As higher interest rates continue to put pressure on borrowers, the ability of the average person to afford a mortgage diminishes.  Higher mortgage rates lead to downward pressure on residential home values as fewer borrowers can afford higher payments.  Simultaneously, commercial real estate is dropping in value as vacancies continue increasing.

Put both of these issues together and already tenuous banks holding mortgage bonds as assets can become more unstable.

This dynamic creates the continual tremors in the background of an economy already suffering from high inflation and low consumer purchasing of durable goods.

A perfect storm starts to realize.

(Wall Street Journal) U.S. existing-home sales decreased 2.4% in March from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.44 million, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. March sales fell 22% from a year earlier.

March marked the 13th time in the previous 14 months that sales have slowed. The housing market had a surprisingly strong February, when sales rose a revised 13.75% from the previous month. But after mortgage rates ticked higher, March sales resumed the extended period of declines.

The housing market’s slowdown is now starting to weigh on prices, which have fallen on an annual basis for two consecutive months for the first time in 11 years. The national median existing-home price decline of 0.9% in March from a year earlier to $375,700 was the biggest year-over-year price drop since January 2012, NAR said.

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the JoeBama Administration and Presidency.

“This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won’t be done. The Founders’ Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.”

“But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.”

~ Mike Vanderboegh

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

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Political DA Alvin Bragg was smacked down pretty hard by a New York judge Wednesday, telling his office there is no legal mechanism to avoid accountability and testimony before congress.

The DA office took federal funds to prosecute Donald Trump, the DA office is interfering in a federal election, the DA office has openly stated their intentions are politically motivated, and therefore the DA office has no standing to try and avoid federal legislative scrutiny.

As Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil clarified to Bragg’s team, she has no standing to block a legislatively authorized congressional subpoena.

New York – […] “The sole question before the Court at this time is whether Bragg has a legal basis to quash a congressional subpoena that was issued with a valid legislative purpose.  He does not,” Vyskocil wrote in her decision Wednesday.

Bragg, a Democrat, has accused Jordan of pursuing the subpoena to score political points while supporting Trump, a Republican. Vyskocil said the dispute appeared political, but said that did not impact her decision.

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An IRS supervisory special agent with information about intervention, mishandling and ‘political interference’ in the ongoing criminal probe into Hunter Biden is seeking whistleblower protections to share the information with Congress. Apparently, the deep state “theys” are protecting Hunter Biden and the IRS agent has had enough.

WALL STREET JOURNAL – WASHINGTON—An IRS supervisor has told lawmakers he has information that suggests the Biden administration is improperly handling the criminal investigation into President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and is seeking whistleblower protections, according to people familiar with the matter.

A letter sent to Congress on Tuesday says a career Internal Revenue Service criminal supervisory special agent has information that would contradict sworn testimony by a “senior political appointee.” The supervisor also has information about a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case,” according to the letter.

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The ride of Paul Revere is originally attributed to April 18th; however, the majority of the events surrounding it took place overnight, into the wee hours of the morning, then ultimately into mid-day of April 19, 1775, when the Battle of Lexington took place.  I hope y’all enjoy this. I revisit this moment in history each year because it shows how ONE ORDINARY MAN can make a huge difference.

Patriots’ Day…

A friend once asked: “How do you celebrate Patriots’ Day?” Which, perhaps, should spur me to share my own thoughts on this day of consequence.

Many are familiar with the poem Paul Revere’s Ride, however, far fewer know that Paul Revere actually memorialized the events of the April 18 and 19, 1775, in an eight-page letter written several years later.

Each Patriots’ Day I remind myself to read his letter from a copy handed down, and I think about how Paul Revere was really just a common man of otherwise undue significance…. yet, capable to the task at hand.

To me everything about the heart of Revere, which you can identify within his own writing, is what defines an American ‘patriot’.

There is no grand prose, there is no outlook of being a person of historical significance, there is just a simple recollection of his involvement, an ordinary man in extraordinary times.

Unsure if anyone else would enjoy I have tracked down an on-line source for sharing and provide a transcript below (all misspelling is with the original).

Paul Revere personally recounts his famous ride. – In this undated letter, Paul Revere summarizes the activities surrounding his famous ride on 18 April 1775. He recounts how Dr. Joseph Warren urged him to ride to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of British troop movements. He arranged to signal the direction of the troops with lanterns from Old North Church, and then had friends row him across the Charles River borrowing a horse for his ride.

