Month: October 2024

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics,

“I just can’t wait for this campaign to be over.”

       –The American people

Enjoy these last nasty days of the presidential election – they are the quiet before the storm. As long as the race continues, each side’s anger is reined in by the hope of victory. Once a winner is declared, the loser’s rage will erupt. This political Vesuvius promises to inflame the land as events unfold in these final days to maximize furious disappointment

Donald Trump’s side is becoming ever more confident of victory. In recent weeks, RealClearPolitics Polling Averages show Harris’ national lead evaporating while Trump has moved slightly ahead in all six battleground states. Betting markets are now giving Trump the edge.

Still, the polls are very close, and Harris may win. If Trump could insist that he won the 2020 race when all the polls predicted his defeat, just imagine his response if he fails when he appeared to be succeeding. He will not go quietly into the good night.

Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has settled on a closing argument that focuses on Trump’s alleged unsuitability for office. As the candidate herself describes her opponent as an unstable threat to the Constitution, her surrogates are once again comparing him to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. They honestly believe this rhetoric, which will make it impossible for them to bow to his ascension.

We have seen this movie before. The Democrats refused to accept Trump’s victory in 2016; he still won’t concede that President Biden won in 2020. As before, neither side will blame themselves for defeat; they will lash out at their perceived enemies. Each will advance their favored conspiracy theory – Trump will rail against the press and deep state, Democrats against foreign influence and misinformation – but both will cast the result as illegitimate.

This is what happens when you are controlled by tribal emotion, when your politics are governed by psychology rather than policy. People have too much invested in the outcome – literally, their sense of self – to engage in soul searching (at least in the short run).

Because of the different structures of each party, a Harris loss would be far more destructive to the country.

In its current incarnation, the GOP is a bottom-up party. None of its ranking eminences wanted Trump to be the nominee in 2016; almost all of them hoped he would go away after his 2020 defeat. The MAGA rank and file felt differently.

If Trump loses, he will fume and smolder and inflame the body politic. Millions of his supporters will be outraged. But they are largely powerless to influence events. Jan. 6 may have been a dark day in American history, but it was a brief action by a small number of people that was never repeated. Most Republicans condemned the assault and resigned themselves to living peaceably during the Biden presidency. If Trump loses once more, party leaders will, as in 2020, admit defeat and denounce efforts to overturn the result. Frankly, they will be happy to turn the page on the Trump era.

The Democrats, by contrast, are a top-down party. While no one should be surprised by a repeat of the contained violence their supporters unleashed around Trump’s inauguration, the real action will occur once more in the corridors of power.

In a repetition of Trump’s first term, party leaders will refuse to accept his election. An army of Democratic Party lawyers is amassed, awaiting instructions on how, and where, to challenge the results. If, as the polls suggest, Democrats retake the House, they have already floated the idea of refusing to seat him, invoking the Civil War-era 14th Amendment to claim he is a Jan. 6 “insurrectionist.” Assuming that gambit fails, they will almost certainly launch multiple impeachment efforts against him while their stenographers in legacy media continuously cast him as an existential threat to the Republic. As during Trump’s first term, every day will be a nonviolent version of Jan. 6. You cannot, after all, find common ground with Hitler.

It pains me to say that the next four years will be more bitter than the last eight. We, the people, have painted ourselves into a corner by turning to the unforgiving world of politics to find identity and meaning. Will we ever find the courage to say enough?

J. Peder Zane is a RealClearInvestigations editor and columnist. He previously worked as a book review editor and book columnist for the News & Observer (Raleigh), where his writing won several national honors. Zane has also worked at the New York Times and taught writing at Duke University and Saint Augustine’s University.

The owner and operator of the cargo ship that caused a Baltimore bridge collapse has agreed to pay nearly $102 million to settle a civil lawsuit with the Department of Justice, the DOJ announced Thursday.

The Dali collided with one of the columns of the Francis Scott Key bridge in March, after the ship suffered mechanical issues, which caused the bridge to collapse and kill six workers. 

