Morning Report: Canadian RE bubble dwarfs US 8/18/17

Vital Statistics:

Last Change
S&P Futures 2432.0 2.5
Eurostoxx Index 374.0 -2.8
Oil (WTI) 47.2 0.1
US dollar index 86.1 -0.3
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 2.16%
Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA 103.09
Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA 103.97
30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage 3.88

Stocks are higher this morning after yesterday’s sell-off. Bonds and MBS are flat.

There is a risk-off feel to the market as the current situation in Washington DC plus the terror attacks in Spain are causing investors to sell stocks and buy bonds. The post-election low on the 10 year was 2.14%, and we are getting close. Loan officers, maybe take a look at some old refi candidates that might have missed the boat and see if there is interest again.

Freddie Mac is introducing an automated appraisal alternative for some purchases and refis. “Freddie Mac’s automated collateral evaluation (ACE) assesses the need for a traditional appraisal by leveraging proprietary models and using data from multiple listing services and public records as well as a wealth of historical home values to determine collateral risks.” ACE has been available for some refis since June, but will also be available for some purchases starting in September. This is one way to alleviate the problem of appraiser shortages.

Freddie Mac has issued their outlook for the rest of 2017. Highlights include

  • Housing starts will remain low, and should come in below 1.24MM (which is the long-term average).
  • Home sales will hit 6.2 million and mortgage rates will stay below 4%.
  • House price appreciation will come in at 6.3% for the year.
  • Cash sales as a percentage of sales will remain elevated in the high teens. This is lower than the peak of 35%, but higher than the historical average of about 10%. This difference translates into about $172 billion in fewer originations.

Freddie Mac explains what is going on with the cash sales: “Usually, not many people like to invest a lot of cash into real estate, which is illiquid and has high transaction costs. However, in the current, highly-competitive housing market, a cash offer is an effective way to gain an advantage over other bidders. In a cash sale, the seller doesn’t have to worry about the buyer’s ability to obtain a mortgage or the chances that an appraisal will come in below the agreed sales price. And each cash sale means one less mortgage origination.”

The Canadian real estate bubble will probably not affect the US all that much, however it could have an impact on higher priced properties, especially on the West Coast. Here is a chart comparing the US bubble to the Canadian one:

Canadian real estate

Note that the Canadian real estate market doesn’t have CDO squareds, NINJA loans, pick-a-pay mortgages, or anything like that. Perhaps bubbles are caused by something else – like too much money chasing too few assets…

Home sales fell 3.5% in July, according to Redfin as tight inventory continues to be a problem. Inventory fell 11%, and many buyers are pulling back from the market, waiting for new inventory. You can see just how much inventory has been falling on a YOY basis below.

76 Responses

  1. @brentnyitray: “Here is a chart comparing the US bubble to the Canadian one:”

    WTF? That’s all too much money chasing too few assets?

    Like

    • IMO, it is Chinese money largely….Vancouver always had a huge Chinese presence and that is where the action is. I doubt that we are seeing the same sort of thing in, say, Saskatoon.

      Liked by 1 person

    • White nationalists in the U.S. are not facing any kind of discrimination whatsoever, despite their belief that they are.

      Part of the problem these days has to be education. Obviously, white nationalists in the US are facing huge, almost total discrimination. Just because the discrimination may be rational and justifiable and perhaps the only moral option, they are obviously facing, like, mega-discrimination. I can’t think of a more universally hated group.

      The rest of the article just reminds me that the modern Jewish homeland should have been located in North Dakota or Utah. Some place with a lot of federal land. Could have been 4 times the size of Israel and not made a dent in our usable acreage.

      Like

  2. Full on TDS:

    “Trump Makes Caligula Look Pretty Good

    Paul Krugman AUG. 18, 2017”

    Like

  3. Bannon’s gone..

    Liked by 1 person

    • Pity, I felt he was one of the best parts about the Trump administration.

      Liked by 1 person

    • Ezra Klein had a good take on Bannon & Trump before this happened.

