Nothing shows that Trump is still a Democrat at heart more than his restated support for ending the Senate filibuster

Imagine the ten worst things either side would pass with a simple majority as soon as it got it.

Republicans could repeal Obamacare right now without the filibuster, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

In the future Democrats could easily pass Medicare For All without it, and close the Department of Defense.

Elections would become even more desperate contests for power than they already are, and a deeply divided America would plunge into chaos.

Everything would become far less predictable, which would poison the economy.

Americans and their employers would become even more vulnerable to the federal pickpockets who populate the halls of Congress. 

Just say No to Mad King Ludwig. 

 

 

  

 

Meanwhile in fiat banking, but I repeat myself, Citigroup erroneously credited a client $81 trillion . . . the amount field came pre-populated with 15 zeros, which the person inputting a transaction needed to delete, something that did not happen

 

Undemocratic progressives, but I repeat myself, utterly blew it by betraying Joe Biden in summer 2024

Imagine Joe Biden is president today.

All eyes would be on progressive policy standard-bearer and VP Kamala Harris at this point in Joe Biden's second term, had he run and won, because of his illness headlined below.

Progressives would have been sitting in the catbird seat for the foreseeable future, advancing their agenda on climate change, renewable energy, higher taxes on the rich, and higher spending on healthcare.

The Democrat failure to stick together in 2024 was a crack-up worthy of 1968, the damage from which Democrats did not recover until 1992.

Just 270,000 votes across four states were the difference between the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in 2024, and that was for the disloyal Kamala Harris.

Progressives have proven themselves unworthy of the name Democrat by their actions in usurping Joe Biden's presidency, and Kamala Harris proved it by her words in her memoir when she framed Biden's decision to run for re-election as entirely personal and therefore reckless, when 14+ million Democrat primary voters for Joe Biden thought otherwise.

14 million primary voters, ignored. That's what progressives stand for. They respect democracy no more than does Mad King Ludwig.

Biden is receiving radiation and hormone therapy to treat his prostate cancer

Phony baloney Trump, but I repeat myself, takes credit for Ukraine's success provided under Joe Biden

 

“Ukraine, I will say they’re very brave, and they’re good soldiers, but without the United States and its money and its military equipment, this war would have been over in a very short time,” Trump added on Tuesday. ... Zelenskyy had also noted that any assistance Ukraine was still receiving was a legacy of the previous U.S. administration under Joe Biden . . ..

Reported here.

Cowardly Republican stooges, but I repeat myself, dummy up on UN vote and Trump appeasement, but Cocaine Mitch comes through

 

 Republicans mostly mum on Trump’s upending of Russia policy: Some spoke out against Putin, sidestepped Trump 

... The two votes on Monday were the latest sign of a dramatic reversal of America’s bipartisan policy since World War II of standing diplomatically and militarily with Europe to defend against the threat of Soviet and later Russian aggression.

It is a shift that congressional Republicans have, with very few exceptions, silently watched unfold.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, issued the most fulsome GOP dissent to date against President Donald Trump’s position on Ukraine.

McConnell, in a statement, called Trump’s unfolding policy reversal “disgraceful” and “unseemly” and suggested it was a reprise of the appeasement that led to World War II.

“‘Peace for our time’ is a noble end, but hope that appeasement will check the ambitions of this aggressor is as naïve today as it was in 1939,” McConnell said, referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s famous remark after signing the Munich Agreement and Germany’s subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia. “America is right to seek an end to this war, but an end that fails to constrain Russian ambition, ensure Ukrainian sovereignty, or strengthen American credibility with both allies and adversaries is no end at all.”

Such a “hollow peace,” he said, would “invite further aggression,” a reference primarily to the lesson China might take away from a demonstration of wilted U.S. resolve.

... virtually no GOP lawmakers besides McConnell have directly criticized Trump’s emerging plan . . ..

 

Three House Republican chuckleheads, but I repeat myself, want to waste everyone's time impeaching Trump's enemy judges

 Pure grand-standing from:

Republican Eli Crane (AZ-2)

Republican Andrew Clyde (GA-9)

Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14).

