Last Call For The House GOP Circus Of The Damned, Con't

New Speaker, same old incompetence as America rushes towards a GOP caused shutdown, completely unable to pass their massive spending cuts because gosh, they're unpopular.

House Republicans closed out the week by canceling votes on two party-line funding bills in the span of 48 hours, a setback for new Speaker Mike Johnson and a sign of persisting dysfunction in the chamber ahead of a key funding deadline.

They pulled a transportation-housing bill late Tuesday as some coastal Republicans opposed cuts to Amtrak. And they yanked a financial services and general government measure on Thursday morning that included divisive anti-abortion language.

It's a step backward for Johnson, R-La., who had hoped to show progress on appropriations bills championed by his party's conservative wing in order to secure their votes to pass a short-term bill that would keep the government open beyond the Nov. 17 deadline.

And it shows how ungovernable the House continues to be after right-wing Republicans ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy over complaints about his handling of government funding.

"I don't think the Lord Jesus himself could manage this group," said Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas. He added that he would pray for the new speaker as the House adjourned for a long weekend.

"We’re still dealing with the same divisions we always have had," said another House Republican. "We’re ungovernable."

On Capitol Hill, questions abound about how the new speaker will handle his first big test in a divided government, where he must balance the demands of ultraconservatives with a Democratic-led Senate and president.

"I think there's a honeymoon period here. I'm not sure how long it lasts, maybe 30 days," said Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. "But with what's going on on the floor today, I think that indicates the honeymoon might be shorter than we thought."

This week, Johnson held multiple meetings with groups of rank-and-file Republicans about a path forward on a short-term funding bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR. But lawmakers didn’t get a good read on Johnson's yet-to-be-unveiled strategy: Some thought he might go with a “clean” CR without controversial policy add-ons that would fund the government into January, while others believed the speaker would back a two-step CR proposed by members of the far-right Freedom Caucus.

"He wants a simple plan that will pass the Senate," said moderate Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who met with Johnson on Wednesday along with roughly 20 other lawmakers. "We should do the hard fights on appropriations and the border, and all that stuff. We shouldn't have the hard fight on the CR — let's keep the government open and make it bipartisan."

Republicans said Johnson will need to make a call on a CR strategy by Friday to abide by the 72-hour rule, which gives lawmakers sufficient time to read the legislation before voting on it early next week. Members departed Washington on Thursday afternoon and will return on Monday.

"We've got to get the Senate something, and you'll see us get the Senate something," said conservative Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., who met with Johnson and is pushing for the two-step process that's been termed a "laddered CR."

But of course there's no reason to believe that the House GOP can pass anything without Democratic votes, and that puts us right back where we were when McCarthy got tossed. 

Mike Johnson might not survive the month as Speaker.

The Auto Loan Crisis Is Back, Too

High interest rates, chip shortages, and high auto prices are resulting in the worst auto loan market in three decades.

 

Higher car prices and rising interest rates are hindering car owners’ ability to afford their vehicle payments, as 6.1% of subprime auto borrowers are at least 60 days past due on their loans, the highest percentage in data dating back to 1994, according to Bloomberg, which cited Fitch Ratings.

The 6.1% of borrowers behind on auto loans last month marks a surge from the 2.6% reported in May 2021, after the federal government significantly lowered interest rates in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Higher vehicle prices and borrowing costs—along with continued higher than usual inflation—have fueled the rising number of Americans behind on their auto loans, a problem that might persist given forecasts from Federal Reserve officials who believe high interest rates will continue through 2026.

Margaret Rowe, a senior executive at Fitch, told Bloomberg subprime borrowers can be the first indication of “where we start to see the negative effects of macroeconomic headwinds.”

Generation Z and millennials may account for a significant amount of the borrowers behind on their auto loans, as the two generations recorded auto loan delinquency rates last year that were significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to an NBC News report that cited TransUnion.

Interest rates for used cars are 13.5% on average for those with fair credit but can rocket up to around 21% for those with the worst credit, according to Bankrate.

Rising car prices have in part been caused by a pandemic-induced computer chip shortage, and some chip shortages could continue into 2024, according to J.P. Morgan.

I know we've managed to avoid a recession so far with this week's stellar GDP report and we have more protections in place than we did fifteen years ago, but I'll be damned if this doesn't all feel like the Great Recession is coming. More likely, the massive economic damage from Trump and Covid is only playing out now and the medicine is painful, but the alternative really is another Great Recession, and if we don't stop the guy who got us into this mess in 2019 and he wins in 2024, we are absolutely sunk as an economy.

We've avoided the crack-up for now, but it's going to take years to dig ourselves out of the Trump mess. If we put ourselves back in it, we're not coming up for air.

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

There are still plenty of warning signs ahead in the housing, auto loan, and student loan sectors, but for now, not only is America's economy growing under Bidenomics, it's skyrocketing.

 

The U.S. economy grew by an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter, the strongest pace since 2021, as spending — by families, businesses and the government — accelerated, even in the face of fast-rising borrowing costs.

New government data released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that gross domestic product expanded between July and September, capping five straight quarters of growth and eluding a long-feared recession.

The economy’s resilience is a product of a strong job market and extra pandemic savings, which have made it possible for people to keep spending despite inflation and rising interest rates. Robust government hiring — including 214,000 new jobs between July and September — also added to overall strength.

“It’s enough to knock me over with a feather,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG. “We’ve had the most aggressive credit tightening from the Federal Reserve since the 1980s and, guess what, the economy’s accelerating. We really underestimated how much consumers could keep spending."

That spending was broad-based in the third quarter, with U.S. households doubling down on both necessities, such as housing, utilities and prescription drugs, as well as luxuries including dining out, hotel stays and recreation. Businesses and the federal government also continued to spend, though GDP was dragged down by lower non-residential investments.

Overall, the latest spike in GDP is more than double the previous quarter’s annual growth rate of 2.1 percent.

What isn’t clear yet is whether higher borrowing costs could reverse some of these gains in the months to come. Economists say that acceleration in economic growth is likely to slow later this year, as pandemic-era savings dry up and millions of households resume student loan payments. Fears of a government shutdown, ongoing strikes by actors and autoworkers, and worsening wars in Ukraine and Gaza are also adding to the uncertainty.

“The U.S. consumer has so been hanging tough and powering the economy forward, but I expect much slower growth the rest of the year,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who expects economic growth to slow to an annualized rate of 1 percent in the fourth quarter. “There are a lot of headwinds out there.”

In Cincinnati, Dominique Walker just made her first student loan payment in more than three years — which means she’s rethinking all sorts of other expenses, including manicures, massages and morning coffees. She’s packing her lunch a lot more and expects to spend less this holiday season than she has been.

“I’m having to rebalance things,” said Walker, 32, a data management specialist at a hospital. “That extra $305 a month, that has to come from somewhere.”

 

The bad news is that voters think the economy is the worst they've seen in decades.

 

The Fed has lifted borrowing costs 11 times since March 2022, with the goal of slowing the economy enough to stabilize prices. Mortgage rates, at 7.6 percent, are at a two-decade high, and the housing market has all but come to a standstill. But economists say that has freed up Americans to spend elsewhere. Expenditures at restaurants, movie theaters and sporting events have all risen in the past few months, helping support continued hiring in those industries.