      “What Steve Bannon gets right about Democrats — and wrong about Trump
      Bannon’s uncensored interview includes a plan for political success Trump can’t follow.
      Updated by Ezra Klein@ezraklein
      Aug 18, 2017, 10:40am EDT

      A Trump administration that was laser-focused on both a message and agenda of economic nationalism would be a formidable political force, particularly if they could co-opt liberal ideas on domestic policy and leave the left to oppose Trump on pure race and identity grounds. But that’s not the Trump administration we’ve seen.”

      https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16165344/steve-bannon-trump-democrats-identity-racism

      Liked by 1 person

      • Ezra might be right here:

        More puzzling is the fact that Bannon would phone a writer and editor of a progressive publication (the cover lines on whose first two issues after Trump’s election were “Resisting Trump” and “Containing Trump”) and assume that a possible convergence of views on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.

        … in that he assumes that was Bannon’s game. I’m dubious, though. Maybe Bannon didn’t realize what he was getting himself into, or didn’t have plan B going in, but I’m not 100% sure. He might not have expected to resign . . .

        On the whole, though, I think he makes good points. Strategically, the Trump admin isn’t doing much wrong in terms of the overall electorate, and the next election, and the Democrats aren’t doing much right. But in terms of actually advancing a policy, the noise and fury around “white nationalism” and accusations of racism make it impossible for elected Democrats to work with Trump, and tough on many Republicans.

        Polls show the one place Americans retain faith in Trump is his economic management. But that isn’t a result of Trump’s agenda — it’s largely a continuation of Obama-era trends — and if it slows down, he’s in real trouble.

        Eh. I’ll listen to a pundit yammer about stuff more seriously when they footnote comments about president’s and the economy with “the president doesn’t control the economy, and administration policy is only tangentially related to economic performance”. One thing I can pretty much guarantee is that if we were currently in the 7th year of the Trump admin, and the economy was going gangbusters, folks like Klein would attribute it to being a continuation of Obama-era trends.

        Which is all to say, Bannon’s theory may be right, but his execution is poor. A Trump administration that was laser-focused on both a message and agenda of economic nationalism would be a formidable political force, particularly if they could co-opt liberal ideas on domestic policy and leave the left to oppose Trump on pure race and identity grounds. But that’s not the Trump administration we’ve seen.

        Ultimately, I don’t think Trump is or ever was the guy to make that kind of political calculus into reality.

        Like

    • From Taibbi:

      The story has even the National Review howling for his dismissal.

      Typical Taibbi dishonesty. The National Review has been “howling” about Bannon since he joined Trump.

      This, from almost 1 year ago:

      http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442189/steve-bannon-trump-administration-alt-right-breitbart-chief-strategist

      BTW, I’d put the intellect of any on his list of “nitwits” and “dunces” in the White House up against Taibbi’s any time.

      Liked by 1 person

      • jnc:

        Taibbi is a good example of why the right shouldn’t engage the media/left’s game of “denounce the nazi”. It really doesn’t matter whether or not they do.

        Bannon’s dismissal of the Charlottesville Nazis as “losers” who need to be suppressed – “We gotta help crush” them, he actually told Kuttner – seems insincere to say the least….

        …Passages like these are exactly what make the Bannonite alt-righters so dangerous. They’re Nazis, but with media awareness. And they don’t want to take over a Virginia street, or an Oregon bird sanctuary, for a few hours here and there. They have much broader ambitions. They want it all – the world, Chico

        Like

        • I don’t need the media or left to convince me to denounce Nazi’s. I’ll do it on my own.

          You and McWing won’t accept this, but it’s a major blind spot for you guys and on this subject, you guys sound just like the left trying to draw an equivalence between ISIS and “Christian terrorists”.

          Normally the progressives are crying wolf on racism and Nazi’s, but Charlottesville was the real thing. I have no problem acknowledging that and also acknowledging that the anti-fa engaged in violent tactics as well. That doesn’t make them equivalent morally.

          I personally think that one of the more effective tactics to push back on overreach by progressives is to acknowledge Nazi’s when they are the real thing and then use them as an example of why the other groups that they seek to smear aren’t.

          Like

        • J,it doesn’t matter to me why someone wants to force into submission and kill me if I don’t submit, nor would it matter to you. In the end, you’re not convinced that the Antifa’s ultimate goal is power over me and my death if I refuse to submit, I am. It’s not a blind spot, it’s a disagreement.