 

House GOP leaders have not weighed in on the calls to impeach the judges — and the chances of such an effort succeeding in their removal is close to zero.

It would take near-unanimous support from House Republicans to impeach a judge if Democrats do not support the measure, and support from Democrats would be required to clear the two-thirds threshold to convict on impeachment articles in the Senate.

More.

  

Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?  

-- Luke 14:31

USAID was not just great in the opinion of the old Marco Rubio, both Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump thought so too, deploying millions of its dollars for their pet projects under Trump I lololol

 

A bunch of phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas, but I repeat myself.

 

Melania and Ivanka's close ties to USAID exposed as Trump goes scorched-earth on the 'corrupt' agency:

Melania and Ivanka Trump used thousands of dollars from USAID to fund pet projects during Trump's first term it's been revealed as the agency's spending comes under scrutiny from the president.

The president has gone scorched-earth against the USAID this week, berating its use of tax-payer dollars and saying it had to be 'corrupt' in its spending.

But despite Donald's disdain for the aid agency, it has maintained close ties with his wife and daughter for years by investing in their government ventures. 

USAID helped fund Melania Trump's Be Best program and Ivanka Trump's Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative during the first Trump term.

And each woman traveled with the agency on separate trips to Africa, where they praised the investments it was making on the continent.

Ivanka Trump travelled with then-USAID administrator Mark Green to Africa in April 2019, where they met with women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia and rural cocoa farmers on the Ivory Coast.

USAID oversaw $265 million per year in spending Ivanka Trump's women's business initiative and an associated antipoverty program.

Melania Trump partnered with the agency on her 2018 trip to Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt.

In Malawi, the first lady promoted USAID's national reading program, which was donating on Trump's behalf 1.4 million textbooks to the more than 5,600 primary schools in the poverty-stricken nation.

'I am so proud of the work this administration is doing through USAID and others,' the first lady said at the time, 'and look forward to the opportunity to take the message of my Be Best campaign to many of the countries, and children, throughout Africa.'

In his first term, Trump heavily cut funding for the aid agency but it still found money to invest into his family's government ventures.

Ivanka Trump used USAID for her program to promote women in business, claiming 12 million women around the world had been helped by it.

She travelled with the agency to Colombia in September 2019 to run a workshop for women entrepreneurs.

That same year, she also used over $11,000 from the agency to buy video recording and reproducing equipment for a White House event, its records show.

Meanwhile, USAID was one of the first agencies to name an ambassador to Melania Trump's Be Best initiative.

When Melania Trump first announced her signature program in May 2018, she asked government agencies to name a liaison to her group. USAID immediately did so.

At her one-year anniversary celebration in May, Melania acknowledged the agency and thanked it for naming the first Be Best ambassador.

'For the first time in history, the United States Agency for International Development has appointed a Be Best ambassador,' she said.

'On this one year anniversary of my initiative, I call on all of our partner agencies to appoint a be best ambassador who will serve as a liaison between my office and their respective agency to better highlight and promote the programs and services offered to parents and children on behalf of the US government,' she added.

Donald Trump was sitting in the audience listening.

Neither the East Wing, the West Wing, nor Ivanka Trump's office responded to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

USAID delivers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid overseas.

The Trump administration is threatening to shut it down or bring the independent agency under the umbrella of the State Department.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now acting director of the agency it's been announced this week.

Hundreds of USAID contractors were placed on unpaid leave and some were terminated. Elon Musk, who is running Trump's Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE program, said the agency would be eliminated.

Its Washington D.C. office is closed and employees were either put on leave or told to work from home.

Trump has said of the agency: 'It's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.'

He also claims it 'had to be corrupt' to approve certain initiatives. 

The president has berated the agency for its spending practices, including having a subscription to Politico Pro, a service that tracks legislation and other government news.

And his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, gave a blistering account of USAID's spending. Speaking to reporters at the White House last week, she held up a sheet of paper giving details of the astonishing ways in which taxpayers' money had been doled out.