The incident forced Baltimore to close its port and federal channel for months, which slowed commercial shipping traffic that flowed through Maryland’s largest city.

As The Epoch Times’ Caden Pearson reports, the DOJ announced the settlement with Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, the owners and operators of the Motor Vessel Dali, on Oct. 24.

The deal resolves a portion of the legal dispute that began in September when the DOJ sued the companies for damages linked to the federal government’s response to the incident.

The $101.9 million settlement will cover the federal government’s costs for cleaning up the wreckage and reopening the port. However, it does not address the cost of rebuilding the bridge itself, which the state of Maryland is pursuing in a separate claim.

“Thanks to the hard work of the Justice Department attorneys since day one of this disaster, we were able to secure this early settlement of our claim, just over one month into litigation,” Benjamin Mizer, principal deputy associate attorney general, said in a statement.

“This resolution ensures that the costs of the federal government’s cleanup efforts in the Fort McHenry Channel are borne by Grace Ocean and Synergy and not the American taxpayer.”

In a separate move, Grace Ocean has already paid nearly $100,000 to the Coast Guard to address the oil spill threat caused by the wreck.

“This is a tremendous outcome that fully compensates the United States for the costs it incurred in responding to this disaster and holds the owner and operator of the Dali accountable,” said Brian Boynton, principal deputy assistant attorney general at the DOJ.

The disaster occurred on March 26 when the Motor Vessel Dali lost power while departing the Port of Baltimore for Sri Lanka.

After regaining and then losing power again, the ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing it to collapse into the water below.

The collapse halted shipping traffic in and out of the port for weeks and severed a critical highway connection.

Federal, state, and local agencies worked together to clear over 50,000 tons of debris from the water. Shipping resumed by June after temporary channels were created to ease the jam.

The $100 million settlement does seem a little shy of the estimates of the costs involved in rebuilding the bridge.

As Shailen Bhatt, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, confirmed to lawmakers in May, a preliminary estimate to replace the bridge at $1.7 billion to $1.9 billion. It will take four years to construct, with completion estimated to come sometime in 2028, he said.

So while they may claim the “American taxpayer” is off the hook,  we suspect that is another lie (because the optics would be bad).

Authored by Austin Alonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

While Congress stagnates, America’s state houses are drafting and passing policies affecting millions. Now, more than ever, those legislative bodies operate without input from an opposition party or dissenting governor.

As of Oct. 21, there are 23 Republican trifectas, 17 Democratic trifectas, and 10 divided governments where neither party holds trifecta control, according to Ballotpedia. A trifecta means one party holds the state governorship and a majority in the state house and senate.

Heading into November’s general election, legislative supermajorities exist in 57 of the 99 legislative chambers in the union, according to data compiled by state and local government consultancy Stateside.

Republicans hold 41 of those veto-proof advantages, while Democrats own 20. All told, there is a partisan supermajority in at least one house of the Legislature in 35 of the 50 states.

However, in 14 of those states, the supermajority is held by an advantage of three seats or less. Michael Behm, Stateside’s co-CEO and principal, told The Epoch Times that organizations aligned with the Democratic and Republican parties are spending heavily on down-ballot races that could make or break a supermajority in the coming legislative term.

Even though voter interest is low in statehouse races compared with high-profile campaigns for national offices, Behm and others who spoke with The Epoch Times said the stakes are high. Most of the legislative actions that affect the public, such as policy on abortions, education, energy, health care, taxes, and transportation, come from decisions made in statehouses.

“With the federal government being so polarized and hamstrung these days, the action is at the state level,” Behm said.

Supermajorities

The definition of a supermajority varies from state to state. Generally, attaining a supermajority means a state legislative body has enough members from one party to pass laws without any votes from the minority party and enough votes to override the governor’s vetoes.

Heading into the 2024 general election, Republicans hold a supermajority in both houses of the state Legislature in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Additionally, Republicans hold a supermajority in one chamber of the Legislature in Iowa, Mississippi, and South Carolina.

