Ah, so Republican pinhead Joe Concha thinks a Democrat win in 2026 would be a loss lol

Joe Concha never really does get to his point in this column, but he does spread a lot of nincompoopery about like so much manure on a field.

This is the guy who masked himself and his kids while outdoors during COVID-19 because his wife is a doctor and told him he had to, which is very amusing given Joe's interest in Democrats' inability to "connect" with young men.

Joe Concha lives in an imaginary world of fanciful creation and takes his marching orders, repeating stupid.

Trump's mandate, for example, "the greatest verdict in history" he says, in 2024 was actually smaller than W's in 2004.

Even Jimmy Carter's was bigger in 1976 than Trump's was in 2024.

Core pce inflation released this past week came in at 2.52%, not 2.1% as Joe says. Joe wouldn't know core if he ate an apple.

Just 49.6% had full time jobs in April 2025 vs. 50.4% in April 2023, 0.8 points lower than two years ago.

Also two years ago, unemployment was 0.8 points lower at 3.4% than Joe Concha's current "historically low" level, again having touched a level under Joe Biden not seen since May 1969.

Joe stealing glory from Joe. Tut-tut.

Democrats may have had trouble connecting with young men in 2024, but the Biden administration really did drop the bigger ball of communicating its record of historically low unemployment. The Wall Street Journal trumpeted it for them in 2023, but you'd hardly remember the fact.

Meanwhile Joe Concha's "respected" GDPNow model got 1Q2025 GDP wrong by 2.4 points lol.

With an actual negative print now at -0.2% for the first quarter, the set-up for a dead cat bounce in 2Q would seem obvious.

But you never know with Trump in charge, and for my money you have to bet against Mr. Unpredictable. 

If Jonathan Swift were here, he might say that it is the Republicans who are led by a changeable female mind, not the Democrats, which may be why Joe Concha likes him so:

The current of a female mind stops thus,

and turns with ev'ry wind;

Thus whirling round, together draws

Fools, fops, and rakes, for chaff and straws.

 

 

Dems Winning 2026 Midterm May Be Kiss of Death

Joe Concha, Washington Examiner

 

... after the votes were counted on Nov. 5, Trump won the greatest verdict in history by capturing the popular vote over former Vice President Kamala Harris while winning every swing state. ...

 

The core inflation numbers released this week show it at just 2.1%. . ..

 

Unemployment is historically low at 4.2%, with private sector jobs soaring. ... 

GDP is expected to grow at 3.8% in the second quarter, according to the respected Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. ...

 

 

 

 

One of Elon Musk's DOGE wizards got the boot for finding that the government works and is not as inefficient as he was expecting

No good deed goes unpunished.

 

... “I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions,” Lavingia told Fast Company in the piece, which also noted that he noticed the number of mission-driven people working in government. “But honestly, it’s kind of fine—because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins.” ...

More.

One of these days the parcel drones won't be carrying simply what they carry now, which will be a fateful turning point for this country

 

The core pce inflation rate in April 2025 at 2.52% year over year is still almost 65% higher than the 2008-2020 average at 1.53%

The rate was last lower than in April 2025 in March 2021 at 2.20% yoy, which is good news.

 

The customers, naturally

 After Trump order, who will pay to keep Michigan coal plant on life support? 

... While the details still remain unclear, utility customers will ultimately be the ones to pay it, they say. ...

The 1935 law Trump administration officials used to order the plant stay open — more commonly deployed for emergencies like hurricanes, wildfires or extreme heat — entitles Consumers to recover its expenses as it complies, according to Dan Scripps, chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities in the state. ...

The same day this story was published Consumer's Energy informed me my budget plan payment amount will rise by $48 monthly for the next year.

We are already paying.

Today's so-called conservatives wish for a nation of executive orders, not a nation of laws

 

Two More Executive Orders Trump Should Sign

Heather Mac Donald, City Journal

CNBC avoids the story like the plague: Real GDP for 1Q2025 was revised up to -0.2% from -0.3% in today's second estimate for 1Q

No one wants to talk about this. Crickets pretty much everywhere. CNBC had Rosie on to discuss, but there was no article.

 

These lunatics are their own worst enemies

 The guy with the common sense about the national debt who stands in the way of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill wants to re-litigate 9/11.

