Vital Statistics:

Stocks are lower this morning as earnings continue to pour in. Bonds and MBS are down again.
Bond yields seem to be rising in lockstep with the probability of a Trump win. Although polling data indicates a close race, betting markets are increasingly predicting a Trump win. Both sides accuse the other of “painting the tape” with Democrats accusing foreign bad actors of placing big bets to influence the odds, while Republicans accuse Democrats of releasing partisan, over-D sampled polls into the overall mix.
Presumably, a Trump win would be bad for bonds as tariffs would raise prices, and a more pro-business regulatory regime would be better for the economy overall, which will keep the Fed from cutting rates as aggressively. A Trump Presidency would also bring back the debate over what to do with the GSEs.
Mortgage applications fell 6.7% last week as purchases fell 5.1% and refis fell 8.4%. “Mortgage rates saw mixed results last week, but the 30-year fixed rate remained unchanged at 6.52 percent. Application activity decreased to its lowest level since July, as both purchase and refinance applications saw declines,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “Purchase applications continued to run stronger than last year’s pace for the fifth consecutive week. Even though rates have been on a recent upswing, they are over a full percentage point lower than a year ago, which has kept some homebuyers in the market. For-sale inventory has started to loosen, and home-price growth has eased in some markets, providing more options for buyers in combination with these lower rates.”
Home prices grew 0.5 MOM in September, according to data from Redfin. On a year-over-year basis, prices rose 6%. “There are around 20% fewer homes on the market today than there were five years ago, mainly because so many homeowners locked in a low mortgage rate during the pandemic,” said Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari. “With mortgage rates back above 6.5% this month—and unlikely to drop below 6% this year—home prices will likely continue their consistent climb until more inventory comes onto the market in the spring.”
Filed under: Economy |
Saint Barack is still disappointed in us.
https://x.com/dom_lucre/status/1848827864285954383
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I’m positive that he believes it’s racism. Despite being elected by majority votes of the electorate.
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Ironically, this is not unifying language. Bitterness and division are not improved by constantly saying people are bitter and divided. You seek commonality and illustrate it to create empathy to reduce division. Encouraging focus on bitterness and division merely exacerbates it. Odd that such a smart man doesn’t know that.
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Interesting read:
https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/how-to-undo-woke-programming-2024
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And I didn’t know this was the root of the incident:
https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/part-2-our-collective-order-keeping
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The funny thing is that VaR is a terrible measure of risk – it gives you the absolute best case scenario when the shit hits the fan, instead of the expected, or worst case scenario which is the truly important variable.
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Who reads the Yelp reviews of McDonald’s?
https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/10/23/weirdo-leftists-tried-to-cancel-the-mcdonalds-that-hosted-trump-they-failed-miserably-n2180961
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Both the LA Times and Warren Buffet decline to endorse Kamala.
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Surprising, actually. Would think Warren Buffet would endorse just to avoid the grief he might get for somehow “helping Trump”.
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Warren Buffet is pretty liberal.
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I thought the same thing. Endorsing Harris does not put one at risk under a Trump regime. The opposite does.
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LA Times editor resigns over it:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/10/24/la-times-editor-resigns-mariel-garza/
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jnc:
LA Times editor resigns over it:
I will give her props for that. Resigning is the right way to publicly object to an ownership decision.
Also, I thought this was kinda funny, from the article:
Newspapers generally have separate, independent departments for news and editorial writing, with the editorial side offering opinions on issues — including endorsements for political candidates — while the newsroom focuses on facts.
Suuuure.
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They need to acknowledge how much of the public does not trust the news in terms of bias or just plain competence or willingness to put forth effort. Newsrooms “focus on facts” doesn’t mean anything if they take them out of context, change meaning by ignoring some facts, don’t get important facts because they are too lazy or don’t care, or report facts incoherently because they have no understanding of the subject, or don’t report important facts or topics at all because they aren’t allowed or aren’t even aware the topic is interesting or important. There are so many ways the modern news media is a travesty of bad before you get to bias and outright lying, which they also do a lot of.
