Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Memetrics
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 4,112 | -4.75 |
| Oil (WTI) | 80.71 | -0.25 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 3.29% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 6.22% |
Stocks are lower this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are up.
The services economy expanded in March, albeit at a much slower rate than in February, according to the ISM Services Index. We saw pretty dramatic declines in new orders and a deceleration in prices. The employment index fell as well, which means the Fed should be pretty happy with these numbers. “There has been a pullback in the rate of growth for the services sector, attributed mainly to (1) a cooling off in the new orders growth rate, (2) an employment environment that varies by industry and (3) continued improvements in capacity and logistics, a positive impact on supplier performance. The majority of respondents report a positive outlook on business conditions.”
Lock volume rose 24% in March, according to the MCTLive Lock Index. Locks increased throughout all categories, with purchases up 23%, rate / term up 39% and cash-out refis up 28%. Part of this is of course seasonal, however lower interest rates are helping matters as well.
Western Alliance announced its earnings date and gave an update on its business. The company’s liquidity covers the number of uninsured deposits by 1.4x, and insured deposits increased to 68% of total deposits. Western Alliance is getting lumped in with Silicon Valley Bank, which is somewhat unfair given that SVB was kind of a one-trick pony and Western Alliance is more diversified with its mortgage ops. The Street expects WA to earn $9.11 this year, which puts the stock on a P/E of 3.2x with a 37% discount to book.
US employers announced 89,703 job cuts in March, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. This is up 15% from February and more than triple the number a year ago. “We know companies are approaching 2023 with caution, though the economy is still creating jobs. With rate hikes continuing and companies’ reigning in costs, the large-scale layoffs we are seeing will likely continue,” said Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. 38% of the cuts were in tech. Separately, initial jobless claims rose to 228k, which is further confirmation the labor economy is slowing down.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
KosKidz shocked at the consequences of their own actions.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/5/2162256/-Republicans-furiously-try-to-distract-the-media-from-Donald-Trump-s-legal-reality#comment_85921769
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Good analogy:
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Baby, why you make me hit you?
This legal embarrassment reveals new layers of Trumpian damage to the legal foundations of the United States: Mr. Trump’s opponents react to his provocations and norms violations by escalating and accelerating the erosion of legal norms.
https://redstate.com/bradslager/2023/04/06/new-york-times-completely-destroys-alvin-braggs-indictmentand-still-manages-to-blame-trump-n727372
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This would be the best outcome:
“The case appears so weak on its legal and jurisdictional basis that a state judge might dismiss the case and mitigate that damage.”
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Never happen, he’ll be convicted on all 34.
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KoKidz now in favor or insurrection.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/6/2162454/-Tyranny-Alert-Tennessee-Republicans-set-to-expel-three-legislatures-who-are-trying-to-pass-gun-laws#comment_85925367
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the left thinks only they should be permitted to protest.
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I’d have censored them and given them one final warning then expelled them on any further breaches of the rules.
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I said the other day that I don’t think they’ll be expelled, unfortunately.
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If the left isn’t going to play by the rules, then the right shouldn’t either.
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One has:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/06/tennessee-democrats-expulsion/
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Well, knock me over. I’m truly shocked!
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The left’s predictable “well i never” schtick over this is pretty lame, considering everything that has happened.
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Looks like two were expelled. One survived.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/06/tennessee-democrats-expulsion/
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I stand humbled and pleasantly surprised.
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Why would any of you be shocked that they expelled the two black guys but let the white woman slide?
It’s shameful what the TN legislature is doing.
I guess there is no sensitivity here regarding gun violence, children and teenagers protesting with their mother’s irks the R controlled legislature. Out of order suddenly means expulsion despite what the voters want?
It’s going to come back to bite these guys/gals in the ass!
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Why would any of you be shocked that they expelled the two black guys but let the white woman slide?
You mean there are still other blacks serving in the Legislature? How’d the let them slip by?
I guess there is no sensitivity here regarding gun violence, children and teenagers protesting with their mother’s irks the R controlled legislature.
I’m willing to train and arm all protesters if they’re feeling unsafe.
It’s going to come back to bite these guys/gals in the ass!
If they believe what they’re doing is right, should they care about the consequences?
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Please. If we were following the left’s Jan 6 reaction, they would be sitting in solitary right now, communicating through the toilet.
