Saturday, June 3, 2023
I had to see it for myself because I just couldn't believe it was real, but it is
Magadonia is located in the tiny country of Also Ran:
Friday, June 2, 2023
Full time employment in May 2023 was a solid 50.47% of civilian population, similar to 2019 levels: Recession delayed
The measure averaged 49.7% in 1Q2023, but climbed in April to 50.2% and to 50.4% now.
Full time usually peaks in the summer.
Debt ceiling compromise clears the US Senate 63-36, Republican Senators extract pledge from Chucky Schumer for more defense spending which amounts to a pig in a poke so 31 vote against it anyway
Hello, all spending bills must originate in the House.
Some Senate Republicans are pretending you don't know that.
What a joke.
CNBC:
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spent much of the day Thursday hammering out an agreement with a group of Senate Republicans who demanded that he pledge to support a supplemental defense funding bill before they would agree to fast-track the debt ceiling bill.
The current House debt ceiling bill provided $886 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2024, an increase of 3% year over year. That figure rose to $895 billion in 2025, an increase of 1%.
But GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called this “woefully inadequate” Thursday, arguing that a 1% increase did not keep pace with inflation, so in practical terms, it was actually a decrease in military funding. The solution came in the form of a rare joint statement from Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., which was read on the floor.
“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries and respond to ongoing and growing national security threats,” Schumer read. “Nor does this debt ceiling limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds and respond to various national issues, such as disaster relief, combating the fentanyl crisis or other issues of national importance,” said Schumer.
The normally slow-moving chamber raced through a dozen votes in just over three hours. ...
A total of 31 Republicans voted against the measure ...
Just four Democrats voted against the measure: Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), along with Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). ...
The legislation would provide $886 billion for defense, which negotiators described as a 3 percent increase, and $637 billion for non-defense programs, according to a White House summary. ...
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said McCarthy didn’t sign
off on the agreement between Senate leaders and defense-minded GOP
senators. ...
Asked how confident he is about a defense supplemental spending bill passing later in the year, Thune said, “hard to say.”
“It was important for some of our members have folks on the record acknowledging there clearly could be a need, will be a need for our national security interests,” he said.
Thursday, June 1, 2023
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
The US House passed the debt ceiling compromise 314-117 this evening
Seventy-one Republicans and 46 Democrats voted against the bill in
the House — mostly liberals and conservatives protesting specific
provisions of the bill. Their numbers, however, were never a threat to
the bill’s passage because of a hodgepodge of moderates and leadership
allies who — despite some acknowledging the bill wasn’t exactly what
they wanted — threw their support behind the measure. ...
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Tuesday estimated that the bipartisan debt limit deal could reduce projected deficits by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade, a meager assessment compared to the roughly $4.8 trillion the nonpartisan scorekeeper said the GOP bill would save. ...
While votes on rules, which govern debate over legislation, typically break along party lines, 29 Republicans broke from the GOP and opposed the rule on Wednesday as a way to boycott the debt limit bill. Shortly before the vote closed — as the bill was poised to be blocked — 52 Democrats threw their support behind the rule, bringing the final vote to 241-187 and allowing the debt limit bill to advance to the floor for a full vote.
More.
Lesbian couple still obsessively testing and masking, even outdoors, and up-to-date on their jabs, has COVID-19 land at their door anyway
In the past two years, my partner and I have taken more at-home COVID tests than we can count. After our first test in 2021, we obsessively checked every few seconds to see what the indicator would reveal. Longest 15 minutes ever.
We’re up to date on
our vaccinations. We still mask up in stores and on public
transportation. We recently attended our first concert in three years
and though most of our fellow concertgoers at the outdoor venue weren’t
masked, we were. Still we swabbed our nostrils a few days later. Both
negative.
So it never crossed our minds as we were about to leave town for the Memorial Day weekend that we would get anything other than the desired result. My COVID test was negative. Hers was positive. A second test confirmed the first.