Democrats own a supermajority in both houses of the state Legislature in California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island. Democrats have a supermajority in one chamber of the state Legislatures of Colorado, Connecticut, and Nevada.

Behm said that’s the largest number of supermajorities he has ever observed in state legislatures. Ideologically, the domination of the legislatures by a single party reflects intense political polarization in these states, he said.

Chris Cooper, director of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University, said a supermajority effectively limits the governor’s power to carry out policy priorities in a state with a divided government.

Four governors—Kansas’s Laura Kelly, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, and Vermont’s Phil Scott—preside over divided state governments in which the opposition party holds a legislative supermajority.

The four governors’ legislatures stripped them of much of their policymaking potency. In June, Scott, a Republican, told members of the news media, “I think the power has gotten to their head,” referring to the Democrat-controlled Vermont General Assembly’s overriding of six of his vetoes in a single override session.

In North Carolina, a supermajority almost wholly nullifies the will of a governor who already commands limited influence under the state’s constitution, Chris Cooper said.

With their supermajority, Republicans passed new abortion restrictions, drafted new election laws, and further throttled back Gov. Roy Cooper’s power during the most recent legislative session.

“They have taken away appointment power from the North Carolina governor,” Chris Cooper said. “They have made a number of changes that make the already powerful state Legislature into something even more powerful.”

National Efforts

Behm said the rise of legislative supermajorities can be attributed to growing involvement from national partisan groups known as 527 organizations. These are tax-exempt entities that can receive and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence federal, state, and local politics and elections.

Three decades ago, statehouse races were usually local contests directed and financed by city and state chambers of commerce, unions, and other parochial political organizations, Behm said. Now, national groups such as the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) and Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) invest vast national resources into the state’s legislative caucuses.

Behm said both party committees use professionals to recruit candidates and organize the partisan campaigns designed to build majorities in statehouses.

“These 527 groups have turned state legislative races into national races,” Behm said.

Chris Cooper said Republicans began to take over the statehouses in 2010 when the Republican Party introduced an initiative known as Project REDMAP. The plan called for investing huge sums into state legislative races that were previously overlooked in Washington and flipping chambers to the GOP.

“They did as advertised,” he said. “They turned maps red.”

Read the rest here…

Lebanon has accused Israel of committing a war crime after a group of journalists in south Lebanon came under attack by Israeli warplanes. Three journalists were killed during an air raid on a hotel or guesthouse in Hasbaya, about 50km south of Beirut and near the Syrian border.

BBC is reporting that “The attack was carried out on a guesthouse in a compound in Hasbaya being used by more than a dozen journalists from at least seven media organizations – with a courtyard containing cars clearly marked with ‘press’.

The three slain journalists worked for regional broadcasters Al-Manar TV and Al Mayadeen TV, which confirmed the deaths in statements, identifying the deceased as Ghassan Najjar, Mohammad Reda, and Wissam Qassem.

While Israel did not offer immediate comment, it might rationalize or seek to justify the killings given that Al-Manar is a Hezbollah-run news network, and Al Mayadeen is seen as pro-Iran.

But Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary charged that this was an intentional assassination of journalists.

“The Israeli enemy waited for the journalists’ nighttime break to betray them in their sleep… This is an assassination, after monitoring and tracking, with prior planning and design, as there were 18 journalists there representing seven media institutions. This is a war crime,” Makary wrote on X.

Other reporters, including from MTV Lebanon were present during the attack but escaped unscathed. “All official parties were told that this house was being used as a stay-house for journalists. We coordinated with them all,” an Al-Jadeed journalist described during a subsequent live broadcast from the location.

And an MTV Lebanon reporter, Youmna Fawwaz, detailed the following:

She said ceilings had fallen in on them, and they were surrounded by rubble and dust, with the sound of fighter jets overhead.

Each news organization had their own building in the compound, she said, and the building housing the Al Mayadeen reporters was “obliterated” while Al-Manar employees were inside.

