Last Call For Recession, Receding

We're not in a recession, folks. We're just in a booming economy, because we have a Democratic president, and a hateful, garbage media.

 

The U.S. economy finished 2022 in solid shape even as questions persist over whether growth will turn negative in the year ahead.

Fourth-quarter gross domestic product, the sum of all goods and services produced for the October-to-December period, rose at a 2.9% annualized pace, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had expected a reading of 2.8%.

The growth rate was slightly slower than the 3.2% pace in the third quarter.

Stocks turned mixed following the report while Treasury yields were mostly higher.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 68% of GDP, increased 2.1% for the period, down slightly from 2.3% in the previous period but still positive.

Inflation readings moved considerably lower to end the year after hitting 41-year highs in the summer. The personal consumption expenditures price index increased 3.2%, in line with expectations but down sharply from 4.8% in the third quarter. Excluding food and energy, the chain-weighted index rose 3.9%, down from 4.7%.

While the inflation numbers indicated price increases are receding, they remain well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

Along with the boost from consumers, increases in private inventory investment, government spending and nonresidential fixed investment helped lift the GDP number.

A 26.7% plunge in residential fixed investment, reflecting a sharp slide in housing, served as a drag on the growth number, as did a 1.3% decline in exports. The housing drop subtracted about 1.3 percentage points from the headline GDP number.

Federal government spending rose 6.2%, due largely to an 11.2% surge on nondefense outlays, while state and local expenditures were up 2.3%. Government spending in total added 0.64 percentage points to GDP.

Inventory increases also played a significant role, adding nearly 1.5 percentage points.

“The mix of growth was discouraging, and the monthly data suggest the economy lost momentum as the fourth quarter went on,” wrote Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics. “We still expect the lagged impact of the surge in interest rates to push the economy into a mild recession in the first half of this year.”

 

If we have another situation in 2023 like we did in the first half of last year with negative GDP turning positive the second half, we're going to still be good. Yes, interest rates are going to slow the GDP. The Fed is still the Fed, and it will raise rates until inflation is smashed under 2%. That's going to take another 6-12 months.

We'll see how much pain the labor market goes through. I want to believe that the economy won't slide into a real hardcore recession, but with the House GOP ready to completely collapse us into a recession over the debt ceiling, all bets are off.

Orange You Glad He's Back, Con't

Facebook says they are reinstating Donald Trump's account...now with guardrails to protect America, or something.

 

Social media is rooted in the belief that open debate and the free flow of ideas are important values, especially at a time when they are under threat in many places around the world. As a general rule, we don’t want to get in the way of open, public and democratic debate on Meta’s platforms — especially in the context of elections in democratic societies like the United States. The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box. But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real world harm — a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse — we act.

Two years ago, we took action in what were extreme and highly unusual circumstances. We indefinitely suspended then-US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts following his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. We then referred that decision to the Oversight Board — an expert body established to be an independent check and balance on our decision-making. The Board upheld the decision but criticized the open-ended nature of the suspension and the lack of clear criteria for when and whether suspended accounts will be restored, directing us to review the matter to determine a more proportionate response.

In response to the Board, we imposed a time-bound suspension of two years from the date of the original suspension on January 7, 2021 — an unprecedented length of time for such a suspension. We also clarified the circumstances in which accounts of public figures could be restricted during times of civil unrest and ongoing violence, and introduced a new Crisis Policy Protocol to guide our assessment of on and off-platform risks of imminent harm so we can respond with specific policy and product actions. In our response to the Oversight Board, we also said that before making any decision on whether or not to lift Mr. Trump’s suspension, we would assess whether the risk to public safety has receded.

The suspension was an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances. The normal state of affairs is that the public should be able to hear from a former President of the United States, and a declared candidate for that office again, on our platforms. Now that the time period of the suspension has elapsed, the question is not whether we choose to reinstate Mr. Trump’s accounts, but whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period is justified.

To assess whether the serious risk to public safety that existed in January 2021 has sufficiently receded, we have evaluated the current environment according to our Crisis Policy Protocol, which included looking at the conduct of the US 2022 midterm elections, and expert assessments on the current security environment. Our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded, and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out. As such, we will be reinstating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks. However, we are doing so with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.

Like any other Facebook or Instagram user, Mr. Trump is subject to our Community Standards. In light of his violations, he now also faces heightened penalties for repeat offenses — penalties which will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest under our updated protocol. In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation.

I give it until St. Patrick's Day before Trump gets banned again for one of his tirades. Only this time when he's punished, the House GOP will be ready to go with subpoenas and hearings, and plenty of fundraising off the circus mess.

The notion that the Trump threat has "subsided" is laughable, but I guess we're going to have to watch him call for another insurrection or worse until someone decides to put him in jail.

Last Call For The Rent Is Too Damn High, Con't

The Biden administration announced a national package of renter protections as rents have soared 20% or more in the last two years.

 

Under pressure to address the nation’s soaring housing costs, the Biden administration on Wednesday announced significant new actions to protect tenants and make renting more affordable.

The announcement involves multiple federal agencies that will gather information on unfair housing practices. It also includes a “Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights” that, while not binding, sets clear guidelines to help renters stay in affordable housing. The White House is also launching a call to action, dubbed the “Resident-Centered Housing Challenge,” that aims to get housing providers as well as state and local governments to strengthen policies in their own markets.

