinating people is bad lol

 So they're going to plead "not guilty by reason of insanity", right?

Based on this hire he must be crazy.

 

Just a reminder that way back in February Emerson College Polling showed Democrats had no options other than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, with Trump beating Joe by one point and Harris by three

 

 

 The Nancy Pelosi/Barack Obama/Jane Fonda-Rob Reiner cabal which ousted Joe Biden deserves all the scorn it has received, and more.

In February 2024, when 2023 articles from this cabal about dumping Kamala Harris were in the rearview mirror, Harris was under-performing Biden v Trump by just one point, and Harris v Trump was doing 7 points better than Gavin Newsom v Trump and 10 points better than Gretchen Whitmer v Trump. There was no alternative to Joe but Kamala.

Emerson here.

 

 

And Joe always knew that, which is why he immediately endorsed Harris on the Sunday of the July coup. He knew she was weak, but he knew her Democrat competition was weaker.

In the end Trump's win over Harris was by only 1.61 points, half what Emerson had predicted, and almost the one point by which Emerson had predicted Trump would beat Biden, the stronger candidate.

Democrats should never have dumped Joe Biden.

They panicked, and the panic lost them The White House. Had they rallied around their president, he might have survived. Instead they lost their nerve and abandoned him to the predator.

Democrats have too many herd followers, not enough leaders. And had Harris truly been a leader, she would have rallied the troops to her president, and she did not. And the pressure from the herd is also what made Joe Biden drop out, signaling his weakness.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, got bloodied by a gunman but defiantly got up and continued to fight, just as he's done all along, rallying his followers by himself to himself, the simple elemental difference between winning and losing.

 

 

Ted Cruz predicted it would happen in August

 

Republicans float a quiet conspiracy theory that Biden won't be on the ballot

“So here’s the scenario that I think is perhaps the most likely and most dangerous,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on his podcast last month. “In August of 2024, the Democrat kingmakers jettison Joe Biden and parachute in Michelle Obama.”

“I view this as a very serious danger,” he said.

 

 

 

People with a brain know Trump's threat to close the Department of Education is idle

 Can Trump actually close the DOE?

Technically, yes.

However, “It would take an act of Congress to take it out,” Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, told Vox. “It would take an act of Congress to radically restructure it. And so the question is whether or not there’d be appetite on the Hill for abolishing the department.”

More.

That's because an act of Congress created it in the first place.

Trump is not a dictator, and never will be, although he plays one on TV, which is the real problem.

It's all just words.

 

12,000 jobs in October 2024 for Biden-Harris is almost as bad as zero jobs in August 2011 for Obama-Biden

Revisions to total nonfarm subtracted 112,000 jobs for August and September, too.

 

Barack Obama is a lyin' pos who could have made any such life-saving measures public long before now, but everyone knows they never existed

If they did exist, the lost lives are on him and no one else because he kept his mouth shut, which is what he should be doing right now instead of spewing lies to get Kamala Harris elected.

 

Sometimes it's not the economy stupid: Headline employment under Obama didn't recover until May 2014, but he got re-elected in 2012 anyway

 Six years and four months went by: Jan 2008-May 2014.

And economic confidence actually declined from -11 in 2012 to -10 in 2014 when it did!

It's one of the craziest things in US political history, comparable to FDR getting re-elected throughout the Great Depression, which his economic experimentation only made worse.

By October 2012, 72% said the effects of the Great Recession were still the most important problem, compared to 43% today in October 2024, but it didn't matter that Obama wasn't solving it. He beat Romney anyway.

Is this one of those sometimes?

The same phenomenon may be happening today, but in reverse.

Harris stands to lose despite economic indicators which are chugging along in her favor, or at least not falling apart, to which those 43% seem oblivious.

Civilian employment in July and September 2024 remains near the November 2023 peak. Core inflation is still too high at 2.7%, but it isn't in the 5s anymore like it was for four straight quarters. Congress has thrown the book at the economy since 2Q2020, with nominal GDP growing at an astounding 9.84% compound annual rate because of pandemic spending. That's been a double-edged sword, however, exploding the national debt, inflation, and interest rates.

