Giant prick sprouts in Texas

 

 It's Pritzker's party: Hell yes, he's messing with Texas...

 ... Newsom is offering voters a professor at the very moment they want to elevate a brawler. Pritzker’s primetime slugfest with Abbott and Paxton is designed to leave no doubt in voters’ minds that he’s a brawler.

There’s also the practical fact that the billionaire governor’s stacks of cash are a more immediate help to Texas Democrats than they are to Newsom’s longer-term play. State Democrats had ruled out a “quorum bust” due to cost and logistical challenges, until Pritzker offered to finance and organize the operation. Now they give official press conferences in front of Pritzker’s campaign logo. If Pritzker wants to be seen as the party’s “can-do” Democrat, this is a great way to start. ...

Trump's $170 billion tax hike on the American consumer

 The seasonally-adjusted annual rate of Trump's tariffs leaped from $96 billion in 1Q to $266 billion in 2Q.

The federal government farts through $20 billion every day, so this annualized tariff revenue goes Poof in less than two weeks, matching just 3.6% of federal outlays.

The numbskulls in the US Senate like Josh Hawley want to redistribute these tax revenues in the form of rebate checks to the taxpayers.

Wouldn't it have been easier and more efficient and more fair not to have taxed us in the first place?

Note that Donald Trump's Bureau of Economic Analysis, run by Howard Lutnick, still must call this what it is, taxes on imports lol, despite what his Treasury Secretary was still saying in June:

Bessent claims tariffs aren’t taxes.

 

 

 

Iran has far more enriched uranium than people realize

 ... Prior to the Israeli and U.S. strikes, Iran had enriched at least 880 pounds of highly enriched uranium to 60 percent according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Relatively speaking, even if it would take some time for Iran to enrich that stockpile to weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (90 percent ) — the amount needed for a modern nuclear missile strike — it could use the 60 percent stockpile it already has to construct Hiroshima-like nuclear bombs.

Iran Watch estimates that Khamenei has enough to build “one or more” of the gun-type bomb known as “Little Boy,” the type of used in Hiroshima. It would only take 132 pounds of uranium enriched to 80 percent.

... while much of the media’s attention has been on Khamenei’s stores of 60 percent highly enriched uranium, we cannot overlook Iran’s 20 percent and 5 percent stockpiles. Prior to the June strikes, Tehran had 606 pounds of the former and 12,150 pounds of the latter.

Iran Watch ominously warns that “20 percent enriched uranium is approximately 90% of the way to weapon-grade and Iran’s stockpile would be sufficient to fuel at least two implosion weapons.” Plus, if further enriched, eventually Khamenei’s 5% stockpile could be used to “fuel at least 10 implosion weapons.” ...

Uranium highly enriched to 60 percent is in a gaseous state and can be stored in cylinders approximately the same size of a scuba tank. Moving or hiding some of them could have been as easy as putting them in the back of a small car or SUV. ...

More. 

Undersea UFO expert Republican Tim Burchett (TN-2) says the Biden administration destroyed the Epstein client list lol

 Atta boy, Tim, blame the Democrats.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday he believes a client list associated with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein once existed but was “destroyed” by the Biden administration.

“I think the files existed at one time,” Burchett said in an interview on NewsNation’s “On Balance” with host Leland Vittert. “I think they were destroyed in the previous administration.” ...

More.  

Hakeem Jeffries has finished his speech in the US House, which took 8 hours and 44 minutes, a new record

 

House GOP can't agree to proceed to debating Senate reconciliation bill, vote stands at 206 Yea, 216 Nay (4 GOP against), with 10 GOP not voting

Yikes. 

Even if all not voting GOP vote Yea, there's a tie. Not good enough.

And moments ago Thomas Massie changed his Yea to Nay lol. 

 Trump’s megabill is in real trouble; House GOP leaders need to flip a ‘no’ vote to a yes

 

 

Deane Waldman argues Medicaid cuts of 20 million new Biden enrollees who don't belong there would save lives by shortening wait times for care which have swelled to 132 days

 Medicaid cuts could save thousands of lives  

... Reduced enrollment and cuts to nonclinical spending could shorten wait times, make care more accessible, and reduce death-by-queue. No one in the media has reported this potential benefit from cuts to Medicaid. ... 