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We spend plenty of time critiquing the main stream media and I’m becoming more and more convinced that it is having almost no influence on the electorate. I suspect there is a generational aspect to it, but the aspect is also wrong. The parties have switched power in the Whitehouse at generally 8 year intervals since Roosevelt died, regardless of what the dominant media position is. Republicans blame the media for Goldwater’s defeat in ‘64 but did he really have a chance given the Kennedy assassination? Nixon was reviled by the media and won handily twice. Ditto Reagan.
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Looks like the LAT owner responds.
https://x.com/yashar/status/1849239047816057188?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
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The replies are something special. I feel like the general public doesn’t really understand freedom of the press, or censorship, or ownership, or why newspaper circulation has been in the toilet for so long … and I love how everyone on the left makes any sign of centrist or neutral or balanced reportage or position into radical far-right fascism.
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So, it’s now ok to hassle Gold Star families?
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Holy shit. And I love the irony of Conway who is a total fucking sociopath calling Trump a sociopath. Fuck these people. They are horrible and if Trump wins they will engage in 4 years of public sociopathy.
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Well looks like game over. She’s got this in the bag at this point:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/10/24/beyonce-kamala-harris-houston-rally/
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I’m still a little stumped over the Texas visit to be honest. Ditto Trump at MSG, unless it’s for the spectacle aspect, or to drive up turn out for Long Island Republican down ballot races. Still, both are odd. Heck, Trumps Coachella event was odd, but Trump is odd and Harris is supposed to be the second coming of Barack and nothing but rock solid on strategy and execution.
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Trump runs on instinct, and is going to be Trump. People will vote for him or they won’t. All there is to it. I can entirely see voting 3rd party. I can totally see wishing there was another Republican to vote for. I can see not voting. I can not see actively voting for Harris. That is one I cannot wrap my head around. No matter what her strategy is, her appeal to voters has got to be 100% TDS.
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I’m of the opinion celebrity endorsements are very exciting to the media and move the electorate maybe .01%.
They were doing Rock the Vote on MTV hard when Reagan won in 1984 and when Bush Sr. Won in 1988. Ross Perot did more for Bill Clinton than Rock the Vote. Not even Beyoncé is gonna push Kamala over the finish line if pure Trump hatred won’t do it.
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WaPo apparently won’t endorse Harris either. Have to say I did not have major leftist organs declining to endorse the democrat on my 2024 bingo card.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/25/nx-s1-5165353/washington-post-presidential-endorsement-trump-harris
Will be interesting to see how the Millennial and Gen-Z SJW journalists react.
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They may have started to realize that MSM endorsements are counterproductive.
This rationale of course is bullshit.
“The reason he cited was to create “independent space” where the newspaper does not tell people for whom to vote.”
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If sincere, it would be a start. Unfortunately it’s almost certainly bullshit but at some point the MSM must either accept that it’s catering to a small, rabid bubble audience (MSNBC), be in the position to operate at a loss because of other revenue streams (WaPo) or be surrounded by enough popular fluff they can pretend their news division is decisively important (NYT). All of which I assert with the most casual of actual analysis.
Or they need to try to straddle the center at least a little bit. I think CNN is going to route. Sure, we’re partisan but we’re not going to operate like a paid arm of the DNC. At least most of the time.
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Jen Rubin had a hissy fit because more LAT people didn’t quit over it. I think she resigns before morning.
Right, Jen?
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I don’t care but also they are so fucking out of touch and up their own asses they have no idea how reasonable the explanation given sounds to normies. A normie says: “hey that sounds like news, giving me information about the candidates and their policies”, while the bubble-dwelling incestual asshats say “no the experts of the 4th estate are supposed to tell us what to think without explanation!”
That expert worship seems great to them but to normies it’s pretty much WTF? What the fuck is just telling us about the platforms and likely outcomes and historical precedents and whatnot?
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Yep.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-150425019
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I have a hard time believing the people doing this, the publications, and the legacy media in general maybe, aren’t doing a level of damage to themselves they are in no shape to sustain. Given how much damage they’ve done to their credibility previously.
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This was a good take:
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-october-a2b
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Just when I thought I couldn’t love the U.S. anymore.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14002395/AIs-offensive-views-Europeans-Americans.html
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I call bullshit on whatever they were feeding the AI. Too much consistency between images to not have a serious bias in the AI seeding.
