Not my president, not my party, not my country

 Politico, here.

 

Another inflation report is out, the data are bad, but they're trying to spin it that inflation is moderating

 The government's chief inflation measure, so-called core inflation which excludes food and energy (third graph), ticked down to 6% in November. Big whoop. Core inflation has now averaged 6.3% throughout 2022, and was actually slightly lower year over year for two months in the summer than it was in November.

The Fed is failing in its effort to bring inflation down, plain and simple.

Higher prices are the new normal.

Meanwhile food inflation is up 12% year over year after peaking above 13% in the summer. Under Trump food inflation was practically non-existent, but Americans have been forced to cope with it month after month for over a year now, with no end in sight.

And energy inflation year over year has been north of 13% for 21 consecutive months. Go ahead. Count 'em. Under Trump we actually had energy disinflation because his administration, unlike Biden's, enthusiastically supported fracking.

Rising food and energy costs are absolutely core, especially when they deliver a one-two punch to the gut like this.

The people hardest hit don't have a voice, however. They never do. The chattering classes are doing just fine, and all they want to talk about is nonsense. Their lot is with the profiteers from inflation, not with the bottom half of the country.

The poor get poorer.

Same as it ever was.

The 39 House Republicans Who Voted for the Same-Sex Marriage Bill, annotated

 The New York Times :

• Representative Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota

• Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska [re-elected 2022 with 51.3% of the vote]
  

• Representative Ken Calvert of California [re-elected 2022 with 52.3% of the vote]
  

• Representative Kat Cammack of Florida

• Representative Mike Carey of Ohio

• Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming [voted to impeach Trump, defeated in 2022 primary]
  

• Representative John Curtis of Utah

• Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois [defeated in 2022 primary by fellow Republican in redistricting-forced battle]
  

• Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota [House GOP Majority Whip]
  

• Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania

• *Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin [flipped from Nay in summer to Yea now]
  

• Representative Andrew Garbarino of New York

• Representative Mike Garcia of California

• Representative Carlos Gimenez of Florida

• Representative Tony Gonzalez of Texas

• Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio [voted to impeach Trump, retiring]
  

• *Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington [voted to impeach Trump, defeated in 2022 primary, flipped from Nay in summer to Yea now]
  

• Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa

• Representative Darrell Issa of California

• Representative Ch[r]is Jacobs of New York [retiring after flipping position on guns after Buffalo mass shooting and angering supporters]
  

• Representative David Joyce of Ohio [leader of House Republican moderate caucus]
  

• Representative John Katko of New York [voted to impeach Trump, retiring]
  

• Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina

• Representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York

• Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan [voted to impeach Trump, defeated in 2022 primary]
  

• Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa

• Representative Blake Moore of Utah

• Representative Dan Newhouse of Washington [voted to impeach Trump]
  

• Representative Jay Obernolte of California

• Representative Tom Rice of South Carolina [voted to impeach Trump, defeated in 2022 primary]
  

• Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho

• Representative Elise Stefanik of New York

• Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin

• Representative Chris Stewart of Utah

• Representative Mike Turner of Ohio

• Representative Fred Upton of Michigan [voted to impeach Trump, retiring]
  

• Representative David Valadao of California [voted to impeach Trump, re-elected with 51.5% of the vote]
  

• Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri [Republican phony of the year LOL: “This district is home to me, and there is no better feeling than representing our conservative, Midwest values in Congress.”]

• Representative Tim Waltz of Florida [LOL: NYT has Democrat Tim Walz, Minnesota Governor, on the brain; the actual name is Republican US Rep. Michael Waltz, who ran unopposed in FL-6 and was re-elected in 2022; the newspaper of record smdh]
  

So-called "core" inflation rose to 5-ish percent from early 2021 and hasn't budged from there in twelve months

Puny Fed rate hikes have done nothing to stop it.

The metric was less than 2% under Trump.

 

Jay Powell is a bitter disappointment, pledging today to moderate rate hikes when he's hardly begun to fight inflation after waiting a year to start

 Jay Powell is such a clown:

  ". . . it makes sense to moderate the pace of our rate increases as we approach the level of restraint that will be sufficient to bring inflation down,” he added. “The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting.”

Story.

Making sure his pals profit under the umbrella of inflationary pressures is worse than insider trading, because we all pay.

We're the marks!

I haven't been this disappointed in a federal official since Donald Trump betrayed his immigration promises in 2017-2018.

And how did stocks respond?

The Trump witch hunt continues: Garland's new special counsel is linked to Lois Lerner while the wife is linked to antisemitic Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib

 Mr. Smith set up a meeting in October 2010 with IRS official Lois Lerner “to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits.” ... Federal Election Commission records show that Ms. Chevigny contributed $1,000 each to Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign, Biden for President and the Biden Victory Fund super PAC, in September 2020. She also donated $150 to a campaign committee supporting Democrat Rashida Tlaib in 2008, when Ms. Tlaib was running for the Michigan House of Representatives.