After months of deliberation, the moves come as the housing market continues to pose a serious problem for people who don’t own their homes — and for the economy overall. While inflation has fallen for the past six months, average rental prices have continued to increase rapidly, disproportionately hurting vulnerable households that spend the bulk of their budgets on rent. Meanwhile, the country is stuck in a massive housing shortfall, complicating efforts to lower costs or simply find enough places for the 44 million American renter households to go.

“This is something the president identified as being necessary on the campaign trail, and is not necessarily purely a product of the current surge in rents, because this is much more expansive than thinking about this in the context of rent growth,” said Erika Poethig, special assistant to the president for housing and urban policy at the Domestic Policy Council, in an interview with The Washington Post. “It’s about thinking about many other aspects of what contributes to a fair market.”

For over a year, tenant leaders, housing experts and legal organizations have pushed the Biden administration to do everything in its power to tackle soaring rent costs, arguing that America’s housing issues are an economic crisis. In recent months, advocates say they were frustrated that the proposals weren’t coming faster or with more force, arguing that the White House was hesitant to test the limits of its executive authority or issue direct requirements to local governments and federal agencies. Tenants and community organizers also met with White House officials and agency heads, and held a congressional briefing sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in November to push for a sweeping set of new regulations.

Organizers with People’s Action and the Homes Guarantee said the announcement included some wins, like getting the Federal Housing Finance Agency to work on identifying ways to adopt and enforce tenant protections, including policies that limit high rent increases at properties with FHFA-backed mortgages.

But in an analysis of the proposals, they said the policies weren’t enough to change “tenants’ lives materially today.” The announcement includes no conditions on federal financing, for example, but instead gets closest with a carrot approach, like providing incentives to landlords who accept vouchers.

 

The solution is MORE RENTAL MULTIFAMILY HOUSING but nobody wants to build it, and nobody wants to live near it in a owned home, so when it does get built it's way out in the middle of nowhere.

 

The incentives are a start, but we need more housing period.

The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has made good on his purely political promise to his fellow GOP clowns, removing Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Select Intelligence Committee, in retaliation for Republicans being voted off committees two years ago for fomenting violence.

 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday unilaterally exiled Representatives Adam B. Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee, making good on a longstanding threat to expel the California Democrats in his first major act of partisan retribution since taking the majority.

The move was a much-anticipated tit-for-tat after Democrats, then in the majority, voted in 2021 to eject two Republicans, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona, from congressional committees for internet posts that advocated violence against their political enemies. It was also payback for the decision by Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, to bar Republicans who had helped former President Donald J. Trump spread the election lies that fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol from sitting on the special committee investigating the riot.

Now that he is in control, Mr. McCarthy sought to punish Mr. Schiff and Mr. Swalwell, two favorite foils of Republicans who had played key roles in the two impeachments of Mr. Trump, though he denied that his decision was retaliatory. Instead, he argued that both men had displayed behavior unbecoming of the committee tasked with overseeing the nation’s intelligence services.

In a letter outlining his decision to Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, Mr. McCarthy decried what he described as “the misuse” of the intelligence panel during the last four years, arguing that it had “severely undermined its primary national security and oversight missions — ultimately leaving our nation less safe.” He called the dismissals of Mr. Schiff and Mr. Swalwell necessary “to maintain a standard worthy of this committee’s responsibilities.”

Mr. McCarthy has said that Mr. Schiff “openly lied to the American people” when he chaired the intelligence panel during Mr. Trump’s presidency. In September 2019, Mr. Schiff was excoriated by Republicans for dramatically paraphrasing the contents of a telephone call in which Mr. Trump had pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, and for implying, falsely, that his committee had had no contact with a whistle-blower raising concerns about their conversation.

Earlier, in March 2019‌, ‌Republicans on the committee had demanded that Mr. Schiff step aside for having said that he had seen “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion between Mr. Trump and the Russians in 2017. That claim had been called into question by the findings of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who had looked into the matter, which Attorney General ‌William P. Barr‌ had summarized in a letter to certain members of Congress. Republicans accused Mr. Schiff of having compromised the integrity of the panel by knowingly promoting false information.

Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday night, Mr. Schiff countered that Mr. McCarthy was “trying to remove me from the intel committee for holding his boss at Mar-a-Lago accountable.”

“It’s just another body blow to the institution of Congress that he’s behaving this way, but it just shows how weak he is as a speaker,” he added.

Republicans have railed against Mr. Swalwell, who served as a manager in Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial, citing an Axios report that reported that Mr. Swalwell was targeted by a suspected Chinese spy as part of an influence campaign in 2014, before he served on the intelligence panel. The report said that around 2015, federal investigators alerted Mr. Swalwell to their concerns and he “cut off all ties.”

“This is all about political vengeance,” Mr. Swalwell said of Mr. McCarthy’s action.

Because the intelligence panel is a “select” committee, the speaker has the authority to dictate who can serve, just as Ms. Pelosi was able to block Republicans appointed by Mr. McCarthy from the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. However, Mr. Schiff and Mr. Swalwell are not expected to lose their other committee assignments.

 

It's about revenge, pure and simple. McCarthy, being the weak, vacillating buffoon that he is, may not have the votes to strip Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of her committee assignments however. 