Meanwhile, inflation has moderated — to 3.7 percent from last summer’s peak of 9.1 percent — though it remains far higher than the Fed would like.

The spate of growth is welcome news for the White House, which has invested heavily in infrastructure as part of its “Bidenomics” plan. But despite $302 billion in spending, it has struggled to convince voters that its economic policies are working for them. Biden’s ratings on economic matters are lower than ever, with just 32 percent of Americans saying they approve of the president’s handling of the economy in a recent CNBC poll. 

 

The disconnect is staggering. Giving the economy back to Trump would be catastrophic. But tens of millions of Americans want to do just that.

 

A Bleak Test Case For College

A new NY Times analysis finds that rich kids score far higher on SATs/ACTs than poor kids, which is news something akin to "the sun is a burny hot fusion sphere" because it was true when I was in college 30 years ago, but it's even more true now and to an even more astonishing degree.

 

New data shows, for the first time at this level of detail, how much students’ standardized test scores rise with their parents’ incomes — and how disparities start years before students sit for tests.

One-third of the children of the very richest families scored a 1300 or higher, while less than 5 percent of middle-class students did, according to the data, from economists at Opportunity Insights, based at Harvard. Relatively few children in the poorest families scored that high; just one in five took the test at all.

The researchers matched all students’ SAT and ACT scores for 2011, 2013 and 2015 with their parents’ federal income tax records for the prior six years. Their analysis, which also included admissions and attendance records, found that children from very rich families are overrepresented at elite colleges for many reasons, including that admissions offices give them preference. But the test score data highlights a more fundamental reason: When it comes to the types of achievement colleges assess, the children of the rich are simply better prepared.

The disparity highlights the inequality at the heart of American education: Starting very early, children from rich and poor families receive vastly different educations, in and out of school, driven by differences in the amount of money and time their parents are able to invest. And in the last five decades, as the country has become more unequal by income, the gap in children’s academic achievement, as measured by test scores throughout schooling, has widened.

“Kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods end up behind the starting line even when they get to kindergarten,” said Sean Reardon, the professor of poverty and inequality in education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

“On average,” he added, “our schools aren’t very good at undoing that damage.”

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision ending race-based affirmative action, there has been revived political momentum to address the ways in which many colleges favor the children of rich and white families, such as legacy admissions, preferences for private school students, athletic recruitment in certain sports and standardized tests.

Yet these things reflect the difference in children’s opportunities long before they apply for college, Professor Reardon said. To address the deeper inequality in education, he said, “it’s 18 years too late.”

The children of the top 0.1 percent, whose parents earned an average of $11.3 million a year in today’s dollars, got far better scores than even the children of the families just below them, the new data shows. For the 12,000 students in this group, opportunities that drive achievement were amplified — exclusive private schools, summers traveling the world and college prep services that cost more than college itself — said John N. Friedman, an economist at Brown, who analyzed the new data with Raj Chetty and David J. Deming of Harvard.

But the larger inequality is between the children of the merely rich and those below them. As class differences have grown more extreme, and a college degree has become more crucial to achieving a middle-class lifestyle or better, it has bred competition among parents anxious about their children’s futures.

“People are kind of jockeying to get into the school district that they think is going to be most beneficial for their kid,” said Ann Owens, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, who studies inequality in education. “A lot of this is driven by rising income inequality. When people have more money to spend on stuff, they’re spending it on moving to an affluent neighborhood, or buying their kids test prep and tutors and all these things they think will help them.”

 

And why wouldn't parents help their kids with college test prep? Mine did. The more money you have available, the more assistance you can buy. It's an investment that pays off in the millions over the course of a career.

 

And remember, these numbers are from ten years ago, 2011, 2013, and 2015. It's even worse now in the post-pandemic, assistive-AI, post-affirmative action era of 2023 which we're only now starting to experience.

 

The book on this era of college admissions is being written now, and if you thought disparity was bad before, well...

Oil's Well That Ends Badly, Con't

Yet another massive oil giant consolidation buyout as Chevron buys Hess for $53 billion as record oil industry profits fuel tens of billions in stock buybacks and ludicrous executive bonuses, all while Americans continue to get robbed at the pump.

Chevron announced Monday that it has agreed to buy rival Hess in yet another oil industry consolidation deal.

Cash-rich oil giants are taking advantage of high prices and surging profits to snap up assets and boost returns for shareholders even as pressure builds for them to invest more in renewable energy.

The deal, worth $53 billion plus debt, would give Chevron even greater access to US shale production in Texas’ Permian Basin, a part of the industry where Chevron (CVX) has been a leader for years. Hess (HES) also has large oil assets in Guyana, which Chevron said would help grow its production over the next decade.

“This combination positions Chevron to strengthen our long-term performance and further enhance our advantaged portfolio by adding world-class assets,” said Chevron Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth.

Wirth said Chevron and Hess will be able to merge seamlessly, sharing “similar values and cultures,” including a commitment to “lowering carbon,” although environmental advocates have been very critical of oil companies’ slow acceptance of renewable energy alternatives.

Chevron said buying Hess would increase the company’s free cash flow, giving the company more cash on hand in the long term to do more share repurchases. Chevron said that it would increase buybacks of its stock by $2.5 billion to $20 billion a year.

Critics have slammed oil companies for spending tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks rather than easing the pain for consumers at the pump or investing more heavily in the energy transition. Already cash rich, oil companies have scored record profits after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pinched oil supplies and sent prices higher.

ExxonMobil (XOM) last year made a record $1,874 of profit for every second during the course of 2022.

Those profits have made oil companies deal-happy. Two weeks ago, Exxon announced it would buy shale company Pioneer for $60 billion, a deal that would more than double Exxon’s Permian Basin operations if it is completed.

It’s not clear whether ExxonMobil or Chevron will face antitrust hurdles to completing their deals. The Biden administration has been far more active in challenging corporate power on antitrust grounds than recent administrations.

Shares of Chevron slipped 3% in premarket trading following the deal announcement, while Hess’ shares were slightly higher. Since the start of 2022, just ahead of the big run-up in oil prices following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Hess shares are up 120%, while Chevron shares are up 42%.

 

Again, the industry is raking in record profits at our expense and any efforts to do anything about it get opposed by two-thirds of Congress and two-thirds of SCOTUS, all while the planet roasts. Something's got to give soon, whether it's the oil industry or the people at the pump.

Oil's been hovering around $80 all year, with gas prices around $3.50 a gallon. A brand-new Middle East war sparked by Israel and Hamas will only drive oil back up above $100 a barrel or higher, and the industry titans will only get more money as a result.

Our unsustainable energy situation is getting even more unsustainable. A crack-up is coming and when it does, all bets are off.

Mr. Jones Goes To Poverty

A federal judge has ruled that white supremacist whackjob Alex Jones cannot use bankruptcy to get out of his billion-dollar plus judgment for defaming Sandy Hook families.

 

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use his personal bankruptcy to escape paying at least $1.1 billion in defamation damages stemming from his repeated lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday.

Bankruptcy can be used to wipe out debts and legal judgments, but not if they result from "willful or malicious injury" caused by the debtor, according to a decision by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston, Texas.