More.

Salena Zito is obviously channeling Peggy Noonan: The women recommend just giving up on secure chain of custody voting

The weaker sex recommends you give in. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

That right there is the whole history of conservatism, from the advent of the Progressive Era 130 years ago until now.

Currently, Democrats are miles ahead of Republicans at targeting specific races and voters. Through mail balloting, they put those voters in the bank early. ... Republicans can complain about the current rules all they want, but what they need to do is wake up and start competing with the Democrats where they are. Otherwise, they're just leaving winnable races on the table.

Florida Republicans certainly have figured it out. In 2018 and 2020, the Democrats went into Election Day with more ballots cast than Republicans in early voting. This year, Florida Republicans flipped that on its head. Republicans in other states should take note.

-- Salena Zito, in her conclusion here

It is rude of Arizona and Nevada to keep the country waiting to know the composition of its Senate. Why, days after the election, don’t we know which party controls the House? Why can’t the late-reporting states get their act together on vote counting? It’s the increase in mail-in ballots? So what? You roll with life and adapt. Florida, which spans two time zones, reports its tallies with professionalism and dispatch. 

-- Peggy Noonan, from her lede here

 

Four true words

 Trump lacked the discipline.      

Stated here.

That's still the fundamental problem, but that's been the case from the beginning.

Character counts. Trump has never had it and never will. I cut my losses with Trump in 2018 when he exposed himself as a phony on his chief plank, illegal immigration. He already did that in August 2016, so fool me once, shame on Trump. I am not ashamed to state it over and over again.

The rest of the party still hasn't come around, however, with so-called conservatives still yammering on about stuff like pOPuLiSm. But that's because opposition to illegal immigration was never a GOP value. The GOP would never be upset because he lied about that.

It's hard to imagine the GOP pointing to anything in particular which was a line too far. 121 voted in the House to object to the 2020 Arizona vote, 138 to the Pennsylvania vote. Not even three horrible elections in a row is proving to be decisive.

Meanwhile Democrats have exploited Trump's weakness, and therefore the GOP's, to consolidate power with extraordinary new depth. The new regime of mail-in voting everywhere changes everything. The chain of custody of ballots in voting precincts is broken forever.

It's the end run around representative government we only imagined the National Popular Vote Compact would be. It's the path to pure democracy. It's the end of legislatures, the end of republicanism, and makes the tyranny of the majority and the repression of the minority the new, terrible future.

A Supreme Court in principle deferring to the states on everything from election law to drugs, marriage, abortion, gender, etc. is no bulwark against what's coming, indeed, what's already here.

The people will decide by referendum.

The people be damned.

Trump failed to deliver in 2018 and 2020, now his party fails to deliver in 2022

Maybe America Hasn't Suffered Enough

 

Scott McKay, The American Spectator

This should have been a massive wave election. Given the low job approval ratings of the sitting president in his first midterm election, and given the favorable generic congressional ballot numbers, this should have been a plus-five wave in the Senate and a plus-30 wave, or bigger, in the House. It also should have resounded down to statehouses, and yet the GOP turns out, apparently, not to have been able to beat abysmal Democrat gubernatorial candidates like Katie Hobbs, Kathy Hochul, and Gretchen Whitmer. ... Trump didn’t play the net positive role he should have, and that might be the real takeaway. ... Objectively, it’s clear that DeSantis is the future of the GOP.

The Fed chair was looking for evidence of transitory inflation for twelve months while actual, raging inflation was staring him in the face the whole time and he did nothing about it

 In his testimony yesterday, Jerome Powell said he uses a table of the last twelve months of 12-month readings of inflation.  In other words, year-over-year readings.

It showed him no evidence of inflation coming down, in other words, of inflation being "transitory".

"We're exactly where we were a year ago." In other words, yep, inflation is raging. It's not transitory.

If you aren't appalled by that, I don't know what to say.

In April 2021 inflation year over year was already at the 2008-level of bad, and the Fed chair decided to wait and see if it became a "problem".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He waited a year, until Mar 2022, to begin raising the main interest rate.

I'm sure the reason is that in April 2021 he was focused on the pandemic as the number one problem. Vaccine uptake reached its crescendo that month, and Jay was praising the COVID stimulus orgy to restart the economy.

But the pandemic wasn't his job. Stable prices is his job, and he let it slide because of the extraordinary circumstances.

Now we're in a whole other big mess. Gutting the bond market is going to be life-changing for far longer than the pandemic will be.

Here's the video from yesterday with the key interchange.

This is Trump's boy, by the way.

 

The COVID-19 emergency continues to Jan 11 despite Biden saying the pandemic's over in September on 60 Minutes: They keep kicking the can down the road to avoid implications for vaccines

 The FDA would have to use the normal process for approving the vaccines, and based on the corners cut to get the vaccines to market, that looks unlikely.

Furthermore, removal of the emergency authorizations would then expose the manufacturers to lawsuits.