More.
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
Thomas Massie of Kentucky voted for the rule advancing the debt ceiling compromise to the House floor because the compromise contains the Penny Plan and a return to regular order
The Penny Plan would be triggered in the event 12 appropriations bills are not passed by Jan. 1 annually, automatically reducing spending 1% across the board.
Ending the present bad habit of omnibus spending bills is essential to a return to good governance and represents a good reason to vote for this bill despite its shortcomings.
Massie followed through with his statement during Tuesday evening’s vote when he supported the rule. He also told reporters that he plans to vote for the bill when it comes to the floor on Wednesday after announcing it in a closed-door GOP conference meeting minutes earlier.
“It’s because it cuts spending,” Massie told The Hill Tuesday night when discussing his intent to support the bill.
“Nothing I’ve ever voted on has ever cut spending that’s passed that’s become law; this will,” he added.
During Tuesday’s Rules Committee hearing, Massie highlighted a provision in the debt limit bill that incentivizes Congress to pass 12 appropriations bills rather than relying on omnibus measures to fund the government. The provision threatens to cut government spending by one percent across the board if the measures are not approved by Jan. 1.
“There is one way in which I think this bill got better, and it is this 1 percent cut that we’re all agreeing to if we vote for this bill, Republicans and Democrat, come Jan. 1. If we haven’t done our homework, and if the Senate hasn’t done their homework, and if the president hasn’t signed those bills — so everybody is gonna be in this, responsible for the outcome,” Massie said.
The debt ceiling compromise freezes spending in the next fiscal year about $400 billion too high, and does nothing to pay for the $4.9 trillion added to the debt over and above "normal" deficit spending
The Washington Examiner, here:
In exchange for a two-year hike in the federal borrowing limit, the legislation roughly freezes next year's spending at fiscal 2023 levels, followed by a 1% increase in 2025. The legislation also imposes some changes to work requirements for food stamps and will speed the development of energy projects with permitting reform.
Fiscal outlays for 2023 are projected to hit $5.792 trillion. Adjusted for inflation since 2019 that should be more like $5.385 trillion.
Meanwhile, deficit spending since 2019 through fiscal 2023 has added, will add, $8.5 trillion to the debt, which has been the solution to, and the cause of, all our problems.
We are not governed by serious people.
We have the government we deserve.
Monday, May 29, 2023
The lie of the day comes from Reuters via CNBC
... the national debt, which at $31.4 trillion is roughly equal to the annual output of the economy.
More.
1Q2023 GDP, 2nd estimate: Nominal: $26.4863 trillion.
118% is not "roughly equal".
And look what has happened to interest payments on the debt, which come out of current revenues. They have gone vertical. At $929 billion annualized, they represent 31.4% of current tax receipts annualized.
Everyone minimizing the gravity of this situation is whistling past the graveyard when government social benefits to persons already exceed the tax receipts.
This will continue until it can't, and great will be the fall of it.
LOL, National Review reports AOC expels protesters at her own townhall in Queens, characteristically buried on the Friday night of the summer's first big holiday weekend to minimize such things
‘American Citizens before Migrants’: Protesters Heckle AOC at NYC Town Hall
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Protesters booed and heckled Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a town hall she held in Queens, N.Y., on Friday night.
A man holding small American flags approached the progressive “Squad” member and shouted, “American citizens before migrants.”
“Where are you on the migrant issue? You’re a piece of s***,” he added.
Ocasio-Cortez said, “OK,” as the man was escorted off.
New York governor Kathy Hochul (D.) declared a state of emergency in New York after the expiration of Title 42 earlier this month. The state has roughly 60,000 asylum seekers relying on social services. New York City has gotten so overwhelmed with the influx of migrants that the city has begun sending them to the suburbs. Hochul said she is “looking at all state assets to help ameliorate the problem that is at a crisis level here in the City of New York,” which could includes housing migrants at SUNY campuses, closed psychiatric centers, large parks and parking lots.