Courts in Connecticut and Texas have already ruled that Jones intentionally defamed relatives of school children killed in the mass shooting, and they have ordered Jones to pay $1.5 billion in damages.

Lopez ruled that more than $1.1 billion of those verdicts, awarded for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, cannot be wiped away in bankruptcy. But he ruled that other parts of the verdicts, including $324 million in attorneys' fees that were awarded as punitive damages in the Connecticut case, could possibly be discharged.

It was not clear whether those punitive damages were attributable to "willful" and "malicious" lies, or whether they could instead be attributed to merely "reckless" conduct, Lopez wrote. Lopez said he will hold a trial to sort out the precise amount of the damages that could be discharged.

Attorneys for Jones and the Sandy Hook families did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

Jones is going to owe these families the better part of hundreds of millions, and he's going to have to pay up. The system works, at least in this one case. 

We'll see what the judge comes up with as a figure, but I'm hoping it's enough to break Jones completely, both his back account and the shriveled raisin he calls a soul.

The Housing Crisis Is Back

I've been warning of another 2008-style housing sector crash for a while now, and it looks like we're getting close to the current bubble bursting and taking the economy with it.

 

Sales of previously owned homes dropped 2% in September from August to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 3.96 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sales were 15.4% lower compared with September 2022.

This is the slowest sales pace since October 2010, during the Great Recession, when the market was in the midst of a foreclosure crisis. As a comparison, just two years ago, when mortgage rates hovered around 3%, home sales were running at a 6.6 million pace. The average rate on the 30-year fixed today is right around 8%, according to Mortgage News Daily.

“As has been the case throughout this year, limited inventory and low housing affordability continue to hamper home sales,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “The Federal Reserve simply cannot keep raising interest rates in light of softening inflation and weakening job gains.”

There were 1.13 million homes for sale at the end of September, down more than 8% from a year ago. Inventory is now at a 3.4-month supply, which is slightly better than last year, but only because sales have dropped so much. Supply is based on the current sales pace.

Adding to higher mortgage rates, the median price of a home sold in September was $394,300, up 2.8% year over year. Roughly 26% of home sold above list price, due to the lack of supply which is resulting in bidding wars.

First-time buyers made up just 27% of sales. Historically, they make up about 40%.

While sales were lower across all price points, they fell the least on the higher end. That’s because there is more supply at the higher price points and because higher-end buyers can often use cash. Mortgage demand is now at the lowest level since 1995, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

All-cash sales made up 29% of all September transactions, up from 27% in August and up from 22% in September of last year.

“Although affordability is a headwind, the renewed upward energy that followed the Fed’s September projections might have prompted some shoppers to rush to the closing table, lest they face higher mortgage rates and even worse affordability in the months ahead. If so, this could mean a bigger lull in sales activity in the coming months,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com, in a release.

 

This all should feel very, very familiar to ZVTS readers, except it's not bundled mortgage tranches that's going to kill us, it's hedge funds and venture capitalists with hundreds of billions buying up every house in your county to keep prices artificially high by creating scarcity. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of games being played on Wall Street, but this time the Too Big To Fail recipients will be gigantic hedge funds and Silly Valley vampires.

 

When those prices stop going up at the Big Casino, a lot of wealth is going to vanish again. Maybe trillions this time.  It won't be "We don't know who owns this mortgage" but "We know exactly who owns it and if they don't get bailed out, the economy will collapse."

When you have almost a third of housing transactions being made in all cash, that's unsustainable. Eventually nobody's going to be able to afford the rent and the property goes fallow, and these hedge fund mega-landlords aren't going to be able to sell at all.

 

And if the housing bubble exploding doesn't crash the economy, well, the banks are running for the hills because Jerome Powell is almost certainly going to raise interest rates again until the economy breaks, and the way things are going in the US House, the federal government will augur in halfway through next month.

And then?

KABOOM.

Getting Drugged Out

With pharmacy chain Rite Aid filing for bankruptcy this week, and the other big pharmacy chains in CVS and Walgreens expected to close hundreds of locations, it's looking like the pharmacy may go the way of the video store by the end of the decade.

 

Drugstore chains for decades saturated US cities, suburbs and small towns with new stores.

Now, they are closing thousands of stores, leaving gaps in communities for medicines and essentials. Researchers find pharmacy closures lead to health risks such as older adults failing to take medication.

Rite Aid, the third largest standalone pharmacy chain, filed for bankruptcy Sunday and will reportedly close roughly 400 to 500 of its approximately 2,200 stores.

Rite Aid was undone by competition from larger rivals, its $3.3 billion debt load, and expensive legal battles for its alleged role in fueling the opioid crisis.

It comes amid walkouts by Walgreens pharmacists and technicians around the country and at CVS stores in Kansas City over low pay and understaffed stores.
Drug store struggles

Rite Aid’s bankruptcy reflects long-term struggles in the retail pharmacy industry.

The majority of drugstores’ sales comes from filling prescriptions. But their profits from that segment have declined in recent years because of lower reimbursement rates for prescription drugs.

The front end of drugstores, where they sell snacks and household staples, also face pressure.

CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid are eliminating some locations as they face rising competition for these items from Amazon, big-box stores with pharmacies like Walmart, and Dollar General in rural areas.

Although drugstores benefited during the pandemic from people getting Covid-19 vaccines, fewer consumers visited stores to shop and prescription volumes fell because people were getting fewer elective procedures.

“The pandemic was not a strong time for drugstores,” said David Silverman, a senior director at Fitch Ratings.

Theft has become a problem for drugstores in some locations, and some stores have resorted to locking up products to prevent theft. But this has made the customer experience worse.

“Theft appears to be hitting drug retailers more than other categories,” Silverman said.

Drugstores are trying to pivot into the more lucrative health care industry in recent years and become primary care providers. CVS acquired health insurer Aetna, and Walgreens took a majority stake in primary care network VillageMD.

But this strategy requires fewer brick-and-mortar retail stores.

 

Walmart and Target were always threats to drugstore chains, but Amazon is going to finish them off.  Cheap prescriptions that you don't have to pick up and the pharmacist doesn't run out of? Yeah, I can already see how this is going to go.

 

On the other hand, if the Supreme Court gets rid of by-mail abortion pills, I can certainly see brick-and-mortar pharmacy companies ganging up on Amazon.

 

On the gripping hand, if your local chain drugstore isn't careful, they may put themselves out of business too if Congress and/or SCOTUS decide pills by mail is too dangerous. I don't see that happening, but who knows with this Congress, and this SCOTUS?

 

 

Orange Meltldown, Con't

The Trump Organization fraud trial in Manhattan continued as formed CFO Allen Weisselberg took the stand for a second day, but that testimony was cut short as NY AG Tish James's office confirmed they were looking into a Forbes Magazine report from Thursday claiming that Weisselberg committed perjury Tuesday when testifying about the value of Trump's properties in the state.

The Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg’s testimony reached an abrupt and unexpected end on Thursday afternoon, just hours after Forbes magazine accused the convicted tax cheat of perjuring himself during an earlier stint as a witness.

