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 as earnings continue to come in. Bonds and MBS are up.
San Francisco Fed Chair Mary Daly is open to skipping a rate cut at one of the two remaining Fed meetings this year. “It’s clear that the direction of change is down,” but added “one or two cuts was a reasonable thing” provided that the economic data continues as expected. Atlanta Fed Head Raphael Bostic is also open to skipping a meeting.
The December Fed Funds futures still overwhelmingly see two more cuts this year:
Mortgage credit availability decreased in September, according to the MBA. “Mortgage credit availability tightened slightly in September as lenders remained cautious in this uncertain economic environment,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “There was a decline in loan programs for cash-out refinances, jumbo and non-QM loans, including loans that require less than full documentation. Most component indexes decreased over the month, but the government index increased, driven by more offerings of VA streamline refinances.”
Mortgage applications fell 17% last week as purchases fell 7.2% and refis fell 17%. “ Mortgage rates moved higher for the third consecutive week, with the 30-year fixed rate increasing to 6.52 percent, its highest level since August,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “The recent uptick in rates has put a damper on applications. Refinance applications fell 26 percent to their lowest level since August, with comparable drops in both conventional and government refinances. This pushed the refinance share of applications back below 50 percent for the first time in over a month. Furthermore, purchase applications also decreased but notably remain 7 percent higher than a year ago.”
US Bank reported better than expected earnings, although revenues missed. Mortgage origination volume improved markedly, rising 16.7% YOY to $11 billion. They are marking their $215 billion MSR portfolio at 4.9x. Provisions for credit losses increased 8% YOY.
Filed under: Economy | Tagged: Federal Reserve, finance, inflation, interest-rates, real-estate |
All Things in Moderation 
Another NYT focus group:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/16/opinion/16focus-group-women-trump-voters.html
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In fairness, this is worse than being called Hitler.
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I bet he was always sure to correctly pronounce the nanny’s name. And the name of any woman giving him lip before he had to slap some sense into her.
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My understanding is that his favorite phrase to women is “If I want your opinion I’ll give it to you” followed by a threatening backhand. He’d follow through on the backhand every third time “to keep them humble”.
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I’m sure this will work out well.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/should-political-violence-be-addressed-like-a-threat-to-public-health
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Cute. They want to make conservatism a public health threat. Then they will want to criminalize it.
When the left tells you what they are, believe them.
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Worse than criminalization. This is about “prevention”.
“and adopt multipronged solutions to stop problems before they arise.”
With criminalization you at least have to commit an act first. This is pre-crime.
And of course not a mention of Antifa in the piece.
There was another group of people in the 20th Century who adopted the language of public health and hygiene and applied it to politics. But we won’t mention them.
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jnc:
I’m curious what your plans are for election day, if you are willing to say. Specifically, I’m wondering if you have yet come to agree with my belief that the left is a much bigger danger to/problem for the nation than Trump is.
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I’ll probably vote 3rd party (Libertarian). I’m in Virginia so it won’t matter.
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I often vote 3rd party as I’m in Tennessee so it also won’t matter, ever. However I’m voting for Trump so it’s 100% clear I’m voting against the Democrats because they are awful. And Harris is awful. And Walz is awful. So I’m adding my vote to that pot this time out.
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And speech equals violence, and only one kind of speech equals violence, and actual crime isn’t violence if done by the marginalized, migrants or the left … and so on. Great platform, they should just run on that even more explicitly.
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I end up thinking about this a lot.
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I often wonder what the response to this would have been under Obama or Bush.
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Well, Russia invaded Georgia during Bush’s term and the response was more sanctions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#Reactions
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Worth noting:
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/rachel-levine-must-resign-2d7
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Why? Did its daughter birth a child and ‘ol Rach is taking credit for it? Cause cussing that out is Dr. Sullivan’s (OBGYN) specialty.
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It’s hard to muster up much respect for or be happy about someone who is suddenly shocked and outraged at something that has been blatantly obvious to anyone with a functioning brain for years.
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And has announced his intent to vote to reelect that administration.
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jnc:
And has announced his intent to vote to reelect that administration.
He makes a habit of this kind of nonsense. I remember back in 2020 he wrote an article about how he was a single issue voter on “law and order”, and proceeded to eviscerate the Democrats on the issue, demonstrating how they were upending it in innumerable ways. He then closed by saying the Biden was the only reasonable choice in the election. Because Orange Man Bad.
The guy runs on pure emotion, virtually no reason.
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I love the attached quote,
My response to the young lady?
You’re goddamn right!
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To make this race even more awesome, Trump is currently making fries at a McDonald’s in Pittsburg.
https://x.com/dougmillsnyt/status/1848071702057464209?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
In fairness, he did take off his suit jacket and donned a McDonald’s apron. In keeping with his character, he is wearing his signature white shirt w/cufflinks and red tie.
Probably the most expensive shirt and tie lost to hot oil in the last 25 years.
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It’s impossible to overstate how awesome this tweet is.
And here I was actually thinking he was quitting the campaign, quitting his real estate empire and going to work as at McDonalds.