Mr. McCarthy has also threatened to remove Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, from congressional committees for criticism of Israel that Republicans and some Democrats have condemned as anti-Semitic. Ms. Omar apologized in 2019 for saying that support for Israel in Washington was “all about the Benjamins baby,” a comment that members of both parties denounced as a reference to an anti-Semitic trope. She was criticized again in 2021 when she made statements that appeared to compare human rights abuses by Israel with acts committed by Hamas and the Taliban, and later said she had not meant to equate them.

It was not clear whether Mr. McCarthy, who holds a razor-thin majority, had the votes to oust Ms. Omar. At least two Republicans have publicly expressed qualms about doing so.

And the Minnesota Democrat on Tuesday night told reporters at the Capitol that some Republicans had told her privately they believed such a move would be “uncalled for.”

“They are trying to do whatever it is that they can within their conference to make sure there is no vote to remove me from the Foreign Affairs Committee,” she added.

 

We'll see what Kevin promises to give away to keep what little power he has left.

Tech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself, Con't

The antitrust legal troubles for Google continue with another massive federal lawsuit over the company's monopoly on digital ads, and a recommendation from the Justice Department that the company be broken up.

 

The Justice Department and a group of states sued Google on Tuesday, accusing it of illegally abusing a monopoly over the technology that powers online advertising, in the agency’s first antitrust lawsuit against a tech giant under President Biden and an escalation in legal pressure on one of the world’s biggest internet companies.

The lawsuit said Google had “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising.” The lawsuit asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to force Google to sell its suite of ad technology products and stop the company from engaging in allegedly anticompetitive practices.

It was the fifth antitrust lawsuit filed by U.S. officials against Google since 2020, as lawmakers and regulators around the world try to rein in the power that big tech companies exert over information and commerce online. In Europe, Amazon, Google, Apple and others have faced antitrust investigations and charges, while regulators have passed new laws to limit social media’s harms and some practices such as data collection.

In the United States, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, was sued in 2020 over claims that it illegally crushed nascent rivals. Google has faced particular scrutiny. In 2020, a group of states led by Texas filed an antitrust lawsuit against it involving advertising technology, while the Justice Department and another group of states separately sued Google over claims that it abused its dominance over online search. In 2021, some states also sued over Google’s app store practices.

The Justice Department and Google didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Biden administration is trying to use uncommon legal theories to clip the wings of some of America’s largest businesses. The Federal Trade Commission has asked a judge to block Meta from buying a virtual-reality start-up, a rare case that argues a deal could harm potential competition in a nascent market. The agency has also challenged Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of the video game publisher Activision Blizzard, a notable action because the two companies are not primarily seen as direct competitors. 

 

It's definitely not helping Google's case when it does things like "Make $13 billion in profits in 2022" and then "Lay off 10,000 employees" because $13 billion in profits is apparently not enough. 

Still, it's going to be difficult to win this case.

The administration’s efforts are expected to meet fierce resistance in federal courts. Judges have for decades subscribed to a view that antitrust violations should mostly be determined by whether they increase prices for consumers. But Jonathan Kanter, the chief of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, and Lina Khan, the F.T.C. chair, have said they are willing to lose cases that allow them to stretch the boundaries of the law and that put corporate America on notice.

 

So, don't expect much here from this particular case. Google is still going to control nearly all digital advertising in the US and will for the foreseeable future.

Last Call For Documenting The Atrocities

 You'll never guess which Republican was caught with classified documents in their house.

 

A lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The FBI and the Justice Department’s National Security Division have launched a review of the documents and how they ended up in Pence’s house in Indiana.

The classified documents were discovered at Pence’s new home in Carmel, Indiana, by a lawyer for Pence in the wake of the revelations about classified material discovered in President Joe Biden’s private office and residence, the sources said. The discovery comes after Pence has repeatedly said he did not have any classified documents in his possession.

It is not yet clear what the documents are related to or their level of sensitivity or classification.

Pence’s team notified congressional leaders and relevant committees of the discovery on Tuesday.

Pence asked his lawyer with experience handling classified material to conduct the search of his home out of an abundance of caution. Sources said that the attorney, Matt Morgan, began going through four boxes stored at Pence’s house last week, finding a small number of documents with classified markings.

Pence’s lawyer immediately alerted the National Archives, the sources said. In turn, the Archives informed the Justice Department.

A lawyer for Pence told CNN that the FBI requested to pick up the documents with classified markings that evening, and Pence agreed. Agents from the FBI’s field office in Indianapolis picked up the documents from Pence’s home, the lawyer said.

On Monday, Pence’s legal team drove the boxes back to Washington, DC, and handed them over to the Archives to review the rest of the material for compliance with the Presidential Records Act.

In a letter to the National Archives obtained by CNN, Pence’s representative to the Archives Greg Jacob wrote that a “small number of documents bearing classified markings” were inadvertently boxed and transported to the vice president’s home.

“Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence,” Jacob wrote. “Vice President Pence understands the high importance of protecting sensitive and classified information and stands ready and willing to cooperate fully with the National Archives and any appropriate inquiry.”

 

So the goalposts have now moved to Obama, with the MAGA Chuds calling for his home to be raided by armed FBI agents to discover the classified documents he's "surely hiding from America" and such nonsense.

 

Maybe you guys can raid Jimmy Carter's house while you're at it. 