But economic confidence is Obama-like negative, and has been since it crashed during the pandemic in April 2020 to -32 from its highest level in 20 years under Trump just two months before, in February 2020 at +41.

Trump didn't shut down the economy in 2020, but governors sure did. It was a stark demonstration of just how quickly the wrong leadership can make everything go to hell in a hand basket overnight. The people today aren't wrong to lack confidence.

Ominously for incumbent VP Harris, Gallup thinks 2024 is most analogous to 1992, when Americans booted the incumbent Bush 41 even though the recession had ended more than a year before in 1991.

Majority of Americans Feel Worse Off Than Four Years Ago

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- More than half of Americans (52%) say they and their family are worse off today than they were four years ago, while 39% say they are better off and 8% volunteer that they are about the same. The 2024 response is most similar to 1992 among presidential election years in which Gallup has asked the question. ...

With a majority of Americans feeling they are not better off than four years ago, economic confidence remaining low, and less than half of Americans saying now is a good time to find a quality job, the economy will be an important consideration at the ballot box this year. As inflation persists and economic concerns dominate voters' minds, the upcoming election may hinge on which candidate can best address these pressing issues.

 

The average price of gasoline under Biden-Harris remains Obama-like, not Trump-like, costing 44% more on average than under Trump

Gasoline averaged $2.488 per gallon under Trump, 2017-2020 inclusive.

Obama told Gingrich in 2012 that $2.50/gal was a phony promise.

Har-dee-har-har.

Under Biden-Harris gasoline has averaged $3.583 per gallon to date (using three quarters of 2024 at $3.531 as if it were a full year).

 

Gallup poll not good for the incumbents Biden-Harris: Economy ranked most important as in 2008 when the voters dumped the incumbent Republicans represented by John McCain

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The economy ranks as the most important of 22 issues that U.S. registered voters say will influence their choice for president. It is the only issue on which a majority of voters, 52%, say the candidates’ positions on it are an “extremely important” influence on their vote. Another 38% of voters rate the economy as “very important,” which means the issue could be a significant factor to nine in 10 voters. ...

The current 52% of voters rating the economy as an “extremely important” influence on their vote for president is the highest since October 2008 during the Great Recession, when 55% of voters said the same.

More. 

It's not 2008, obviously, where everyone feared a catastrophe with banks failing left and right, homes going into foreclosure, and stocks tanking, but the perception of the economy as lousy today because of high inflation is remarkably high as it was in 2008 as indicated by this poll.

Everyone forgets that the vast majority of the job losses came after Obama was elected in 2008, not before, which took a record number of years to recover, setting the stage for Donald Trump. And pandemic fear drove the election cycle in 2020 and not the economy because of the gargantuan bailouts of the people.

Kicker:

Voters view Donald Trump as better able than Kamala Harris to handle the economy, 54% versus 45%.

Democrats are whistling past the graveyard of the industrial downturn, but this article misses their coerced misallocation of investment to a green energy economy the voters don't want

 But perhaps most ominous are signs that domestic manufacturing is on the cusp of a full-blown sectoral recession. Output has declined for five months, no doubt due to uncertainty over interest rates, as well as the debilitating shortage of skilled workers. The contraction, however, isn’t merely a reflection of Federal Reserve policy reinforcing supply-side choke points, which has undercut Team Biden’s efforts to reshore industry. In fact, production has been largely anemic since at least the slump of 2019; according to the Institute for Supply Management, a leading industry association, a 13-month stretch from 2022 to 2023 was the longest downturn since 2000-2002, when Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China went into effect. ... 

These patterns should be of grave concern to progressives—as a matter of politics and policy. A similar, overlooked downturn late in President Barack Obama’s second term likely contributed to Hillary Clinton’s defeat in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in the 2016 election. That, along with her campaign’s astounding indifference to the industrial Midwest, practically cemented the view among many working-class whites that today’s Democrats have abandoned their New Deal roots. Although the Harris-Walz ticket appears to be sustaining momentum and has trained its focus on preserving the “Blue Wall,” unanticipated headwinds in battleground counties could spell the same fate as Clinton’s. ...