          Further, an acknowledgement of the obvious genocidal nature of Antifa is not an endorsement of neonazi’s specifically and fascism in general. Why would you think it was?

          Like

        • McWing:

          It’s not a blind spot, it’s a disagreement.

          Exactly.

          Like

        • jnc:

          I don’t need the media or left to convince me to denounce Nazi’s. I’ll do it on my own.

          Bannon just did quite literally exactly that, and what was Taibbi’s response?

          To paraphrase Clint Eastwood’s Bill Munny, need’s got nothing to do with it. I’m not talking about “needing” to be “convinced” to do anything. I am talking about the game the left plays.

          I’ll remind you about the Ace comment that KW posted earlier. In it Ace said:

          Here’s what these emotionally driven people are missing. Literally nothing has to be done to stop Nazis in America except to ignore them.

          You said that this comment was “dead on”. Were you serious or not? And if you were, who exactly is the problem, Trump or the left/media?

          Normally the progressives are crying wolf on racism and Nazi’s, but Charlottesville was the real thing. I have no problem acknowledging that and also acknowledging that the anti-fa engaged in violent tactics as well. That doesn’t make them equivalent morally.

          I am happy to acknowledge both things too. And while I agree that the mere willingness to use violence doesn’t make them morally equivalent, I think they are equivalent morally nonetheless. And for precisely for the reasons outlined in the Ace post that you said was “dead on”, I think the latter is a far, far more dangerous force in the nation.

          Like

        • jnc:

          I’ve been thinking about this one.

          you guys sound just like the left trying to draw an equivalence between ISIS and “Christian terrorists”.

          I don’t know who exactly qualifies as a “Christian terrorist” (Obama had to reach all the way back to the Crusades to draw an equivalency between Muslim violence and Christian violence), but that aside, let me ask you what you think…

          1) who poses a bigger security threat to the US, ISIS or “Christian terrorists”?

          2) who is likely to inflict more harm on US citizens, neo-nazis or the radical left.

          Like

        • Scott, the answer seems to have been counter-intuitive to what I would have thought. In the USA, the FBI says the most terrorist attacks have been from far right domestic groups, the next most from far left and black nationalist domestic groups, and running a distant third, Muslim extremists, whether local or international.

          Trying to reason that out, I recall that when I was actively practicing law my Muslim clients were just a huge source of information for the FBI, so we know that if that has been repeated around the country the FBI has pretty much thwarted them, with a few prominent exceptions that come to mind! But apparently domestic terrorists of every stripe don’t run off at the mouth to folks who regularly cooperate with law enforcement.

          Additionally, more than 90% of Islamic terrorist caused deaths in the USA occurred on one day.

          Like

        • Mark:

          Scott, the answer seems to have been counter-intuitive to what I would have thought.

          So just to clarify, are you saying that far right domestic groups are “Christian terrorists”, and that these groups pose a bigger security threat to the US than ISIS?

          Like

        • No.

          Because I don’t know that. However, I suspect that far right terrorists and far left terrorists of the American type aren’t Islamists, probably aren’t Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Shintoists, Taoists, or Wiccans, either.

          My guess is that most of them on both American extremes are “Christians”, at least in how they self identify. I don’t know this, of course. I also don’t think most of them are in communities of like minded groups who get their inspiration from praying together for death to others, and in that way I don’t liken them to Islamists.

          I wrote what I did because I was surprised at the number of terrorist incidents and how many more were visited upon us by domestic terrorists with no Muslim attachment. I had expected from the news stories that stuck in my mind since 9-11 that most incidents involved Islamists. I was surprised that wasn’t the case.

          Like

        • “it doesn’t matter to me why someone wants to force into submission and kill me”

          “obvious genocidal nature of Antifa”

          And I reject your view that that is the Anti-Fa’s goals. It’s not.

          Liked by 1 person

        • I’m cool with denouncing Nazis, BTW.

          I honestly do see the roots of the antifa as being an unhealthy cocktail of young men wanting a clarified moral purpose while creating their own fight club so there is some existential drama in their lives, and some new-fangled Stalinism that is willing to use any means necessary to achieve their amorphous liberal utopia.

          They do not clearly articulate as a group their most odious positions the way the KKK and the Nazis do. How much this redounds to their favor, I don’t know.