Trump is threatening to throttle Elon Musk's opposition to the bill in the US Senate, which still hasn't been voted on after 24 hours of debate, by deporting him

 

The current policy baseline helps Republicans hide the fact that they are spending like drunken sailors

 

 

Phony Republican current policy baseline says Trump tax cuts will cost $0 going forward, Congressional Budget Office says $3.5 trillion

 Graham claims sole authority to decide if GOP megabill complies with budget laws

... Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the Budget Committee, immediately appealed the ruling of the chair.

He pointed to a letter he received from Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel asserting that the Finance portion of the bill would increase federal deficit by $3.5 trillion between 2025 and 2034 and increase deficits beyond the 10-year budget window, which ends in 2034.

“The ability of the chair to create a phony baseline has never been used in reconciliation, not ever,” Merkley argued.

“This breaks a 51-year tradition of the Senate for honest numbers,” he declared.

Merkley’s appeal of the chair’s ruling empowering Graham failed by a party-line vote. Senators rejected it by a vote of 53 to 47. ...

Republicans are doing an end-run around the Senate parliamentarian to make novel use of the current policy baseline instead of current law, asserting a Democrat precedent from 2022

 Senate GOP declines to meet with parliamentarian on whether Trump tax cuts add to deficit

... Republicans, however, say that the parliamentarian doesn’t have a role in judging how much the tax portion of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add to the deficit within the bill’s 10-year budget window or whether it would add to deficits beyond 2034.

They argue that Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has authority under Section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act “to determine baseline numbers of spending and revenue.”

Ryan Wrasse, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), pointed to a Budget Committee report published when Democrats were in the majority in 2022 stating that the Budget Committee, through its chair, makes the call on questions of numbers, not the parliamentarian.

Graham received a letter from Swagel [CBO Director] on Saturday stating that the Finance Committee’s tax text does not exceed its reconciliation instructions or add to deficits after 2034 when scored on the “current-policy” baseline that Graham wants the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and CBO to use.

Taylor Reidy, a spokesperson for the Budget panel, asserted on the social platform X that “there is no need to have a parliamentarian meeting with respect to current policy baseline because Section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act gives Sen. Graham — as Chairman of the Budget Committee — the authority to set the baseline.” ...

All you really need to know is that whatever these yokels end up passing, the country will be $50-$60 trillion in debt ten years from now because they spend too much and tax too little.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis from North Carolina will not run again in 2026 after voting to stop Trump's reconciliation bill

 Tillis won’t run for reelection in North Carolina 

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Sunday announced he will not seek reelection to the Senate next year, firing a political shock wave into the midterm cycle after he said he would oppose President Trump’s mammoth tax package. ... 

 

Good morning to all, except to those who cannot spell yesses and noes

 Alexander Bolton at The Hill here:

... The vote to proceed to the sprawling budget reconciliation package remained open on the Senate floor for more than three and a half hours, stuck for a long time at 47 yes’s and 50 no’s. ...

 

 

 

 

Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin folds like a house of cards, switches his Nay vote to Yea to advance reconciliation bill to the Senate floor for debate

 Trump megabill narrowly advances in Senate despite two GOP defections

Senate Republicans on Saturday narrowly voted to advance a sprawling 1,000-page bill to enact President Trump’s agenda, despite the opposition of two GOP lawmakers.

The vote was 51-49.

Two Republicans voted against advancing the package: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who opposes a provision to raise the debt limit by $5 trillion and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who says the legislation would cost his state $38.9 trillion in federal Medicaid funding.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) changed his “no” vote to “aye,” and holdout Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) also voted yes to advance the bill. 

The bill had suffered several significant setbacks in the days and hours before coming to the floor, at times appearing to be on shaky ground.

The vote itself was also full of drama. ...

Flashback to May 25 when Johnson said he had enough votes in the Senate to stop the bill:

GOP senator says resistance to Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' could stop it in the Senate

President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are hopeful for minimal modifications in the Senate to the "One Big, Beautiful Bill" passed by the House last week, but one Republican senator said there's enough resistance to halt the bill unless there are significant changes.

"The first goal of our budget reconciliation process should be to reduce the deficit. This actually increases," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, urging deeper spending cuts than those in the bill to reset to a "reasonable, pre-pandemic level of spending."

"I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit," Johnson said. ...                                                

Didn't even have him!

