Wednesday, May 20, 2026

It's hard to keep up with Trump cratering in the polls as he makes another new record low for approval and another new record high for disapproval in the average of the polls at Real Clear Politics

 39.6% approve

57.8% disapprove


 

No Jeff, the bottom 80% should pay zero in income taxes, the top 20% should pay 100% of the income taxes

 Jeff Bezos says bottom half of earners should pay zero in income taxes

The top 20% receive income in excess of $10 trillion. Taxed at 50% that will still pay for the federal government.

They can live on $100k just like the rest of us, and still have half of everything above that left over. 

Pure market manipulation

 U.S. crude oil falls below $100 per barrel after Trump says Iran talks in final stages

The only thing surprising about any of this is the market's 100% propensity to believe lies in order to make a buck. 

Trump approval falls again, to another new record low 39.8%

 


Hey look, a shot across his bow

 

Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics spews nonsense about Michigan's U.S. Senate contest


 

Jonah Goldberg: Impeachment is still an available political remedy for Trump's serious abuses

 ... Contrary to thousands of hours of impeachment legal punditry going back to the Nixon administration, a president doesn’t have to commit a crime to be impeached. As Hamilton writes in Federalist 65, impeachment involves “the misconduct of public men” and “the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Impeachments are “POLITICAL” (Hamilton’s all-caps) because they injure “society itself.”

It may in fact be legal for the president to be the judge in his own cause and create a taxpayer-financed slush fund for him to reward cronies and henchmen on a whim. It is already clear that presidents can launch wars without Congress or the courts unduly getting in the way. But I struggle to think of hypothetical scenarios that would be more likely to arouse in Madison and his contemporaries the — now misplaced — reassurance that impeachment was an available remedy.

Here

Ann Coulter's favorite candidate to defeat Mitch McConnell six years ago loses again lol

 Booker defeats McGrath in Kentucky Democratic Senate primary 

Charles Booker is projected to win the Kentucky Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday, according to Decision Desk HQ, defeating Amy McGrath in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

The victory came six years after McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot, narrowly defeated Booker in the primary for the seat, winning 45 percent of the vote to Booker’s 43 percent. McGrath went on to lose in the general election by nearly 20 points. ...

Elections have consequences as Mad King Ludwig eats his own narrow majority in the U.S. Senate and further alienates it

 

 Trump's self-destructive alcoholic personality will only make him more legislatively unsuccessful this year than he has been already.

 

 Cassidy becomes fourth GOP senator to back Iran war powers measure limiting Trump 

Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost his bid for a third term in Saturday’s Louisiana Senate Republican primary, on Tuesday became the fourth Republican senator to vote to advance a war powers resolution directing President Trump to withdraw U.S. armed forces deployed against Iran.

Cassidy joined Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in voting Tuesday for a motion to discharge the war powers resolution sponsored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The motion passed by a vote of 50 to 47, setting up a future vote to proceed to the motion on the Senate floor.

The resolution is privileged under the 1973 War Powers Act, allowing it to pass the Senate with a simple-majority vote instead of having to clear the 60-vote threshold required for most legislation.

Cassidy kept his plan to vote to advance the resolution secret until the last moment. He declined to reveal how he would vote on the measure when asked about it Monday.

Murkowski broke ranks with Senate Republican leaders last week to vote to advance the war powers resolution. ...

 Trump’s ouster of Republican senator sends shock waves through Senate GOP 

The resounding defeat of Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) in Saturday’s Louisiana primary has sent shock waves through the Senate Republican Conference, underscoring how Republicans who look to distance themselves from President Trump and his low approval ratings will have to think twice about paying a political price for perceived disloyalty.

Cassidy’s ouster came a few weeks after Trump and his allies helped defeat five state senators in Indiana who defied Trump’s desire to redraw the state’s congressional map, sending a loud message to any Republican on Capitol Hill thinking about clashing with the president. ...

[Republican Senator Thom] Tillis, an outspoken critic of some of the Trump administration’s actions this year, reacted angrily to Cassidy’s loss, sending an email to Republican colleagues on Monday threatening to block a budget reconciliation package from moving on the Senate floor later this week — even though it’s a top Trump priority.

Tillis expressed his disappointment over Cassidy’s loss on Saturday and urged Republican colleagues to delay action on the reconciliation bill so as not to force Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), another Republican colleague facing a tough primary on May 26, to stay in Washington until late this week to vote on the budget bill, according to a source familiar with the email’s details. ...

Senate GOP expresses frustration, anger, sadness as Trump snubs Cornyn in Texas 

President Trump’s decision Tuesday to snub Sen. John Cornyn and endorse state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate Republican primary was met with frustration, anger and even sadness by Senate Republicans.