          If we are talking in the abstract, about the abstract ideals each group claims to pursue, then certainly antifa seems downright noble and perhaps even justified in some of their tactics, and the Nazis are odious and awful. Although they would also be almost completely invisible with antifa and the MSM and grandstanding DC politicians, but that’s another issue.

          I there are other concerns with the game being played of “you must denounce the Nazis more loudly”, in which those playing it against folks on the right are trying to push the definition of Nazi closer and closer to the center. So now you’re not just denouncing Nazis, but immigration reform, because if you aren’t for open borders, you’re a Nazi, and so on. I don’t feel like the “denounce the Nazis” stuff is sincerely meant.

          I seriously don’t understand why anybody has to denounce Nazis. Its one of those things that should go without saying, and people should be able to understand that with maybe a thousand people total, out of 350 million, identifying as Nazis in America, there aren’t statistically any f**king Nazis in America.

          As to why folks on the right are focusing on antifa violence and poopooing the Nazi connection, I think it’s primarily because a lot of DC politicians and the MSM are pretending they (the antifa) aren’t what they obvious are, and didn’t do exactly what they did.

          And, of course, people get resentful when you demand they denounce Nazis. They aren’t going to Wolf Blitzer and demand he denounce Nazis. They didn’t call up Obama to check get a solid sound bite of him denouncing Nazis. There is an implication in the demand, and its selective application, that makes folks on the right suspicious, I think. And rightly so.

          And there are people who are going to judge moral equivalency primarily or solely on action. This is not unusual and is not irrational. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you think or what your organizations stated mission is when you start beating people with big metal bike locks.

          To repeat: Nazis are bad. All 400 of them. Hate ’em.

          Like

        • ““obvious genocidal nature of Antifa”

          This remains to be seen. They aren’t off to a promising start, but I would expect them to be more totalitarian and thought-police, should they gain power ala a Hitler or a Stalin.

          But they won’t. They are more suicidal than genocidal. The fact they exist at all depends, 100%, on the mollycoddling they are getting from Democrats, the left generally, and the media.

          But there’s no process for becoming antifa, not really. No basic training. No educational structure. These are random people coming together for an adrenaline rush and to give their lives meaning while participating in their Two-Minutes Hate, and they will get out of control. Again, they can only give journalists in the modern era concussions for so long before it becomes a real problem for them.

          Like

        • “Further, an acknowledgement of the obvious genocidal nature of Antifa is not an endorsement of neonazi’s specifically and fascism in general. Why would you think it was?”

          This is definitely the left’s narrative, and the media narrative, and the DC politicrat narrative. So there must be some reason for it. I think it’s because of the distinction between perceived goalsets of antifa and the Nazis. Ultimately, like you, I believe there is no real distinction–but that’s because I don’t take antifa at their word. I think they are either lying or delusional or both.

          Frankly, I don’t take the American Nazis at their word, because a real set of goals from them would involve making the world pay for the way their father abused and then abandoned them, or possibly to make the voices stop and to prove they didn’t need the medication the doctors kept trying to give them when they finally run America. I don’t take them at their word because their goals are primarily about their obvious emotional damage and suppressed sexuality.

          But if we compare the PowerPoints of what each group puts forth as their goals, the antifa have much better PR. I think that’s undeniable.

          Like

        • “So just to clarify, are you saying that far right domestic groups are “Christian terrorists””

          I think the “Christian terrorists” is completely fodder for the left and militant atheists. You can argue that far-right domestic terrorists post a greater threat and have successfully executed more attacks in the US, yet get better PR, and there is data to support this to some extent. With the exception of abortion clinic bombings, very little that the left wants to lump under the label of “Christian terrorism” in the present day is actually Christian. Timothy McVeigh was anti-Government (and mentally unbalanced, like most terrorists, I think). He was not acting under some Christian equivalent of jihad.

          The domestic “terrorists” are more likely to come out of the Sovereign Citizen movement than any Christian church. And they won’t be meeting in church, planning terrorist attacks with their priest or pastor, either.