Sen. Ron Johnson on 9/11: "A Lot Of Legitimate Questions Remain Unanswered"

Two-weeks-Trump lets Putin string him along for six weeks

A prophet without honor in his own country is limited by Elon Musk

 

Trump lays tariff egg with new "Chicken Do"

 

Few people consider that the Great Depression of the 1930s was the unwind of the Great Inflation of WWI

 Economics is mean-reverting.

 

 

 

 

We've been liberated from Liberation Day by two Republicans (one appointed by Trump) and one Democrat on a court handpicked by Trump to adjudicate his tariffs lol

 

Federal trade court strikes down Trump’s reciprocal tariffs

The U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday blocked steep reciprocal tariffs unilaterally imposed by President Donald Trump on scores of countries in April to correct what he said were persistent trade imbalances. ...

In its ruling, a three-judge panel on the Court of International Trade said that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Trump invoked to impose the tariffs, does not authorize a president to levy universal duties on imports.

 

“The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs,” the judges wrote.

And separate, specific tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China related to drug trafficking “fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders,” the panel wrote.

Implementing tariffs typically requires congressional approval.

But Trump chose to bypass Congress by declaring a national economic emergency under IEEPA, which became law in 1977, and then using the purported emergency as justification for cutting Congress out of the process.

The panel not only ordered a permanent halt to the tariffs at issue in the case, but it also barred any future modifications to them.

The Trump administration was given 10 days to make the necessary changes to carry out the judges’ orders. ...

 

Different parties, same hopium: In September 2012 Barack Obama accepted the Democrats' nomination saying Hope Needs More Time, now Trump says he needs another two weeks to see whether Putin really wants peace in Ukraine

Like Putin's record three-day bombardment of Ukraine last weekend wasn't an answer.

 

CNBC piles on Elon Musk with unfair story about latest test flight of Starship, which was hardly a setback

 

SpaceX’s Starship explodes for third time in a row, Musk promises more frequent launches

 

SpaceX saw its Starship system explode on Tuesday in a test flight, the third consecutive setback for Elon Musk’s rocket maker.

 

There's a far less biased presentation here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lead actor in the sequel to the Grace Commission didn't realize it was just a show

 

Elon Musk says Trump’s spending bill undermines the work DOGE has been doing

 

... “I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a clip the program shared on social media platform X. ... “I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful, but I don’t know if it could be both,” Musk said in the clip. ...

In an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, Musk said that the federal bureaucracy is “much worse than I realized” and that DOGE became “the whipping boy for everything.”

At 65.6% in 2024, the homeownership rate in the United States matches the 1980 rate, which was an historical high water mark not exceeded until 1997

 For all the justified complaining about not being able to afford a home, the homeownership rate in 2024 is historically pretty good, one of just twenty years since 1963 at the level of 65.6% or higher. 66% of the time the homeownership rate has been lower than it was in 2024. 

In 2023 housing affordability in the United States bounced off the 2022 low but is still 9.15 points off the more affordable levels of the 1980s

 The median income in 2022 bought just 17.22% of the median house, the all-time low in the most up-to-date data.

In 2023 that rose to 18.89%.

Peak affordability in the data was in 1984 at 28.04%.

 

 

The decline of worker hours in America

 In 1966 all the hours worked by all the full time and part time workers divided by the civilian employment level peaked at about 35.35 hours per worker per week. That's full time level work. That's prosperity.

The flood of Baby Boomers, especially Baby Boomer women under the influence of feminism and the social revolution of the 1960s, and also foreign born workers after the Immigration Act of 1965, into the labor markets after the mid-1960s reduced hours per week per worker by almost 11%, not forming a new stable bottom until the 1980s at about 31.5 hours per week.

Increased labor supply = fewer hours to go around = less prosperity.

By 1999, when peak Baby Boom had passed 40 years of age, hours per week had risen as high as 32.68 per worker per week. That was the end result of the good times kick-started by Ronald Reagan twenty years prior, which hit in four waves: 1984-85, 1989, 1995, and 1999.

But the whole subsequent period 2003-2019 inclusive fell apart.

Many, many troubles reduced hours worked per worker by almost 7% between 1999 and 2009, not the least of which were admission of China to the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the Great Recession.

Hours per week per worker have risen again as of 2022, but only to the old bottom, at around 31.57 per week.

Median real earnings per week are up just $38 since 1979.

Will that be As Good As It Gets?

 

 

 

Germany lifts weapons restrictions on Ukraine