Revere wrote this letter at the request of Jeremy Belknap, corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Revere signed his name to the letter but then wrote above it, “A Son of Liberty of the year 1775”, and beside it, “do not print my name.” Nonetheless, the MHS included Revere’s name when it printed the letter in 1798.

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♦ National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Lawrence A. Tabak officially took office on December 20, 2021. Previously Tabak served as the Principal Deputy Director and the Deputy Ethics Counselor of NIH since August 2010. Today he was asked about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, commonly known as Covid-19. Mr. Tabak claims he has no idea where the virus came from.

– Non pretending version: Tabak knows exactly where it came from and is protecting Anthony Fauci.

♦ Rochelle P. Walensky, is the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Today Ms. Walensky was asked if her prior claims of vaccinated people not being able to spread or transmit the COVID-19 virus were accurate. Walensky clams the statements were accurate at the time they were made (March ’21).

– Non pretending version: the entire predicate of the govt vaccination mandate rests on the vaccine stopping the spread of COVID-19.  The vaccine stopping transmission was a lie when Walensky said it in March ’21, and it is a lie she must maintain in 2023 because the OSHA mandate could not have existed without it. WATCH:

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Another three endorsements for President Trump today from the Florida congressional delegation, bringing the total so far to ten with more anticipated.  Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is in Washington DC seeking support.  DeSantis is warmly greeted, but President Trump gets the endorsements.  What’s going on?

Republican Congressman Greg Steube gives an explanation below about the Ron DeSantis Floridians know, but nationally most do not.

DeSantis is an out-of-touch aloof persona, who generally projects himself as better than others.  In person he projects an arrogance and condescending personality trait also carried by his insta-selfie supporters and ‘influencers.’ It comes through the camera lens.  Everything constructed around DeSantis is fake, even the fake blue-collar handshakes that have to be photo-shopped to give a common man impression.

The donors are pouring in hundreds of millions to pay for the fake DeSantis constructs, Top Gov brand imaging and Madison Avenue illusions, but you cannot purchase authenticity, and you cannot rewrite the history of who DeSantis is.  Greg Steube explains:

[I]n a brief interview last night [Steube noted] that DeSantis has never once reached out to him during his five years in Congress nor replied to his multiple attempts to connect. He recalled a recent news conference dealing with damage from Hurricane Ian where the governor’s aides initially invited him to stand alongside DeSantis, only to tell him that he wouldn’t be part of the event when he showed up.

Trump, on the other hand, was the first person Steube remembers calling him in the ICU to wish him well after he was injured in a January tree-trimming accident. “To this day I have not heard from Gov. DeSantis,” he said.

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Some insider threats are more equal than others; so goes the position of the nation’s biggest leaker of classified documents in modern history, and it’s not Jack Teixeira.

This story shows the importance of what was hidden by the combined efforts of the national security apparatus in 2018.

Readers here are familiar, but most Americans are not, with how Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner leaked a top-secret classified Title-1 FISA application in March of 2017.

Then the Vice-Chair of the SSCI, Senator Warner instructed Senate Security Director James Wolfe to leak the 82-page FISA application assembled against Carter Page.  On the afternoon of March 17, 2017, Wolfe took 82 pictures of the “Read and Return” document that was delivered to the SSCI basement SCIF by FBI Supervisory Special Agent Brian Dugan from the Washington Field Office.

Later that evening, Wolfe sent the images to journalist Ali Watkins using an encrypted messaging app.  Ms. Watkins then shared the FISA content with her peers and used the information to leverage a top-tier job at the New York Times.  The media were off to the races talking about FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign and using the leaked FISA as evidence of the ongoing investigation, later known as Crossfire Hurricane.   Three days later, March 20, 2017, after coordinating the intent of the narrative creation with Mark Warner, FBI Director James Comey publicly admitted the Trump-Russia investigation for the first time.

After James Wolfe was arrested for the FISA application leak, his defense lawyers threatened to expose the role of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the leak and subpoena the members as witnesses.  The Mueller/Weissmann team, then in charge of all DOJ operations that touched on Trump-Russia, took apart the evidence of Wolfe’s conduct, and DC Attorney Jessie Liu dropped most of the charges against Wolfe.  Mueller then ran cover for Mark Warner, and eventually – out of an abundance of caution to maintain the need for the coverup operation – the Mueller/Weissmann team then made the FISA application public. The rest is history.

Keep in mind, I could be civilly sued if anything written above as an asserted truth was false.  I’m not, because the truth is the defense.  All of this happened.

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the JoeBama Administration and Presidency.

“This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won’t be done. The Founders’ Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.”

“But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.”

~ Mike Vanderboegh

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

(more…)