Images from the bombed-out scene indeed show cars with large English markings indicating ‘Press’…

Fawwaz further accused Israel of conducting assassinations in order to prevent the Lebanese correspondents from covering the fighting in the south. “The airstrike was carried out on purpose. Everyone knew we were there. All the cars were labelled as press and TV. There wasn’t even a warning given to us,” she said.

Since the start of the conflict after Oct.7, 2023 – dozens of journalists have died – mostly in Gaza. Israel has particularly cracked down on Al Jazeera, expelling the Qatar-based network from Israel and the West Bank.

Authored by David Harsanyi via PJMedia.com,

Vote. Don’t vote. I don’t care. Just stop telling me that Vice President Kamala Harris is going to save democracy.

Do I wish Republicans had nominated a more coherent, principled, competent candidate for the presidency? Of course. But if anyone is under the impression Democrats tapped such a person, I have news. Spend some time trying to decipher Harris’ swirling, platitude-ridden, incoherent rhetoric and you will only be further convinced that we live in an idiocracy.

Sure, there are many reasons why a movement conservative might feel uncomfortable voting for former President Donald Trump. I get it. I’m not a fan. But there are plenty of completely rational reasons to vote for him, as well. First and foremost, the existence of the contemporary Democratic Party.

Liz Cheney, and other Never Trumpers, tell me that the former president poses a uniquely dangerous threat to the Constitution, and thus, I must set aside any policy disagreements with Democrats and put country over politics.

No doubt, this kind of self-glorification feels great, but it doesn’t really comport with reality.

For one thing, most of the Left’s scariest warnings about Trump are fiction. I don’t believe The Atlantic when it tells me that Trump is a would-be Hitler. I’m sorry, I don’t believe he’s going to throw all his political enemies in concentration camps. Save the story for the next Mueller investigation.

Considering recent history, in fact, it’s clear to me that the Left is far more adept and willing to weaponize the state to punish their enemies. And I’m not just talking about the unprecedented lawfare launched at Trump. I’m talking about debarring lawyers. I’m talking about raiding the homes of pro-life activists. I’m talking about the spying on Catholic churches and the Justice Department’s chilling speech by smearing parents who stood up to authoritarian school boards as terrorists.

Moreover, even if Trump acted on his worst instincts, the damage would likely be confined to his own presidency. Trump is about Trump. Harris and Democrats, though, have openly embraced a string of consequential, long-term attacks on the constitutional order. Ones that we can never come back from.

Sorry, I don’t accept that a woman who once complained to CNN’s Jake Tapper that “millions and millions of people” were speaking “without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop” is going to be my champion of the Constitution.

Harris’ running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently argued that there is “no guarantee” for free speech when it came to “misinformation” or “hate speech,” “especially around our democracy.” If this were a properly functioning republic, Walz would be thrown to the curb.

No honest person could possibly believe Democrats are better for free expression.

Let’s not forget either that Harris once promised to bypass Congress and sign an executive order seizing rifles from millions of law-abiding Americans. Though Democrats like to pretend otherwise, the Second Amendment is still part of the Constitution.

Indeed, Harris is in no position to lecture anyone about any governing norms.

She frequently praises Biden for ignoring courts and “forgiving” student loans by forcing taxpayers to foot the bill. She supports trashing the legislative filibuster, empowering slim majorities to destroy any semblance of federalism. Harris has backed bills that would have overturned thousands of state laws, allowing national Democrats to strip state election security measures, make abortion legal until crowning, compel local religious hospitals to perform gender transition surgeries, shut down religious foster care organizations, and many other outrages.

None of this is to even speak of her efforts to destroy the Supreme Court. Harris, who gleefully took part in the vile smearing of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, supports packing the court — the most serious attack on the judicial branch since President Franklin Roosevelt’s effort in the 1930s. Senate Democrats say it is “virtually certain” they will pass a “Supreme Court reform” bill that, among other assaults on the judicial branch, will empower legislators to strip individual justices of their power.

