Senator Rand Paul has blocked a fast-track senate vote on the additional $40 billion funding package created by Joe Biden and House Democrats.  Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell approved a fast-track vote; however, senator Rand Paul (KY) stood defiant against their effort.

Despite the high-profile pressure from the two Senate leaders, Rand Paul refused to move and that means the Senate will have to take procedural steps to overcome his objection, which could take several days. “My oath of office is the US constitution not to any foreign nation and no matter how sympathetic the cause, my oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America,” Paul said in his remarks before objecting to moving to swift passage of the bill. “We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.” WATCH:

The $40 billion supplemental spending bill for Ukraine is more than the total military budget of Russia.  The combined Ukraine aid packages now exceed $60 billion, more than the entire budget for the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security including border protection.

Rand Paul is on the right side of history with his position, and the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with him.   However, the opinion of the people is irrelevant to the Senate.   Even democrat Senator Chuck Schumer seemed to admit this point when he said Rand Paul’s position “was not the opinion of the overwhelming majority here,” meaning in the senate.  Schumer would have used other terms if he thought the American people agreed with him.  They don’t, and he knows it.

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The “Producer Price Index” (PPI) is essentially the tracking of wholesale prices at three stages: Origination (commodity), Intermediate (processing), and then Final (to wholesale). Today, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released April price data [Available Here] showing another 11.0% increase year-over-year in Final Demand products at the wholesale level.

Last month when looking at internal economic activity that showed a contraction in consumer purchases of goods, we said pay attention to the service side of the ledger now.  Knowing people have stopped buying ‘stuff’, if people are starting to run out of money, they will cut back in the service sector (dining out, etc).

While the PPI focuses on prices, the PPI data for April shows exactly that service side contraction now taking place.  Wholesale inflation in goods is determined heavily by higher costs for raw materials and processing.  However, the rate of inflation within the service sector is more connected to what consumers can afford.   Modified Table-A, look at the April difference between goods (1.3%) and services (0.0%):

[Ex. The lawn company might pay 50% more for oil and gasoline (goods side), but they may not be able to increase the rate they charge you by 50% to mow the grass (service side).]

The major current production inflation in both goods and services is directly connected to the cost of energy.  Energy prices are embedded in every sector of the economy.  For “goods” higher electricity, heating/cooling and petroleum costs (packaging, materials, transportation, etc) are unavoidable and passed on to consumers. For “services,” individuals and companies raise their prices to compensate for increases in their own costs.  It is a cumulative inflation snowball.

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Joe Biden was in Chicago today attending the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers conference.   As he delivered his remarks about the U.S. economy, the installed occupant of the White House started yelling about food boxes and desperate hungry Americans.  WATCH (40 secs):

Perhaps someone should tell Joe Biden that he’s in charge of the economy he is complaining about.  The failures he speaks of are happening under his stewardship.

I know it seems odd, but Joe Biden did this yesterday when he promised in his inflation speech that if people supported Joe Biden as president, Joe Biden would fix the inflation problems Joe Biden created last year.  It all seems rather odd.  And now he’s just yelling about it.

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I’ve been pondering this disconnect for several weeks as the messaging from inside the beltway, including their expressed priorities, seem even more disconnected than before.  The DC bubble has always been present; however, lately the disconnect is even more profound.

Perhaps the increased distance in priorities can be explained by federal politicians cancelling townhall meetings and constituent engagement due to the pandemic. Perhaps politicians are holding party positions disconnected from the population they are supposed to represent because they have spent two years physically distancing from the voters.  Whatever the cause, the disconnect is now more severe.

The contrast is even more significant when it comes to the far-left politicians, because they travel amid a very closed communal tribe where outside opinions are considered toxic to their sense of identity.  The term “safe spaces” was literally coined because leftists cannot handle differences of opinion.

The professional leftist arguments are generally flawed, illogical, antithetical to common values and historically weak.  As an outcome their advocate policy positions are weak and easy to deconstruct when challenged.  To avoid being challenged they rarely hold open discussions with constituents in their districts without extreme vetting measures to avoid confrontation.

Regardless of root cause, most Democrats are severely disconnected from the economic reality of their district citizens.  This is evidenced in a Politico report today discussing the example of Democrat House member Katie Porter of California.

As the article notes, Ms. Porter told the House Democrat Caucus of her experience in the ‘real world’ with people who are grocery shopping.  The perplexed Democrats sat quietly listening to the stories of how price increases for food and gasoline are seriously hurting something called ‘working-class‘ people.

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Senate Democrats wanted to manufacture a political optic using the hot button issue of abortion.  The senate pushed a bill for a massive expansion of abortion, far beyond Roe -v- Wade, to the floor.  However, the bill needed 60 votes to pass cloture, end debate.

Embarrassingly, and in a pure political stunt, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer summoned Kamala Harris to the upper chamber in the event she was needed for a “tie-breaking” vote.  However, cloture requires 60 votes, not 50, so the optics of Harris only highlighted the insufferable politics.

The cloture vote failed 49-51, far short of the 60 votes needed to end debate and attempt to pass the bill.  Democrat Senator Joe Manchin voted with republicans to block the cloture effort.  The federal abortion legislation now disappears back into the filing cabinet from which it came.

