NAH, BUT HE’D HAVE GOTTEN A GREAT JOKE OUT OF IT: Ronald Reagan Is Spinning in His Grave Over This. “The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute recently announced its recipients for the prestigious ‘Peace Through Strength Award,’ and the choices are raising eyebrows. This year’s honorees are Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and, for some reason that I cannot comprehend, President Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.”
Archive for 2024
December 13, 2024
MOST HILL STAFFERS THUMBS DOWN ON BOSSES’ PAY RAISE: It’s only one percent below half in the latest CNCT Capitol Pulse survey, but even that razor-thin margin is amazing.
And check out the partisan agreement on this issue. Maybe more of the staffers are accurately assessing the significance of the November election than are the senators and representatives for whom they work?
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Goldman Delivers Grim Outlook For Prospective Homebuyers.
Given the latest inflation data, a largely in-line CPI report followed by a ‘red hot’ PPI print in November, this data suggests that longer-term yields are to stay higher over the medium- to longer-term, according to Bloomberg’s Simon White.
In other words, White suggests that this inflation data squashes the dovish party. As of late Thursday, the market is pricing in only two rate cuts for next year.
Goldman analysts noted that without interest rate relief and the general leanness of housing inventory, home prices are forecasted to increase by 3% YoY.
“Said differently, we estimate the mortgage payment on a median-priced single-family home is 35% of the median household income. Although this is down from 39% a year ago, it remains well above the 30% threshold for most lenders,” they explained.
They’ll turn us all into renters ’cause they’re easier to please.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Great — Biden Just Let All of Hunter’s Friends Out of Jail. “Biden is cranky and vindictive, but the people who have been running his brain for the last four years have their downright evil moments. They’re the ones who drew up the list for Biden’s clemency frenzy. There were bound to be some unsavory characters on it.”
CHINA IS ASSHOE, EXHIBIT #1,000,006:
China is depleting the world's oceans of fish. Estimates are between 200,000 – 800,000 fishing vessels, going as far as Argentina.
They account for ~half of the worlds fishing catch and do not respect stewardship protocols to preserve ecosystems.
This is power projection. pic.twitter.com/6lGTm0oqPK
— Andrew Côté (@Andercot) December 11, 2024
Bullies push until they’re pushed back.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: NASA Performs First Aircraft Accident Investigation on Another World.
YES:
Now is the time for a blitz through the institutions. The Left is exhausted. BLM is shattered. Trans is imploding. Trump has a mandate to abolish DEI, defund left-wing racialism, and restore public authority over the public institutions. The counterrevolution starts now.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) December 10, 2024
WHY WOULD ANY REPUBLICAN? Hegseth Spares No Feelings In Quip To Media: ‘I Don’t Feel The Need To Respond To CNN.’
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Gray Swans, Regime Collapse, and the Kremlin.
Last week, 50-plus years of the Assad family’s Ba’ath Party rule ended after an 11-day lightning campaign by rebel forces that nobody saw coming. Could Vladimir Putin’s regime suffer a similar fate? Authoritarian regimes appear strong, invincible even, right up until the moment they disappear in a gray swan event.
In a Substack essay this week, Charles Hugh Smith defined a gray swan event as “an event that is known and possible to happen, but which is assumed to be unlikely to occur.” The most recent example is the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria last weekend. People are right to marvel at how quickly it came undone but only after nearly 14 years of civil war. And there had been very little movement since March 2020.
Nevertheless, a gray swan appeared from nowhere two weeks ago, and 11 days later, Assad was history.
VIP members asked for longer essays and I’ve been happy to oblige.
DON SURBER: Why I want Dems to rely on Mainstream Media.
SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER:
Help me understand how there is NO money left for us in #WNC when you sent:
– $50 billion yesterday to Ukraine
– $1 billion to Africa
– $998 million again to Ukraine…in the last 8 days
Square that circle for me.
— Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol) December 12, 2024
LIMITED TIME DEAL: DEWALT 20V MAX Cordless Drill and Impact Driver. #CommissionEarned
PERSONALLY, I’D ABOLISH THE FBI. WE DON’T NEED A DOMESTIC SECRET POLICE.
So the FBI will raid Trump’s house and indict him twice
But a report on the FBI’s involvement in J6 was delayed until after the election so that it “didn’t cause any election interference”?
