Politics And The Markets 08/25/23

To sooner had The Loser been booked than he was back on X/Twitter raising money. This guy is the master of cycling money from morons to lawyers. -- www.msn.com/...

He looks sinister now, I wonder how he'll look in a year. -- apnews.com/...

That didn't take long. -- Georgia co-defendant flips and throws The Loser under the bus (in an attempt to cut a deal and avoid the big house?). www.msn.com/... I suppose the low-IQ loyalists here will now claim that it's the fault of the liberal press for reporting this, lol.

Why do Republicans even bother with this whole farce?
(Trump wasn't there, but we saw why he's leading: GOP voters don't care about substance, just unjustified grievances)
www.salon.com/...

snip------
As last night's debate demonstrated, however, the insignificance of a Republican debate isn't just due to Trump's skill at sucking the oxygen out of any room — even one he's not in — Trump's power is entirely due to the vacuum created by the vapidity of Republican leaders. Watching this non-debate was mainly a reminder that none of these politicians possess anything resembling substance. Despite all the chatter from the punditry about "policy," the voters these candidates are trying to reach could not care less about the nuts and bolts of governance. The GOP exists mainly as a vehicle for the endless parade of unwarranted, incoherent grievances of the Republican base.
When whining and playing the victim are all that the voters want from their leaders, of course Trump rises to the top. Even Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is so egotistical he put out an ad declaring he was handpicked by God, cannot compete with Trump's off-the-charts level of narcissism. For a base that just wants to hear how they're the real victims here, Trump's "woe is me" messaging and retribution-oriented rhetoric is political heroin straight into their MAGA veins.

Wednesday night's debate was a painful illustration of this.

(much more at link)

Donald Trump is still the former president who received more votes as a sitting president than any president before him, and his lead in every poll is practically insurmountable. And that’s with potential prison time hanging over his head. He wants the job again, he’s eligible for another term, and at least half of the party’s voters want it for him. There’s time for some shocking revelation to warp things before the official state contests begin — assuming anything shocks you anymore — but the debate wasn’t shocking. It was shouting, and that’s about it.

Suggestions in the fake media that anyone “won” the debate or in some way altered the course of the race are either delus!onal or they’re efforts by anti-Trump “conservatives” to satisfy their dµmb audiences.

Case in point, Bret Stephens at The New York Times declared Woman Lady Girl Gal Nikki Haley “the star of the evening” with “the aura of someone who can win a general election.” What Stephens really means is that Haley sent his heart aflutter when she snapped at one of her opponents, “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows. It shows.” That sassy little clap was directed at Vivek Ramaswamy because he said he wasn’t interested in sending another $500 billion dollars to Ukraine, a sentiment shared by, oh, just a majority of the U.S. population.

Even more cringe-worthy was The Wall Street Journal editorial board golf clapping what it called “a very good Republican presidential debate.” The paper heralded Mike Pence, polling nationally somewhere between zero and “He seems like a nice fellow,” referring to him as “the adult in the room” because he too is eager to pump more taxpayer dollars into a foreign war. “At least for one night,” the Journal said, “GOP voters were able to see that they have better choices.”

Entertaining an alternate reality wherein the GOP nomination is up for equal grabs is pointless. Bret Stephens, editors at the Journal, and others in the media no doubt prefer a Republican more in line with their own sensibilities — which is to say, at odds with a majority of actual Republican voters.

That’s not going to happen. Calling Nikki Haley “a star” and Mike Pence “the adult” won’t make it so.

Joe Biden's America.

Bidenomics = High mortgage rates, high inflation rates, collapsed banks, expensive groceries, record high rent, and dwindling retirement accounts.

The highly popular 30-year fixed mortgage rate is getting closer and closer to 8%.

In early July 30-year fixed-rate mortgages spiked 31 basis points in one week to 7.22%!

The average payment on a $400,000 mortgage is $1,000 more per month than it was 2 years ago.

30-year fixed mortgage rates hit 7.49% this week, the highest rates since 2001.

Home buyers are fleeing the housing market.

"Purchase applications are down to the lowest level in 28 years", Market Watch reported.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden is doing spin and Pilates classes while staying in a luxury vacation villa in Lake Tahoe.

Biden doesn't have a care in the world while he shuffles around Lake Tahoe on taxpayer dime.

President Trump spoke briefly on the tarmac in Atlanta after his arrest Thursday night in Georgia.

President Trump was booked on unapproved speech charges.

President Trump: "Thank you very much for being here. I really believe this is a very sad day for America. This should never happen if you challenge an election. You should be able to challenge an election. I thought the election was a rigged election, a stolen election, and I should have every right to do that. As you know, you have many people that you’ve been watching over the years do the same thing, whether it’s Hillary Clinton or Stacey Abrams or many others. When you have that great freedom to challenge, you have to be able to otherwise you’re going to have very dishonest elections. What has taken place here is a travesty of justice. We did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong, and everybody knows it. I’ve never had such support. And that goes with the other ones, too. What they’re doing is election interference. They’re trying to interfere with an election. There’s never been anything like it in our country before. This is their way of campaigning, and this is one instance, but you have three other instances. It’s election interference. So I want to thank you for being here. We did nothing wrong at all."