WASHINGTON – […] In a 49-51 vote, the Senate rejected the Democratic legislation, with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and all Republicans voting against the measure. While the outcome was no surprise and mirrored a similar vote on abortion protections the Senate took in February, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested the court’s draft opinion, published by POLITICO last week, had raised the stakes.

“Today’s vote is one of the most consequential we will take in decades because for the first time in 50 years, a conservative majority, an extreme majority on the Supreme Court, is on the brink of declaring that women do not have freedom over their own bodies,” Schumer said in a floor speech Wednesday morning, adding that the decision “will live in infamy.” (read more)

According to Manchin’s earlier statement, “Democrats are “trying to make people believe that this is the same thing as codifying Roe v. Wade. And I want you to know, it’s not,” he argued, referring to the bill’s ban on some state restrictions on the procedure currently allowed. “This is not the same. It expands abortion.”

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Texas Representative Chip Roy (CD-21) goes full ultra-MAGA after the House democrats created a $40 billion Ukraine spending bill and then demand an immediate vote for support, or else you’re a Russian sympathizer.  WATCH (1 minute):

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In an unusual incumbent vs. incumbent Republican House primary – due to West Virginia losing a House seat, West Virginia’s CD-02 has become a “near-perfect distillation of the split in the G.O.P., with Representative David B. McKinley, who is soft spoken and intent on getting things done, facing a more hard-edged, Trump-aligned ideological candidate, Representative Alex X. Mooney,” according to the New York Times.

Despite the McKinley advantage because the redrawn district is considerably more McKinley than Mooney territory, it looks like Trump-Endorsed Alex Mooney is going to win.

NYT Election Center

Politico Election Center

CNN Election Center

UPDATE:  Mooney Wins – President Trump now 56-0 with 2022 endorsements

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The republican senate leadership team held a press conference today announcing their support for the priority agenda of Joe Biden and the White House.

As Leader Mitch McConnell noted at the beginning of his remarks, “we all agree, the most important thing going on in the world right now is the war in Ukraine,” and with that statement McConnell announced he and Joe Biden have agreed to advance a massive package of $40 billion to pay the salaries and retirement benefits of the Ukrainian government.

Comrades, you must put aside any stress about how to afford groceries and still fill your gas tank, there are people in the government of Ukraine who need your tax dollars more.  WATCH (45 seconds):

No gas money, no grocery money, no infant formula, no voting integrity…. Meh, no problem.  We’ve got Ukrainians to support.

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When Donald Trump won the 2016 election, even before he took office, CTH warned about the permanent bureaucratic class in Washington DC and what it meant for an outside to enter this system.  With a consistent question being raised, it is well worth the reminder – because the answer has nothing to do with Donald Trump.

First the question:

The short answer is, it’s not that complicated. There is one permanent bureaucratic class in/around DC (two wings, same bird). The pool of appointees comes from this UniParty system. Donald Trump as an outsider faced animosity from the system itself. There are no MAGA bureaucrats.

That said, the more fulsome answer is the real issue. Because it doesn’t matter who the ‘outsider’ is, they are going to suffer the same fate until a structural change takes place.

If you take a small potential pool of America-First administrators, and then overlay the DC filtration system in the Senate, ‘advise and consent’, what you realize is that any appointment has to be approved by the same system that is opposed to the agenda the nominee would represent.

In essence, the DC system is designed to protect itself.

It doesn’t matter who the next presidential candidate is. If that President wants to advance a policy agenda in favor of the American people, they will face the same problem.  So let me give one perspective on how to tackle the issue.

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Even with dementia I doubt seriously Joe Biden believes the nonsense he read from his prepared script today.  Every economy policy the Biden administration has triggered, specifically including the Green New Deal energy policy, has caused massive inflation.

The national average price per gallon of gasoline was $2.33 in January 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). It has increased nearly 84% when compared to the current national average price of $4.28 per gallon {link}.  Petroleum and refined gasoline costs are embedded in every aspect of the production economy.  Additionally, Biden’s restrictions, and later policies, on natural gas and coal have caused overall energy costs to skyrocket. Again, these are cornerstones of economic inflation.

During a ridiculously obtuse speech today [Full Speech Here], part of which is in the excerpt below, Biden claims there are only two sources of inflation: (1) the pandemic (covid-19); and (2) Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  I often accuse democrats of pretending not to know things, however these false attributions are far beyond pretense, they are purposeful lies. WATCH:

Beyond the claims about inflation, a visible pile of bovine excrement is noted in the sentences around Ukraine grain supplies.  Notice there is no supply chain issue pushing thousands of tons of military hardware into Ukraine; however, Biden claims they cannot get grain supplies out of Ukraine.  He cannot even see the hypocrisy in his own script.

Sending more than $50 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to Ukraine while those same U.S. taxpayers are crushed under the weight of the inflation that type of spending creates, is beyond blood-boiling.  We are currently in an abusive relationship with our own government and Joe Biden is the cognitively challenged, disposable front man sent to the cameras to gaslight the American people.

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