In all seriousness, note how Pence is cooperating completely, and yet this story will vanish tomorrow, because it can't be used to hurt President Biden or help Donald Trump.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

If Joe Manchin thought for a moment that blocking Democratic initiatives would earn him points with Republicans, his good colleague Rick Scott is openly running NRSC ads in West Virginia calling for Manchin to announce his retirement now so that the GOP can take his seat.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is portraying Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) as a Davos-trekking elitist in a direct mail and digital ad campaign directed at West Virginia voters.

Why it matters: The NRSC's early anti-Manchin messaging is part of a pressure campaign designed to dissuade him from seeking a third term. Manchin is the only Democrat who can realistically hold a Senate seat in one of the most conservative states in the country.

"I haven't made a decision what I'm going to do in 2024. I've got two years ahead of me now to do the best I can for the state and for my country," Manchin said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Details: The NRSC mailer hits Manchin for traveling to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. "Instead of working in West Virginia, Joe Manchin is hanging out in Switzerland," the back of the mailer reads.

The digital ad tags Manchin as "Maserati Manchin," attacking him for living a luxurious lifestyle — owning a fancy car, luxury yacht and racking up big bills at gourmet restaurants.

The bottom line: Manchin's decision to travel to a conference of international jet-setters — along with his public teasing of a possible 2024 presidential campaign — aren't consistent with the actions of a senator trying to lock down his seat in West Virginia.

 

Like him or not, Manchin is the only possible Senate win in WV for the Dems. Anyone else would lose by 25 points. West Virginia is MAGA country for the foreseeable future.  He's got to be the number one target for the NRSC, and they aren't waiting a moment to try to bury him.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

So yeah, infamous Putinista oligarch and US-sanctioned crook Oleg Deripaska managed to buy himself a former FBI SAC to investigate a rival, and, well, gosh that's illegal, champ.

A former top FBI official in New York has been arrested over his ties to a Russian oligarch, law enforcement sources told ABC News Monday.

Charles McGonigal, who was the special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI's New York Field Office, is under arrest over his ties to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who has been sanctioned by the United States and criminally charged last year with violating those sanctions.

McGonigal retired from the FBI in 2018. He was arrested Saturday afternoon after he arrived at JFK Airport following travel in Sri Lanka, the sources said.

He was charged along with a court interpreter, Sergey Shestakov, who also worked with Deripaska.

McGonigal, 54, is charged with violating U.S. sanctions by trying to get Deripaska off the sanctions list. McGonigal is one of the highest ranking former FBI officials ever charged with a crime.

McGonigal and Shestakov, who worked for the FBI investigating oligarchs, allegedly agreed in 2021 to investigate a rival Russian oligarch in return for payments from Deripaska, according to the Justice Department. McGonigal and Shestakov are accused of receiving payments through shell companies and forging signatures in order to keep it a secret that Deripaska was paying them.

Both face money laundering charges in addition to charges for violating sanctions. Each of four counts carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

 

You have to admit that Deripaska didn't aim low. He bought the former FBI Special Agent-in-Charge of the NYC bureau's Counterintelligence division, which is exactly the person who would be investigating US citizens violating international money laundering operations by Russian oligarchs as possible national security risks as terrorism funding.

It's like the world's most notorious bank robbery crew hiring the FBI's top bank robbery investigator to help them rob a bank.

Which is basically what Deripaska did.

McGonigal needs to go away for a very, very long time.

Bonus points: when James Comey put McGonigal in charge of the NYC counterterrorism division in 2016, his job was to investigate, among other international money laundering terrorist oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska. And somebody from that field office leaked Hillary Clinton's emails just before the election.

Give you three guesses as to who would have been in charge of finding the leaker, and the first four don't count.

Last Call For Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Another weekend, another deadly mass shooting in America, as police officials say an elderly suspect shot up a Lunar New Year's celebration in California before taking his own life.

Authorities have identified the man responsible for a deadly shooting inside a Monterey Park dance studio as 72-year-old Hemet resident Huu Can Tran.

Tran died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a strip mall parking lot, law enforcement sources said.

“We still are not clear on the motive,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said. “The investigation continues … we want to know how something this awful can happen.”

The manhunt began after the shooter opened fire inside Star Dance Studio on West Garvey Avenue around 10:20 p.m. Saturday, killing 10 people and injuring 10 others. It was Lunar New Year’s Eve.

About 20 minutes after the shooting in Monterey Park, Tran walked into Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio in nearby Alhambra, officials said. “The suspect walked in there, probably with the intent to kill two more people,” Luna said. “But two community members disarmed him, took possession of his weapon, and the suspect ran away.”

At 10:20 a.m. Sunday, police located the white cargo van that was seen leaving the scene of the shooting near Sepulveda and Hawthorne boulevards in Torrance, Luna said. When officers left their patrol vehicle to make contact with the van occupant, they heard one gunshot come from the van.

At 1 p.m., a SWAT team determined that the suspect had sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities determined the man inside the van was Tran, the mass shooting suspect.

During the search, several pieces of evidence were found inside the van linking the suspect to both locations.

“I can confirm that there are no outstanding suspects,” Luna said.

The weapon taken by community members in Alhambra was a magazine-fed semiautomatic assault pistol, with an extended magazine attached, according to authorities. This particular firearm with an extended magazine is illegal to possess in California.

