The House is scheduled to begin the effort for the installation of California Representative Kevin McCarthy at 10:00pm ET.   It is unknown whether the 14th ballot effort will succeed or exactly how many representatives are still in DC for the activity.   The livestream is below:

UPDATE:

• Round 14 fails for McCarthy by one vote.  232 votes cast. McCarthy got 216 – one vote short of majority.
• Representative Mike Rogers (AL) tried to fight Matt Gaetz and had to be restrained. (LINK)
• GOP tried to adjourn.  Voice vote failed and failed counting of yeas and nays.  House cannot adjourn.
• Republicans now go for round #15

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The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released the December jobs report today [DATA HERE] showing 223,000 jobs gained in December ’22.

Most of the job growth was in the “leisure and hospitality” sector (+67,000), healthcare (+55,000), construction (+28,000) and social assistance (+20,000).  Additionally, average hourly earnings rose by 0.3%, with a year-over-year measure of wage growth at 4.6%.

At this point in the history of our economic pretending game, we are well aware the employment numbers are heavily manipulated in order to support the government policymaking that is destroying the same workforce they claim to represent.   It’s all a ruse, just look around your community and you will see what I am talking about.

The financial pundits, Wall Street, government policy makers and various individuals and economic gaslighters are concerned that worker wage growth could drive inflation.  This is one of the most aggravating aspects to reviewing the majority of economic punditry. [Example:]

This knuckleheaded narrative engineer from the New York Times/Atlantic even has the audacity to say, “let prices continue to fall to target,” as if there is a single item at any price that is dropping.  His spin is a good example of gaslighting just from the use of the statement “price inflation is falling back towards where we want it.”

Price inflation is not price.  ‘Price inflation’ is the rate of increase.  There’s a BIG DIFFERENCE between “inflation falling back” and prices dropping. Inflation falling back is merely a lessening of the rate of price increase.  The price does not drop, and never will.

This reality is why it is infuriating to see government policymakers and pundits decry wage growth as a bad thing that might cause inflation.

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Our dear friend Sharon always reminds us, “Those whose motives are based on deception, will always find an audience willing to be deceived.”  That, my friends, is the current status of the Republican party watchers and one of the primary reasons this little corner of the internet, The Last Refuge, was formed.

We accept things as they are, not as we would wish them to be and never as we would pretend them to be.   Pretending is an endless quest akin to convincing. Those who operate in the world of political pretense expend an exhaustive amount of energy in constant vigilance against those who speak plain truths.

The House of Representatives has adjourned until 10pm tonight, when another vote will be taken, as outlined by the design of the Kevin McCarthy supporters.

Why adjourn?  Why return at 10:00pm on a Friday evening?  Simply, because the McCarthy team is counting on several House members (mostly Democrats) not being in attendance for the quorum, facilitating a lower threshold of the vote to achieve a majority.

435/434 members present = 218 votes needed
433/432 members present = 217 votes needed
431/430 members present = 216 votes needed
429/428 members present = 215 votes needed
etc.

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The twelfth ballot round ended up with Kevin McCarthy receiving 214 votes of support, fourteen more than previous ballot rounds.  McCarthy needs 218 votes to succeed (if all members are present).

The following group of 14 Republicans changed their vote to support Kevin McCarthy on the 12th ballot:

Rep. Dan Bishop (N.C.), Rep.-elect Josh Brecheen (Okla.), Rep. Michael Cloud (Texas), Rep. Andrew Clyde (Ga.), Rep. Byron Donalds (Fla.), Rep. Paul Gosar (Ariz.),Rep.-elect Anna Paulina Luna (FL), Rep. Mary Miller (Ill.), Rep. Ralph Norman (S.C.), Rep.-elect Andy Ogles (Tenn.), Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Rep.-elect Keith Self (Texas), and Rep. Victoria Spartz (IN) all voted to support Kevin McCarthy.

The Holdouts are:

Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep.-elect Eli Crane (Ariz.), Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Rep. Bob Good (Va.), Rep. Andy Harris (Md.) and Rep. Matt Rosendale (Mont.)

aka “The Magnificent Seven”

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Day #4 of the House effort to elect a new speaker will continue today with no one asking why only 20 members want to change the rules.  The rules are problematic for 20+ members who have refused to vote through eleven ballots for McCarthy, which begs the question.  Why do 200 republicans accept giving McCarthy all the power to determine legislative business?