The left has no room to complain. The bully finally got punched back.
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Just thought of this……………..I was a future voter in 1968 and believe me, you haven’t heard the last from young people. The new generation of voters has been awakened!
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lms:
The new generation of voters has been awakened!
Awake is not a word I would use for anyone who votes D.
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That’s true every few years. And will continue to be true I suspect, until one side or the other manages to institutionalize the rigging of elections always in their favor.
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The modern left is utopian and authoritarian. History shows what happens then those types take over institutions and governments. The only thing keeping them in their lane is an armed citizenry.
And all those kids are going to sit in deep blue states, where they already have all the gun control they could possibly want.
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I say we give them the left and east coast and call it a day.
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I say we give them the left and east coast and call it a day.
The US has a chance if we can overturn Wickard and Chevron.
Otherwise that should probably be the plan. The left gets I-5 and I-95.
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“Out of order suddenly means expulsion despite what the voters want?”
If they had the votes, they’d introduce legislation. The protest tactics are because they don’t have the votes.
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jnc:
The protest tactics are because they don’t have the votes.
I interpreted “what the voters want” to be referring to the fact that they were elected reps, ie the voters wanted them there. (If my interpretation is right, of course, it seems an odd point for someone who supported the impeachment of a President.)
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In all sincerity, when did interrupting legislative activity stop being sedition?
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McWing:
In all sincerity, when did interrupting legislative activity stop being sedition?
When Calvin declared it so.
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It didn’t. Democrats doing it for justice isn’t sedition. Republicans doing anything like it for any reason is treason, because they are evil.
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“Just thought of this……………..I was a future voter in 1968 and believe me, you haven’t heard the last from young people. The new generation of voters has been awakened!”
Same thing happened in 1988 with Reagan and a whole generation.
The biggest impact on the upcoming generations that I’ve seen is the economy and the constant crises that have impacted their ability to progress in careers, by homes, and start families.
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jnc:
The biggest impact on the upcoming generations that I’ve seen is the economy and the constant crises that have impacted their ability to progress in careers, by homes, and start families.
I wouldn’t discount the catastrophism that the left has been propagandizing them with for pretty much their entire lives.
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I think the cultural transformation towards perpetual adolescence, replacing children with pets, and replacing any personal ambition with online feuds … this general erosion of the desirability of marriage and starting a family (for economic and cultural reasons) is long term the complete extinction of the west as we’ve known it, though I’ll be dead before the world is run by a fusion of super-wealthy leftists and Muslim caliphates.
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I was a future voter in 1968 and believe me, you haven’t heard the last from young people.
To put the year 1968 into perspective, 10 years later I was in the middle of the Carter Administration. By the time I was in college, the students were triggering the boomer administrators with Reagan / Bush 84 buttons on our backpacks.
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40 (!) undercover agents and informants on J6 but they had no clue?!?
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I wonder if the Fed have even tried to infiltrate Antifa. My guess is they haven’t because they are on the same side.
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Taibbi’s journey to the dark side is complete:
“It’s rare that the following words are justified on every level, but really, MSNBC: Fuck you. ”
https://www.racket.news/p/msnbc-sucks
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From Yahoo News!
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — In an extraordinary act of political retaliation, Tennessee Republicans on Thursday expelled two Democratic lawmakers from the state Legislature for their role in a protest calling for more gun control in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting in Nashville. A third Democrat was narrowly spared by a one-vote margin.
The split votes drew accusations of racism, with lawmakers ousting Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who are both Black, while Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is white, survived the vote on her expulsion. Republican leadership denied that race was a factor, however.
Banishment is a move the chamber has used only a handful times since the Civil War. Most state legislatures possess the power to expel members, but it is generally reserved as a punishment for lawmakers accused of serious misconduct, not used as a weapon against political opponents.
Jones, Pearson and Johnson joined in protesting last week as hundreds of protesters packed the Capitol to call for passage of gun-control measures. While demonstrators filled galleries, the three Democrats approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn and participated in a chant.
The protest unfolded days after the shooting at the Covenant School, a private Christian school where six people were killed, including three children.
“We are losing our democracy. This is not normal. This is not OK,” Pearson told reporters Thursday. The three “broke a House rule because we’re fighting for kids who are dying from gun violence and people in our communities who want to see an end to the proliferation of weaponry in our communities.”