This is why Kash Patel is needed for a deep clean of the corrupt FBI https://t.co/3RdnV5bRQ1
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) December 13, 2024
MICHAEL LIND: The Re-Skilling of America.
What explains the large-scale miscredentialing of the American workforce? The endless greed of tuition-hungry universities is one factor. But the main cause is the insistence of many American employers, including federal, state, and local government, that new hires have college diplomas—even for jobs that are currently filled by workers without four-year degrees.
Like other forms of inflation, degree inflation reduces the inflated unit of currency. Today a worker earning between $40,000 and $60,000 in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars is as likely to have a bachelor’s degree as a worker in 2006 who earned between $60,000 and $80,000, when there were fewer college graduates as a share of the workforce. According to the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP): “Between 1990 and 2021, all occupational categories except one—teachers and librarians—experienced degree inflation, meaning the proportion of prime-age workers with a bachelor’s degree increased.”
There is no reason to believe that receptionists and bank tellers with B.A.s in popular majors like communications or business, to say nothing of gender studies, are more productive and skilled than their non-college-educated predecessors who had high school educations plus on-the-job training. According to a survey of employers by Bloomberg, college diplomas are most often used as a screening device for entry-level job applicants, rather than as evidence that the potential hires have job-relevant skills: “For more than half of employers surveyed (60 percent), a college diploma was seen as a stand-in for work ethic, personal skills and mental capacity, as opposed to the actual skills associated with the job.”
I think Glenn might have had a thing or two to say about this topic a while back.
HEH:
'Now Now, Let's Not Be So Hasty To Find And Assassinate Everyone Responsible For The Healthcare Crisis,' Says Nervous Obama https://t.co/X4YvHxSnJs pic.twitter.com/hu5EDBVCSx
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 12, 2024
Related:
NOBODY'S presidency aged worse than Obama's. His signature achievement was called the Affordable Care Act and prices have gotten so high since it passed that his own party is now on board with shooting healthcare CEO'S. What a disaster.
— Jimmy Failla (@jimmyfailla) December 12, 2024
Plus:
HMM: Governors push back on federal proposal to move National Guard units. “In a notable move of unity, governors of all 55 states and territories have joined together to urge Congress to reject Legislative Proposal 480, which would allow specified Air National Guard units to be reassigned to the U.S. Space Force without legally required approval from governors.” I’m really not clear on what this is about.
IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE A PARODY, BUT . . .
Assassin Luigi Mangione Takes Lead In 2028 Democratic Primary Polls https://t.co/OjzXgnEVPG pic.twitter.com/gFSpiS8Yoo
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 12, 2024
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Crystal Mangum admits to fabricating 2006 Duke lacrosse scandal accusations.
Crystal Mangum, the woman who falsely accused three Duke men’s lacrosse players of rape in 2006, admitted she lied about the allegations and asked for David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann’s forgiveness.
Mangum made her confession in an interview published Wednesday on “Let’s Talk with Kat,” hosted by Katerena DePasquale, at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women. Unrelated to the lacrosse case, Mangum is currently in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder of her then-boyfriend in 2013.
“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong, and I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me,” Mangum said in the interview. “[I] made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”
Then-N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper did not prosecute Mangum for perjury after the case was dismissed, saying at the time that the investigators thought “she may have actually believed the many different stories that she has been telling.” The statute of limitations on perjury charges typically lasts two years in North Carolina law, meaning that Mangum can no longer be prosecuted for lying under oath.
Duke Athletics declined The Chronicle’s request for comment on Mangum’s statement. University administration, former University President Richard Brodhead, then-head men’s lacrosse coach Mike Pressler and Seligmann did not respond to The Chronicle’s request for comment in time for publication.
Mangum’s statement comes nearly two decades after she asserted that she was raped by the lacrosse players. Until now, she had never publicly stated that it was not true.
Flashback to Mary Katharine Ham in 2006, who gave us a video tour of the non-crime scene:
OH, I HAVE CONFIDENCE IN HIM. HE CAN MANAGE A FEW MORE. Matt Taibbi: Justin Trudeau’s Painful Last Faceplant: Canada’s hipster PM is about to talk Canada back into its historical role as the Washington Generals of international relations.