This is all just blatantly authoritarian stuff. 

Right now — in part, because of Trump — the court is the only institution in the United States that properly functions. There is no telling what kind of arsonist Harris and Democrats would install.

At the very least, I know Trump has a track record of not only nominating decent jurists but sticking with them under massive pressure.

It is odd, indeed, that Democrats, who support price controls, state mandates and a slew of other economic intrusions that force corporations to bend to their will, are constantly warning us about the specter of “fascism.”

We have no clue if the Trump presidency plays out. Trumpism is whatever Trump says it is whenever he feels like it. It might well be a disaster. But Harris offers me nothing.

Reinforcing concerns that many Americans have with voting that isn’t done in-person, at least 12 Colorado mail-in ballots were stolen, filled out with forged signatures, and submitted — and three of them are going to count anyway. Announced by state officials on Thursday, the thefts all affected voters in western Colorado’s Mesa County, but the discovery leaves people wondering how many other forged ballots may have gone undetected elsewhere in the state and across the country.

“The Department of State learned that at least 12 ballots appear to have been intercepted before reaching voters,” said Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office in a statement. “Those ballots were voted and then returned to the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder via USPS mailboxes. This issue was flagged during Colorado’s secure signature verification process.” 

Rather than sending them upon request, Colorado mails ballots to every registered voter in the state — that’s about 4 million ballots making their way through the postal system and before being left in mailboxes, a great many of which are unsecured. In addition to returning ballots via the postal service, Coloradans can also use drop boxes. 

Several of the victimized voters were surprised to receive notifications that their ballots — which they hadn’t submitted — required curing because their signatures didn’t match digital signatures in the state database. Griswold said the handwriting on multiple ballots seemed to indicate the same individual completed each of them. 

While sharing some details about the theft, Griswold, a Democrat, was tight-lipped about the detail most people want to know: which candidate(s) were meant to benefit from this crime? If her name sounds familiar, it’s because Griswold attempted to exclude Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2024 ballots on the claim he’d incited an insurrection in 2021. In May, the US Supreme Court ruled against her. 

Donald Trump must be held accountable for his actions. He incited an insurrection and tried to steal an election from the American people. I hope #SCOTUS affirms the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar him from the ballot. pic.twitter.com/LFfRPNNh51

— Jena Griswold (@JenaGriswold) February 11, 2024

Perhaps the most troubling detail about the Mesa County situation is that three of the fraudulent ballots will not be removed from the count. They were flagged for review, but then a single election judge approved them all. After that action, there’s no mechanism for remedy or removal, officials say. The judge who approved the three forged ballots has been reassigned. “Everybody affected will be offered a new ballot,” Griswold told reporters.  

“Colorado’s elections are safe and secure. This attempt at fraud was found and investigated quickly because of all the trailblazing processes and tools Colorado has in place like signature verification, ballot tracking, and the curing process,” said Griswold. “Every eligible Colorado voter will be able to make their voice heard this election.” Griswold’s boast seems excessive, given 25% of the known fraudulent ballots are being counted anyway. Uneasy Colorado voters can check the status of their ballots by visiting Go Vote Colorado.  

Mesa County is in Colorado’s expansive 3rd congressional district. It’s currently represented by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, but she’s now making a run to represent eastern Colorado’s 4th district instead. She only won reelection in 2022 by about 500 votes and would have faced long odds against the same better-funded opponent, Adam Frisch. The Economist projects Boebert will win the 4th-district in a landslide. Neither of Colorado’s Senate seats are up for election this year. Meanwhile, Polymarket gives Kamala Harris a 94.8% chance winning Colorado’s 10 electoral votes. 

