Fake News CNN’s Jake Tapper asks White House Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci why the White House is sending out false information, aka ‘disinformation’, about when the COVID vaccines were available. Fauci giggles, laughs and says “I have no idea.”  WATCH:

U.S. politics has devolved into a grand pretense of a theatrical performance keeping everyone distracted from the severe damage being inflicted by the political ideologues within the Biden administration.

I guarantee you if someone were just to ask Joe Biden at a presser who his Interior Secretary or EPA Administrator were, he’d have absolutely no idea.  Biden is purposefully and completely isolated from the policies being carried out by the people running the administration.  Biden has no idea what they are doing. None.

Clueless and disconnected Joe Biden is a shallow, empty and at times explosively angry vessel of nothingness.   The entire world can see it.

(more…)

The good news is more and more people are waking up to the dark arts of Republican politics.  If the awakening continues things will change.  The bad news is we’ve got to plow through a few more losses to get more lions awake.

Mike Pence is going to rally in Georgia on behalf of Brian Kemp’s reelection bid, because of course he is, Club rules.

The GOP club has outplayed the MAGA voters in the state of Georgia by using their private club rules along with the assist from an open primary.

Brian Kemp will win the GA republican (open ballot) primary with the help of democrats and GOP club endorsements.

The defeat of David Perdue will provide the Pence/Bush tenured club officials, ie. ‘the old guard‘, with the opportunity to disparage Donald Trump, claim MAGA is dead and Trump’s endorsements worthless.   The media are all waiting anticipatory glee for the opportunity.

Sometimes you just have to swallow the bitter pill and move along.  Both clubs in Georgia have made a deal, everything now is just watching the illusion of choice unfold.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence will campaign with Georgia’s incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp the day before this month’s GOP primary in his most significant political break with former President Donald Trump to date.

(more…)

Perhaps you’ve noticed. For the past two nights Fox News and a host of corporate allies have been doing a full-frontal attack against Pennsylvania Senate Candidate Kathy Barnette.

The club reaction appears to have been triggered by a GOP Trafalgar poll showing Kathy Barnette in a close second place (23.2%), surging ahead of David McCormick (21.6%) and right on the heels of Mehmet Oz (24.5%).  [Bartos 7.2%, Sands 6.5%]

In this outline I will explain the easily visible GOPe club moves without trying to support any particular candidate, that’s for Pennsylvania voters to decide.  However, once you understand the background play, it might help clarify what the Keystone state voters are witnessing.

BACKGROUND.  President Trump has endorsed Mehmet Oz.  However, many people in the MAGA base are stuggling with that endorsement because they just don’t like the guy and question the bonafides of his sudden, seemingly convenient, MAGA-mindedness.

Meanwhile, David McCormick is the GOPe candidate from the mold of the typically Wall Street Mitch McConnell tribe.

McCormick is the quintessential corporate republican, or what might be described as the ‘establishment’ party choice.  I would call McCormick the club candidate.

Kathy Barnette is the alternative favorite in the race for the MAGA base who just cannot bring themselves to support Oz.  Barnette is the outsider and carries a fierce independent streak that appeals to frustrated voters who have had enough of the nonsense.

As a result, the top three in the race break down into McCormick as the Club candidate, while Barnette and Oz are splitting the MAGA vote.  By my estimation the MAGA support looks like 60%(ish) Barnette and 40%(ish) Oz.  What is happening now in this race is very Karl Rove-ian.

(more…)

The entire premise of the J6 committee is a farce.  The overwhelming majority of Americans fully understand it is a political exercise between Democrats in congress and their hired Lawfare allies.  The goal is to label their political opposition as extremists, block and/or tarnish President Trump and manufacture a false premise to advance the Democrat 2022 election goals.

Despite this reality the effort continues in order to fuel their far-left base and media allies.

Today, the House committee triggered subpoenas against House republican members.  The subpoenas were sent to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (U-DC), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Rep Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Mo Brooks (R-Ala.). All five of the house members had previously rejected investigators’ requests for voluntarily testimony.

The subpoena authority is likely, hopefully, to be challenged in court.  The premise of a House committee issuing subpoena’s to the political opposition of the same House membership appears to violate the function of government on many levels.

WASHINGTON DC – […] The Republican leader indicated he might not comply with the subpoena.

“My view on the committee has not changed,” said McCarthy, who added he had not yet seen the subpoena. “They’re not conducting a legitimate investigation. It seems as though they just want to go after their political opponents.”

The select committee demanded testimony from the five lawmakers in the final week of May.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.”

(more…)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the inflation data from April today [DATA HERE] showing 0.3% increased inflation in April and a continued 8.3% ‘sticky’ inflation year-over-year.

CTH is going to say something slightly unusual, this data is actually worse than expected.   The hidden canary in the mine is within this BLS sentence which shows in the statistics, “the index for gasoline fell 6.1 percent over the month, offsetting increases in the indexes for natural gas and electricity.”  Remember, these are backwards reflections of price captured in early/mid-April.

The actual price of gasoline dropped 1% in April during the timeframe captured.  Yes, there was an actual 18 days in April when gasoline prices moderated and slightly ticked down; however, those prices immediately jumped again late April through today.

Because the BLS puts a 5x weight on the importance of gas [Table A], the 1% temporary drop in gasoline led to 6.1% downward “seasonally adjusted” price pressure.

All of that said, and with the heavy weighting of the gasoline prices considered, the net inflation results barely moved from March (8.5%) to April (8.3%). I modified Table-A to take out the noise.  You can see the downward pressure from gasoline and simultaneously the upward price pressure from food, specifically food at home.

This outcome is a reflection of what we have been seeing in the supermarkets and grocery stores.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)