Weisselberg insisted on Tuesday from the witness stand that he “never focused” on calculating the square footage of the former president’s Trump Tower triplex, a three-floor penthouse in his namesake skyscraper.

Two days later, on Thursday, Forbes reported that emails not currently in the attorney general’s possession show otherwise.

A source close to New York Attorney General Letitia James confirmed that her office is looking into the latest Forbes report.

Hours after the publication of that story, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron convened a sidebar with attorneys for the state and defense, but the subject of their private huddle remains unknown. Weisselberg was excused for the day shortly after that conversation, as attorneys for both sides reserved the right to call him back.

I'm not lawyer, but this seems really bad for both Weisselberg and for Trump's defense in the case.

Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander wrote that his old emails and reporter notes contradict those denials, pointing out in his story that "Weisselberg absolutely thought about Trump’s apartment—and played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years that it was worth more than it really was."

"Given the fact that these discussions continued for years, and that Weisselberg took a very detailed approach in reviewing Trump’s assets with Forbes, it defies all logic to think he truly believes what he is now saying in court," Alexander added.

Earlier this week, Trump attacked Alexander by name on Truth Social, labeling him a “psycho” and his news organization a “rag" after it dropped the former president from its world billionaires list for the second time in three years. 

Those Trump social media comments were also posted hours after James entered a series of Forbes’ fact-checking emails with Weisselberg and other executives into evidence. Alexander, whose byline appeared on the story knocking Trump off Forbes’ billionaires list, was one of the staffers who sent those emails.

Considering Trump's overinflation of the value of his properties is at the heart of this fraud case, I'm betting Trump wish Weisselberg had kept his mouth shut, or at least taken the 5th because he definitely screwed up here.

We'll see what the results are, but at this point if there was any shred of hope that Trump would prevail, that hope died screaming as it was shot into the sun. 

Sunday Long Read: Pool Fools

Devin Friedman wanted a pool. The pool contractor wanted him to pay by app, in this case, mobile banking app, Zelle. And in our Sunday Long Read this week, we find out how Devin and his wife spent $31,500 on a pool that wasn't a pool, but a scam.

 

I was trying to reach Gary Kruglitz, the proprietor of Royal Palace Pools and Spas. Gary cuts a certain figure. Just a hair over 6 feet tall, wears a mustache, square wire-rimmed bifocal glasses, thin short-sleeved dress shirts through which it is occasionally possible to glimpse just the hint of nipple when the lighting is right. He has an unusually high voice for a man his size, as if a Muppet crawled down his throat one night and couldn't get out again. I wouldn't say Gary is perplexed by this modern world we find ourselves living in as much as he might not be aware it exists. Sometimes when you talk to him, he'll look up from his papers, turn in your direction, and blink, like a bird that has heard something in the underbrush.

Gary — I changed his name so I could be as honest about him and his nipples as possible — spends his days working out of his pool warehouse, in an office covered desk-to-credenza in product manuals and spa brochures and invoices produced in gold-, pink-, and white-triplicate. A man trapped in the amber of another era, the type of guy who answers his phone yellllow and says bye now when he hangs up. But at this moment, Gary was not answering his phone at all. And I was desperate to reach him, because my wife and I had paid him a deposit of $31,500 to build us a pool, and he had apparently disappeared off the face of the earth.

"I'm sorry, Gary is not available right now," said Cheryl when I phoned that morning.

As best I could tell, there were three women who worked at Royal Palace Pools. Cheryl, Cheryl, and Sheryl. (Could be wrong on that.) The Cheryls didn't have offices. They stood point at the front of the store, behind the glass cases where the chlorine tablets and pool thermometers are displayed. There was a rumor that one of the Cheryls — Sheryl — was Gary's wife, but I couldn't imagine Gary making love, or having breakfast each morning with someone in his home. I believed the likelier scenario was that each night when the Cheryls went home, Gary climbed into an empty Jacuzzi shell with a bag of Funyuns and a worry-worn pad of invoices that served as his transitional object, pulled the thermal cover over himself, and waited in the dark with his eyes open until he could go back to the office. Regardless, if you wanted to get in touch with him, there was going to be at least one Cheryl between you and Gary.

"Do you know where he is?" I said. "This is urgent."

"Um. And who is this?" said Cheryl.

I gave her my name and her tone changed a bit.

"I see," she said tightly. "Well, I'll tell him that you called. Again."

"Please do," I said, trying to sound both grateful and angry. Then I hung up.

It's true that my wife and I had been calling Gary a lot. About a year and a half prior, we'd walked into his office in the Berkshires, in Massachusetts — home to white folks who love the Boston Pops, farm to table, and Lyme disease — and signed a contract for Gary to build a pool in our backyard. It made me feel a little bit like an asshole to be honest, the idea of having a pool. Just the rich-person-ness of it. But what is life if not a long march toward losing all your morals and shame. And thanks to the support of my friends and family, I was able to bury my feelings deep inside and become invested in the idea of having a pool. A pool could be evidence that my life hadn't amounted to nothing. When I found myself at a party with intimidating people, I would sometimes say to myself, I am a person with a swimming pool, so I could believe I had the same right to exist as anyone else. And people would have to be friends with me, right? Because who doesn't want a friend with a pool? It would be like when Jeff Allen's mom used to let him have pool parties at his house in eighth grade. Sure, after everyone ate all the grilled cheeses his mom had cut into triangles and sneaked shots of vodka and then thrown up in the bushes, they all left and didn't invite him to come along. But wasn't that better than sitting at home alone on a Friday night, which was probably what Jeff would have been doing otherwise? Wasn't that a win?

(Side note: Jeff grew up to be a heavy Facebook poster who writes screeds about how if people are so sure a man has a right to marry a man, then shouldn't a man have the right to marry a dog? He lives in Tennessee now with his wife, Krystal, whom he proposed to by having a trained dolphin swim up to her strapped with an engagement ring. Some people stay true to themselves.)

Originally, the pool work was supposed to commence in April 2020. But obviously that didn't happen, because that was when everyone was sealed in their homes rinsing groceries in a solution of three parts water to one part Clorox. But now it was 2021. The construction trade was beginning to lurch back to life. There were delays, of course. We were in the throes of the great pandemic renovation boom, and there weren't enough workers or materials. Container ships were lined up for miles at the ports, and the cost of lumber had become something normal people talked about. The New York Times was publishing hate-reads about people from cities moving to places like the Berkshires and building swimming pools and bringing their obnoxious, demanding, me-first city culture with them.

And so that March, we began calling Gary to say me first. Can you ensure we'll be first in line once the ground thaws? He'd try, he said. We took that as a promise.

We called him in April. We called him in May. The further into summer we got, the less responsive he became. If you've hired a contractor, this will sound familiar. Why answer the phone just to get yelled at by some people from a New York Times hate-read? June crept along, and Gary went completely dark. We were anxious. We felt wronged. We let our feelings be known: Gary, and here I'm paraphrasing our email, we Karen-ed our way into being first in line to build a pool in the spring and now here it is in the middle of summer and we literally cannot get ahold of you.

Finally, on July 5, we received a response. Gary emailed us that he was ready to begin. He said he could start within the week and reminded us that, according to the contract, we owed him $30K-plus before construction commenced. We checked the contract and saw that he was right. He sent another email with instructions for payment. Because a lot of bank branches were still closed, and the crew wanted their money, he requested that we transfer the money via Zelle. But because there are daily Zelle limits, he said, we should just transfer a little bit every day.

