In the aftermath of the 2020 election House democrats led by Nancy Pelosi directed a national pantomime from Washington DC that extremists were running amok and terrorizing congress. The January 6 Committee was intended to further establish that narrative.
Pelosi called up the national guard, put fences and barbed wire around congress then installed metal detectors, all as part of the theater for manufacturing the domestic violent extremist narrative. The media engineered the supportive narrative and the ridiculous pantomime continued throughout the past two years. However, as congress now changes hands and republicans take control, the fences are taken down and the metal detectors are being removed.
Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert highlights the return of normalcy. {Direct Rumble Link} WATCH:
However, against the backdrop of revelations from the Twitter Files where the intelligence apparatus, Dept of Homeland Security and FBI were part of the government operation to influence public opinion, the possibility of an FBI inspired and coordinated attack against the Capitol is now more likely than previous.
The House of Representatives failed to elect a House Speaker through three rounds of voting. Approximately 20 members of the Republican conference will not vote for Kevin McCarthy, as a result there is a stalemate. The Republican caucus requested adjournment until noon tomorrow, Wednesday January 4th.
Essentially Kevin McCarthy needs to: (1) step aside and accept he will not be Speaker, or (2) continue the House voting in futility, or (3) find a way to convince the Republican holdouts to support him.
“They’re just not into you Kevin”…
This has happened before, just not in the modern political era. The holdouts want Jim Jordan to accept the Speaker position.
Don’t get defrosted, worried or overly attached to any outcome. This is simply the way our system was designed.
The House of Representatives continues efforts to elect a Speaker of the House. Republican candidate Kevin McCarthy failed in his first-round effort on the floor in dramatic fashion. A group of conservatives blocked his path amid one of the smallest GOP House majorities in history. Democrat Hakeem Jeffries had the highest overall number of votes, but still not enough to become speaker.
As noted by Politico, “In a stunning moment of chaos on the first day of the new Congress, McCarthy and his allies will now attempt to quell the revolt, preparing members to take repeated votes as pressure mounts from their colleagues. It will mark only the second time since the Civil War that a party will need multiple attempts to choose its leader on the House floor — with all business in the chamber, even the swearing-in of members, halted until a speaker is chosen.”
Voting continues, video below. UPDATE After Three Failed Votes, the House is adjourned until noon tomorrow:
Republican house member Matt Gaetz delivered a fiery speech in opposition to Republican candidate for Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy.
Florida Representative Matt Gaetz nominates Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, and then gives a blistering critique of California Representative Kevin McCarthy as a selfish, self-centered political sellout who will do anything to gain power and then undermine the Republican caucus he claims to represent. WATCH:
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Ohio Representative Jim Jordan’s speech to the House of Representatives is below:
The Republican battle for Speaker of the House of Representatives continues with multiple factions competing for influence. The sausage making inside the GOPe conference is doing what that sausage makers in the GOPe conference always do. There’s a lot of opposition to Kevin McCarthy and the vast majority of it is well deserved.
Yes, the swamp is doing swampy things, and yes, it’s a hot mess. But that’s also what happens in a two-party congress within a constitutional republic where members from very different states end up arguing for position based on an ideology that varies wildly. Notice that if you get rid of the two-party system, all of this stuff seemingly evaporates. Funny how the people who construct the two-party system don’t want us to notice that.
In this video, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a representative who supports the MAGA agenda and Kevin McCarthy for speaker, calls out some of the well-known voices in the GOPe apparatus who are doing swampy things. WATCH:
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I would suggest not getting emotionally invested in any of this internecine arguing. If you have let your congressional representative know your expectation, the only thing we can do is watch it play out.
It’s almost painful to go to the grocery store today, not just because the prices for everything are so high, but also because seeing the stress amid the working-class shopping is palpable. Unfortunately, while we may have a momentary plateau on current pricing, there’s a strong possibility another wave of higher prices is yet to come.
At the core of the issue are energy prices which continue to rise. The immediate cycle of energy price hikes, a direct consequence of political policy, has lessened somewhat and we are now in that slow tick upward as the pressure on oil, gas, heating and electricity prices continues.
Michael Burry, famous for his predictions in/around the U.S. housing market, is noticing the same thing as CTH. “Inflation peaked. But it is not the last peak of this cycle,”he said. “We are likely to see CPI lower, possibly negative in 2H 2023, and the US in recession by any definition. Fed will cut and government will stimulate. And we will have another inflation spike. It’s not hard.”
Peak demand side inflation is long in the rearview mirror, but the peak of supply side inflation is questionable at best – I would say it’s a plateau, not a peak.
The price of goods, including industrialized and processed raw materials from China are going to increase again – and simultaneously become less consistent in availability. This is going to make prices extremely volatile in 2023.
Essentially, everything around price is tenuous as the western economies absorb the full impact of this Build Back Better energy policy, and into this foray comes China with production and processing challenges as a result of COVID bubbles being removed. We are seeing this problem right now in the pharmaceutical industry and with ordinary medicines becoming scarcer on store shelves.