I cannot believe how I was duped!! Now I hate Trump!
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I suspect anything with the Secret Service involved is staged.
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Watching the videos, it works really well for Trump. The impression given is of the owner/manager of the restaurant stepping in to help out with the line operations because they were short staffed one day.
Keeping his white shirt and tie on was smart vs putting on one of the McDonald’s employee shirts to try and fit in.
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Newsweek needs to go bankrupt as soon as possible.
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This is pretty entertaining:
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/on-millennial-snot
Related critique:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/everyone-online-sounds-like-an-absolute
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Boy, they owned Trump on this one.
Hello, I’d like to report murder.
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As if anyone who writes for the Times ever worked in food service
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Day three of the lefty freakout of the McDonald’s visit – this is a front page diary from the KosKidz.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/22/2278617/-Want-lies-with-that-The-right-is-still-loving-Trump-s-McDonald-s-stunt?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_2&pm_medium=web#comments
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Doesn’t the left’s freak out over the McDondald’s think make them just look unhinged and out of control to normies and independents and casual non-partisan voters? I feel like it has to.
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And yet, ironically, they should all work in food service. Or the custodial arts.
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Good read:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/opinion/donald-trump-ezra-klein-podcast.html
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And another worthwhile read:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/likability-isnt-enough
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I think there are many people like me who don’t necessarily dislike Kamala Harris, but cannot stand the Borg. That is what Silver is missing.
That is what the Left cannot grasp – It isn’t Trump versus Kamala. It is Trump versus the Party and the Establishment.
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I can’t stand the Borg but I also don’t like Kamala Harris, and really didn’t like any of the Democrats that primaries in 2020. Except Gabbard. Their bench was otherwise awful.
If Kamala Harris is gross. Incompetent in many ways and also likely a sociopathic narcissist. Without the eccentric humor Trump brings to it.
On the other hand I liked almost all the Republican field. I was a DeSantis man but would have been satisfied with Halley or even Christie. Would have preferred any of them before Trump but Trump is who we got and I will take Trump a thousand times over Kamala Harris. Eh, we will see what Election Day brings. Even the last four years didn’t convince the normies Trump is a better bet than Harris there’s nothing Trump can say that will.
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Klein may have some interesting observations, but when he engages in such obvious gaslighting as suggesting that the media provided “unrelenting coverage” of Biden’s diminishing capacities, a near perfect inversion of reality, or when he repeats known mischaracterizations such as that Trump was asking Raffensberger to “find votes” for him that did not exist, he loses all credibility. I can’t take him seriously regarding things I don’t know about, because I know he is lying about things I do know about.
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The media only covered Biden’s obvious senility when it became obvious to everyone else.
Unrelenting, indeed.
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McWing:
The media only covered Biden’s obvious senility when it became obvious to everyone else.
I think they covered it only when it became obvious to the D power structure that he couldn’t win, and it needed to put pressure on him to drop out. If the D party power structure remained behind Biden even after it became obvious to everyone else, they wouldn’t have covered it even then. That is why the coverage ceased as soon as he dropped out, and we are back to “He is perfectly capable of running the country.” Continuing coverage of it would raise too many awkward questions for Harris, and jeopardize the D candidate.
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I question the power of their reasoning. Or their delusional arrogance around their own powers of deception. Kamala Harris is an objectively awful candidate, as her immediate failure in the 2020 primary demonstrated. She did not distinguish herself as VP. She was clearly like 1% better than Biden because not obviously senile, but that was literally her only positive.
I feel like most of those pushing Joe out knew this but thought they could fashion a narrative sufficient to fool the suckers and hypnotize everybody with joy and vibes. I feel their clear thrashing around desperately now illustrates they have learned they were wrong about that.
Obviously she can still win, but they cannot deny she is an awful candidate and she’s much more likely to lose than some other candidate they might have run.
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In fairness to Klein, he was covering it before most of the rest of them and catching flack for doing so.
The main point that I thought he was right about (and I’m probably wrong about) is you can’t separate out parts of Trump’s personality. It’s a package deal, as Kellyanne Conway noted:
This however is Klein’s most absurd observation:
That just shows that Biden’s staff were lying to everyone about his fitness for the job. That’s not something that reflects well on them or Biden.
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jnc:
In fairness to Klein, he was covering it before most of the rest of them and catching flack for doing so.
All the more reason for him to know, then, that his “unrelenting coverage” claim is false.
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It also shows that for someone who values loyalty as much as Trump he is a bad judge of who will have it, or doesn’t know how to enforce it, where the Biden family clearly doesn’t have that problem.
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Also you know that he’s old enough and smart enough to know that he’s lying. He’s not mistaken or deceived or overreacting—he’s just lying, probably because he has to in order to conform to Journ-o-list expectations.
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Imagine the gall, meddling in the paper he owns! Outrageous!
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-says-daughter-tiffany-trump-graduated-no-1-from-law-school-that-doesnt-rank/
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Kinda admire the Kelly’s Heroes/Ransom vibe the IDF is putting out here.
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