We Zelle-ed $3,500 on the 6th, $3,500 on the 7th, $5,000 on the 8th and again on the 9th. Now that he was getting his money, Gary was more responsive. Do you have all the materials you were waiting for, we asked in an email. Yep, mostly. Can you start next week? Yes. The emails were strange. We sometimes had to read them aloud: What if you put a period here, would it make sense then? What if there were a verb? But Gary's emails had always been weird. After all, you don't go into the Cheryls business because you care about the syntax in your electronic correspondence. This man ran his company from an AOL account, which I didn't even know you could still have.

After we Zelled more money, we got worried. What if Gary said he never got his deposit? We asked him to send us a signed receipt for the $23,000-ish we'd sent. Certainly, he said, I'm on a job, give me a few minutes. A few minutes later we got a signed receipt from Royal Palace Pools and Spas, printed on letterhead and photographed. All we had to do was send another $3,500 on the 12th and another $5,000 the 13th, his start date. If things went our way, the construction would be finished in a few weeks.

And then July 13 arrived. Early that morning we received an email from Gary that he was down the road with his crew and would be there imminently. But hours passed, and he didn't show. That's when we reached Cheryl and she said, "Oh, it's you," and told me she'd get him a message. We started calling every 15 minutes. This guy had taken our money and who knows when — or if — he was ever going to start building us a hate-read-worthy swimming pool.

Then, early that afternoon, we got Gary on the phone. Yellllow he said. We asked him where he was. He was confused by that. He was at the office, he said. But you told us you were on your way here, we said. You emailed us and said you were already on the road.

Gary was silent for a moment.

"I haven't emailed you in a month," he said.

Then my wife said holy fuck.

 

Zelle made it astonishingly easy to pay "Gary" and also astonishingly easy to scam Devin. The cautionary tale here this week is in an era of massive disinformation, that information can also include the ones and zeroes in your checking account. It's the biggest P2P banking app in Americ, way bigger than Venmo. And the fraud and scam potential for it is massive.

And worse, nobody's actually responsible for covering that fraud, because there are no laws or backstop behind it like bank deposits and the FDIC for example. On top of that, the one federal agency that should be involved, the Consumer Banking Protection Bureau, is currently facing a Supreme Court case that argues that the entire agency is unconstitutional, because the banks and the GOP want it gone.

So yes, take Devin's pool as an example. Be careful out there.

 

Be careful out there.

Last Call For No Solving For X

As we come up on the one-year anniversary of Elon Musk taking over X/Twitter/Whatever, Miles Klee at Rolling Stone documents the atrocities as the once-premiere social media platform is now a toxic neo-Nazi-filled trash fire destined for the wrecking ball.

ON OCT. 26, 2022, Elon Musk enjoyed his first and last good day as the head of Twitter (now X). Following a $44 billion acquisition he tried to scuttle but was legally forced into closing, he attempted a bit of prop comedy — entering the company’s headquarters with a porcelain sink while flashing a mischievous smile. It was all the setup to a groaner of a pun announcing his arrival: “Let that sink in!” he declared in the video caption of his entrance. It was a master class in cringe.

Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

Nearly a year later, you’d be hard pressed to name a single improvement to the site under Musk’s direction. His biggest ideas have all blown up in his face: An $8 monthly subscription fee for a blue check that verified users then needed the option of hiding to avoid mockery. The abandonment of a valuable brand name and logo in favor of the meaningless “X,” which prompted a trademark lawsuit and led to the installation of a garish metal X structure on the roof of Twitter’s office — city inspectors had it removed just days later. Musk’s latest move is to have headlines stripped from article links, leaving only an image and media source, which he seems to believe looks better and will keep users scrolling. But for those who follow news on the app, it makes X that much more pointless.

i love clicking on a stock Getty image and having no clue what the article is going to be about, great job https://t.co/vYpw9aYgIZ— rat king 🐀 (@MikeIsaac) October 4, 2023

Of course, these mistakes pale in comparison to the rancid vibes Musk has cultivated by reinstating right-wing extremists and peddlers of misinformation previously banned from the platform, amplifying their conspiracy theories, and ensuring their garbage posts are shoved into “For You” feeds by Twitter’s algorithms. He buys into white supremacist propaganda, panders to anti-LGBTQ hate accounts, and, with advertisers fleeing these intolerable conditions, found a way to blame the catastrophic loss of revenue on a Jewish civil rights group that combats antisemitism.

How much longer can this wreckage of a formerly semi-functional website stay afloat? Although it has shed millions of daily active users since Musk started tinkering with it, the endgame is more likely to come down to money. Seven banks led by Morgan Stanley hold some $13 billion in debt after backing Musk’s blockbuster deal last year, and the company itself is presumably worth much less at this point — even according to his own math. If X can’t keep making its $300 million quarterly interest payments, the financial firms may repossess it in order to recoup a fraction of their losses.

 

I'm still in the camp that says Elongated Muskrat is doing this on purpose, that he spent tens of billions on Twitter in order to destroy it ahead of the 2024 elections in order to sow chaos going into the 2024 elections. With Facebook/Threads/Whatever now out of the election integrity game, there's little hope to stop voters from being targeted with voting disinformation to a degree that it could throw the entire ballgame to the GOP and Trump's promised authoritarian takeover attempt of the federal government.

 

Whether or not voters can see the light in all this coming darkness, well, we have to try to light the way.

Hunting The Hunter, Con't

With a House Republican-caused government shutdown now less than 72 hours away, those self-same House Republicans are concentrating on the real issues: Hunter Biden's tax records.

 

Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee released more than 700 pages of IRS whistleblower documents Wednesday, providing ample fodder for the newly launched House GOP impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden that will center on his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.

Democrats were quick to push back, asserting that GOP lawmakers cherry-picked information that gives a distorted view of the allegations against the Bidens.

Following the committee’s 24-17 party-line vote to release of the documents to the public, Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) asserted that the new materials — which include an assortment of business tax returns, interview transcripts and emails between investigators and prosecutors — show that Hunter Biden used his father’s lofty political standing as part of a global family influence-peddling scheme.

“This evidence makes clear Hunter Biden’s business was selling the Biden ‘brand’ and that access to the White House was his family’s most valuable asset,” Smith said.

Democrats panned committee Republicans for focusing on the impeachment effort as a government shutdown looms on Sunday that could put millions of federal employees out of work. Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in his opening statement at the closed-door session that the whistleblower testimony consisted of uncorroborated allegations and heavily redacted documents cherry-picked by the IRS whistleblowers.

“Why waste precious time that could be put toward keeping the government open? Other than to distract from reality,” Neal said in the statement he provided reporters, noting that there’s pressure on Republican tax writers to release the material before House Oversight Committee James Comer’s (R-Ky.) first impeachment hearing, scheduled for Thursday morning.

 

Except of course, the documents don't actually show he was selling access to the WHite House. They showed he was in business with foreign nationals, which is okay when fraudster Donald Trump does it, I guess. 

