Aging Like Vintage Milk

After touting stock market, Trump claims record high under Biden only makes “rich people richer”

The Dow Jones hit a record high despite Trump's prediction that the economy would collapse under Biden

Donald Trump, who predicted in a 2020 debate that stock markets would crash under President Joe Biden, griped Sunday that stock markets reaching record highs were just making "rich people richer." The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to a record high last week, hitting 37,000 and surpassing the previous record set in 2022. The former president often patted himself on the back for a bustling stock market during his time in office between 2017 and 2021.

"The stock market is making rich people richer," Trump said, per Reuters, to a crowd of supporters in Reno, Nevada, in an effort to put an anti-Biden, populist spin on the new record stock market value. "Biden's inflation catastrophe is demolishing your savings and ravaging your dreams," the GOP nomination frontrunner added, changing the subject to high prices — a hallmark of Biden's term thus far — to take a jab at his likely opponent in the 2024 contest. Despite a recent increase in wages, a decrease in inflation and low unemployment, Trump went on: "We are a nation whose economy is collapsing into a cesspool."

Biden mocked Trump last week for his incorrect prediction in a campaign video shared on X/Twitter flaunting the record stock market high, CNBC reports. “Good one, Donald,” Biden tweeted. The video replayed a clip of Trump declaring, "If Biden wins, you’re gonna have a stock market collapse the likes of which you’ve never had," before rolling soundbites of news anchors lauding the stock market's recent upsurge. “Uh, let’s just talk for a moment about the stock market. Boom,” says Larry Kudlow, Trump's former top economic aide, in an included snippet from his Fox Business show.

Good one, Donald. pic.twitter.com/XNtiU4bqSF

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 15, 2023

Can You Say "Containment"?

This past April, Finland was admitted to NATO. That in itself had to have been galling enough to Putin, but the deal to add Sweden is nearing a close as well.

Now Finland has agreed to put US forces on Finnish ground, and that has to be giving Putin nightmares.

The kicker there (for me) is that it's another Biden master stroke. Putin doesn't just have to worry about another 700 miles of border with a NATO member - now it's 700 miles of border with a NATO member that has large quantities of knock-your-dick-in-the-dirt courtesy of Uncle Sam (that whupass is about 100 miles from St Petersburg). And that means the Russians have to defend even more border areas, when they can't defend what they already had - which could mean a little less pressure on Ukraine.

Seems pretty smart to me.

Finland to sign defence pact with US

HELSINKI, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Finland will on Monday Dec. 18 sign a defence cooperation agreement with the United States, the Finnish government said on Thursday, to grant the U.S. military broad access across the Nordic country to the vicinity of its long border with Russia.

Russia's Nordic neighbour Finland became the NATO military alliance's newest member earlier this year in response to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

"The fact that there will be no need to agree on everything separately, makes organising peace time operations easier, but above all it can be vital in a crisis," Finland's Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told reporters.

The agreement with the United States is aimed at allowing swift military access and aid to Finland in case of conflict, officials said ahead of the announcement.

The agreement lists 15 facilities and areas in Finland to which the U.S. military will have unimpeded access and where it can also store military equipment and ammunition.

The areas will include four airbases, a military port and railway access to northern Finland, where the U.S. military will have a storage area alongside a railway that leads up to the Russian border, the agreement showed.

As Reuters reported in July, Finland is currently improving its railway infrastructure on its Swedish border, to make it easier for allies to send reinforcements and equipment from across the Atlantic to Kemijarvi, an hour's drive from the Russian border and seven hours from Russia's nuclear bastion and military bases near Murmansk in the Kola peninsula.

Neighbouring Sweden, which has also asked to join NATO but has been left waiting due to resistance from existing members Turkey and Hungary, signed a similar agreement with the U.S. last week, giving it access to 17 areas including four air bases, one harbour and five military camps.

Among other NATO members, the U.S. has signed similar agreements with Norway, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Estonia, while the one with Denmark is pending approval.

Finland will not allow storage or transport of nuclear and biological weapons or anti-personnel mines on its territory, in line with international non-proliferation treaties it has committed to previously, officials said.

The U.S. military can have a permanent presence and regular exercises in Finland, but there are no plans for permanent bases, they said.

The agreement will be signed in Washington D.C. on Monday, before official ratification by legislators in both countries.