Johnson, a retired teacher, said her concern about school shootings was personal, recalling a day in 2008 when students came running toward her out of a cafeteria because a student had just been shot and killed there.
“The trauma on those faces, you will never, ever forget. I don’t want to forget it,” she said.
Thousands of people flocked to the Capitol to support the Democrats, cheering and chanting outside the House chamber so loudly that the noise drowned out the proceedings.
The trio held hands as they walked onto the floor, and Pearson raised his fist to the crowd during the Pledge of Allegiance.
Offered a chance to defend himself before the vote, Jones said the GOP responded to the shooting with a different kind of attack.
“We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” he said.
Jones vowed that even if expelled, he would continue pressing for action on guns.
“I’ll be out there with the people every week, demanding that you act,” he said.
Republican Rep. Gino Bulso said the three Democratic representatives “effectively conducted a mutiny.”
“The gentleman shows no remorse,” Bulso said, referring to Jones. “He does not even recognize that what he did was wrong. So not to expel him would simply invite him and his colleagues to engage in mutiny on the House floor.”
The two expelled lawmakers may not be gone for long. County commissions in their districts get to pick replacements to serve until a special election can be scheduled, and they also would be eligible to run in the special election.
Under the Tennessee Constitution, lawmakers cannot be expelled for the same offense twice.
During discussion, Republican Rep. Sabi Kumar advised Jones to be more collegial and less focused on race.
“You have a lot to offer, but offer it in a vein where people are accepting of your ideas,” Kumar said.
Jones said he did not intend to assimilate in order to be accepted. “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to make a change for my community,” he replied.
Fielding questions from lawmakers, Johnson reminded them that she did not raise her voice nor did she use the bullhorn — as did the other two, both of whom are new lawmakers and among the youngest members in the chamber.
But she also suggested that race was likely a factor on why Jones and Pearson were ousted but not her, telling reporters that it “might have to do with the color of our skin.”
That notion was echoed by state Sen. London Lamar, a Democrat representing Memphis.
Lawmakers “expelled the two black men and kept the white woman,” Lamar, a Black woman, said via Twitter. “The racism that is on display today! Wow!”
However House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican who voted to expel all three, denied that race was at play, arguing that Johnson’s arguments might have swayed other members.
“Our members literally didn’t look at the ethnicity of the members up for expulsion,” Majority Leader William Lamberth added. He alleged that Jones and Pearson were trying to incite a riot last week, while Johnson was more subdued.
After sitting quietly for hours and hushing anyone who cried out during the proceedings, people in the gallery erupted in screams and boos following the final vote. There were chants of “Shame!” and “Fascists!”
Lawmakers quickly adjourned for the evening.
GOP leaders told journalists afterward that Thursday’s actions were necessary to avoid setting a precedent that lawmakers disrupting House proceedings through protest would be tolerated.
Outrage over the expulsions underscored not only the ability of the Republican supermajority to silence opponents, but its increasing willingness to do so.
In Washington, President Joe Biden blasted the GOP’s priorities.
“Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting. And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action. It’s shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent,” Biden tweeted.
Many of the protesters traveled from Memphis and Knoxville, areas that Pearson and Johnson represent, and stood in a line that wrapped around the Capitol to get inside.
Protesters outside the chamber held up signs that said, “School zones shouldn’t be war zones,” “Muskets didn’t fire 950 rounds per minute” with a photo of George Washington, and “You can silence a gun … but not the voice of the people.“
Before the expulsion votes, House members debated more than 20 bills, including a school safety proposal requiring public and private schools to submit their building safety plans to the state. The bill did not address gun control, sparking criticism from some Democratic members that lawmakers were only addressing a symptom and not the cause of school shootings.
Past expulsion votes have taken place under distinctly different circumstances.
In 2019, lawmakers faced pressure to expel former Republican Rep. David Byrd after he faced accusations of sexual misconduct dating to when he was a high school basketball coach three decades earlier. Republicans declined to take any action, pointing out that he was reelected as the allegations surfaced. Byrd retired last year.
Last year, the state Senate expelled Democrat Katrina Robinson after she was convicted of using about $3,400 in federal grant money on wedding expenses instead of her nursing school.