          Like

      • Taibbi is a smart guy. It’s interesting that so many people, though, judge intelligence by how close the other person’s views or opinions hew to their own. Which essentially the Taibbi position, though I suspect he has numerous superficial reasons for disising DeVos and Carson and Perry, likely for ignorance in areas where they are dilettantes in (I agree that DeVos is a bad selection for secretary of education, generally, but I don’t care that much as I’m not a fan of the Dept. of Education).

        The thing is, Ben Carson and Rick Perry may be as good or better in their jobs as people who present as “smarter” by Taibbi’s metric. How they’d actually go up against each other really depends on the metric, and Taibbi’s is probably a metric that measures how much one comes off as an erudite, cosmopolitan, traveled east-coast liberal with a large vocabulary. He’d win that contest. 😉

        Like

      • The left is trying to establish the narrative that criticizing Antifa equates to supporting Nazis.

        Liked by 1 person

        • Well, because they automatically accept that interpretation of things. I’m seeing it from lots of folks on the Facebag, with lots of cautionary tales about not being the asshole trying to say both sides are bad, or insisting on some kind of “dialog” with evil.

          Like

        • I know I’ve said it before but the only way to deal with this is to accept the label. If wanting smaller government at all levels makes me a nazi klansman, so be it. Now, let me tell you why xyz policy is better for you.

          Like

        • I think it is funny the left is trying to define them as basically anarchists…

          Anarchists who want to control what is and what is not permissible speech.. Anarchists who want total government control of the healthcare system and to eliminate capitalism..

          In what addled mindset does anarchy equal statism?

          Liked by 1 person

        • They’ve always been the vanguard of the communists, the shock-troops. Still are.

          Liked by 1 person

        • The “nonviolent left”

          “Literally Normandy”

          Liked by 1 person

        • When you’re fighting Nazis (or the police, or journalists, or Starbucks) you do what you gotta do. The nobility of your cause is more important than any specific tactic.

          Like

  4. It’s not going to end with Lee & Jackson, and if one is intellectually consistent, it shouldn’t.

    “Traveling down Main Street toward UVA, you walk past a statue of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, with Native American guide Sacagawea crouching below the two white men. Further down the street is a statue of Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark, called “Conqueror of the Northwest.” The statue depicts Clark as a grand hero while Native Americans beg for mercy at his feet. Both statues venerate local men whose exploits furthered extended white supremacy by seizing the North American landmass and subjugating all of the peoples contained therein.

    No discussion of monuments to white supremacist patriarchy would be complete without including Thomas Jefferson, the founder of UVA and a thinker who laid some of the ideological foundations of America. Statues and paintings of Jefferson abound in the city and on campus, presenting an often uncritical picture of the Founding Father. Yes, Jefferson famously objected to slavery — but less famously, he articulated the many reasons African Americans could not be incorporated into broader society on a basis equal to whites. He argued both of these positions even as he fathered children by Sally Hemings, an enslaved girl he owned.

    This fact, while accepted by professional historians and the many African Americans who trace their ancestry to Jefferson, is denied by many white Virginians who resist any slight to the character of this local hero.”

    https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/8/18/16166708/charlottesville-white-supremacy-neo-nazis-confederacy

    For the people upset about the statutes, the offense wasn’t treason/rebellion against the United States and it’s not about keeping the union together. It’s about dismantling the “white supremacist patriarchy”. No reason to exempt the pre-Civil War iconography if one views the country as having been founded on it originally.

    Liked by 1 person

    • It’s not going to end with Lee & Jackson, and if one is intellectually consistent, it shouldn’t.

      No, but it’s all about manipulating emotion, and avoiding manipulating other emotions, so collectively they aren’t showing up and trying to blow up the Jefferson Memorial. Yet.

      Like

      • They have to finish the fight with the centrist Democrats first.

        The “Tea Partyization” of the Democratic party isn’t far enough along for them to go there. Yet.

        Liked by 1 person

  5. Good piece:

    “When Confederate Monuments Represent Reconciliation
    Grave-spitting is easy, forgiveness is hard.
    By Robert Mariani • August 18, 2017

    The Civil War was not a war of conquest. The South is not a subjugated foreign nation, but an essential component of the United States. The South—and, importantly, the nation in general—paid for its sin of slavery with horror and hardship that the modern person can’t imagine. The Southern states were re-admitted to the Union, and the restoration of fraternity began. Southerners get to honor their dead not because they were fighting on the correct side, but because they’re allowed to grapple with the texture of sacrifice and war as their culture experienced it. Just like Yankees do. That’s what memorials are for.