The House returns to session for what is expected to be McCarthy’s 12th attempt to win the gavel. According to Politico, “the GOP leader and his leadership team convened a conference call Friday morning to update members on the status of negotiations, hours after he appeared to gather some momentum late Thursday by hashing out specific concessions to hardline members of the GOP conference — offers that his allies were hopeful would move votes in his direction.

But enormous uncertainty lingered Friday morning, as members of the freedom Caucus had yet to commit their support to McCarthy and a handful of other holdouts continued to signal their opposition to him. Absences on the GOP side of the aisle could scramble things further, with McCarthy backer Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) predicting at least three during Friday’s likely balloting.  WATCH:

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During his opening monologue tonight, Fox News host Tucker Carlson outlines the attacks against those opposing Kevin McCarthy for House Speaker.

Tucker Carlson asks why the visibility of democracy in action ends up with DC insiders claiming the American political structure is going to collapse just because Kevin McCarthy is not being anointed as House Speaker.   Those in opposition to McCarthy are deemed as Russian operatives, domestic terrorists and corrupt sketchy voices belonging to various shady patriotic movements that have threatened the domestic tranquility of the nation.   WATCH:

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Representative Matt Rosendale (R-MT) railed against Congress’s “broken system” as he nominated Byron Donalds for the 9th round of voting in the race for Speaker of the House on Thursday.

During his remarks, Rosendale outlined the power dynamic and rules system, what he calls “the nasty little secret, put into place by prior leadership that has corrupted the institution and made the voices of individual members irrelevant to the activity within the lower chamber.  Rosendale outlines how changing these rules and the power dynamic of the few is what the protest against Kevin McCarthy is all about.  WATCH:

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The eleventh round of votes for a House Speaker ended the same way as the ten before it.

Ballot round #11 fails. No majority speaker elected.

Rather than attempting to continue voting amid a landscape of futility, and without Kevin McCarthy accepting defeat in his life quest to be Speaker of The House, the chamber voted to adjourn.

Initially a voice vote on the adjournment failed, the democrats won and wanted to force the republicans to continue.  However, an electronic accounting of the yeas and nays resulted in a majority decision to adjourn until noon tomorrow, Friday, January 6th.

The backroom bartering and negotiations will now commence; drinks will be had, promises will be made, votes will be purchased, and perhaps a successful path toward a republican speaker will be found.  On the upside, for the past three days no taxpayer monies have been spent.

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The tenth round of ballot counting continues in the House chamber. However, it looks like an 11th ballot will be necessary as Kevin McCarthy has failed, yet again, to gain the support of 21 House Republican holdouts.

Inside the beltway rumors have surfaced that after the 9th failed attempt, groundhog McCarthy exited the chambers, stepped outside, saw his shadow and thus predicted another six weeks of ballot counting was likely.  As noted by Politico, “the California Republican fell short in his bid for the speaker’s gavel in seventh, eighth, ninth, and now tenth ballots — a history-making stalemate that has paralyzed the party’s new majority.”

WASHINGTON DC – […] The next steps for McCarthy are unclear. GOP leadership is mulling trying to adjourn the chamber to give McCarthy more time to hold meetings and solidify a deal that they hope will win him the speaker’s gavel. But such a move would require help from Democrats or near unimity from Republicans, who only narrowly won an unruly vote Wednesday to adjourn for the night.

And Republicans are still trying to figure out if the glimmers of hope over the potential deal are just a mirage. McCarthy met nearly every one of the holdouts’ demands, but it’s not clear it will be enough to get him across the finish line. And in a slim majority, he can’t afford to alienate the other side of his conference, where centrists and institutionalists already have heartburn over the offered deal. (read more)

Voting continues.  Meme creators continue working overtime.

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Most people are unaware that outside lobbyist groups hold the power over the internal dynamic.  In addition to internal financial systems, each congressperson is aligned with a lobbyist group that pays for their political election efforts, sort of like a corporate sponsor in a professional sports team.  Ultimately the sponsors determine what issues the politician supports.  This is the business end of DC politics.

According to Politico, the Congressional Leadership Fund (team McCarthy) has come to an agreement with the Club for Growth Fund (team not McCarthy) and worked out a deal the representatives may be permitted to support.  The deal “includes a vote on term limits for members, more seats for Freedom Caucus members on the powerful House Rules Committee and allowing a single member to force a vote on ousting the speaker.”  The voting continues today.

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