An advisory from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department identified the suspect as an adult Asian man, about 5 feet 10 inches and weighing 150 pounds. An image showed the man in a black leather jacket, beanie and glasses.

“I still have questions in my mind, which is, what was the motive for this shooter? Did he have a mental illness? Was he a domestic violence abuser? How did he get these guns, and was it through legal means? Well, those questions will have to be answered in the future,” said U.S. Rep. Judy Chu during a Sunday night news conference.

 

We don't know if it was a hate crime, a targeted killing, a random massacre, or what at this point, but what we do know is that the weapon used made it easy for the gunman to shoot 20 people and kill 10 of them, and that absolutely nothing will be done to prevent the next massacre.

 

No other country on earth would tolerate this level of wanton destruction, and make literally hundreds of millions of firearms available to the public to be used for harming others.

 

There was a separate nightclub shooting in Baton Rouge just minutes after the California shooting that left a dozen people wounded as well.

Welcome to Gunmerica. Flights to hell with a bullet leaving daily.

Those Florida Blues

DEMS IN DISARRAY from the Washington Post, but in this case as the subject is Florida's completely moribund Democratic party, the joke is that the Post is kinda correct for once.

 

More than two months after enduring humbling midterm losses, Democrats in Florida are in a state of disorder, with no clear leader, infrastructure, or consensus for rebuilding, according to interviews with more than a dozen organizers, former lawmakers, donors and other leaders.

These factors have compounded their worries about Democrats outside Florida all but writing off the nation’s third most populous state, which was once seen as a marquee battleground. Democrats have struggled there in recent elections, hitting a new low last fall when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won a second term by nearly 20 points and carried majority-Hispanic Miami-Dade County, which a GOP gubernatorial nominee hadn’t done in 20 years. Republicans also secured a supermajority in the state legislature.

Now, as Democrats look to 2024, there are few early signs that Florida will be a top priority for President Biden, who has said he intends to run for reelection. A Biden adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe strategy, said decisions about whether a reelection campaign would invest in Florida would be based in part on the Republican nominee. Some Democrats see little hope of contesting Florida’s 30 electoral votes — only Texas and California are allotted more — in 2024 if DeSantis is the nominee, while there’s a greater opportunity if former president Donald Trump wins the GOP nod.

“The thing about Florida Democrats is we keep learning with every passing year that just when you thought you had hit bottom, you discover that there are new abysses to fall deeper and deeper into,” said Fernand Amandi, a veteran Democratic operative in the state. “There is no plan. There’s nothing. It’s just a state of suspended animation and chaos — and, more than anything, it’s the mournful regret and acceptance that Florida has been cast aside for the long, foreseeable future.”

It is unclear to many Florida Democrats whether they will be able to field a competitive U.S. Senate nominee next year for the seat currently held by Sen. Rick Scott (R); the last time they won a Senate race in the state was 2012. There are currently no Democratic statewide officeholders — a first since Reconstruction.

More immediately, they face the question of who will helm the state party after the recent resignation of Manny Diaz, the embattled chairman who faced mounting calls for him to step down. There is no immediate front-runner for the position, Democrats said, and the Democratic National Committee has no preference for next chair yet, according to a person familiar with the deliberations, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private considerations.

 

To recap, the nation's third most populous state has virtually no Democratic party leadership at this point. The state completely belongs to GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and his anti-trans, anti-Black, white supremacist assholes and there are basically zero plans to confront him from within the state. DeSantis is completely unfettered and can pass whatever laws and decrees that he wants to. It's a one-party state, and that party is utterly corrupt, racist, bigoted, misogynistic, and plain evil.

Florida Democrats certainly aren't going to try to stop him anytime soon because they can't. Like Ohio, Florida is lost to MAGA idiocy and millions will suffer as a result for years to come. The problem is the Florida GOP. The Democrats in the state just don't have the resources to fight this level of bone-numbing, soul-eating stupid.

But they'd better get those resources, because the Florida game plan, starting with Hispanic voters, is coming to as many other states as possible in 2024. The failure by Democrats to counter the Spanish language media version of the Right Wing Noise Machine directly led to major losses in Florida, Texas, and California in 2022, and heading into 2024 the GOP desinformación project is going nationwide in a mutli-million dollar way.

 

Republicans have made notable inroads among Hispanic voters in recent election cycles. Now, a conservative media network is looking to cement and further those gains by trying to become the Fox News of Spanish-speaking America.

Americano Media, which launched in March, is embarking on an aggressive expansion plan to shape center-right Hispanic opinion during the upcoming election cycle. The network has hired more than 80 Latino journalists and producers, are expanding their radio presence to television, and by the end of the year will have studios in Miami, Las Vegas and D.C. with reporters covering the White House, Congress and embedding in 2024 presidential campaigns. This month, Americano is launching a $20 million marketing campaign to draw in new viewers.

It’s the latest development in an arms race to reach and win over the nation’s second-largest demographic group, one playing an increasingly critical role in election outcomes.

“We don’t have a Fox News in Spanish, and that’s what Americano intends to be,” said the network’s CEO and founder Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo. He said he has listened to Hispanic Republican leaders lament for 25 years about the need for something like it, but no one ever took serious action.