It was an apparent reference to a story in Daily Mail, which first outlined the shocking expenditures related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), on which President Trump has ordered a crackdown.

'I don't know about you. But as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going toward this crap. And I know the American people don't either. And that's exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do. To get the fraud, waste and abuse out of the federal government,' Leavitt said.

These ridiculous goofs, President Biden, VP Harris, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand should all be removed from office before Monday

 The ERA was never ratified according to the rules. Pretending otherwise and using the power of the executive to assert otherwise is a violation of their oaths of office. There is no 28th Amendment to the US Constitution. The ERA is not the law of the land. These are renegade Democrats, but I repeat myself, enemies of the rule of law and enemies of democracy. They mock us with this stunt, and deserve mockery in return.

 

 

The stock market cheerleaders/Fed rate cut cheerleaders at CNBC, but I repeat myself, lied by omission about wholesale price increases yesterday, but CNN told the truth

 CNBC: Wholesale prices rose 0.2% in October, in line with expectations

Wholesale prices nudged higher in October, though largely in line with expectations and mostly consistent with the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates again in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.

The producer price index, which measures what producers get for their products, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, up one-tenth of a percentage point from September though matching the Dow Jones consensus forecast. On a 12-month basis, headline wholesale inflation was at 2.4%.

Excluding food and energy, core PPI rose 0.3%, also one-tenth more than September and also matching expectations. The 12-month rate was at 3.1%.

"Largely in line" and "mostly consistent" lol. Both 12-month measures were higher than the consensus expected, which was 2.3% for headline and 3% for core. The year over year measures are the most important anyway, especially core.

Why lie about it?

 

 

CNN: Wholesale inflation heated up again last month, reversing recent progress

US wholesale inflation picked up more than expected in October, indicating that some price pressures persist at the producer level.

The Producer Price Index, a measurement of average price changes seen by producers and manufacturers, rose 0.2% on a monthly basis and 2.4% for the 12 months ended in October, marking an acceleration from September, when prices ticked up 0.1% for the month and grew 1.9% annually, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Thursday. ...

FactSet consensus forecasts called for a 0.2% monthly gain and for the annual rate to heat up to 2.3%.

Excluding food and energy prices, which tend to be volatile, core PPI rose 0.3% on a monthly basis, marking an acceleration from 0.2% in September. Annually, core PPI heated up from 2.9% to 3.1%, the largest increase since June. Economists projected a 0.2% monthly gain and a 3% annual rate. 

Obviously not all prediction models were the same. FactSet projected a 0.2% monthly gain for core vs. 0.3% for core shown above by FXStreet.

But again, the year over year is up MORE THAN EXPECTED for BOTH measures in most models. CNN mentions it, CNBC does not.

You can clearly observe that overall, headline wholesale prices year over year have been trending higher since June 2023. That bottom came out in July 2023, when the Fed last hiked the interest rate in the current cycle and then paused for good.

That was a big mistake.

The rise in wholesale prices since then is as good an indicator as any that higher inflation is deeply embedded in the economy and that the Fed stopped hiking too soon. Arguably core prices sent the same signal, but not starting until after December 2023.

Paying attention to core could explain the Fed's mistake, but for the fact that if the Fed were truly listening to this information, it wouldn't have then cut by 50 basis points in September 2024. I mean, c'mon man.

Jay Powell represents the interests of the bankers and Wall Street, for whom inflation is a good thing because it is the screen behind which the pipeline from prices to profits gets juiced.

He does not represent the people.

Who appointed that guy anyway?!

 

   

 

Democrat professors, but I repeat myself

 

Israeli ingenuity finds way to make Hezbollah pagers explode simultaneously in south Lebanon and Syria, injuring thousands of terrorist fighters, including the Iranian ambassador lol

 

 Well, why does the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon have a Hezbollah pager in the first place?

I mean, they aren't working, you know, TOGETHER, are they?

Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded near simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, killing at least nine people – including an 8-year-old girl -- and wounding several thousand, officials said. They blamed Israel in what appeared to be a sophisticated, remote attack.

Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. ... The pagers that exploded had been newly acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using cell phones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand the group had not used before.