Protesters at the town hall held signs concerning a number of issues: “America First. Vetted legal migrants only,” “Stop funding Ukraine,” “AOC: An Obvious Criminal,” and “AOC: Stop pushing drag queen story hour,”
More protesters came forward throughout the evening, including a woman who was critical of Ocasio-Cortez’s support for U.S. funding in Ukraine. The New York Democrat voted to send $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine last year.
“Stop funding this war, there’s a lot of communities that need help and need that money,” another woman said as she was removed from the event.
Ocasio-Cortez was met with both boos and cheers from the crowd when she suggested the Biden administration should abolish the debt limit, as a June 5 debt default deadline looms.
“$100 billion for Ukraine that you voted for!” one man shouted in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s comments on the debt ceiling.
The progressive lawmaker said earlier this week that the “stakes of a default cannot be understated.”
“The chaos that would ensue and the impact on people’s everyday lives would likely be immediate and it is one of the reasons why we need to take default off the table,” she said.
Send a tip to the news team at NR.
The Dingbat meant overstated, not understated.
Sunday, May 28, 2023
Saturday, May 27, 2023
Friday, May 26, 2023
The voters have made yet another colossal error in judgment, but NBC doesn't really want to tell you how big
New research published this month, involving millions of people worldwide over decades, is adding to worries that heavy use of high-potency cannabis and legalization of recreational weed in many U.S. states could exacerbate the nation's mental health crisis in young adults. “There is a big sense of urgency not just because more people are smoking marijuana, but because more people are using it in ways that are harmful, with higher and higher concentration of THC,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), said in an interview. ... The magnitude of the connection between cannabis and schizophrenia for young men surprised study author Volkow, who was expecting the number to be closer to 10%. “This is worrisome,” she said.
But NBC doesn't tell you the number:
Among 16–20-year-old males, no clear pattern over time is observed, with PARFs generally fluctuating between 10% and 20%. In older males, the PARFs show a clearly increasing pattern, ending up around 20–30% until the age of 31–40 when PARFs fluctuate between <1% and nearly 20%.
More.
Let's see how long G$$GLE leaves this up before censoring me like last time.
Inflation remains stuck, year over year in April 2023 at 4.7%, meaning at minimum that interest rates will remain higher for longer
Congress needs to rein-in spending.
Supremes slap down EPA meddling in property owners' wetlands under Clean Water Act, reversing yet another pestilent view of former justice Anthony Kennedy
A majority in Rapanos (2006) couldn’t agree on how to limit EPA’s authority over wetlands. Four Justices said the Clean Water Act’s scope extended to “only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water” such as oceans, rivers and lakes, and wetlands that were directly adjacent and “indistinguishable” from those waters.
However, the agencies and lower courts have adopted Justice Anthony Kennedy’s lone opinion that federal jurisdiction extends to land that has a “significant nexus” to a waterway. This test is as clear as a swamp.
While all nine Justices ruled for the Sacketts, they disagreed on the scope of federal power. The majority strips away the “significant nexus” ambiguity from Justice Kennedy’s Rapanos opinion, but reaffirms the conservative plurality’s view that a “wetland” must “be indistinguishably part of a body of water that itself constitutes ‘waters’ under the CWA.”
Ronald Reagan's worst appointment.
More.
Kim Strassel: Republicans should claw back $80 billion IRS infusion in wake of IRS targeting of Taibbi and Shapley
IRS Needs a Cage, Not More Cash
The cases of the whistleblower Gary Shapley and journalist Matt Taibbi show why the GOP should claw back that $80 billion infusion.
As House Republicans and the White House wrangle over a debt-ceiling deal, one GOP demand ought to be nonnegotiable. A politicized Internal Revenue Service has no business keeping its untrustworthy fingers on last year’s $80 billion cash infusion.
More.
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