After last week’s small $6.5BN outflow, money-market funds saw a massive $40.4BN inflow this week, taking total AUM to fresh record high above $6.5 TN…

Source: Bloomberg

And following last week’s huge deposit outflows (which we assumed were somewhat related to deferred tax payments coming due), US banks saw deposits (on a seasonally-adjusted basis) surged back higher (by $84BN) in the week ending 10/16 (the latest data released today)…

Source: Bloomberg

On a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, total deposits also rebounded from last week’s plunge (+$66BN)…

Source: Bloomberg

Excluding foreign deposits, domestic deposits rebounded from last week’s puke. Seasonally-0adjusted deposits rose $73.7BN while non-seasonally-adjusted deposits rose $60.5BN…

Source: Bloomberg

Large banks dominated the deposit inflows (+46BN NSA, $67.7BN SA) while Small banks added $14.5BN NSA and $6BN SA.

Given all that, it is perhaps rather surprising that loan volumes exploded higher in the week ending `0/16 with Larg bank loans rising $20.7BN and Small bank loans increasing by $5.3BN. That is the biggest since April 2023…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, the bank bailout facility continued to be drained (down $7.1BN this week) as the initial loans roll out of the facility…

Source: Bloomberg

And from a liquidity need perspective, The Fed’s reverse repo facility continued to be drained this week (to cycle lows since the quarter-end surge)…

Source: Bloomberg

In the crude world, we call this ‘tank bottoms’ – and we’re fearful that the plumbing is going to start creaking sooner rather than later.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“The American ‘Left’ is fully exposed now as a demented, vicious, abusive animal of traumatizing narcissism.”

– Celia Farber

Do you hear that lonesome whistle blow? Wooooo-wooooo! It’s the last train to Palookaville pulling into the station. At this late hour, two passengers get on: Kamala Harris, mom jeans and blazer, rheumy red eyes, half-gone on chardonnay. . .  and an elderly gentleman with a goatee in a colorful but shabby red-white-and-blue suit, famous long ago as “Uncle Sam.”

There’s an election on, in case you haven’t noticed, imminent even. Kamala, everyone seems to agree, has blown it. Can’t answer simple questions pitched by friendly ringers in the “news” business. Hiding somebody else’s agenda is a tough assignment, you see. All she can really do is cackle or simper and, let’s face it, that gets humiliating fast. Joy has turned to despair. Her punched ticket says “one way.”

Whose idea was it, anyway, over at party HQ, to put her up to this contest? She wishes she knew, as she gazes out the window at the sad lights of the little towns streaking by — East Chugwater, Erehwon, Tanktown, Loserville, onward into the night to the end of the line. How’d they manage to yank her out of the comfort of the Naval Observatory, where she was comfy and cozy watching Netflix rom-coms with Doug, chardonnay refills on-demand, all the Doritos a gal could munch. She was a lover, not a fighter, she repeats to herself, but the self-consolation doesn’t quite avail.

Uncle Sam sits stoically five seats behind her. He is resigned, knowing very well why he is on that train, too. His own country is sending him into exile after swindling him out of his history and his posterity. He doesn’t even recognize the place anymore. What happened to Sandberg’s city of big shoulders? Who turned the fruited plain into a hellscape of muffler shops? How did the heroes of Iwo Jima transition into a legion of TikTok influencers with pierced faces and scrambled brains? When the train gets in, he has no place to go. Perhaps he’ll sleep in a ditch.

You entertain these drear hallucinatory conceits despite the giddiness about Donald Trump’s seeming triumph over adversity — botched assassinations, court cases hatched by malice-crazed ninnies, blob-generated calumnies, conspiracies, ops, and hoaxes galore. And for Halloween, they painted a Hitler mustache on him, just for fun. It remains to be seen what marvels of ballot legerdemain have been concocted by Marc Elias, Esq, lawfare artist supreme, destroyer of the nation’s faith in itself.

But say Mr. Trump overcomes even the planned epic voter fraud to capture the prize. What then? You’re entitled to feel nervous. The army, under Department of Defense directive 5240.01 has just been licensed to gun you down. This is a new thing. Now isn’t is it a queer moment in history for a move like that? What are they expecting, anyway? And, by the way, who exactly is the varlet in the chain-of-command who issued that directive? (Or did it just bubble-up out of the ruling blob like some sulfurous gas from a Yellowstone fumarole?)