The move likely sinks Cornyn’s hopes of winning another Senate term, and Republicans warned it could make it tougher to defeat Democratic candidate James Talarico in November.

Republican senators exuded pain for Cornyn, who served as Senate Republican whip during Trump’s first term and is deeply respected by his Senate GOP colleagues. ...

Some Republican senators saw Trump’s treatment of Cornyn as a snub of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who had worked behind the scenes for months to persuade the president to back him.

The NRSC invested in Cornyn through a joint fundraising committee, and One Nation, a fundraising group affiliated with Thune’s political operation, has spent more than $10 million helping Cornyn. ...

Trump’s endorsement of Paxton and his attacks against Cassidy won’t make it any easier for him to muster GOP votes for his ballroom funding or for the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund to compensate MAGA allies who believe they were targeted by the government. ...

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Attention all you weak dollar lunatics

 Nominal broad dollar index average values

Obama II, first year // 1Q second year // April 2014: 92.75 / 94.51 / 93.99

Trump II, first year // 1Q second year // April 2026: 122.75 / 119.01 / 119.03

Thank you for attention to this matter. 

The total value of all foreign-owned U.S. Treasury securities is up 3.25% year over year in March 2026, and CNBC says Japan and China retreat from owning them

The big retreat was actually in the BRICS. 

The value of Japanese-owned UST is up 5.4% year over year in March, lol.

Meanwhile the value of official China-owned is down 14.8% yoy, but China notoriously owns UST through stealth mechanisms, often in the UK and Belgium where ownership is up 19% and 12.9% yoy respectively.

Hard to say what's going on there with the most trusted name in nothing.

Month over month in March 2026 the total value of all foreign-owned is barely down 1.5%, which is neither unusual nor indicative of much of anything. 

On a year over year basis, there were just five net "sellers" among the major foreign holders: China, Taiwan, Switzerland, India (down nearly 24%!), and Brazil (down 19%!). 

Officially anyway, BRIC of the BRICS raising hard currency for some reason lol oil.

Japan, China lead foreign government retreat from U.S. Treasurys as Gulf War stokes currency fears

Monday, May 18, 2026

From JMIC Update 46 for Middle East tanker transits May 10-16, 2026: SoH 2.71 per day, BAM 13.57 per day

 


Senate Parliamentarian won't let Republicans spend $1 billion through phony reconciliation interpretation to rebuild East Wing destroyed by the MAGA drone in the Oval Office


 

 Trump ballroom money in question after Senate parliamentarian rules. Thune says GOP will persist

... Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough determined Saturday that the provision, which included $220 million for security upgrades tied to the East Wing ballroom project, fell outside the jurisdiction of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ... The White House and Senate Republicans have framed the $1 billion as Secret Service funding for security upgrades, not direct construction money for the ballroom. ... MacDonough has already ruled against several other pieces of the measure, forcing GOP leaders to revise multiple provisions as they try to keep the package on track. ...

Mein Führer . . . I CAN WALK !!


 

 Elon Musk compares his company’s work to that of Jesus

... “It has enabled people who have completely lost their brain-body connection to speak again … and we believe it will enable people to walk again,” Musk said of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface, or BCI, technologies.

... “Restoring control of people who are tetraplegics and restoring sight I think are pretty big deals,” Musk said on Monday at the conference, adding: “They’re sort of what I might call Jesus-level technologies.” ...

 


 

 

Sheriff says not to worry because no one has told him that he should . . . ROFLMAO

 
... Cuba has acquired 300 military drones ...
 
... thousands of Cuban veterans of Russia’s war with Ukraine have come home to tell their leaders of the effectiveness of drones on the battlefield. U.S. officials have learned more about Cuba’s drone program from Venezuela since removing Nicolás Maduro from power earlier this year ...

A Blue Wave is building in the 2026 Generic Congressional Vote with Democrats now +7.2 points

As usual politics at the extremes is less about voting for someone and more about voting against someone.

All you have to do most of the time is not piss off the voters.

 


Trump Job Approval falls below 40% in RCP Average for first time in 2nd term to 39.9%

 

 

Sunday, May 17, 2026

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (LA-4) was for the ban on insider stock trading in Congress before he was against it

 My favorite part about his new position is that if we don't allow our representatives to make money somehow, we'll stop attracting talent to Washington, D.C.

You know, like Trump, whose primary talent is corruption. 

💋 

 




The ever-amazing Mr. Trump makes yet another new low in his approval rating in the Real Clear Politics average: 40.1%

 


Severe economic contraction incoming