Again, you'd think Jason Smith would look at the tax info from Jared (the Gallaria of Crime) Kushner and Ivanka Trump, which actually does show massive pay-for-play White House influence peddling to the House of Saud to the tune of $2 billion, but nobody on the R side seems to care about that.

Alas, today's impeachment hearings are more important. I guess when Grandma and Grandpa stop getting government checks, somebody might notice.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

New York Judge Arthur Engoron has found Donald Trump liable for years of inflated property values resulting in fraudulent Trump Organization loans in NY AG Tish James's $250 million civil fraud case against Trump.

 

A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House.

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations.

Trump’s lawyer and spokesperson Alina Habba said they intend to appeal the decision, calling it “an affront to our legal system” and “fundamentally flawed at every level.”

Trump has long insisted he did nothing wrong. His son, Eric, railed against the decision Tuesday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, calling it “an attempt to destroy my father and kick him out of New York.”

“Today, I lost all faith in the New York legal system,” said Eric Trump, an executive in his father’s company and a defendant in the lawsuit. “Never before have I seen such hatred toward one person by a judge — a coordinated effort with the Attorney General to destroy a man’s life, company and accomplishments.”

The decision, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.

Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.

Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

 

Trump is pretty well fucked, innit he? 

Well, he would be if I didn't expect the entire case to be overturned on statutes of limitations issues on appeal, and Trump won't have to pay a dime, but otherwise, he's fucked. If Judge Engoron's ruling holds, the Trump Organization is effectively done in the state of New York.

With Judge Engoron's decision made, we'll see what the NY appellate court now says about the statue of limitations on the fraud charges, possibly as soon as Thursday.

Stay tuned.

Last Call For Shutdown Countdown, Clown Town Edition, Con't

Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell just knocked the Big Top blocks out from under House GOP Circus Ringmaster Kevin McCarthy.

 

Senate Republicans and Democrats reached agreement on Tuesday on a stopgap spending plan that would head off a government shutdown on Sunday while providing billions in disaster relief and aid to Ukraine, but the measure faced resistance in the Republican-led House.

The legislation cleared its first procedural obstacle Tuesday night on a bipartisan vote of 77 to 19. It would keep government funding flowing through Nov. 17 to allow more time for negotiations over yearlong spending bills and provide about $6 billion for the Ukraine war effort as well as approximately $6 billion for disaster relief in the wake of a series of wildfires and floods.

Senate leaders hoped to pass it by the end of the week and send it to the House in time to avert a shutdown now set to begin at midnight Saturday. But there was no guarantee that Speaker Kevin McCarthy would bring the legislation to the House floor for a vote, since some far-right Republicans have said they would try to remove him from his post if he did.

Still, in putting the legislation forward, Senate leaders in both parties were ratcheting up the pressure on Mr. McCarthy, who has failed to put together a temporary spending plan of his own.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said the Senate agreement “will continue to fund the government at present levels while maintaining our commitment to Ukraine’s security and humanitarian needs while also ensuring those impacted by disasters across the country begin to get the resources they need.”

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, urged her colleagues to support the plan, warning that shutdowns “do not accomplish the goals that people who advocate government shutdowns think will be accomplished.”

“I’ve been through two government shutdowns,” Ms. Collins said, “and I can tell you they are never good policy.”

The Senate proposal would meet stiff resistance from House Republicans because it includes assistance for Ukraine that many of them oppose and maintains federal funding at current levels. Many House Republicans are demanding steep cuts in even an interim funding plan. As a result, Mr. McCarthy would need Democratic votes to pass it, and leaning on Democrats would stir a backlash from his own party.

Mr. McCarthy on Tuesday told reporters at the Capitol that he would not address “hypotheticals” about whether he would put a stopgap plan passed by the Senate to a vote on the House floor. He and his deputies were toiling ahead of a scheduled vote on Tuesday evening to round up support to allow a group of yearlong spending bills to come to the floor for debate, even as a group of hard-right Republicans vowed to continue blocking them.

“I heard all this time, they’re going to pass appropriations bills all month,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters at a separate news conference later in the day. “Remember, you all wrote about it? They were the good chamber. So when they pass something, come back and ask.”

 

Boy, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the circus boxcar hammock, didn't he?

 

Still, McCarthy has nobody to blame but himself. He's no longer Speaker but in name only, and if he tries to bring the bill to a House floor vote, he may get removed before he can do it. I don't expect Hakeem Jeffries will help McCarthy out of the Big Top until after the Senate stopgap bill gets passed in the House, but that leaves us with six weeks to figure out who's replacing him.

 

Of course, McCarthy's a coward, and that means he may let the government shut down anyway.

 

We'll see. The Senate bill has to pass first before anything happens.

 

 

Of course, then we get to have the new fight with the new Ringmaster.

 

 

Last Call For Shutdown Countdown, Clown Town Edition

With under a week to go before the GOP shuts down the government,  the only questions now appear to be how long the shutdown lasts, and how quickly GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is replaced by Republicans (and by whom) when he inevitably caves.

 

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said he would consider voting to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., should the speaker opt to work with Democrats to pass funding measures ahead of the Sept. 30 funding deadline.

"That would be something I would look strongly at," Burchett said in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."

Burchett dismissed the notion that he and other House Republicans opposed to passing a short-term stopgap measure are at fault if lawmakers fail to pass spending measures, noting that the group made their priorities clear far before House members returned from August recess.

"We're gonna get the blame because we're trying to do our job," Burchett said.

 

Like most terrorists, Burchett believes he and his fellow economic suicide bombers are the good guys here.

 

The bigger problem is that even before Burchett piped up, the number of House Republicans that have said they would be open to replacing McCarthy is already enough to cost him his job.  So again, when he caves, and he will cave, folks, he'll be ousted, as I've been saying for a while now. It's Boehner all over again.

In fact, McCarthy has already caved, backtracking on last week's demand from Marjorie Terrorist Greene that he yank all Ukraine funding from the Pentagon bill.

Who will replace him, well, we'll see.

Last Call For Supremely Corrupts Crooks, Cads, And Creeps, Con't

And as bad as Bob Menendez is with his bribery indictments, he's still not 1% as corrupt as, say, Justice Clarence Thomas.

 

On Jan. 25, 2018, dozens of private jets descended on Palm Springs International Airport. Some of the richest people in the country were arriving for the annual winter donor summit of the Koch network, the political organization founded by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. A long weekend of strategizing, relaxation in the California sun and high-dollar fundraising lay ahead.

Just after 6 p.m., a Gulfstream G200 jet touched down on the tarmac. One of the Koch network’s most powerful allies was on board: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

During the summit, the justice went to a private dinner for the network’s donors. Thomas has attended Koch donor events at least twice over the years, according to interviews with three former network employees and one major donor. The justice was brought in to speak, staffers said, in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.

That puts Thomas in the extraordinary position of having served as a fundraising draw for a network that has brought cases before the Supreme Court, including one of the most closely watched of the upcoming term.

Thomas never reported the 2018 flight to Palm Springs on his annual financial disclosure form, an apparent violation of federal law requiring justices to report most gifts. A Koch network spokesperson said the network did not pay for the private jet. Since Thomas didn’t disclose it, it’s not clear who did pay.