I agree with the guy in the last paragraph below.

Expect indefinite emergency use authorization, at least until Republicans take over the federal government in 2025.

The FDA’s ability to issue emergency authorizations for vaccines, drugs and medical devices would not necessarily end when the Covid public health emergency is lifted. These authorizations rely on a separate determination made by the U.S. health secretary under the law that governs the FDA.

But it could become increasingly difficult for HHS and FDA to justify clearing vaccines and treatments through an expedited process that shortcuts the normal system of approval when the emergency declaration is no longer in place.

Trump administration Health Secretary Alex Azar activated the FDA’s emergency authorization powers in March 2020, about two months after first declaring the public health emergency.

“It could affect emergency use authorization, where you couldn’t give these EUAs and so the FDA would have to fully approve the drug,” Gostin said. “It could have enormous knock-on effects that need to be very carefully thought through,” he said of ending the public health emergency.

But James Hodge, an expert on public health law at Arizona State University, said the PREP Act declaration that supports Covid vaccinations at pharmacies and the FDA’s power to grant emergency use authorizations will probably remain in place for years to come.

More.

Food and energy are bad enough, which core inflation would you rather have?

 

Phony boom narrative under Trump continues under Biden, only the lie is much bigger

 Factory Jobs Booming Like It's 1970s...

Well, it's the lying New York Times, of course, and drive-by repeater, Drudge.

The summer peak in 2019 was 12.905 million.

The summer peak in 2022 was 12.916 million, up . . . eleven thousand! Woo hoo!

Meanwhile in the 1970s, many MILLIONS more worked in manufacturing in the United States, and many millions more as a share of the population:

11.8% of the population in 1979 on average vs. just 4.9% in August 2022!

From the end of the story, lol:

Eight percent of the surveyed companies reported moving segments of their supply chain out of China to the United States in the past year, while another 16 percent had moved some operations to other countries. But 78 percent of the companies said they had not shifted any business away from China.

 

 

LOL, after a three-year investigation the State of New York has bupkis on Trump, files civil suit

Story.

LOL Democrats flood the country with illegal aliens, blame Republicans for causing chaos!

 

How GOP Governors Are Using Migrants To Create Chaos

Nayyera Haq, MSNBC

The OBAMA FBI misled TRUMP DOJ leadership about Danchenko

 

The FBI also misled DOJ leadership about Danchenko. 

Fixed it for ya, Jerry.

More.

Everyone forgets that the Russians-tampering-with-voting-machines lunacy began in the Hillary camp in 2016, not in the Trump camp in 2020

 The group ... believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked. ... the suspicious pattern merits an independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee. 

Here. 

Hillary lost because blacks didn't turn out in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia.  She underperformed Obama 2008 in 39 states.

The Russians didn't put the stink on her campaign.

She did that all by herself.

 

Last time I checked it wasn't Donald Trump who turned Washington, DC into an armed camp occupied by the National Guard for five months

 There was no disruption to the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th. It occurred successfully by act of Congress, without the aid of the military whatsoever.

Whatsover.

It was a tyrannical new president who shut down DC, FOR FIVE MONTHS, by using the National Guard, not the old president.

Ann Coulter says Republicans shouldn't waste their time defending their incumbents or primarying them, just vote for the Democrat

 Spending energy, time, volunteers [on primaries] is a zero-sum game when it comes to campaigns. We can not waste our time defending incumbents. As bad as Republicans are, there are a lot of bad Republicans, but there are no good Democrats. So do not primary an incumbent. Do not waste the time and money.

Here.

Ann Coulter goes off the rails, blames the Tea Party for Obamacare

 She forgets that Obamacare was passed in March 2010, months before the "Tea Party" swept the US House in an historic win with the help of Freedom Works & Co.

. . . the Tea Party candidates lost us a lot of races and Senate seats. We would not have Obamacare if it weren't for a lot of the Tea Party candidates running against incumbent candidates. 

Here.

Hello. Republicans won the US House in 2010, and the US Senate in 2014, the year Obamacare went live.

Methinks Ann is jealous that Republicans actually won that 2010 election because of indignation over mortgage bailouts instead of over something else. The Tea Party's origin was in 2009 after all, not 2010.

Recall that Rush Limbaugh blamed the faceless conservative "base", too, when McCain lost. But Ann names names, calling out Trump himself over and over (he has deserved it), Mitch McConnell (perennially), and now the Tea Party. Yeah, the Tea Party got co-opted for sure, but she's rewriting history here because she's pissed so many Trump aligned candidates have won their primaries, believing (hoping?) they will lose in November, you know, like they "lost" in 2010.

Well I sure hope so.

Ann spent years saying Obamacare was the number one issue before coming to prioritize immigration, maintaining as she did that illegal aliens were the number one beneficiaries of Obamacare. Now she blames everyone else for saying so, too.

Her irrational outbursts and ad hominem arguments are her own best case for repeal of the 19th Amendment.

Make up your mind, woman.