At about 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, pagers started heating up and then exploding in the pockets and hands of those carrying them -- particularly in a southern Beirut suburb and the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon where Hezbollah has a strong presence, and in Damascus, where several Hezbollah members were wounded, Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official said. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. ... AP photographers at area hospitals said the emergency rooms were overloaded with patients. Some had missing hands or chunks blown out of their legs near the pocket area.

More.

A fabulous success for Israel.

A bad day for Democrat appeasers of Iran, but I repeat myself.

Lots of dickless, ball-less Hezbollah, too.

Jen Psaki: Kamala Harris is as likable as Hillary Clinton

I hope so, but I repeat myself.

A lot of people don't know who Kamala Harris even is.

Still more don't know who Jen Psaki is.

But everybody remembers Hillary, right?

 

This conservative outrage machine story yesterday and today about Commerce Secretary Raimondo has got to be the dumbest one I've heard in a long time

 She was asked an ignorant question.

Why would the Commerce Secretary have something timely to say about employment revisions released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the Labor Department?

It's not her area. I wouldn't expect her to know anything about it, and if I had a brain I wouldn't bother asking her.

Commerce and Labor are two separate cabinet level departments and have been since 1913.

I don't expect the Commerce Secretary to have the latest labor information anymore than I expect the Labor Secretary to be able to respond to the latest GDP report produced by the BEA at the Commerce Dept.

But all the ignorami on the right, but I repeat myself, are up in arms over this. It's embarrassing.

What's really going on here is outrage over the size of the revision, which is the largest since 2009.

Republicans want to say Biden and Harris have been lying about the jobs numbers for a year to make themselves look better.

That's a crock. The initial benchmark revisions occur every year around this time, and their size should be no surprise since the Employment Situation Summary every month contains revisions upon revisions upon revisions of prior months. This happens all the time, and if you know you know that this year the numbers have been particularly susceptible of large revisions, criticism, and expressed suspicions from the FOMC members on down.

But total nonfarm payrolls have always been this way. They are quick and dirty on any day. I gave up following them in favor of other measures precisely because it involves securing jello on a galley plate in high seas, and I have better things to do.

Full time employment, measured with other data, around 50% of population under Joe Biden hasn't been great, and it hasn't been awful either. In my arrogant opinion, following total nonfarm and its endless stream of revisions is a fool's errand.

Even more foolish to get upset about it when plenty of other indicators show that employment up until this summer has been "secularly tight", as one economist likes to put it. Continued claims for unemployment have been steady as she goes since late 2021.

The slight recent elevation in these claims numbers is consistent with a softening of employment, which I have noted elsewhere in regard to full time jobs.

The bloom is off the rose it seems, but the preliminary total nonfarm benchmark revision down 819,000 is a problem with that model, not a sign of a sudden problem with employment. 

 

Like Democrats generally Kamala Harris wants to ban assault weapons, even though they can't define them, ignoring that most weapons crimes are committed with handguns

Meanwhile, conservatives want children to read age-appropriate books.

There are no banned books in America, unless you are a commie librarian, but I repeat myself, who won't stock conservative books demanded by the public.

Like guns, we have to go buy our own.

 

The entire Democrat and media establishment, but I repeat myself, has been lying to the nation to protect one man, Joe Biden, and they trot out Obama with this liberal projection to gaslight the voters one more time

Biden Fights for Ordinary People While Trump Is Out for Himself -- Barack Obama, X

This hopium peddler sat idly by while hopeless ordinary people had to join the greatest exodus from the labor force in the history of the post-war.

 

Now millions of illegals have been brought in under Joe Biden to take their place at much lower wages.

 

Democrats to ordinary people: You're chumps!

 

 

As usual the media and the Democrats, but I repeat myself, are portraying the House Republican bill which lifts the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion as a bill with "big spending cuts"

This is how NPR, who else?, frames the issue from the beginning:

The House of Representatives has narrowly approved a Republican bill to raise the debt limit. However, it ties the ability to raise that debt ceiling to big spending cuts. And this House bill rolls back several of President Biden's key policies.

