In March 2016 Pete Hegseth was no different from NeverTrumpers like Erick Erickson, Mark Levin, Charlie Kirk, and Ben Shapiro who all now bend the knee

 

 CNN video here from Dec 3rd, in which Hegseth criticizes Trump for being an arm chair warrior who had the temerity to criticize John McCain while avoiding the draft.

Which is rich coming from Hegseth who was never regular military.

It's Megyn Kelly interviewing him, too, lol, who has been defending Pete The Warrior and his PTSD for his bad behavior with the women.

I keep waiting for someone to ask Hegseth how many firefights he was in in the field in Afghanistan. We'd all like to know in this age of stolen valor. We know that's a fact about his time in Iraq, but everyone keeps talking as if that's what he did in Afghanistan when the only evidence I find is that he taught a course there and that his stay was very brief.

More at Mediaite here.

Bunch of phony, baloney, plastic banana, good time rock 'n rollas.

American whiners generally rate their own healthcare positively but not the country's

 Gallup, here.

People are in a bad mood about it since 2020 because of what happened during the pandemic with lock-downs, quarantines, and mask and vaccine mandates, and because the expanded emergency coverage from that year has expired with the expiration of the emergency in 2023.

But 71% still think their own healthcare quality is pretty good, compared with 44% saying the same thing about the quality for the country as a whole.

There's always been that disconnect.

And generally speaking, it is difficult to draw any conclusions from this about pre-Obamacare and post-Obamacare experiences because of it. But 62% rated the quality of healthcare in the country highly in both 2012 and 2010, the year Obamacare was passed. That's now down 18 points to 44%. 71% now rate the quality of their own healthcare highly, down 11 points since 2012 from 82%.

I suspect we'll be living with the after effects of the pandemic debacle for a while longer.

 

Rosie throws in the towel and BlackRock declares the boom and bust cycle over

 Gee, when have we heard that before lol?

Full time employment as a percentage of civilian population fell to 49.49% in November 2024

 The measure to two decimal points has been 50% or better only in June and July this year.

If 54.67% worked full time as in July 2000, we would have 147.3 million working full time today instead of 133.4 million, a difference of 13.9 million.

Whatcha all doin' out there?

 

10-year view

View since 1968

Pete Hegseth promises to quit drinking if confirmed as SECDEF lol

 

Why wait, Pete? Why not stop now?

Hegseth appeared to acknowledge that his relationship with alcohol is a matter of serious concern to GOP senators by pledging Wednesday in meetings on Capitol Hill that he would stop drinking if confirmed to serve as Defense secretary.

The Hill, here.

The bargaining is classic drunk.

Secular bear Rosie not throwing in the towel . . . again

 Rosie was on the wrong side of the trade in April 2011 when the bear went bullish. Is he again now?

He uses the same phrase, too, "not throwing in the towel", lol.

In April 2011 he claimed he wasn't throwing in the bear towel after the S&P 500 had already recovered from the 2008 debacle. Then the market slid 20% all the way to October 3, 2011, with the index falling to 1099 again, right where it was exactly three years earlier on the very same date.

It was . . . spooky!

If you had followed his take that April, you'd have lost 20% again. On top of all your losses in 2008. Ouch. Ouch.

Many of us who had kept our powder dry couldn't believe it in October 2011. We thought we were headed back to the depths of March 2009 again, too, just like the last time the market fell to 1099. I mean, that was a free-fall from there in 2008. TARP got signed in a panic that week to stop it, to no avail.

But October 2011 turned out to be more of a retest than we realized, one of the last great buying opportunities of the period. It was a brutal, crushing period of doubt, which some of us still live with.

Now it's the reverse, with unbelievable euphoria everywhere, with the S&P 500 at 6075.

A period of euphoria seems to me like a damned strange time to throw in the bear towel again, after missing out for two years by his own admission. I have no idea if Rosie is the contrary indicator he appears to be.

But the valuation of the market is pre-1920s crazy right now. It is literally not on the charts of our experience in the post-war, or even from the roaring '20s. We have GDP of $29.354 trillion, meaning a valuation of 207, when fair value has been 81 since the Great Depression.

I'm not in it, and I intend to keep staying out, because I can.

Good luck out there to those of you who go where angels fear to tread.

COVID-19 in wastewater in November 2024 is at 1.76 vs. 5.94 in November 2023 and 5.39 in November 2022 per the CDC

 

Sometimes I hate the media more than words can say, but it was the NYPD which released the new photos of the unmasked person

Fox News goes with Not The Suspect

 

Not The Suspect

The Suspect

CNBC Goes with Not The Suspect

NYPost goes with Not The Suspect

OMG, the NY Post/Karol Markowicz comparison of Pete Hegseth to Brett Kavanaugh is completely wrong, and now Pete Hegseth goes there to defend himself

 Where else? but in The Wall Street Journal here:

Like veterans returning from any war, we drank beers to manage the reality of what we had faced. But we never did anything improper, and we treated everyone with respect.