People of good faith have reason to believe that the country is about to be blown apart. By another odd coincidence, an outfit called the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International (AFCEA) has scheduled an “exercise simulating a cyber-attack on critical infrastructure” for November 5 in Atlanta, Georgia. That’s election day. In a big swing state. Whose idea was that? Is there already not enough that might go wrong that some treasonous moron had to kick the risk of fiasco up another notch? Or might it be cover for another Three Card Monte caper with the Georgia votes? This is the sort of thing that will dog poor old Uncle Sam’s mind as he tries to fall asleep in that drainage ditch on the ragged edge of Palookaville.

Or perhaps what we’re witnessing is a fabulous bit of what George W. Bush once called “strategery” by the Party of Chaos.

Five minutes after Mr. Trump gets elected, a certain unseen hand flips a little toggle somewhere in the banking system that tanks the economy so hard and fast that 2025 will make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a Hamptons clam bake… for the next four years we become a land with no money and no way to generate money. . . and MAGA / MAHA is left to suck eggs in the cold and dark until 2028 when the Democratic Party returns in full Maoist mode, riding in on a unicorn cavalry to rescue us. . . . Nah. . . .They just blew it.

So, more likely, we’re seeing the suicide of the Democratic Party.

Even CNN is starting to back away from them, as from a convocation of lepers. They can smell the odor of necrosis. Plus, their own instinct for survival has kicked in. They have a business to run. They want to be around to cover the treason trial of Alejandro Mayorkas — a sure thing to jack those sagging ratings back up.

Maybe even Kamala Harris will be called out of retirement to testify and we’ll find out just what was going on in the White House in the summer of 2024, when “Joe Biden” — remember him? — was rattling around the joint like a BB in a packing crate, howling for his ice cream, and no one was around anymore to hear him.

The theme for the week was the good (macro outperformance), the bad (dovish rate-cut expectations plunging), and the ugly (Kamala Harris victory expectations gagged as markets bet on Trump).

The ‘good’ news this was that macro data continued to outperform expectations…

Source: Bloomberg

…raising ever more doubts about the pace of The Fed’s new easing cycle as rate-cut expectations tumbled this week – especially for 2025 (because that’s when Trump will be in office, so why would we cut rates for him?)…

Source: Bloomberg

Just as Kevin Warsh!!

“if that’s all true, maybe they’re not data-dependent.”

“I do not want to be the person accusing them of politics … but when you don’t have a theory of the case and you don’t follow it, it is easy to get that accusation and it is harder … to defend them.“

And the ugly theme (for some) was the Trump-Trade taking off in stocks and prediction markets (as well as bonds, bullion, and bitcoin)…

Source: Bloomberg

While ‘Trump Trade’ stock baskets outperformed, the broad market was lower (especially The Dow and Small Caps). Nasdaq had an epic gamma squeeze today which lifted it into the green for the week (but gave most of that back by the close). The S&P 500 closed down around 1% on the week, ending a six-week win-streak…

Mega-Cap tech had a wild week with the Mag7 basket whipsawing down hard and then a big squeeze higher thanks to NVDA and TSLA…

Source: Bloomberg

TSLA ended the week up over 20% to its highest weekly close since Sept 2023…

NVDA refuses to stop going up – up 5 straight weeks to a new record high today…

Nvidia briefly surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable company on Friday with a $3.53 trillion valuation…

Source: Bloomberg

VIX had a wild ride this week too, ending back above 20…

Source: Bloomberg

Bonds were a bloodbath this week with the belly of the curve underperforming bigly…

Source: Bloomberg

Notice that today saw yields spike notably after WaPo refused to endorse Kamala…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar rallied for the 4th straight week to its highest weekly close since June…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold rallied for the 6th week in the last 7, hitting a new intraday record high during the week…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin ended the week lower thanks to a big puke today as Tether headlines (and the tech wreck) weighed on the whole crypto ecosystem…

Source: Bloomberg

Crude prices were higher this week (but chopped around in a narrow band – WTI between $70 and $72)…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, is the ultimate hedge trade on the USA (US CDS) signaling a “sweep”…

Source: Bloomberg

Gridlock – good; Red or Blue Sweep – bad!