 

Republican critic of Donald Trump Don Bacon of purple district NE-2 will not run for re-election

 

Bacon not running for reelection 

 

Update Monday Jun 30:

 

Don Bacon won’t seek reelection in competitive Nebraska district

 

The consensus estimate for today's GDP report was indeed for -0.2, instead it surprised at -0.5

 

First-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth was revised lower Thursday in light of reduced consumer spending, surprising economists.

GDP contracted by 0.5 percent on an annualized basis, 0.3 percentage points lower than the last measurement from the Commerce Department.

Economists were expecting the number to stay the same at a 0.2 percent contraction. ...

More. 

Average yields at Treasury Note auctions this week have been significantly lower than at the immediately preceding auctions, indicating there has been a flight to safety on souring economic growth expectations.

Trump may get his lower interest rates . . . the hard way, lol. 

Blowhard Tommy Tuberville isn't running for re-election to the U.S. Senate, so he'll say anything now

 

GOP senator calls for Senate parliamentarian to be fired after ruling against Medicaid cuts

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which said Iran possessed 400kg of highly enriched uranium on June 12, says they'd have to go to the bomb sites to really know the extent of the damage caused by the U.S. attacks

 

Iran’s nuclear facilities “suffered enormous damage” from the U.S. airstrikes Saturday, but more extensive evaluation is needed, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said Thursday.

“I think ‘annihilated’ is too much, but it has suffered enormous damage,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Rafael Grossi told French broadcaster RFI. “I know there’s a lot of debate about the degree of annihilation, total destruction, and so on, what I can tell you, and I think everyone agrees on this, is that very considerable damage has been done.”

“Obviously, you have to go to the site and that is not easy, there is debris and it is no longer an operational facility,” he added.

More. 

What they lack in intelligence they make up for in bad manners

 

Trump calls Fed chief Powell ‘numbskull’ as he urges interest rate cut

 

... Trump claimed at the White House that lowering rates by 2 percentage points would save the U.S. $600 billion per year, “but we can’t get this guy to do it.” “We’re going to spend $600 billion a year, $600 billion because of one numbskull that sits here [and says] ‘I don’t see enough reason to cut the rates now,’” Trump said. ...

Trump’s insult came hours after the Labor Department reported that U.S. producer prices rose less in May than some economists anticipated. ...

 

‘Immaturity’: Rand Paul rips White House after being ‘uninvited’ from picnic 

 

... “I’ve just been told that I’ve been uninvited from the picnic; I think I’m the first senator in the history of the United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic,” Paul told reporters. “The White House is owned by the taxpayers, we are all members of it, every Democrat will be invited, every Republican will be invited, but I will be the only one disallowed to come on the grounds of the White House.” ... 

 

The White House's Stephen Miller attacks libertarians for opposing the reconciliation bill's immigration enforcement spending

 ... the White House deputy chief of staff — and chief architect of Trump’s immigration agenda — is taking a sledgehammer to what remains of the libertarian-conservative fusionism that was prominent in the party pre-Trump.

“The libertarians in the House and Senate trying to take down this bill — they’re not stupid. They just don’t care,” Miller said in an interview with conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk last week.

“Immigration has never mattered to them; it will never matter to them. Deportations have never mattered to them; it will never matter to them. You will never live a day in your life where a libertarian cares as much about immigration and sovereignty as they do about the Congressional Budget Office.” ...

Miller’s aversion to libertarians, though, seems to go deeper than opportunistic messaging for the bill. He posted in 2022 that the uprising of the ideology in the House GOP is “how we ended up with open borders globalist [Paul] Ryan.” He blamed libertarian candidates for siphoning votes away from failed Trump-endorsed candidates in 2022 — Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona, and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire.

“Another example of how libertarians ruin everything,” Miller said in one post responding to a 2022 Georgia Senate poll. ...

More.

The CBS Poll referenced in the story indicates 55% like Trump's deportation goals but 56% dislike his approach.

Polling on the reconciliation bill indicates most think it will help the wealthy and hurt poor and middle class people, with a third admitting they have no idea what's in the bill. Well, neither did many in the US House who voted for the damn thing.

This points up the political danger of these Christmas Tree bills adorned with something for everyone. They're too complicated to understand and therefore capture little enthusiasm. But Stephen Miller fancifully thinks otherwise:

“By including the immigration language with the tax cuts with the welfare reform, it creates a coalition. Politics is all about coalitions,” Miller said in the interview with Kirk — also praising Trump in the interview as “able to create a winning formula for populist, nationalist, conservative government.”          

But not libertarian government.