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Pure erotica.
https://x.com/remakingmanhood/status/1850239342926504137?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
I hope she’s single.
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This post has been deleted. I’m sorry I missed it.
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Here is an article that replaces the deans link.
https://nypost.com/2024/11/02/us-news/nj-woman-rips-off-top-votes-in-bra-after-being-told-to-ditch-maga-gear/
The bra-zen woman flipped poll workers the bird and shouted, “Suck my c–t,” witnesses said.
“This is why I vote Trump,”
Hawt!
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It’s over, y’all.
I’m telling you, Lemon has the pulse of the American people.
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Lemon is right. The joke isn’t funny. Which is a fair point. Say that, Lemon.
It’s not racist, however. But obviously when you as a member of the elite ideological cult closely associated with a particular party get to the point where your calling everything racist is actually alienating the minorities more so than the supposed “racist” comments . . . best to double down on that, but also add in more calling of everyone who disagrees with you even a little “just like Hitler”. With these strategies the Democrats will sweep the board!
It might be my generation and how I crew up with kind of classic, southern 70s liberalism, where we were all “content of your character” and “color blindness” (now apparently also racist, thanks a lot Martin Luther King for making me a racist, apparently) but when I saw even a whiff of “white identity” politics, it grossed me out. I remember seeing the Jesse Helms add with a pair of white hands crumpling a “job rejection” letter because had lost a job he applied for to a less qualified black person because of affirmative action. That shit turned me off. I was like, “come on, dude”. Because my thought is: if I’m that fucking qualified, I’ll find a better job somewhere else. So don’t pull that BS with me.
I have to think there are black people and Hispanics and Asians–especially the men–who have internalized the argument that Republicans/conservatives don’t care about their interests, but aren’t as enamored of all the identity politics as elite, bubble-dwelling leftists are, and have just kind of ignored those people as “the price you pay not to have the other bad people in charge”. Which some have certainly done on the right, ignoring actually racist or anti-Semitic folks on the right as “okay, they exist, but I’m still voting for low tax/strong defense guys, even if that one speech had a line that sounded a little like a dog whistle even to me”.
But there gets to be a point when the racists and anti-Semites are kind of obviously controlling the party and make up it’s biggest supporters, you kind of get tired of it. I don’t think the black working class or Hispanics of any stripe or Asians or Jews are excited about reparations, or even particularly want all policy and all discussion to be about their skin pigmentation. And while I’m pretty sure your college educated pHds will never get tired of, no matter the skin pigmentation, I think a lot of the regular voters are peeling off, one by one. Plenty of signs of that in 2016 and even in 2020, even though Biden won. I suspect we might see some more.
It doesn’t hurt, of course, from an identity point of view, that Donald Trump seems to be a real human being and the Democrats are running people who all seem to be literal aliens, in terms of behavior. I bet they are missing Obama and Bill Clinton so bad right now.
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It’s fascinating to see the parties re-align in class and less so on race – it’s the populist alignment, and how fundamentally disorienting it is for a lot of politicians and pundits.
I’m no longer sensitive to so called dog whistles, especially from my own side, as I don’t believe it, for the most part. Even the infamous Southern Strategy that was supposed to be the grand proof of Reagan’s inveterate shamelessness is bunk. Ill try and find the link for you.
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Here is the link about Lee Atwater and the Southern Strategy. Its dynamite. To me, it goes along with something I picked up years ago, and that is so much of Common Knowledge will be proven incorrect in 5-10 years. Essentially, much, if not most, of what we know is incorrect. It tend to keep oneself humble.
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There are few dogwhistles. Mostly when you have an anti-Semite on the right they come out and say it. Not surprised that common wisdom about anything is bunk, especially if it involves Republicans or secret racisms.
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Also—there seem to be a lot of clueless people. While there are a handful of Republican politicians where this is true, they will lose their races and be forgotten. There are certainly plenty of ostensibly conservative pundits where this is true.