Garcia-Hidalgo, who worked as a Hispanic surrogate for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign after a career in telecommunications with Tyco, AT&T and Sprint, said he wants to “blow up” the traditional ways in which conservative Hispanics interact with the media, which he said consisted of going on liberal-leaning networks to “apologize for being Republican, bow your head and take a beating for an hour.”

Americano started with a suite of radio shows out of Miami, where it remains headquartered, but plans to have a presence on television and radio in battleground states across America in the next year, in addition to driving Spanish-speaking audiences to its online and streaming platforms.

To date, Americano Media has raised $18 million from its first three investors, and is set to complete its first and only round of equity investment this spring to generate another $30 to $50 million, Garcia-Hidalgo said. Thomas Woolston, a northern Virginia patent attorney, and Doug Hayden, a San Jose, Calif.-based investor, were the first to provide capital; Americano declined to disclose the third investor. 

 

If you want a good place for Florida Democrats to start fighting back, combating Americano Media is an excellent place to start, eh?

It's easy to say that "Look, if your state's Democratic party is in worse shape than Kentucky, Indiana, or Ohio, which Florida most definitely qualifies as, you're in real trouble, and so increasingly is America."

But never forget the villains here are the GOP. And they're winning.

Presenting, Not Lamenting, The Zients King

The Biden White House is moving extremely quickly on replacing outgoing Chief of Staff Ron Klain, and former WH COVID response czar/Midterm shuffle transition aide Jeff Zients is the person for the job.

President Biden will name Jeff Zients to serve as his next chief of staff, turning to a management consultant who oversaw the administration’s coronavirus response to replace Ron Klain, who is expected to leave in the coming weeks, according to four people familiar with the decision.

Zients left the White House in April after steering the administration’s pandemic response and leading the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history. He returned to the White House in the fall to help Klain prepare for staff turnover after the midterms — a project that was ultimately limited in scope, as few senior staff members have left across the administration. But, in recent weeks, Klain has assigned him different projects, which some viewed as preparing Zients for the top role, people familiar with the arrangement said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

Zients takes over the top job as Biden is entering a new and challenging stretch of his presidency: Republicans have already launched a barrage of investigations into the administration and the business dealings of the president’s son. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the handling of classified documents found at Biden’s personal office and Wilmington, Del., home. And Biden is preparing to launch his reelection bid.

Zients comes into the job with a vastly different profile than Klain: His first government job was during the Obama administration, and he has spent most of his career in the private sector. He has only ever worked in the executive branch. His personal Twitter account has no posts.

But colleagues have praised Zients as a master implementer who engenders deep loyalty from the people he oversees.

As Biden ramps up his political activity, some Democrats said they expect the structure of the chief of staff role to change, with Biden’s political advisers, including Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, taking on even more prominence in the building.

They compared the arrangement to that of the Obama White House, when Jack Lew served as chief of staff in 2012 and focused on keeping the federal government running, while David Plouffe, a political strategist, came into the White House from 2011 to 2013 as a senior adviser to oversee the reelection campaign. Democrats say Dunn, a senior adviser, will serve in a Plouffe-like role.

 

So the message being sent here is that Zients is a fighter and will be free to take on the House GOP Circus of the Damned, while Anita Dunn will run Biden's 2024 campaign.

Having said that, Zients will certainly find himself a giant target of House Republicans, both for his new role and for his runningCOVID-19 response last year. Let's hope he's as much of a combatant as he is a manager, because Kevin McCarthy's clown crew is definitely going to try to drag him into hearing after hearing.

We'll see how he fares, but it looks like this has been in the works for a while now, and he's had time to prepare for the sheer magnitude of the job ahead, and the stakes that are in play, starting with the GOP trying to default on America's debt and pitch us headfirst into a depression with millions of job losses and untold misery.

No pressure, Jeff...

Last Call For Documenting Both Sides

With news that a voluntary Justice Department search of President Biden's Delaware residence turned up more classified documents from when Biden was a Delaware senator, the effort to paint Biden's full cooperation as worse than Trump's year-plus long cavalcade of lies, mistruths, and efforts to illegally keep hundreds of documents is underway in our "liberal" press, and the latest polling is showing that it's working as intended.

Strong majorities of Americans believe that both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump acted inappropriately when it came to their handling of classified documents, but in weighing their severity, a plurality of the public believes Trump's actions were more serious, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.

Over three-quarters of the public, 77%, feel that Trump acted inappropriately in the way he handled classified files, while 64%, say the same of Biden. Condemnation expectedly aligns along party lines, with 96% of Democrats saying that Trump's handling of classified documents was not appropriate compared to 47% of Republicans.

More than eight in 10 independents (83%), believe that Trump's behavior was inappropriate, per the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.

Reaction to Biden's actions on this matter similarly varies by party, with 89% of Republicans saying that Biden's handling of classified documents was not appropriate compared to 38% of Democrats and two-thirds of independents (66%).

Both Biden and Trump are under heavy scrutiny due to the discovery of classified files located amid personal items or in unsecured facilities, instead of housed at the National Archives where they belong, though there are key differences in each case.

Earlier this month, reports revealed that a small number of such documents were found in November at an office Biden kept in Washington, D.C. More documents have since been found in his Wilmington, Delaware, home.

