Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
Stocks are flattish this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are up.
The Bank of Canada unexpectedly hiked rates 25 basis points yesterday, triggering a sell-off in global sovereign debt. Fears about the impending sale of $1 trillion in T-bills isn’t helping things either. The yield curve inversion has increased over the past couple of weeks:
Rate lock volume fell 16% in May compared to April according to MCT’s Rate Lock Index. Purchase volume was down 15% while refi volume fell 22%. Overall lock volumes are down 29% compared to last year. MCT’s lock index is more reliable than the MBA’s mortgage application index in that it eliminates the multiple application problem for a single loan. Regardless, times are tough out there in the mortgage space.
Initial Jobless claims increased to 261k last week. This is the highest level since October of 2021. While claims are still low on a historical basis, it looks like the Fed’s tightening policy is getting some traction in the labor market.
Overall, the groundwork is being laid for lower rates going forward. The Fed Funds futures still see a 70% chance for a pause in June. Student loan repayments will resume in August, which will crimp consumption. The Eurozone economy is officially in a technical recession, and the ISM data shows US manufacturing is contracting and the services economy is slowing. Increased capital requirements for banks will push long-term rates down, at least at the margin. Notwithstanding the jobs report last week, the evidence is pointing towards a cooling labor market. The volatility in the bond market (measured by the MOVE Index) is falling again, which should help MBS spreads. While it is hard to be optimistic in the mortgage space right now, the second half of 2023 should be better than the first.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
Yep, the old CNN will never come back.
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The other problem for CNN is that the average viewer of cable news is collecting social security.
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Remember, I predicted he’d be indicted before the end of the year and tried and convicted after the bulk of the primary’s, but before the election.
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Southeast Asia / Latin America ain’t got nothing on us!
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Trump could have saved himself a lot of trouble by having a list drawn up of all the documents he was taking, written on it “I declassify these documents as of X date, signed Donald J. Trump”, and then had it recorded.
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That presupposes he’d have knowledge of bad faith investigations instigated by NARA. They won’t charge him with classified documents as then they’d have to charge Biden, Obama, Pence, Hillary and probably Gore for that matter as well as the act of him taking them could be interpreted as him declassifying them anyway. It’ll be about DoD issues, watch.
But the spectacle factor is off the charts!
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The quite part out loud:
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I don’t get it. It’s obvious Republicans have zero chance of winning just looking at the ballot harvesting issue. To me, it’s not just Trump but any R POTUS nominee. No matter who it will be, indictments before the election. It is what it is.
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I finally read the opinion in the case involving the Florida law outlawing the sexual mutilation of children.
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000188-9171-dcb8-a5bc-bffdda950000
As expected, the judge, Judge Hinckle, engages in the same kind of sophistry and semantic games that are the hallmark of the entire gender ideology. He equivocates with his terms and slays straw men everywhere, all while fastidiously avoiding the fundamental issue, even as he insinuates that the defense has “admitted” the truth of his understanding of this fundamental issue.
Hinckle makes a big show of pointing out what he calls “the elephant in the room”, specifically that “gender identity is real”, and he acts as though in acknowledging this reality, the defense has made some kind of fatal concession. But far from being an elephant in the room, it is more like a dust mite. As Hinckle defines the term, it is in fact a trivial truth that virtually no one does or would dispute, and has no bearing on the actual controversy surrounding trans ideology. The real elephant in the room is the complete lack of any explanation of what “gender” is, and whether that is real. And this is an elephant that Hinckle goes to great lengths to ignore and obfuscate.
He begins his analysis by pointing out (one is tempted to say he “admits”) what everyone actually knows…that the concepts “male” and “female” are defined by physical reality.
He then moves to this idea of a “gender identity”, proclaiming:
Now, immediately we ought to be able to see his “elephant in the room” is anything but that. If this is what he means by “gender identity”, then his claim that “gender identity is real” is nothing more than a trivial truth, an acknowledgement that people “really” do have subjective feelings and “internal senses” of things, which virtually no one disputes. What critics of trans ideology dispute is that such internal senses about one’s “gender” are true, not that they are “real”, and the basis for that dispute is opposition to the notion that “gender” identifies some real thing other than simply sex. Ironically, given the pose he takes in the rest of his analysis, Hinckle has actually substantiated exactly this critique of gender ideology.
Notably, and almost certainly deliberately, Hinckle fails to explicitly define what he means by “gender”. But the unavoidable implication of what he has defined is that he is simply using “gender” as a synonym for “sex”. After all, if “male” and “female” are sex categories, as established above, and this “identity” is an “internal sense” of being one of these sex categories, then it is, necessarily, simply an “internal sense” of one’s sex. So clearly there is no distinction between “gender identity” and what we could easily, and perhaps more sensibly, term “sex identity”. So aolthough he tries to obscure the fact, Hinckle is saying simply that “gender” in the term “gender identity” refers to nothing other than “sex”.
Next, Hinckle says:
He has introduced yet another undefined term here, “natal sex”. Why “natal”? As opposed to what? Is it supposed to be distinguished from some other kind of sex? If we can assume, as I think we must, that this “natal sex” is the same thing he was referring to above when he said that every person is born with male or female external sex characteristics and chromosomes, then, applying like terms, his definition of “gender identity” can be restated as “a deeply felt internal sense of one’s natal sex”. And when he says one’s natal sex and gender identity are “opposites”, what he is therefore saying is simply that this “internal sense” is in conflict with external, physical reality. It is, in other words a false sense of reality. So putting his claim in more straightforward terms, he is saying:
For less than 1%, the person has a false gender identity, ie a male has an internal sense of being female, or vice versa.
So, by his very own definitions, Hinckle has substantiated much of the criticisms of trans ideology. And yet, bizarrely, he acts as though he has somehow completely repudiated that criticism.
He uses the characterization “admitted” as if it somehow weighs against their underlying claim or critique, but in this he is just conflating the “reality” of feelings with the accuracy, or truth, of those feelings. An anorexic has a real, “deeply felt, internal sense” that she is overweight. But the reality of that “sense” doesn’t make it accurate or true. A paranoid man has a real, “deeply felt, internal sense” that someone is deliberately trying to harm him. But the reality of that sense doesn’t make it accurate or true. So too, of course, for this internal sense of one’s “natal sex”.
But Hinckle ignores this fact, and takes it so far as to condemn a defense doctor for making a claim that Hinckle’s very own definitions show to be true.
Ignore the sudden switch from “gender identity” to “transgender identity”, yet another undefined term and concept switch. As shown above, under Hinckle’s own explanation of gender identity, transgender individuals have a false belief as a matter of tautology. The fact that they have this false belief is precisely what makes them “transgender”! If they didn’t have this false belief, they would be “cisgnder” according to Hinckle’s definitions. Yet Hinckle somehow now repudiates the very logic and necessary implications of his own words.
Finally Hinckle ends with this hubristic nonsense:
No, Judge Hinckle. What ought not be tolerated are straw men, equivocations, and an amazing incapacity to think logically, especially in a legal opinion. So you need to put up or shut up: what do you mean by “gender”, and what evidence do you have that it is real?
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You may find Wesley Yang’s substack of interest here:
https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/were-giving-these-girls-mastectomies#details
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That was good, thanks.
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See also:
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This line struck me:
The N.H.S. said that the new system for treating minors with gender-related issues will establish standardized assessments and incorporate much more mental health support.
The fact that the old system, even if it was passing out puberty blockers like candy, didn’t already incorporate huge amounts of mental health support is even more damning, giving that this problem is at its root quite obviously a mental health problem.
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