    Those who are trying to bring statues down are so are so obsessed with moral rightness that they forget that part of being good is loving your enemies rather than hating them. Love—agape, not the “love” that we’re lectured about in empty sloganeering—and crowds out vengeance and tempers impulses to hurt.”

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-confederate-monuments-represent-reconciliation/

    Undoing that reconciliation in favor of spiking the ball risks more than those advocating for it are aware of.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I think the urgency and the hyperbole create the biggest risks. Take down a statue here, one there, incrementally change the landscape and make confederate memorials into museum pieces of historical significance, but not celebrations, and it’s not going to tear the country apart.

      Start a campaign for the wholesale destruction of everything that reflects any kind of souther historicity pre-1970 over a period of a few years and they will damage their cause. Deeply.

      But it’s hard to avoid. People don’t approach these issues rationally, or with a view to consequences and long term planning.

      Like

      • Especially if you eschew the political process as hopelessly corrupt in favor of “direct action”.

        Liked by 1 person

        • I’ve driven through town where there are memorials for soldiers who died fighting for the confederacy. And it’s the entire male population at the time that was killed. Typically 50 or 75 guys. I don’t begrudge the people who are left trying to come to terms with that.

          Liked by 1 person

  6. Regardless. Here was a chance to unite and everyone with a real chance to influence things blew it.

    Local radio this morning about the Spain attack. Apprently the real story is trumps twitter response time.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Jonah Goldberg says antifa is bad. Like his point that being less bad than Nazis is not a moral achievement.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450583/alt-right-antifa-both-bad-groups-ideology

    Like

  8. Brent – any prediction on when or if the CDN bubble will burst? Inquiring minds want to know.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Here’s the Bannon/Kuttner piece everybody is referencing. One thing that sticks out but is left unsaid is the idea that China uses the NORK’s as a cat’s paw anytime we get pissy with trade issues.

    Bannon’s plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. “We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war…

    “Oh, they’re wetting themselves,” he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which was put on hold when the war of threats with North Korea broke out, was shelved only temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon has big plans to marginalize their influence.

    http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant

    That angle looks like an interesting investigative piece.

    Anyway, I’m still baffled as to what he said that undermined Trump on the NORKs, I had no concern of a US military first strike, nor did the NORKs.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Antifa members also sometimes launch attacks against people who aren’t physically attacking them. The movement, Crow said, sees alt-right hate speech as violent, and for that, its activists have opted to meet violence with violence.

    Right or wrong, “that’s for history to decide,” he said.

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/unmasking-antifa-anti-fascists-hard-left/index.html

    Like

    • Wrong or wrong. Fixed it for him.

      Liked by 1 person

    • This story has been updated to clarify that counterprotesters say they are not to blame for violence at the Charlottesville protest. The story’s headline has also been updated.

      The antifa counter-propaganda arm moves fast to get obedient news organizations to redact and modify their stories.

      Like

    • While Antifa members don’t fit a single category, they say many are millennials and many live on society’s fringes: undocumented immigrants, transgender people, low-wage workers, those who don’t conform to the traditional 9-to-5.

      Translation: they don’t have jobs.

      Antifa activists, who operate without any centralized leadership, told CNN that their goal is peace and inclusivity.

      Translation: scream loudly and hit people with a big stick.

      Like

      • I bet 97.3% of the antifa membership is whiter than the neonazi’s.

        With a racially purer bloodline.

        Course, It doesn’t take a pure bloodline to want to exterminate those that disagree with you, just a belief that limits to debate should be enforced with violence.

        Liked by 1 person

        • I bet 97.3% of the antifa membership is whiter than the neonazi’s.

          And just as unemployed, and just as likely to be living off their parents or the government or both.

          They’ve got a lot in common, I think. Too bad they can’t get along.

          Like

  11. GLOP Culture podcast makes a good argument for why it’s a good idea to provide clarity on Nazis being bad. Especially for the right.

    https://ricochet.com/podcast/pixelated-butts/

    They mentioned, but could have emphasized, the need for clarity to white nationalists and Nazis: you're not on our side. We don't want the same things. Go away.