Before that case, state lawmakers last ousted a House member in 2016 when the chamber voted 70-2 to remove Republican Rep. Jeremy Durham after an attorney general’s investigation detailed allegations of improper sexual contact with at least 22 women during his four years in office.
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Oh this one will be fun….
In an extraordinary act of political retaliation
Does the left possess mirrors in their parallel universe? Cause they are trying to pin 34 felonies on a presidential candidate for inaccurately accounting for the cost of a NDA.
The split votes drew accusations of racism
Well, it is a day of the week ending in -day, so the left is crying racism.
“We are losing our democracy. This is not normal. This is not OK,”
“democracy” means nothing more than the left getting their way.
“We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” he said.
The only thing keeping the left in check is an armed citizenry.
Look, the left decided to overreact to Jan 6, and so under the new rules the right can overreact too.
Zero sympathy.
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Brent:
Look, the left decided to overreact to Jan 6, and so under the new rules the right can overreact too.
You can’t really make that argument to a progressive, because they sincerely believe in Calvinball rules.
I hate the thought of what it will mean, but I really don’t see any case for Republican DAs and AGs across the country refraining from engaging in the same lawfare that the Dems have now introduced us to. It is either that or surrender, which worries me even more.
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Always assume bad faith when dealing with the left. Always.
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Like I said above, I’d have censored them and put them on notice that any further breaches would have been met with expulsion.
I think the lack of contrition did them in.
And this would be the key difference in why the first two were expelled and the third wasn’t:
“Fielding questions from lawmakers, Johnson reminded them that she did not raise her voice nor did she use the bullhorn — as did the other two, both of whom are new lawmakers and among the youngest members in the chamber.”
You can’t go down into the chamber with a bullhorn and disrupt the legislative proceedings.
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Like I said above, I’d have censored them and put them on notice that any further breaches would have been met with expulsion.
I, too. Legislative House Rules on decorum are a real thing. The censorship would have to have been more than a verbal admonition, I think – pay docking, mandatory classes, loss of committee seats, etc. But removing the representatives who were elected leaves districts unrepresented. A second breach would have to be dealt with expulsion.
To be sure, I don’t think expulsion was outrageous, just a little disproportionate for a first offense. The non racial distinction based on the excesses of behavior seems more compelling than a racial distinction to me, but I bet it doesn’t to the constituents of the expelled legislators.
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I think you’re right. But I also think politicians consider themselves an elite class and sacrosanct, so if you disrespect them you’ve offended the ruling class—and will get a disproportionate response becausen you dared to thumb your nose at the kings and queens (even if technically one of the ruling class; you side with the rabble you’re a traitor).
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LOL
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted luxury gifts from a prominent Republican donor for more than 20 years without disclosing them, possibly violating a law that requires justices, judges and members of Congress to disclose most gifts, according to a new report.
ProPublica reported Thursday on a series of lavish trips Thomas has taken over more than two decades, which have been funded by billionaire and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.
This investigation comes as the nation’s high court fends off requests for a code of ethics, which would likely address similar instances.
The disclosures are the latest ethics controversy to dog Thomas, who also has faced tough questions about his incomplete financial disclosure forms and appearances at other political gatherings of wealthy conservative donors and influencers.
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, his wife, also has come under scrutiny for her back-channel efforts to help former President Donald Trump stay in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.
Thomas accepted luxury gifts without disclosing them, according to report
Thomas has accepted lavish gifts from the billionaire Dallas businessman nearly every year, which had included vacations on Crow’s superyacht and trips on the billionaire’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet as well as a week each summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks, ProPublica reported, citing flight records, internal documents and interviews with Crow’s employees.
The report also found that flight records from the Federal Aviation Administration and FlightAware suggest that Thomas makes “regular use” of Crow’s jet, noting that Thomas used the private plane for a three-hour trip in 2016.
ProPublica reported Thursday that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted luxury gifts from a prominent Republican donor for more than 20 years without disclosing them.
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pretty tame compared to making bank in ukraine.
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You always seem to go after the black guys.
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Hahaahah
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He shouldn’t have done it or at least disclosed it, but I doubt it impacted any of his votes. Thomas is nothing if not consistent with his judicial philosophy.
After how he was treated during his confirmation hearings, I think he stopped caring about what the media, et. al. thought about him.
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Impossible. Lefties strategies are inspired by pure motives so never backfire.
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