Thomas’ involvement in the events is part of a yearslong, personal relationship with the Koch brothers that has remained almost entirely out of public view. It developed over years of trips to the Bohemian Grove, a secretive all-men’s retreat in Northern California. Thomas has been a regular at the Grove for two decades, where he stayed in a small camp with real estate billionaire Harlan Crow and the Kochs, according to records and people who’ve spent time with him there.

A spokesperson for the Koch network, formally known as Stand Together, did not answer detailed questions about his role at the Palm Springs events but said, “Thomas wasn’t present for fundraising conversations.”

“The idea that attending a couple events to promote a book or give dinner remarks, as all the justices do, could somehow be undue influence just doesn’t hold water,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“All of the sitting Justices and many who came before them have contributed to the national dialogue in speeches, book tours, and social gatherings,” the statement added. “Our events are no different. To claim otherwise is false.”

In a series of stories this year, ProPublica reported that Thomas has accepted undisclosed luxury travel from Crow and a coterie of other ultrawealthy men. Crow also purchased Thomas’ mother’s home and paid private school tuition for the child Thomas was raising as his son. Thomas has said little in response. In a statement earlier this year, he said that Crow is a close friend whom he has joined on “family trips.” He has also argued that he was not required to disclose the free vacations. Thomas did not respond to questions for this story.

The code of conduct for the federal judiciary lays out rules designed to preserve judges’ impartiality and independence, which it calls “indispensable to justice in our society.” The code specifically prohibits both political activity and participation in fundraising. Judges are advised, for instance, not to “associate themselves” with any group “publicly identified with controversial legal, social, or political positions.”

But the code of conduct only applies to the lower courts. At the Supreme Court, justices decide what’s appropriate for themselves.

“I can’t imagine — it takes my breath away, frankly — that he would go to a Koch network event for donors,” said John E. Jones III, a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush. Jones said that if he had gone to a Koch summit as a district court judge, “I’d have gotten a letter that would’ve commenced a disciplinary proceeding.”

 

Of course, that's the problem. Supreme Court justices are, again, not subject to any ethics rules other than their own recognizance. 

And Republicans keep making sure that will remain the case.

 

Shutdown Countdown, Clown Town Edition, Con't

Turns out GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy still doesn't have the votes to pass anything at all as far as keeping the government open as a second attempt to pass a Pentagon funding bill had to be pulled from the House floor, and with the House now in recess, it looks like a GOP-caused shutdown is all but guaranteed.

 

For the second time this week, House Republicans on Thursday failed to start debate on a key military funding bill after five conservative rebels blocked the measure over demands for additional spending cuts.

The defeat marked yet another public embarrassment for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans as Washington barrels toward a government shutdown. Then, they left town for the week.

"We are very dysfunctional right now," Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said, adding that the failure proves that GOP leaders "obviously can't count" votes, unlike Democrats. "Speaker Pelosi, love her or hate her, she put something out there and they'd rally around it."

McCarthy had vowed that the House would work through the weekend to find a solution to the crisis, with votes expected through Saturday. Now, they've canceled votes for Friday and the weekend, telling members they'll get "ample notice" if any votes are scheduled.

Moderate Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., who is facing a tough re-election bid next year, has been describing the GOP dysfunction as a "clown show" and warned that pragmatists would work with Democrats to keep the government funded.

 

Even House Republicans themselves are calling this clown show a clown show! 

"For my colleagues, they have to come to a realization: If they are unable or unwilling to govern, others will. And in a divided government where you have Democrats controlling the Senate, a Democrat controlling the White House, there needs to be a realization that you're not going to get everything you want," he said.

"And just throwing a temper tantrum and stomping your feet, frankly not only is it wrong — it's pathetic," Lawler added.

The House paralysis bodes ill for preventing a government shutdown at the end of September, as Republicans remain unable to pass messaging bills that would represent their opening bid and have no chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate. The infighting could only escalate when they have to make policy compromises to accept a bill that President Joe Biden can sign into law.

“At the end of the day, any final bill is going to be bipartisan. And if somebody doesn’t realize that they’re truly clueless,” Lawler said.

Thursday's vote failed 212-216. The Republicans who voted no were Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; Dan Bishop of North Carolina; Matt Rosendale of Montana; and Andy Biggs and Eli Crane, both of Arizona. Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., later switched his vote to no, a procedural move that will allow him to bring the bill up again.

“The problem is, we’ve been doing CRs for 25 years or longer. And that works the same way. Lather, rinse, repeat. The Washington wash cycle,” Bishop said. “So there’s another CR and they get to a few days before Christmas and they pass on monstrous omnibus. That’s exactly the path. We all see it, we all recognize it. The only way to change it is to change it.”

 

But of course Republicans don't have the votes to change it, and they could have passed spending bills months ago without a single Democratic vote. They chose not to. 

Republicans are clowns, period. We're all here to watch the Big Top burn down with them -- and America -- in it.

And when the Villagers are openly asking if Kevin McCarthy is even still in charge and worse, answering that question with "No, Matt Gaetz is running the circus now" then yeah, I don't see how McCarthy seriously survives the next few weeks as Speaker. More than ever it feels like the Clown Town kids table is going to have to eat what the adults in the Senate give them, and that McCarthy's going to spend the holidays shooting hoops in his driveway in sweatpants and muttering about how he was A Contenda™.

His only hope is that Matt Gaetz would be so much worse as Speaker that the thought alone might keep him in the office as whipping boy, and in that scenario, McCarthy's just a puppet.

We'll see.

Shutdown Countdown, Clown Town Edition, Con't

With Tuesday's House GOP vote on Pentagon spending pulled because GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy doesn't have the votes to pass anything at this point, a MAGA federal government shutdown now looks all but inevitable.

 

Republican divisions paralyzed the House again on Tuesday as a small band of conservative rebels blocked a motion to merely begin debate on a military funding bill and GOP leaders abandoned a separate vote to avert a shutdown at the end of the month.

The military vote was close, 212-214, with five GOP hardliners in the narrow majority joining Democrats to sink it: Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Dan Bishop, R-N.C., Ken Buck, R-Colo., Ralph Norman, R-S.C., and Matt Rosendale, R-Mont.

With just 11 days until the deadline, Norman said a government shutdown is inevitable.

“I do not” see a way to prevent it, Norman said, adding that conservatives want assurances on a “top line” spending level that Congress will stick by before they agree to pass any full-year funding bills.

Meanwhile, a split within the far-right has also endangered a continuing resolution, or CR, to stave off a shutdown on Sept. 30, with some Freedom Caucus members rejecting a deal struck between other Freedom Caucus members and center-right lawmakers. A procedural vote on the CR was planned for Tuesday afternoon, but leadership pulled it off the floor after failing to flip the roughly dozen declared no votes.

"They didn't have the votes," Norman said after meeting with leadership.

The House GOP chaos is worse than it may appear. The bills Republicans are fighting over have no chance of becoming law — and if they passed the chamber they’d merely represent an opening bid to negotiate with the Democratic-led Senate and President Joe Biden, who oppose the spending cuts and conservative policies that House Republicans are pursuing.

 

House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and President Biden are letting McCarthy burn in the bed he made, and aren't about to help him keep the MAGA promises he made in January to become Speaker. 