The White House maintains that aides immediately contacted the Archives upon learning of the Biden documents and are cooperating fully with the Department of Justice. Trump, on the other hand, faces allegations from the DOJ of obstruction of justice, after his team allegedly left out key details and made multiple unfounded or false claims with investigators during initial efforts to retrieve classified documents stored in his Mar-a-Lago home.

Both now face special counsel investigations appointed by the Justice Department.

The poll was conducted before the Saturday revelation that DOJ investigators found additional classified documents after a consensual FBI search of Biden's Delaware home.

 

As a result, the Villagers have already declared Biden's 2024 run dead and buried, and are openly speculating on whether or not That Horrible Cackling Bitch Kamala Harris™ will even bother to run.

 

Republicans seem to think this is a plot to force Biden out of office and are counting the days before his resignation...after his inevitable impeachment.

A lot of people have decided that Biden and Harris are done.

I'm not one of them, of course. Biden followed the law.

Trump still hasn't.

That's the difference.

 

Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Kids have to be taught to hate, and kids have to be taught to shoot, too. Of course the Virginia elementary school teacher shot by a first-grade MAGA kid who brought one of his family's many, many firearms to school had her pleas that the kid was a time bomb ignored.

 

The Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student repeatedly asked administrators for help with the boy but officials downplayed educators’ warnings about his behavior, including dismissing his threat to light a teacher on fire and watch her die, according to messages from teachers obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously unreported incidents raise fresh questions about how Richneck Elementary School in Newport News handled the troubled student before police say he shot Abigail Zwerner as she taught her first-grade class earlier this month. Authorities have called the shooting “intentional” but are still investigating the motive.

Many parents are already outraged over Richneck officials’ management of events before the shooting. Newport News Superintendent George Parker III has said school officials got a tip the boy had a gun that day and searched his backpack, but that staffers never found the weapon before authorities say the 6-year-old shot Zwerner. Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said his department was not contacted about the report that the boy had a weapon before the shooting.

Police and school officials have repeatedly declined to answer questions about the boy’s disciplinary issues or worrisome behaviors the 6-year-old may have exhibited and how school officials responded, citing the child’s age and the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The boy’s family said in a statement he has an “acute disability,” but James Ellenson, an attorney for the family, declined to comment on accounts of the boy’s behavior or how it was handled by the school.

School district spokeswoman Michelle Price said in a phone interview late Friday that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting students’ privacy, prohibits her from releasing information related to the 6-year-old.

“I cannot share any information in a child’s educational record,” she said. “A lot of what you’re asking is part of the child’s educational record, and it’s also a matter of an ongoing police investigation and an internal school investigation. Unfortunately, some of these details I’m not even privy to.”

Screenshots of a conversation held online between school employees and Parker shortly after the shooting show educators claiming that Zwerner raised alarms about the 6-year-old and sought assistance during the school year.

“she had asked for help,” one staffer wrote in that chat, referring to Zwerner.

“several times,” came another message.

“Yes she did.”

“two hours prior”

“all year.”

The messages, which were provided to The Post by the spouse of a Richneck Elementary schoolteacher, do not detail what specific assistance Zwerner sought, or to whom she directed her requests. Zwerner and her family have not returned repeated messages from The Washington Post.

 

Again, this battle was lost ten years ago at Sandy Hook. If anything, guns in schools are far more prevalent today, because America fucking refuses to do anything about it, and anything we try gets blocked by the gun fetishists.

 

Even at the cost of kids' lives.

 

They all want to be Kyle Rittenhouse. They all want to kill liberals and get away with murder in "self-defense". 

And they won't be stopped by asking nicely.

Sunday Long Read: Charlie And The Great Class Excavator

This week's Sunday Long Read comes from the NY Times's Rob Lieber, who brings us yet another colossal Millennial con, the story of how 30-year-old Charlie Javice took the mighty JP Morgan Chase to the cleaners for $175 million dollar investment in her entirely fake college financial planning empire.

When JPMorgan Chase paid $175 million to acquire a college financial planning company called Frank in September 2021, it heralded the “unique opportunity for deeper engagement” with the five million students Frank worked with at more than 6,000 American institutions of higher education.

Then last month, the biggest bank in the country did something extraordinary: It said it had been conned.

In a lawsuit, JPMorgan claimed that Frank’s young founder, Charlie Javice, had engaged in an elaborate scheme to stuff that list of five million customers with fakery.

“To cash in, Javice decided to lie,” the suit said. “Including lying about Frank’s success, Frank’s size and the depth of Frank’s market penetration.” Ms. Javice, through her lawyer, has said the bank’s claims are untrue.

JPMorgan’s legal filing reads like pulp nonfiction, with jaw-dropping accusations. Among them: that Ms. Javice and Olivier Amar, Frank’s chief growth and acquisition officer, faked their customer list and hired a data science professor to help pull the wool over the eyes of the bank’s due-diligence team.

What JPMorgan mostly left out, however, is the story of how Ms. Javice found herself in a nine-figure negotiation with the bank in the first place.

When Frank was born, in 2016, Ms. Javice was 24 years old, displayed great media savvy and claimed to have real-world experience with financial aid and the struggle to pay for college. “It’s grueling, it’s emotional,” she told The Daily Pennsylvanian, a student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania, adding that her mother would frequently cry while talking to financial aid officers.