But nowhere does it seem to be as true as it is with the Democrats and the mainstream media (to whatever degree they aren’t just the same thing). I have never seen a campaign flail more than Harris’s. From weird and unimportant to Hitler and the world will end in the space of what, six weeks? The media’s coverage of Trump is reeking of desperation. “Donald Trump today was seen wearing pants. Just like Adolph Hitler once did. Experts say his wearing of pants is meant to evoke Hitler and other fascist leaders, because that’s what he’ll be if you morons elect him.”
There are lots of responses to Trump and the right, lots of ways for Harris to be running her campaign … yet I can’t imagine them doing worse than they are, unless the came out as objectively wanting to murder their own voters.
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My opinion is that they are trying to gas light more assassins. That’s the plan now, make any other upstart billionaire think twice before running and potentially fucking things up for the Uniparty.
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Well they are obviously trying to fire up more assassins. The DOJ releasing the last would-be assassin’s “manifesto” might as well have been an ad from the DOJ saying “kill Trump, get $150k!” Or whatever the amount was. But that was unheard of and other than promoting that exciting offer, the media had no interest in why the DOJ—who at least takes some time before releasing manifestos, and often never does—chose to expedite this one filled with great reasons to shoot Trump if your a quiet loner who mostly keeps to himself.
The messaging seems so bad I feel like they aren’t going to capture a lot of lone gunmen who have something approaching the skills to do the job who are still motivated by a news media (that is untrustworthy to lots of conspiracy minded people) saying Trump is Hitler. Even the kooks don’t trust the media.
It may be part of it but still wildly incompetent as a strategy. Somewhere there is a naked guy in a cabin stroking a dead raccoon while watching AOC and Tim Walz on Twitch talking about how Trump is a fascist, and this naked stroker of dead raccoons turns to the demon-ghosts he lives with and says: “These motherfuckers are out of their minds.”
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“Somewhere there is a naked guy in a cabin stroking a dead raccoon while watching AOC and Tim Walz on Twitch talking about how Trump is a fascist, and this naked stroker of dead raccoons turns to the demon-ghosts he lives with and says: “These motherfuckers are out of their minds.”
I wept at the beauty of this – it reads like a cross between Jack Kerouac and William Carlos Williams. Magnificent! Somewhere a red wheelbarrow is melting into the railroad earth.
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I didn’t see a link to Lee Atwater.
I seem to remember a few years back someone found the audio recordings of the actual interview and it didn’t match the quotes commonly associated with it.
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Sorry,
Here is the link – https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/what-did-lee-atwater-really-say.php
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Thanks. A fairly tame misrepresentation—although obviously a misrepresentation—-compared to today. We have respected news pundits referring to the Trump rally as a white nationalist rally. With, you know, lots of blacks, Indians, Mexicans and Jews. And a few Muslims.
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This fits Trump better than “fascist”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/29/trump-demagogue-fascist-definitions/
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If Trump is a demagogue, so was Saint Barack
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Both are demagogues. It’s silly to act like anybody who becomes president never plays the role of a demagogue.
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Registering voters is bad, y’all.
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He’s buying votes! Unlike all the Democrat voter registration efforts, many of which offer some sort of crackerjack prize for registering.
The idea is Musk’s audience is going to feature a lot more Trump voters who may carry on with the momentum of registration by voting for Trump. Which is what Democrats do but the right isn’t supposed to do that. So it’s bad.
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The left’s double standards are comical at this point.
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They are at a level where some non-trivial number of fellow travelers have to be sneaking “seriously, this is what we’re doing?” looks at each other.
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Can he put Kanye back with Kim Karashian?
I need those kids to make it.
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These people are lunatics. It’s concerning that there are enough people who take such stuff seriously in this country that polls have it neck-and-neck. Because what she is saying is insane even out of context.
In context, Trump is doing better with minorities that any Republican president in the modern era. The rally at the garden was filled with people of all races. People of many races spoke. Dave Rubin noted seeing a Muslim woman in full hijab sitting in front of a Jew in a yarmulka at the rally. What kind of brain dead moron would believe Trump has any interest in, let alone the power, to break up interracial marriages? Melania looks a little ethnic to me.
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“I just hope your beeper doesn’t go off.”
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I love the conniption people on the left keep having that there is anybody that dares to not bend the knee and grovel before them at all times. It’s getting kind of old.
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