Authored by Sundance via The Conservative Treehouse,

Many people might think that Attorney General Ken Paxton filing a letter of notice for criminal referral to the U.S Dept of Justice is an act of futility, because the DOJ is not going to investigate or indict criminal conduct by leftist political operatives.  However, there is a strategic process to follow, particularly if the Texas AG is likely to become the next U.S. Attorney General.

In a way this step-by-step proactive approach is exactly why my efforts to intercept fraudulent ballot printing operations in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were targeted to the Postmasters General in specific locales.  It is unlawful to use the U.S.P.S. to conduct fraud through the postal system.  Additionally, it is specifically illegal for a postmaster to be provided with direct evidence of mail fraud, and to knowingly – with intent, allow further unlawful activity therein.

Texas AG Ken Paxton is following a procedural process that builds a legal pathway.

[SOURCE pdf]

TEXAS – Attorney General Ken Paxton made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) detailing the results of an investigation that revealed how suspicious actors seemingly use ActBlue’s political fundraising platform to make illegal straw donations.

The investigation into ActBlue began in December 2023 following allegations that the company could be facilitating illegal campaign contributions. As a result, in August 2024 ActBlue began requiring donors using credit cards to provide “CVV” codes, a common security measure. That does not prevent all the abuses that Attorney General Paxton’s team has identified on ActBlue, including that straw donations apparently are being made on a large scale using false identities, through untraceable payment methods.

On Monday, Attorney General Paxton sent a petition for rulemaking to the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) urging changes that would close loopholes that can be exploited to illegally funnel money into American elections. When the FEC previously considered adopting rules that could prevent straw donation schemes like those uncovered by the investigation, ActBlue opposed such changes.

“I have made a criminal referral to the U.S. Department of Justice based on the findings from our investigation into ActBlue. My investigation uncovered evidence showing that bad actors are likely using ActBlue’s platform to make illegal campaign contributions,” said Attorney General Paxton. “It is illegal to engage in election fraud and it is illegal to obscure one’s identity to flout election rules. The Department of Justice must take immediate action to prevent illegal conduct in our elections.” (link)

Reminder….. With the Legislative Branch compromised by their own creation, and with the Judicial Branch stuck inside an old paradigm of “national security” you can see how confronting the DOJ operation can only come from one place, THE OVAL OFFICE.

The President of the United States, hopefully Donald J Trump, is going to have to do what the other branches have failed to do, take apart the DOJ and change all the functions of Main Justice to their pre-Patriot Act status.  This is not going to be easy and will take a very specific type of person as U.S. Attorney General who both understands the issue and can, more importantly, articulate the problem to the larger American public.

• The President Trump Attorney General needs to be ultra clean with a spine of steel and a laser focus.  The AG needs to totally understand the goals and objectives, without being told what the goals and objectives are.  The AG needs to be independent, stable, strategic, brutally honest and keenly confident in his/her communication style with the attack media.

President Trump cannot spend exhaustive time instructing the AG on critical priorities.  The AG needs to operate with skill, focus and self-motivated energy.   The AG will be the focus of the Lawfare crew for removal/recusal. (Weissmann, McCord, Eisen, etc.)

• The Deputy AG needs to be intensely capable to stay on task with minimal supervision.  The DAG is the git-r’-done person, no excuses, no apologies, no explanations.  Raw, brutal, cold, quiet and determined.  The DAG needs eyes of a mouse and ears of an elephant.  The DAG needs to be a sponge, with total loyalty to the mission.  The DAG also needs to be the bridge to the FBI.