Archive for 2024

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Home Sales on Track for Worst Year Since 1995.

Sales of existing homes in the U.S. are on track for the worst year since 1995—for the second year in a row.

Persistently high home prices and elevated mortgage rates are keeping potential home buyers on the sidelines. Sales of previously owned homes in the first nine months of the year were lower than the same period last year, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.

Existing-home sales in September fell 1% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.84 million, NAR said, the lowest monthly rate since October 2010. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had estimated a monthly decrease of 0.5%.

September sales fell 3.5% from a year earlier.

After a sluggish 2023, economists and real-estate executives widely expected activity to pick up in 2024.

Based on what, exactly?

Buying a home, like having a baby, is a Yea vote on the future — and Americans aren’t doing much of either lately.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Isn’t Hitlering Enough to Help Kamala. “The “Trump is Hitler 2.0″ pitch is so desperate I can almost smell Harris’s flop sweat through my computer. Seriously, the Opinion sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post have been trying to sell that hard all year and it hasn’t stuck. Perhaps that’s because it’s such tired shtick.”

FUN:

COLORADO:

Danielle Jurinsky is an Aurora City Council member and these Aurora PD email exchanges about Tren de Aragua’s growing presence in the city that Jurinsky is now making public go back to at least November of last year.

There’s much more on her personal X timeline.

WOW, NBC’S LATEST LAW & ORDER SPINOFF SOUNDS REALLY BAD:

Hey, be glad that Keith only wants to lock you up:

Olbermann was discussing the election with Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman, a frequent guest. They topic was, how can a winner finally be determined in this never-ending Democratic race for the nomination? Of course, the assumption was that it was Clinton that should be shown the door (despite clearly still earning her spot in the race thanks to, um, voters). Fineman said that, all the delegate math aside, ultimately it was going to take “some adults somewhere in the Democratic party to step in and stop this thing, like a referee in a fight that could go on for thirty rounds. Those are the super, super, super delegates who are going to have to decide this.”

Said Olbermann: “Right. Somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.”

“Keith Olbermann’s Idea For Beating Hillary: Literally Beating Hillary,” The Huffington Post, May 2nd, 2008.

Come the fall of 2008, and Olbermann was worried that Sarah Palin “might stick around to be the slowest-moving target imaginable for comedians and commentators. It would be like shooting moose from a chopper.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Ben Shapiro Took on 25 Kamala Harris Voters in a Debate, and the Results Were Incredible.

Ben Shapiro is never one to shy away from a debate, but his latest foray into the arena may take the cake. In a scene that I don’t think has ever played out in politics, the podcast host and owner of The Daily Wire faced off against 25 Kamala Harris supporters, and the results were incredible.

If you thought leftists were vapid and unable to articulate basic defenses of their positions before, just wait until you hear some of this.

Let’s start with the topic of abortion, which every Democrat believes they are an expert in, and get ready to have your mind numbed.

Shapiro’s ability to remain calm and focused among this level of sustained insanity and infantilism is just astonishing.

THIS HAS BEEN THE ERA OF UNMASKING:

ANOTHER SUCCESS FOR SPACEX: NASA’s Crew-8 returns to Earth, successfully splashing down into Atlantic. “The four-member SpaceX Crew-8 aboard Crew Dragon Endeavour returned to Earth early Friday, completing their nearly eight-month mission in space. Their Endeavour spacecraft splashed down into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida near Pensacola at 3:39 a.m. EDT, after undocking from the International Space Station some 34 hours earlier.”

KAMALA HARRIS’S CAMPAIGN, TRAFFICKING IN STEREOTYPES TO GET ELECTED:

And maybe in the Philadelphia area, among black residents, they still speak of “empathy” by calling it “the nature of a female.” But all of us can see this ad. And to me, it seems as though the Harris campaign looks upon black men as sexist — Obama let it show the other day — and wants to meet them where they are and is therefore calling women “females” and describing their “nature” in old-fashioned, stereotypical terms — “empathy, that’s just, like, in their heart, the nature of a female.”