This was a devastating day for America. The Democrats have turned the Justice Department against the people.

In late December 2020, President Trump made a call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to look at some of the items that were uncovered by his auditor. There was plenty of evidence for a competent auditor or any man of integrity to know that the election was uncertifiable.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger’s office secretly recorded the phone call with President Trump, then lied about it to the far left Washington Post.

Raffensperger’s office later ran to the Washington Post and leaked a fraudulent transcript of the call.

After they were caught lying to the America public, The Washington Post outed Jordan Fuchs as their anonymous source for their garbage hit piece.

Fuchs provided the WaPo with a fraudulent Trump quote that the paper ran in an anti-Trump hit piece on January 9th.

They planned this to do the most damage to President Trump before the sham impeachment trial in the US Senate.

Georgia Chairman of the Republican Party David Shafer later revealed that Raffensperger and Fuchs lied to the Washington Post about Trump demanding that they “find the fraud.”

Then after the leaked their version of the story to the Washington Post they deleted the audio of the call.

The audio file was later found in the laptop’s “trash” folder.

This shows who Trump was dealing with in Georgia!

Fuchs ran Raffensperger’s campaign for Secretary of State.

According to Georgia activists, Fuchs, Raffensberger and the entire Secretary of State’s office were not helpful at all during investigations following the controversial 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.

In February 2021 Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis opened an investigation into President Trump’s call to Brad Raffensperger following the 2020 election that was misrepresented to the Washington Post.

Her investigation was ALL based on a lie by Fuchs and Raffensperger. www.thegatewaypundit.com/...

Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has been forbidden from meeting with US government officials during his current trip to Washington by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli media reports.

Gallant set off for the US capital overnight on Thursday where, according to his official agenda, he will meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan.

"Minister Gallant will hold a security briefing for the ambassadors of the member states of the UN Security Council and will visit the procurement delegation of the Ministry of Defense in New York," Galant's office said in a statement.

However, no meetings with US officials are part of Gallant's agenda, as Netanyahu reportedly imposed a veto with the directive, "if I’m not invited to Washington, no one gets a meeting there."

Since his return to power late last year, Netanyahu has been left out in the cold by US President Joe Biden, who has refused to invite the Israeli premier to the White House in a public show of discontent with the policies pursued by
Israel's governing coalition.

When mainstream economists and politicians cite “improvements” to the inflation problem in the US in recent months, what they are commonly referencing are changes to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). However, the CPI is not a measure of total inflation, rather, it is a median snapshot of prices at a particular point and time. True inflation is cumulative – A 10% increase one year and a 5% increase the next year is not a win, it means that you are now paying 15% more on average for everything you buy in the span of only two years.

When CPI falls this does not mean that prices on goods and services are going down, it only indicates that prices are rising slower than they were the month or the year before.

Another misconception about CPI is that it measures the inflation rate accurately for regular consumers on common purchases. In reality, the CPI represents mean average price rate increase for a vast basket of goods; over 94,000 items and services with over 200 separate categories. Most of these items and services you will never use or rarely purchase in the span of a year. In other words, inflation declines in uncommon goods can dilute the numbers, making it seem like inflation is dropping while prices on daily necessities continue to spike.

If we throw out the CPI distraction and look at common necessities since 2020, the economic picture is far more bleak.

Overall food prices have soared by 25%-30% in only three years (again, this means that you are now paying 30% more this year for food than you were paying at the beginning of 2020). Chicken is up from $3 per pound to $4 per pound. Beef is up from $3.50 to $6 per pound. Corn is up from $3.50 per pound to $4.70 per pound. Wheat is up from $5 per pound to $7 per pound. In 2019 the average American household was spending $8100 on food annually; with a 30% increase, in 2023 Americans will be spending at least $10,500 per household.

By the end of 2019, the average rental price of a single family home was around $1450 per month. This year the price is around $2000 per month. At the beginning of 2020, the median cost of a home was $320,000; by 2023 the price skyrocketed to an average of $416,000.

For gasoline, the price in early 2020 was around $2.50 per gallon. The price has fluctuated dramatically due to Biden's manipulation of the market using strategic reserves, but still remains high today at $3.80 per gallon.

The cost of electricity has risen swiftly, holding steady around .13 cents per kilowatt hour for a decade, then spiking to at least .17 cents per kilowatt hour by 2023.

Remember, most of these costs are static and are difficult to reduce through household spending cuts. These are not items that are easily removed from a monthly budget and the expenditures add up to considerable pressure on consumer accounts. This is probably why around 74% of the public in polls say that the economy is getting worse, not better. It's because government statistics are not highlighting the true inflationary crisis.

When we look at the cumulative climb of prices in necessities since before the inflation crisis officially began, the truth is that Americans now have to increase their wages by at least 25%-30% on average to maintain the same standard of living they had three years ago. This is a disaster not seen since the stagflationary event of the 1970s and early 1980s. If you have a strange feeling like your bank account is being rapidly drained in recent months, that's because it is.