House Speaker Kevin McCarthy appears with Maria Bartiromo to address criticism about details within his debt ceiling bill.  The criticism is very valid, and is being made by many people who are unhappy with the deal to raise the debt ceiling.  However, the primary defense point of McCarthy surrounds a return to regular budgetary order.

As noted by McCarthy, the 12 house appropriations bill that form the traditional federal budget, are due in Aug/Sept for fiscal year 2025 which begins October 1st.  That is where substantive spending will be reduced, well below current spending levels.  However, Bartiromo confronts that outlook by asking ‘what if’ the Senate doesn’t take up the federal budget bill, preferring instead to use the funding mechanism provided within the debt ceiling bill.  {Direct Rumble Link}

The budget debate may sound somewhat parliamentarian, because the nuance of federal budgets is exactly that.  The mechanism to force congress to create a regular order budget is the debt ceiling. Essentially the national credit limit. If you take away the mechanism to force the budget, there is no force mechanism to require the budget.  WATCH:

The amount of debt carried in your own household budget is only a problem if you have a limit on your credit. If you have unlimited credit, meaning you can borrow endless amounts of money, then you can spend as much as you want. This willy-nilly raising of the national debt ceiling is the issue at the core of why federal budgets are not passed.

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I’m going to go into the deep weeds on this story, because many people are missing a key facet.  The names behind the Trump targeting operation are included, along with citations for independent checks by House congressional investigators.

Inside the recently released report by John Durham [CITATION], the special counsel outlines how former FBI Director James Comey was intimately involved in the creation of the Carter Page FISA application.  Durham notes that Comey kept asking the DOJ National Security Division and FBI counterintelligence investigators, “Where’s the FISA, we need the FISA.”  However, John Durham never interviewed James Comey or Andrew McCabe.  The former FBI Director and Deputy refused to cooperate or give testimony to John Durham.  So, how did John Durham have details about the demands of Comey?

The answer is found in the footnotes.  Durham reviewed transcripts of interviews given by Andrew McCabe to the Office of the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, who previously investigated FBI conduct in the origin of the Carter Page FISA.  Durham pulled quotes from that transcript. [Footnote #1207, page 199 – Durham Report]

♦QUESTION: If Andrew McCabe gave testimony to the OIG about the motives and impetus of FBI Director James Comey in pushing for the Carter Page FISA application, why did the OIG report never outline those transcribed interviews?  Why was the interview transcript never included in the 2019 OIG report?

[ NOTE to Congress.  Now that you know a transcribed interview of Andrew McCabe exists in the OIG office, request the transcription and release it to the public.]

Let me answer those questions without the customary pretending from the DC professional political class.  The short version is that OIG Michael Horowitz was trying to protect the DOJ and FBI. The longer version is a coverup that includes Rod Rosenstein, Bill Barr and yes, John Durham.  I will share that story below.

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Boy, is there ever a loaded dump truck of potential discussion points in this subject area.

First, Google via YouTube is reversing its position and allowing content that challenges the results of the 2020 election.

[Per Axios] “In a reversal of its election integrity policy, YouTube will leave up content that says fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 presidential election and other U.S. elections, the company confirmed to Axios Friday.”

After removing “tens of thousands of videos” (their admission) previously containing content that challenged the 2020 election results, suddenly that conversation is permitted.

“Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape,” YouTube said in a statement.

So, according to the script, the “threat to democracy” has suddenly diminished as the 2024 election cycle starts to become a topic of increased discussion? Yeah, right.

I read this Google change two ways: (1) This reads like a “mission accomplished and we don’t need this anymore” kind of policy switch; and (2) There’s that probability of Donald Trump winning the 2024 election and they need to be able to question election results again.

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There is a strong divergence within the May jobs report as released by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) [DATA HERE].  Payrolls increased 339,000 in May from April and previous months were revised up by 93,000. That is good news.  However, the household survey, from which the unemployment rate is derived, showed employment down 310,000 jobs and the unemployment rate increased to 3.7%.

One of the aspects driving higher payroll starts are the number of people taking on additional part-time jobs.  This aspect is noted in a decline for the number of hours in the average workweek. As more PT jobs are added, the number of hours in a workweek declines. As noted in the BLS data, “the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged down by 0.1 hour to 34.3 hours in May.”

There were 161.0 million people working in April.  There are 160.7 million people working in May.

There were 5.7 million people unemployed in April.  There are 6.1 million unemployed people in May.

The unemployment rate increased from 3.4% to 3.7%.

There are 310,000 fewer people working in May than were working in April.  However, payrolls increased by 339,000 over the same timeframe. See graph above for where those jobs were gained.