The New Year brings a look of forward-looking economic perspectives from major financial institutions. Unfortunately, if the perspective of Bank of America Chief Economist Michael Gapen is reflective of the larger institutional analysis, the financial pretending is anticipated to continue.
[Side Note: Notice how they will all start talking about ‘deglobalization’ in 2023. There’s a reason for that that I will touch on in the IMF interview to follow]
Appearing on Face the Nation Gapen accurately indicates the U.S. housing market is already in a steep economic recession, housing prices falling rapidly with a considerable amount of distance to go (-30% range), and the overall housing market will likely be in this situation for around two years. On a macro level the Bank of America indicators line up with the general housing trajectory. From a lending standpoint, Gapen would have specific insight.
Beyond the housing sector, Mr. Gapen starts to get sketchy. He anticipates inflation taking 24 to 36 months to lower to the norm 2% range. That is generally in line with CTH expectations; however, nowhere in the analysis does Gapen even mention energy costs and the overall impact to the economy from energy policy. You will note this absence will be present in almost all financial punditries. Mentioning “energy policy’ as a cause of economic pain is a third rail amid his peer group; it is simply not permitted.
Astute readers will note the great financial and economic pretending that surrounds the Build Back Better and Green New Deal climate change agenda will not be discussed by anyone, ever. The massive price impacts, the supply side inflation pressures, are baked into the western global economic outlooks. It is strictly verboten to talk about climate change policy being stopped, modified, reversed or even, well, gasp, removed. WATCH:
[TRANSCRIPT] – […] BANK OF AMERICA CHIEF ECONOMIST MICHAEL GAPEN: Happy New Year as well. Thank you for having me on.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You know, a majority of voters polled by The Wall Street Journal say that the economy is going to look and feel worse in 2023. What is your forecast?
GAPEN: So I think that’s probably true. I think we’re in a situation where the risk of recession is high, may not be a deep and prolonged one. But we’re in a situation where the economy has recovered very rapidly from- from COVID, and it’s come with a lot of inflation. And the Federal Reserve is trying to slow down the economy, to bring inflation down. And in the past, more often than not, that’s coincided with some sort of recession in the US economy and the U.S. labor market. It’s not baked in. It’s not for certain. We may be able to avoid it, but I would agree that the outlook by most people who sit in the position that I do think 2023 could be a difficult year for the U.S..
MARGARET BRENNAN: So we may be able to avoid recession?
If 2022 was not the apex year for the era of great pretending, then we remain sitting in a handbasket – destination, full speed ahead.
When asked for the topic of a ‘big picture‘ podcast this 2022-year ending, the obvious answer from me was We Need to Quit Pretending.
For the past two years I can only encapsulate the entire social, political and socioeconomic dynamic that surrounds us by saying we are living in an era of great pretending. Why? Because nothing else adequately explains it.
A recession is no longer two negative quarters of economic growth. Elections are no longer defined by votes cast, but by ballots counted. Meanwhile, women are claimed to have penises and people will argue -strenuously and with commitment- that men can give birth to babies.
Simultaneously, vaccines are no longer about medicines to avoid viruses, and Americans have some moral obligation to fund the administrative salaries, pensions and expense accounts for a nation of European politicians, in a country that few taxpayers could find on a map.
We must pretend the occupant of the oval office is not a dementia patient, at the same time we must pretend the Dept of Homeland Security and FBI is not telling online speech platforms that identifying the dementia patient, as a dementia patient, means you are a domestic violent extremist. The absurdity of the pretenses are off-the-charts.
However, on the upside, we now see even blissfully ignorant people starting to realize something is wrong when their electricity and heating bills quadruple, while the same system of governmental caretakers are telling us to embrace a new earth friendly normal of $12 dollar eggs. We been knew, but more are now knowing – thank God.
This is interesting. The use of public genetic genealogy databases by law enforcement officials has been discussed for several years now.
According to information within a CNN article about the capture of Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger, it appears this might be the most recent case solved -at least in part- through the use of those public DNA databases.
(Via CNN) – […] Investigators homed in on Kohberger as the suspect through DNA evidence and by confirming his ownership of a white Hyundai Elantra seen near the crime scene, according to two law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation.
[…] An FBI surveillance team tracked him for four days before his arrest while law enforcement worked with prosecutors to develop enough probable cause to obtain a warrant, the two law enforcement sources said.
Genetic genealogy techniques were used to connect Kohberger to unidentified DNA evidence, another source with knowledge of the case tells CNN. The DNA was run through a public database to find potential family member matches, and subsequent investigative work by law enforcement led to him as the suspect, the source said. (read more)
Many who understand the scope of data and privacy exploitation have often wondered and warned if it was smart for people to be voluntarily giving their DNA to various genealogical tracing companies. When Blackstone purchased Ancestry.Com the world’s largest public DNA database, there were several questions raised again about the possible misuse and privacy issues. At the time, here’s how Ancestry responded:
For the past two years I can only encapsulate the entire social, political and socioeconomic dynamic that surrounds us by saying we are living in an era of great pretending. Why? Because nothing else adequately explains it.
According to information