How Do You Say 'Normal' In MAGAspeak?

You don't - there is no word that means anything even close to 'normal' in MAGA World.

The Rebound

There are problems with the American economy. 

• Housing affordability
• Wage suppression
• Labor rights being denied
• Massive Inequity

Way too many people are struggling just to squeak by.

IMHO, we can fix an awful lot of those difficulties by fixing the tax code. We've seen the long term results of the Trickle Down thing, and we have to face the simple fact that it was bullshit from the start. Poppy Bush nailed it perfectly in 1980 when he called it Voodoo Economics.

For every dollar in direct stimulus (the kind Biden and the Dems pushed thru in 2021), we see, on average, a boost in economic activity of $1.19. For every dollar in tax cuts (like the GOP's TaxScam2017®) we see 59¢ in return. Tell me you wouldn't fire your broker if he kept pushing you in the wrong fucking direction on this shit.

My point is that Biden and the Democrats are working the problems, and making some changes that are showing some pretty great results.

I realize I sound like a cheerleader, but when it works, it works - and we should all be able to acknowledge that.

So lemme see - Biden's doing as well as anybody could do handling numerous foreign affairs clusterfucks (including 2 hot wars and other periodic flare-ups), he's got the economy starting to click, he's got us poised on the verge of enormous Climate Change progress, and he's not a fucking Nazi.

So if you're dumb enough to be looking for a reason to vote Biden-Harris that doesn't stop at "HE BEAT THAT DOG-ASS NAZI TRUMP", then you've got plenty to go on.

Household Wealth Has Taken Off, Fed Data Show. That Explains a Lot.

Americans’ wealth grew by 37% from 2019 to 2022, an astonishing pace of accumulation that helps explain why the U.S. economy has remained robust, according to the latest report on consumer finances released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve.

U.S. households’ real median net worth grew to $192,900 by the end of 2022, up from $141,100 recorded three years prior, according to the latest Survey of Consumer Finances. The rapid pace of wealth growth was the largest three-year increase recorded in what the Fed described as the modern survey results. It was more than double the next-fastest increase on record, according to the banks.

That's a 37% increase since the pandemic.

The Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances is ordinarily conducted every three years and is one of the primary sources of information on the financial condition of different types of U.S. families, but was delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The data released Wednesday are from surveys conducted between March and December 2022.

The figures shed fresh light on just how much financial strength American households were able to build up throughout the course of the pandemic, as generous federal stimulus payments and a slowdown in spending in 2020 allowed families to accumulate savings and pay down debt. Easy-money policies allowed households to refinance mortgages at ultralow rates, while student-loan forbearance programs put payments on hold for tens of millions of borrowers.

As a result, all measures of what the survey terms “financial fragility” declined between 2019 and 2022. The median leverage ratio, or a family’s total debt relative to its total assets, declined to its lowest level in two decades, at 29.2%. The median ratio of debt payments to income ratio also dropped to its lowest level on record, at 13.4%.

That combination of soaring net worth and rising affordability of debt payments helps to explain why the economy has been able to defy expectations and remain so resilient in the face of high inflation and rapidly rising interest rates. With more cash on hand, households have been able to keep up a surprisingly strong level of spending, which has propped up the labor market and helped stave off a long-anticipated recession.

Americans’ surge in net worth was helped along by rising homeownership rates, the increase in home values, higher stock prices, greater overall participation in investing, and, to some extent, higher incomes. Americans who owned their homes or participated in the stock market were more likely to have built up wealth between 2019 and 2022, Federal Reserve economists said.

By 2021, U.S. household median income hit $70,300, a 3% increase from the prior survey. But the mean household income increased 15% from $123,400 recorded in 2018 to $141,900 in 2021.

The income gains were “relatively widespread,” though there were variances among demographic groups, according to the Fed. Median income rose by 1% for white households over the three-year span, for example, but declined by 2% for Black families and fell by 1% for Hispanic.

Other big wealth generators, homeownership and stock-market participation, also increased slightly between 2019 and 2022. The homeownership rate rose to 66.1% of the population, according to the Fed. The median net housing value rose from $139,100 in 2019 to $201,000 in 2022, a positive for homeowners. This was due, in large part, to the fact that home prices rose and debt was relatively flat.

But for those looking to buy, things were getting tougher. Housing affordability fell to historic lows, with the median home worth more than 4.6 times the median family income.