The reality is that dozens of counties reeling from job losses have effectively experienced what many wage-earners rightly feared: stagflation. In more rural regions, peak inflation was higher than the national average, a trend which spread from the South to the postindustrial Northeast. Its toll undoubtedly compounded the sense of helplessness among rural households, who tend to pay more for groceries and other staples. Mainstream liberals seem reluctant to acknowledge as much. ...

An economy pockmarked by mini-regional downturns, moreover, belies headlines heralding a manufacturing renaissance.

More. 

 

 

Trump and Harris agreeing on ending the filibuster rule reminds me of McCain and Obama agreeing on something inadvisable in 2008

 

They both interrupted their campaigns to vote for TARP on October 1, 2008, which became law on Friday, October 3, but did nothing to stop the panic.

On Monday, October 6 Jim Cramer came on the Today Show at 7am and told people who needed their money in the next five years to sell their stocks.

The S&P 500 fell from 1099 to 848 by October 27th, almost 23%, on its way to the March 9, 2009 closing low at 676 (there was an intraday low of 666 on March 6).

Over 500 bank failures marked the era fueled by these events, and more than 6 million lost their homes.

And no one went to jail.

Nothing good will come of ending the filibuster, either, not with the country this divided.

 

CNBC fact-checks Joe Biden, now that it doesn't matter

 But the article name-checks Donald Trump five times because he's an opponent of Fed decisions.

There's a whole movement out there that wants to End the Fed, composed of Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians, which CNBC is loathe to mention.

Many of them argue that the US 2-year Treasury Note should be the benchmark for the Federal Funds Effective Rate, not the whim of the Fed Chair and the Federal Open Market Committee, who are un-elected, well-connected, and VERY WELL PAID elites who watch out primarily for the interests of the banksters.

For example, despite the disastrous Zero Interest Rate Policy post-Great Recession, DGS2 resisted it and outran DFF throughout the period under Obama and Trump, and anticipated the recent inflationary outburst by starting to rise in the spring of 2021, a full year before the Fed moved to "combat inflation" by raising the funds rate in the spring of 2022. 

Similarly DGS2 also started to fall in November of 2023 despite no change to Fed policy, anticipating the recent decline of inflation rates by almost a year.

The role of the US Treasury Secretary, AS MUCH A CREATURE of the Executive as the Fed Chair, is also huge for interest rates because the Secretary decides how to divvy up the debt securities for auction by duration.

Biden's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been in the news for driving up the issuance in T-bills to 22% when 15% has been customary, which has contributed to longer rates falling and stocks rising, just in time for the election.

But the costs of this have been dramatic, financing deficit spending at the highest rates and driving interest payments on the debt to the third spot in the budget, behind only Social Security and Medicare.

Kamala Harris is going to spread joy and poverty like Barack Obama spread happiness and poverty

 

Trump has been moving left on abortion, adding insult to injury with a commitment to another federal mandate

 In August, Trump reiterated his opposition to Florida’s ban on abortions after six weeks. Asked if he supported an amendment to the state’s constitution expanding the right to abortion, Trump said, “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.” Faced with a firestorm of criticism from anti-abortion groups, Trump campaign officials maintained he “has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative.” ...

At the end of August, with polls showing a slight lead for Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump announced that “because we want more babies,” his administration would require either the federal government or insurance companies to pay the entire cost (which typically runs in the tens of thousands of dollars per individual) of IVF treatments for all Americans. He did not specify whether his proposal would be implemented through the Affordable Care Act, which he has promised to repeal, or whether he has become an advocate of socialized medicine. Nor did Trump reconcile the plan with the 2024 GOP platform, which has language that seems to support rights of citizenship, under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, to fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses.

More.

Trump has learned nothing.

 

CBS News lies about heat deaths, now AP Obama blatantly lies about what JD Vance said

It's almost like you can't trust the news 😏 .

 

 

The middle class couldn't afford restaurants under Obama-Biden, eleven years later they can't afford even fast food under Biden-Harris

 You got what you voted for, good and hard.

 

She's earned nothing, no one voted for her

 Newspaper thinks you earn things with words. Just words.

Not a serious country.

With Acceptance Speech, Harris Earns Her Ascent

Minneapolis Star Tribune