With just days to go before the government runs out of money, Biden’s team is watching Congress steam toward a shutdown, resigned to the reality that there’s little they can do now to fix the situation and confident the politics will play out their way.

President Joe Biden has steered well clear of the chaos engulfing the House, where Republicans are battling each other over a government funding bill. Within the White House, aides have settled on a hard-line strategy aimed at pressuring McCarthy to stick to a spending deal he struck with Biden back in May rather than attempt to patch together a new bipartisan bill.

“We agreed to the budget deal and a deal is a deal — House GOP should abide by it,” said a White House official granted anonymity to discuss the private calculations. Their “chaos is making the case that they are responsible if there is a shutdown.”

Biden world’s wait-and-see approach comes against the backdrop of an increasingly likely shutdown, which would be the first of the Biden era.

 

The debt ceiling deal made earlier this year with the White House is the first thing McCarthy's MAGA chuds threw under the bus this month, so there's no reason why the Biden administration would help break their own commitments to the American people.

Rep. Jeffries is working with the House Problem Solvers caucus to get to a deal to end a shutdown, but it's looking like weeks of Clown Town government shutdown well into October in the meantime.

McCarthy is going to have to eventually fold and make the deal with Jeffries and Biden, and that's almost certainly the end of his Speaker career.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

As Donald Trump's constant legal troubles continue, it seems like every day there's a new development in at least one legal venue where Trump is facing ruination, and this week is no different. We switch gears to New York AG Tish James and her civil fraud case against Trump, where both sides are asking for summary judgment ahead of October's scheduled state civil fraud trial.

 

Before Donald J. Trump was indicted four times over, he was sued by New York’s attorney general, who said that for years the former president, his business and members of his family had fraudulently overvalued their assets by billions of dollars.

Before any of those criminal trials will take place, Mr. Trump is scheduled for a civil trial in New York in October. During the trial, the attorney general, Letitia James, will seek to bar him and three of his children from leading their family business, the Trump Organization, and to require him to pay a fine of around $250 million.

On Wednesday, Ms. James fired an opening salvo, arguing that a trial is not necessary to find that Mr. Trump and the other defendants inflated the value of their assets in annual financial statements, fraudulently obtaining favorable loans and insurance arrangements.

The fraud was so pervasive, she said in a court filing, that Mr. Trump had falsely boosted his net worth by between $812 million and $2.2 billion each year over the course of a decade.

“Based on the undisputed evidence, no trial is required for the court to determine that defendants presented grossly and materially inflated asset values,” the filing said.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers, in their own motion, argued that the entire case should be thrown out, relying in large part on a recent appellate court decision that appeared as if it could significantly narrow the scope of the case because of a legal time limit. Mr. Trump had received most of the loans in question too long ago for the matter to be considered by a court, his lawyers argue.

“The appellate division has now limited the reach of the N.Y. A.G.’s crusade against President Trump and his family” wrote Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Christopher M. Kise, Michael Madaio and Clifford S. Robert.

Both filings seek what is known as summary judgment, or a ruling from the judge that they are entitled to a victory before trial based on undisputed facts in evidence.

Ms. James sought that ruling on the claim at the core of her case — that Mr. Trump’s financial statements were fraudulent — and if she prevails, it would mark a significant victory and could smooth her path to a potential win at trial on the remaining claims.

If Mr. Trump won even partial summary judgment, the case could become a shadow of what it once appeared, significantly lowering the stakes of the October trial.

Or the judge could deny both bids for early victory, which would simply set the case for trial.

The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, is scheduled to hold a hearing in late September and could rule then.

Ms. James’s lawsuit disputes the value of some of Mr. Trump’s best-known properties, including Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, and Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. In her new filing, she wrote that, given the way that the worth of Trump Tower was calculated in 2018, it was overvalued by nearly $175 million. The following year, she said, the value of the building was falsely boosted by nearly $323 million.

“At the end of the day this is a documents case,” the filing unsealed on Wednesday said, adding that the documents left not a shred of doubt that Mr. Trump’s annual financial statements “do not even remotely reflect the ‘estimated current value’ of his assets.”

Ms. James also took aim at Mr. Trump for submitting the financial statements to obtain loans for a golf resort outside Miami, a hotel in Washington and a hotel in Chicago.

Yet Mr. Trump’s lawyers argue that Justice Engoron should throw out those transactions from the case, citing the recent appellate court ruling. In that ruling, the appeals court dismissed Ms. James’s case against his daughter, Ivanka Trump, because the accusations concerned conduct that had occurred too long ago. As Mr. Trump’s lawyers interpret the appellate ruling, any loans that Mr. Trump and his company received before July 2014 were too old to be included in the case.

The appeals court declined to throw out the case against Mr. Trump, his company and his two adult sons — effectively leaving it to Justice Engoron to decide. But Mr. Trump’s lawyers noted in their motion for summary judgment that the loans for the Chicago hotel and Florida resort were negotiated before the July 2014 legal deadline.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers also argued that Mr. Trump’s lenders did not rely heavily on his financial statements when issuing him loans, and that the lenders reaped millions from their dealings with the former president.

“The sophisticated private parties all profited considerably from successfully consummated transactions,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote. “Thus, ‘fraud’ cannot exist in the abstract or solely in the mind of the N.Y. A.G.”

 

This case too seems destined for a Trump-friendly Supreme Court, given the defendant is a ex-Oval Office occupant. Trump may not be able to force the trial into federal court, but I imagine he'll appeal any verdict against him as high as he can possibly go. Whether or not SCOTUS will take anything up is up in the air, but Trump will certainly demand it.

Hell, there's a fair chance he's back in the White House by the time this gets to SCOTUS, and we already know exactly what's going to happen if he does.

 

Former President Donald Trump joined controversial radio host Glenn Beck for an interview on Tuesday and was asked flat out if he would use the office of the president to jail his political opponents – as he promised to do in 2016.

“You said in 2016, you know, ‘lock her up.’ And then when you became president, you said, ‘We don’t do that in America.’ That’s just not the right thing to do. That’s what they’re doing. Do you regret not locking her up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?” Beck asked Trump.

“Well, I’ll give you an example. Uh, the answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us,” Trump replied, making clear he would.

“I always had such great respect for the office of the president and the presidency and but the office of the president. And I never hit Biden as hard as I could have. And then I heard he was trying to indict me and it was him that was doing it,” Trump continued, adding:

"You know, I don’t think he’s sharp enough to think about much, but he was there and he was probably the one giving the order. But he was, you know, hard to believe that he even thinks about that because he’s gone. But then I said, well, they’re actually trying to indict me because every one of these indictments is him, including Bragg. But he put his top people.

I don’t know if you know this, he put his top person into the office of the Manhattan district attorney. They’ve been in total coordination with Fani Willis. The woman that I never met, that they accused me of rape, that’s being run by a Democrat, a Democrat operative, and paid for by the Democrat party. You know, so many of these days, I have a couple of other lawsuits all funded against me by the Democrats. But these are sick people. These are evil people."

 

He's telling us that he will put dozens, maybe hundreds of Democrats in jail. We shouldn't exactly give him the chance, right?

 

Right?