    Like

    • Fingers crossed they do this. It will defang the debt ceiling argument when nothing defaults.

      I’m also amused at the premise of the article, that Trump has done something worthy of censure.

      Were there WMD’s in Iraq? Was he slag-fucking interns and selling the Lincoln bedroom along with pardons? Was he arming Mexican drug cartels and trying to blame gun dealers? Was he conducting Illegal wars in Libya and Syria? Using the IRS to suppress political groups he didn’t like?

      Yeah, Trumps a monster.

      It’s an obvious attempt at recapturing the narrative though. Don’t think the Democratic base is gonna wanna talk about statues

      Liked by 1 person

    • It’s an altogether different enterprise when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., pitches her full support behind the effort to sanction the president.

      Is it? Is it really?

      This seems super-predictable and par-for-the-course and something I thought, honestly, that she had already done. Maybe several times.

      Charlottesville dashed those chances. And we haven’t even gotten to the Republicans and their relationship with the president yet.

      This is BS. There was no chance for Trump to work with Democrats. Nobody would ever let that happen. Not the Republicans or Democrats. Charlottesville has nothing to do with that.

      They’ll argue the his words were reprehensible and beneath the dignity of the office.

      I hope not. I don’t like this. I don’t like Trump, and think his response to Charlottesville was impolitic and weak. I can think of much better Trumpian responses than what he came up with. “What the hell are we letting Nazis protest for anyway? What do they care about a statue? They wanted to defeat America and make sure everyone spoke German. This is stupid. And what were those people all in black throwing rocks and stuff? Is there some kind of war between Nazis and Ninja Nazis?” … and so on. There are other ways that focus first on the reprehensibility of Nazis, and then characterize the antifa as a group in the process of elevating Nazis and granting them a status and importance they should not have and do not deserve.

      But it would take some thought.

      Still, censuring the president for mentioning that antifa is violent seems like a bad first step towards something more like actual Nazis than the pretend Nazis who deal with their deep emotional problems by playing dress up and blaming non-white races for the fact daddy never came home after going out for smokes.

      But others know just how bad it will look for the party if Republican leaders don’t at least produce some tepid measure to admonish the president. Many Republicans will at least demand a fig leaf behind which to hide.

      I can’t believe the GOP would do that. If they do, they deserve to lose. Admonishing your own president, no matter how objectively awful, in this day and age gives you nothing. Especially on something like this, where to most of the base he seems to have condemned Nazis just fine.

      And the Democrats will use it against both those who go for it and those who don’t. It’s lose/lose. They could draft their own resolution condemning Nazis and come out fine, but reprimanding Trump would be political suicide.

      And historically presidential censure has been used to complain that the president isn’t just acting as a rubber stamp for whatever congress wants. That’s interesting.

      Like

  12. Yikes.

    Miller unofficially changed his name to Malik Mohammad Ali, acquaintances confirmed, although Miller wrote on his Facebook page that he is not Muslim and does identify with any other religion.

    In the days prior to the shooting, Miller posted several articles on Facebook related to the Ku Klux Klan and Neo Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia.

    On the morning the police officers were killed, Miller posted a meme of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that included the caption, “When I said march I didn’t mean forever (expletive). Shoot back.”

    “You can only poke a tie (sic) up dog so long,” Miller wrote above the photo. “Once that chain breaks it’s over. Wake up America before it’s too late.”

    Later that day, just hours before Miller would be accused of murdering two police officers, he posted an article on Facebook suggesting white supremacists had infiltrated police departments.

    “F— you, rich bastards,” Miller wrote above photos of police officers allegedly wearing KKK hoods.

    https://www.clickorlando.com/news/accused-cop-killer-was-long-time-marine

    Like

    • The Pope has no idea how anything works, apparently. He should just call on God to provide everybody a UBI and be done with it.

      Like

    • McWing:

      This seems stupid.

      It is.

      He said the principle of ensuring each person’s dignity “obliges us to always prioritize personal safety over national security.”

      Right, because national security is unrelated to personal security.

      Like

Be kind, show respect, and all will be right with the world.