Investing activity also picked up. About two-thirds of working-age families reported they invested in a retirement plan during the 2022 survey period. Roughly one in five households invested in stocks, up from the 15.2% recorded in the 2019 survey. That had a measurable impact given the “sizable rise in major stock indexes” over this period, according to the Fed. All major income groups experienced robust growth in the median and average values of their investments.

In addition to bulking up the asset side of the household balance sheet, Americans also reduced their debt obligations over the course of 2019 to 2022. The median leverage ratio—a household’s total debt relative to total assets—declined to 29.2%, the lowest recorded rate in 20 years, according to the Fed. Only about 6.5% of U.S. families with debt had payment-to-income ratios above 40% as of 2022, the lowest rate on record.

Although the Fed’s survey data only extends through the end of 2022, the relative strength of U.S. consumers has extended into 2023 as well, despite the spending down of pandemic-era savings, higher interest rates, and inflation rates persistently above the Fed’s 2% target.

The deleveraging Americans did during the pandemic has continued to keep consumer spending levels up, according to new, separate research released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The large swath of households that took advantage of low interest rates and extra savings to pay down debt, paired with forbearance programs like the pause on student-loan payments, led to significant, sustained improvements in household cash flows.

About 14 million households refinanced their mortgages, which reduced housing debt by about $30 billion annually through 2021, the New York Fed researchers found. Starting in 2020, the researchers calculated, the additional cash flow available for consumption amounted to about $450 billion.

That extra cash has helped drive the unexpectedly steady levels of high consumer spending. While spending growth has retreated somewhat from its 2022 levels, the six-month average of 5.4% is well above its prepandemic level of 3.1% in February 2020. That, in turn, has helped keep readings of gross domestic product on the upswing, given that consumer spending is a huge engine of economic activity.

But with higher interest rates bearing down on consumers and continued restrictions on purchasing power, economists question how long U.S. households can sustain the spending.

It's time for somebody to step up and save Capitalism from the Capitalists - again.

That someone has always been a Progressive, and those Progressives are all on the Democrats' side of the aisle now.

Today's PG

Leigh McGowan was once a leader in the "Yeah, but the Democrats" / "Why can't they message better?" gang.

Happy to report she seems to be on a much better tack.

1. Democrats are not to blame for the shitty behavior of Republicans
2. Biden's "Got 'Er Done List" is not hard to find - here's more
3. Nobody is obligated to spoon-feed any of it to us

Quitcher bitchin'. And work the problem - not each other.

democracy is not something we have

if it's not something we do

The Bidening Continues

And of course the Press Poodle (Catherine Rampell) has to throw a little shade and remind us that presidents don't really, directly, all-that-much, maybe-it's something-else, get the credit for good economic news - even when it's astonishingly good news, and makes the doom-n-gloom gang look like total dopes. She just can't bring herself to say straight out that after decades of fucked up Republican policy decisions, Biden and the Dems are proving government can work, and have positive effects on the lives of regular everyday Americans.

At least she didn't leave the usual shitty aftertaste of "Yeah but it's prob'ly not good news for the Democrats in the long run".

Fuck 'em - take the W, Mikey.

Opinion

3 milestones from a stunning jobs report

The U.S. economy added nearly twice as many jobs in September as economists had forecast, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that’s before you consider how much job growth was revised upward in July and August. All in all, it was an astonishingly good report.

Three milestones in particular are worth celebrating:

1. Raise a glass

When covid hit, the shuttering of businesses around the country and reluctance of consumers to dine out eliminated about half the jobs across the industry. That is, between February and April 2020, about 6 million restaurant and bar jobs vanished.

Even as the economy reopened, these employers struggled to hire back workers. Some longtime food services workers had decided to leave the business altogether, trading up to better-paying or more humane positions. Some jumped from employer to employer amid the bidding war for staff. Declines in immigration — owing to pandemic-era policies and the Trump administration’s broader sabotage of immigration processing — hurt the industry as well, since foreign-born workers make up about a fifth of the sector’s jobs.

But bars and restaurants have steadily been recovering, and as of last month, employment levels were finally back to where then were in February 2020. It probably helps that more people are joining the labor force and immigration has largely normalized.

2. A boon for public-sector workers

Public-sector employment also took a hit early in the pandemic. The sector overall has finally recovered all the jobs lost, though that milestone is entirely driven by growth in the federal government.