Ms. Javice’s personal story — and pledge to cut through the painful thicket of government forms, jargon and regulations surrounding the aid process — must have made compelling reading for angel investors and venture capitalists. Especially those who have little firsthand knowledge of how financial aid actually works.

By promising to help users file financial aid forms more quickly and easily — and deliver billions in savings to teenagers who needed help — her business plan had the halo of doing well while doing good. It eventually added a dot-org web address for good measure.

“I thought it would be an advocacy organization,” said Carly Gillis, who was Frank’s director of content and community for several months in 2018. “A real David and Goliath story.”

At least some of its good deeds, however, may never have been done or were at least highly exaggerated. When many people were still home during the pandemic, Frank started offering “amazing prices” for online classes that earned “real college credits.” This past week, however, schools that appeared on Frank’s website with hundreds of supposedly available courses expressed confusion in interviews about their presence on the site during that period. At one school, nobody had ever even heard of the company.

Ms. Javice’s story is an archetypal tale of late-stage start-up hustle culture — a teenage prodigy turned Ivy League social enterprise maven and shape-shifting savior of higher education.

Or so she would have the world believe.

 

Now, this is a story of nine-figure fraud and corporate greed on a fantastic level, all made possible by a completely broken higher education system that preys on the least wealthy and most needful of us.

 

But I can't be completely furious with Javice, as she absolutely fucked JP Morgan Chase over for $175 big ones, and it couldn't have happened to a shittier bank (except maybe Wells Fargo.) 

I'm really kind of cool with that.

Last Call For Klain Jumpers

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain is out, as the Biden Administration goes from historic accomplishments to a war footing with the House GOP Circus of the Damned.

 

Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff who has steered President Biden’s administration through two years of triumphs and setbacks, is expected to step down in coming weeks in the most significant changing of the guard since Mr. Biden took office two years ago.

Mr. Klain has been telling colleagues privately since the November midterm elections that after a grueling, nonstop stretch at Mr. Biden’s side going back to the 2020 campaign, he is ready to move on, according to senior administration officials, and a search for a replacement has been underway.

The officials, who discussed internal matters on condition of anonymity, would not say whether a successor has already been picked or when the decision would be announced, but indicated that it would come at some point after the president outlined his agenda for the coming year in his State of the Union address on Feb. 7. Mr. Klain likely would stay around for a transition period to help the next chief settle into the corner office that has been his command post for many crises and legislative battles.

His resignation would be a striking moment of turnover at the top of an administration that has been relatively stable through the first half of Mr. Biden’s term, and Mr. Klain takes pride that he has lasted longer than any other Democratic president’s first chief of staff in more than half a century. But with Mr. Biden expected to announce by spring that he is running for re-election, advisers predict more moves as some aides shift from the White House to the campaign.

The departure would also come at a time when the White House faces a widening array of political and legal threats from a newly appointed special counsel investigating the improper handling of classified documents and a flurry of other inquiries by the newly installed Republican majority in the House. The next chief of staff will be charged with managing the defense of Mr. Biden’s White House and any counterattack as the 2024 election approaches.

Among the possible choices to replace Mr. Klain mentioned by senior officials are Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh; former Gov. Jack A. Markell of Delaware, now serving as ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden; Steven J. Ricchetti, the counselor to the president; Jeffrey D. Zients, the administration’s former coronavirus response coordinator; Susan Rice, the White House domestic policy adviser; and Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture.

Neither Mr. Klain nor any of those named as possible candidates to succeed him had any immediate comment on Saturday in response to messages. Ms. Dunn has flatly ruled out taking the job in conversations with colleagues.

Mr. Klain has been a singularly important figure in Mr. Biden’s administration. Having worked for Mr. Biden off and on for more than three decades, admirers say that Mr. Klain channels the president as few others can. He is seen as so influential that Republicans derisively call him a virtual prime minister and Democrats blame him when they are disappointed in a decision.

For all the crossfire, Mr. Klain helped rack up an impressive string of legislative victories, including a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure program, the largest investment in combating climate change in history and measures to expand benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, lower prescription drug costs for seniors, spur development in the semiconductor industry and create a minimum 15 percent tax rate for major corporations.

Mr. Klain also helped oversee the distribution of vaccines that have curbed if not ended the Covid-19 pandemic and the enactment of a plan to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars of student loan debt for millions of Americans. And he set the tone for the White House message to the world through an active Twitter account that he used to promote victories and jab critics.

On Friday, for instance, he chided Republicans for their approach to federal spending. “How extreme is the House GOP plan to cut Social Security and Medicare?” he wrote. “So extreme that even Donald Trump is saying, ‘Hey, that’s too extreme for me!’”

 

Two observations: One, Klain was spectacular at the job, or maybe I've just lived in politics in an era where the list of former White House Chiefs of Staff included James Baker, Leon Panetta, Andy Card, Rahm Emmanuel, Reince Priebus, John Kelly, and Mark Meadows.

Certainly Klain has done the best job since Obama's second term maestro, Denis McDonough, who doesn't nearly get enough credit considering who came after him (he was Obama's former head of the NSC and was largely responsible for the Iran containment strategy which Trump and his chuds wrecked) but he'll go down as the Man Who Got Shit Done, especially on infrastructure and the environment.

The question is who will step up in his place, now that the next 23 months plus will be nothing but investigations by Kevin McCarthy's clowns?