The House Republican bill, now languishing in the Senate, rolls back spending levels to pre-COVID levels. That's not a spending cut. That's saying, as Biden himself says, the emergency is over.

If the emergency is over, the emergency spending should end, too.

Outlays in fiscal 2020 and 2021 ballooned because of the new pandemic spending. Deficits for just those two years soared to almost $6 trillion. Republicans seek to roll that spending back. Democrats want that spending to form the new baseline. If Democrats succeed, Katy bar the door. The national debt will absolutely explode.

NPR knows this. It just chooses to hide the facts about it all, how the pandemic spending created these massive deficits, and how that spending which flooded the economy with money contributed to the new inflation:

So it raises the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or through March of 2024, whichever comes first. It also sets spending levels for federal programs to those that were in place two years ago. It limits the growth of spending going forward to 1% annually. But as you said, it also targets a list of the president's policies. It repeals the president's student loan forgiveness program, which is tied up in the courts. It claws back unspent COVID relief money and rolls back key energy provisions that were in the Inflation Reduction Act. It also puts in place new work requirements for adults without children who receive federal assistance like food stamps or Medicaid.

LOL, DC Mayor and President Biden both oppose DC's soft-on-crime bill, progressive Democrats, but I repeat myself, are outraged

 The crime bill passed the D.C. City Council unanimously in January. After Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) vetoed it, the city council overrode it 12-1. Among other things, the bill would eliminate most mandatory sentences and lower penalties for a number of violent offenses, including carjackings and robberies. It would also expand the requirement for jury trials in most misdemeanor cases. 

More.

Say what you will about Biden or Bowser, these two do not want to become Beetlejuice, who just lost her mayoral re-election bid because 63% of Chicagoans no longer feel safe there.

 

Sounds more and more like Joe is running, doesn't it?

 

His Energy Department last week endorsed the possibility of COVID-19 being a lab leak, followed in short order by the FBI saying the same, which the progressives still call a conspiracy theory.

 

Joe is aligning himself with where the country is on major issues like crime and the pandemic. He's running.

 

 

WaPo Democrat, but I repeat myself, calls this a civil war

 

The legacy of unionized, government teachers who refused to show up because of COVID-19: Students in 2022 are performing at a level last seen two decades ago

 In math, the average score for 9-year-old students fell 7 percentage points between 2020 and 2022, according to the study. The average reading score fell 5 points. . . . Although it marks a sharp drop since 2020, the average reading score was 7 points higher than it was in 1971, and the average math score was 15 points higher than in 1978, the study found.

More. 

Now just in time for the election lying Democrats, but I repeat myself, want you to think that they and their allies opposed school closings when they were attacking Republicans for wanting them open. 

The Party of Violence desperately wants Election 2022 to be about abortion

 

Abortion Is Centerpiece of Dem TV Ads in 2022

 

Goldmacher & Glueck, NY Times

Right off the bat this story lies, as usual from The New York Times, by omission:

 In Michigan, Democrats took aim at the Republican nominee for governor almost immediately after the primary with a television ad highlighting her opposition to abortion, without exceptions for rape or incest. ...

Some abortion ads use the specific words and positions of Republican candidates against them. ... Some use Republicans’ unyielding stances on abortion to cast them more broadly as extremists.

The ad in Michigan actually says without exceptions for life of the mother, too, which is by itself a drive-by editing lie by "Put Michigan First".

A lie by insertion. Dixon never answered a life of the mother question that way, with "no exceptions".

You see how that works?

The New York Times sort of tells the truth about Dixon's position, which is no exceptions for rape and incest, but lies about the ad, which lies about Dixon's position by making her say something about the life of the mother which she didn't say.

Then later the former paper of record edges close to telling the truth about what's going on in the ad without actually telling you the truth about what's going on in the ad.

The chutzpah.

Democrats lie to you coming and going, and so does the New York Times, but I repeat myself.

Republicans, however, seem hopelessly, perennially, unequipped to counter this disinformation war. 

They're like deer in the headlights.

And when the Democrats spot them, they floor it.