 

CA-13 was decided for the Democrat overnight, so the final US House outcome is GOP 220, Dems 215

 CA-13 flipped Republican in this election, as did CA-27 and CA-45.

Republicans flipped no seats in California, and nationally Democrats picked up one seat on net and the GOP lost one on net.

Republicans have the same razor thin US House majority in the next Congress that they have now.

Bye Bye Red Wave.

DeSantis is far and away better for DOD than Pete Hegseth, but it would be a step down for the governor, and a minefield which could blow up his chances for 2028, if he still has any

 Trump Mulls Replacing Pete Hegseth With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Beside all that, Trump is just poaching again. 

Florida still needs Ron DeSantis, especially to appoint the replacement for the already poached Senator Marco Rubio. One bad decision leads to another.

Can't Trump find anyone else? Isn't this just more evidence of how few quality people find serving in this lame duck presidency an attractive prospect?

Ron DeSantis should also think long and hard about having to defend everything Trump for four years, quite apart from defending the United States, if he's still serious about a 2028 run. He ran against Trump in the primaries, after all, for reasons.

I think this story is more of a trial balloon, an advertisement: "Hey out there! Anyone interested in the job? Help! I gotta get rid of Pete! Please step up!"

For everything else there's MasterCard

 Newsweek falls for X shitposter Parik Patel posing as Trump appointee Kash Patel's dad lol.

 

Kevin Dowd: close the border, eliminate regulations, end the war on fossil fuels, cancel electric vehicle mandates, do a little dance

 

 

 Kevin Dowd takes over for Maureen Dowd on Thanksgiving, here:

 

Trump promises a return to common sense and has been given the tools to accomplish it with an electoral mandate and all three branches of government on his side. He cannot squander it. He must not get bogged down in petty disputes and perceived slights. ...

There are things he can do right away to make a difference: close the border, eliminate regulations, end the war on fossil fuels and cancel EV mandates. ...

He should move forward without rancour or grievance, fuelled by the joy of the Trump Shuffle, his robot-like dance that has broken out at UFC fights and across the NFL. I’m going to have the younger members of the family teach it to Maureen on Thanksgiving.

If Joe Biden had won the election, he would surely have commuted the sentence of his son Hunter

 We knew this in June.

 

Talking Points Memo: Poor Hunter Biden lol, and being better, different, more righteous, and more norm-honoring is for chumps like conservatives

The only reason Hunter Biden has been in habitual trouble is because he's a bad boy.

 

Joe Biden more than once pledged not to pardon his son Hunter Biden, but today he did

 The period covered by the pardon goes all the way back to January 1, 2014 for any and all crimes Hunter may have committed, too. You know, like tax crimes. The statute of limitations for tax crimes is ten years.

This wasn't just about the gun crimes.

Meanwhile, 363 people were convicted of tax fraud in 2023, and 63% went to prison. 

It's great to be a Democrat.

 

If only Trump understood anything about the dollar, he wouldn't waste his time embarrassing himself like this

 

The New York Times has obtained an e-mail sent to Pete Hegseth by his mother, and hoo boy, does this fill in the details or what?

 

Inflation under Biden is so bad . . .

 

It's amazing how so-called conservative women will twist themselves into pretzels to defend Pete Hegseth, for example by lowering Brett Kavanaugh to his level

 

 Don’t let the left do to Pete Hegseth what it did to Brett Kavanaugh 

It’s the Brett Kavanaugh show all over again. ... Was Hegseth also in another relationship at the time [2017]? Maybe. But he’s being nominated for secretary of defense, not for the role of our boyfriend or husband. His personal life issues should stay personal. 

As Megyn Kelly pointed out, “Having difficulty in one’s personal relationship, especially after having served two tours — which it’s not uncommon for these combat vets to come back and not be able to navigate their love lives all that well — is much different than being a rapist.”

 

Brett Kavanaugh isn't on his third wife, or his second, and hasn't cheated on his first one, let alone on three and then lied about it by omission. There is no moral equivalence between Pete Hegseth and Brett Kavanaugh whatsoever. 

Hegseth meanwhile served in combat in Iraq in 2005-6, having married wife number one in 2004. That marriage ended in 2009, reportedly due to his infidelity, and he remarried the very next year in 2010, both of which life-altering events occurred while he was executive director of Vets For Freedom, 2007-2012.

In 2012 he was an active duty military instructor in Afghanistan, but evidently for not very long.

In that same year he had started a political action committee called MN PAC, briefly ran for the US Senate from Minnesota starting in February, lost at the Republican Convention in May, and also became CEO of Concerned Veterans for America that year, a job he held until 2015, having become a Fox News contributor the previous year.

It is laughable to suggest that this biography matches a man suffering from the post-traumatic stress of two tours of duty in the Middle East. He looks more like an ambitious climber trying to make the most he can out of what little he's got.