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Last night on Sean Hannity television show, House Oversight Chairman James Comer made the first admission that both he and Senator Chuck Grassley had seen the FD-1023 form filled out by an FBI agent based on allegations of Joe Biden taking bribes as outlined by an FBI CHS (Confidential Human Source).  {Backstory HERE}

FBI Director Christopher Wray refused to admit the document existed until Comer and Grassley informed Wray they had already seen it.  However, the FBI is still refusing the release the document to congress. During a Fox News interview today, Senator Chuck Grassley gives his opinion of what is contained within the six-page document {Direct Rumble Link}.  The comments about the FD-1023 happen after the 02:00 mark. WATCH:

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Joe Biden was attending the USAF Academy graduation ceremony today, when he tripped on stage and took a hard fall.  WATCH:

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An interesting series of updates to the FBI whistleblower case of Joe Biden taking a $5 million bribe payment which now looks to have originated in Ukraine.

The background claim is pretty basic. A whistleblower approached congress stating the FBI had a report, an unclassified FD-1023, detailing a conversation with a ‘confidential human source’ (CHS) that outlined Vice President Joe Biden taking a $5 million payment from a foreign national to affect a U.S. policy decision.  The FBI agent responsible for investigating the CHS claim was FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, a sketchy character from the Trump-Russia probe.

The investigative events took place in June and July 2020 during the presidential election year.  The claim is that FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Auten reportedly buried the CHS allegation saying it could not be corroborated, and then wrote an assessment that it was Russian disinformation.  However, the FBI investigative team didn’t see any effort by any FBI member to substantiate it.  Hence a whistleblower, with specific knowledge of the details in the allegation, surfaces and tells congress the FBI is hiding the FD-1023 that outlines the confidential human source allegation of bribery.

Congress requested the FD-1023, the FBI refused to provide it.  House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer then set a compliance deadline while he coordinated with Senator Chuck Grassley.  The FBI still refused to turn it over, saying they would neither confirm nor deny the FD-1023 existence, and said releasing any information like that would potentially compromise Confidential Human Sources (CHS’s).  The proverbial sources and methods excuse.

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As details begin to emerge, many of the House Republicans are furious at Kevin McCarthy for the deal to lift the debt ceiling he has brokered with Joe Biden.

Suddenly, the prior battle and construct of the House Rules Committee is becoming important.   While Kevin McCarthy may have the 218 votes on the floor of the House to pass the deal, he first has to get it out of the House Rules Committee (HRC).  If three Republicans oppose it in the HRC, McCarthy cannot get it to the floor.  Chip Roy and Ralph Norman are on the HRC and oppose the bill.   Thomas Massie is also on the HRC but appears to be supporting Kevin McCarthy (lol, because muh principles).

Byron Donalds also delivered a strong rebuke of the McCarthy deal, as outlined below:

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According to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a deal “in principle” has been reached between himself and Joe Biden.  McCarthy held a brief press conference to announced the deal; however, no details are forthcoming.  WATCH:

WASHINGTON DC – … [B]oth Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy still have to sell their respective parties on the agreement, navigating fraught votes in both chambers. McCarthy immediately hosted a call with members after the deal was announced, calling it a “big win” and claiming Democrats didn’t get “one thing” that they wanted out of the negotiations on a member-wide conference call, according to three people on the call.

While conservative Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) vocally criticized the agreement — saying he was “extremely disappointed” that the deal didn’t include “any meaningful cuts” — other Freedom Caucus members praised the deal, including Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Though both said they wanted to see the text, Jordan praised McCarthy for a deal where the government is “spending less” than it did before and getting Democrats to move on work requirements.

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Last night I participated in a conversation. This article is written as an outcome of that conversation, as requested by those who participated.

Essentially, the framework of the conversation, as I initially listened, is best described as a series of questions amid a group of smart intellectual types who are very understanding of the nature of our current situation.

In various forms they were asking each other the same question.  What happened in the last several years that caused Democrats, leftists and the traditional political left to switch positions on their advocacy?

Liberalism literally went from railing against Big Govt, to embracing corrupt Big Govt. Why and how did this happen?

In short, it was the same line of questioning I have seen asked by Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard and various traditionally liberal people as well as people on the right side of the continuum.

Why and how did traditional liberalism so suddenly flip from being, big picture – ‘anti-government’, to suddenly embracing corrupt government enterprise, and supporting the intelligence apparatus, federal govt (writ large), institutional oppressive law enforcement and FBI etc.?  What happened?

After listening to this conversation quietly, as I am prone to do, my remarks -with citations and examples- silenced the room.

At the conclusion of my remarks, everyone asked me if I had ever written about this, and if not – why not?   I did not have an answer, so consider this a promise fulfilled.  Perhaps you might find value.

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