But nobody wants an aunt like Kamala, or sees her as nurturing or empathetic. Least of all her constantly shat-upon underlings.

YOU JUST HAVE TO LAUGH: Once a dog, always a dog.

“Former President Bill Clinton called Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake “physically attractive” during a campaign stop in Arizona to stump for Vice President Kamala Harris and Lake’s opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).”

First, not that he’s wrong, she’s a looker, for sure. And lest we forget Bubba did the men of America an enormous favor by declaring that oral sex wasn’t “sexual relations.”

My ruling from the bench: I’ll allow it:

A WHALE OF A GOOD TIME: Who Is Polymarket’s Trump Whale? Site Reveals French Trader Bet $28 Million On Trump Win.

A French national is behind four of the five biggest Polymarket bettors on a Trump victory next month, a company spokesperson told several outlets Thursday.

Those four accounts – Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro and Michie – have a combined $28.6 million on Trump election bets, according to CNBC, making up four of the five largest holders of Trump victory shares.

That makes up more than 1% of the $2.4 billion wagered on Polymarket’s $2.4 billion presidential election winner market.

The big Trump backer is someone with “extensive trading experience and a financial services background,” a Polymarket spokesperson told Bloomberg, adding the trader “is taking a directional position based on personal views of the election.”

The blockchain-based platform “has not identified any information to suggest that this user manipulated, or attempted to manipulate, the market,” the spokesperson added.

Here’s to hoping he makes a killing.

A DIFFERENT WAY OF LOOKING AT HALLOWEEN: What would you say if somebody  asked why America has a wildly popular holiday devoted to blood, gore, ghosts and goblins? I mean, isn’t it horrifying enough to consider the looming prospect of four years of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the White House?

DON’T GET COCKY: The recriminations that follow a Kamala defeat will be delicious.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is in trouble, which means we may be in for one hell of a post-election fireworks show.

If she loses the presidential election, there will be intra-Democratic Party in-fighting unlike anything we’ve seen before. The recriminations will be extraordinary. There will be finger-pointing, backstabbing, excuse-making and an air of panic that will make even the sleazy, widespread gossip-peddling that followed the late Senator John McCain’s defeat in 2008 look tame.

How do we know this will happen? Because it has happened before, albeit on a smaller scale.

In December 2019, when Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary before the Iowa caucuses, there was a windfall of terrific gossip regarding her leadership style, or lack thereof, staffer dysfunction, inexcusable mismanagement, even the meddling of her control-freak sister, Maya. Earlier, in 2016, we saw much of the same when Hillary Clinton somehow managed to lose a winnable election to a game show host despite enjoying every conceivable advantage. The only real difference between the two events is that the recriminations in 2016 were far more muted than what Harris’s inner circle allowed for in 2019. Say what you will about Clintonland, but they’re nothing if not loyal.

Now imagine Harris’s post-primary implosion, but on a national scale, one in which Democrats again lose the White House to Donald Trump. If Harris loses this November, no miracle will contain the intra-party in-fighting. It’ll spill into the papers and the streets, and we’ll all have a front seat to the gloriously bitter denunciations and accusations.

Let’s get past the finish line before publishing these sorts of pieces: ”Right now, I think Trump has a narrow advantage, and the Democratic panic is real. But it’s still quite plausible that the blue wall holds, that Harris wins that second congressional district in Nebraska, and that, with 270 electoral votes, Kamala Harris becomes the 47th president of the United States.”

More here: Think Donald Trump is cruising to victory? You may be in for a nasty surprise. “The main thing that Harris still has going for her is that she has large money and staffing advantages over Trump. Her campaign is being run by people who may not be great at messaging, but are fairly skilled at the mechanics of turning out voters. Trump’s ground game has been outsourced to activists with no proven track record. That doesn’t guarantee Harris will be more successful at getting her voters to show up than Trump will be. The early voting trends so far suggest either some level of Republican competence or organic GOP voter enthusiasm. But on paper, this is one edge Harris still has over Trump, and it is an important one.”