State and local governments are still deeply in the hole. Hence all those headlines about shortages of teachers, bus drivers, cops, corrections officers, etc.

To be clear, state and local governments have lots of vacancies but are struggling to fill them. This is the result of a collection of factors. The sector’s disproportionately older workforce is aging into retirement, for instance. Amid high inflation, wages in the private sector have risen much faster than those in the public sector (which already paid less for many equivalent roles). Some government jobs (public health, education, elections, policing) have also grown much more stressful in recent years.

3. They can do it

Despite all those warnings about a “she-cession” setting working women back a generation, working women seem to be doing better than ever. After some stagnation in women’s employment early in the 21st century, women ages 25 to 54 are more likely to be working today than at any previous time in history. This is thanks partly to demographic changes, partly to changing social norms and partly to changing working conditions.

The same milestone is not true of men. Prime-age men’s labor force participation is back to where it was pre-pandemic, but longer-term, it’s been trending downward.

So: Does President Biden deserve credit for these remarkable numbers?

In his remarks Friday afternoon, he certainly claimed as much, saying, “It’s Bidenomics, growing the economy from the middle-out, bottom-up, not the top down.” In truth, presidents have very limited control over economic conditions, but since he gets blamed for the bad things no matter what, it’s hard to chastise him for taking credit for the good ones.

To the extent “Bidenomics” is primarily about manufacturing and industrial policy, though, its fingerprints are not terribly visible in data so far.

When Biden spoke in celebration of the robust hiring numbers, manufacturing was the one and only sector he called out by name. The same was true last month. But the recent hiring numbers show very little growth in the sector, even before taking into account the work stoppages related to the United Auto Workers’ strike. (If the strike had begun earlier in the month, the report might well have shown job losses rather than gains in the sector.) And over a longer-term horizon, manufacturing job growth since the pandemic began has been weaker than that in the rest of the economy. Other metrics suggest the sector has been contracting for the past 11 consecutive months.

But on the other hand: Claims that Biden is somehow discouraging Americans writ large from working, or otherwise hamstringing employers, are nowhere evident in the data. Employers are hiring, and Americans are ready to work.

Go Brandon

If you want somebody to make a stand against price gouging, then Brandon's your guy.

This is, of course, a win. But we can prob'ly expect more wrangling, which may have something to do with the timing of implementation (2026). Maybe they built in a time allowance to get it all sorted out thru the courts (?)

US judge refuses to block Medicare from negotiating drug prices

Sept 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. government's Medicare health insurance program can begin negotiating prices for some prescription drugs this fall under a new program, a federal judge ruled on Friday, vindicating one of President Joe Biden's signature initiatives.

The order by U.S. District Judge Michael Newman in Dayton, Ohio, comes in a lawsuit brought against the Biden administration by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The nation's largest business lobbying group argues that the program violates the U.S. Constitution by allowing the government to force drugmakers to accept unfairly low prices, and would stifle innovation.

Newman in a preliminary order rejected that argument, finding that drugmakers were unlikely to prevail in the case. He said they were not being forced to give anything up because participating in Medicare is "completely voluntary."

"As there is no constitutional right (or requirement) to engage in business with the government, the consequences of that participation cannot be considered a constitutional violation," he wrote.

The Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Biden administration "will continue fighting to lower health care costs for American families, no matter how many challenges Republicans and Big Pharma put in our way," White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

Although Newman's ruling allows the price negotiation program to begin as scheduled on Oct. 1, the judge allowed the lawsuit to continue, denying a motion by the government to dismiss it altogether.

The ruling is the first to come from multiple lawsuits by drug companies and industry groups challenging the program. Newman was appointed to the bench by Republican former President Donald Trump.

The drug price negotiation program is part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden, a Democrat, signed last year.

Americans pay more for prescription medicines than people in any other country. The program aims to save $25 billion annually by 2031 by requiring drugmakers to negotiate the prices of selected expensive drugs with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS), which oversees Medicare.

Medicare mostly serves the millions of Americans aged 65 and older.

Drugmakers whose medicines were selected for the first round of pricing negotiations must agree to begin talks on Oct. 1. Those who do not negotiate either would have to pay steep penalties, up to 19 times a drug's sales, or stop participating in the government healthcare programs, which account for a significant portion of the companies' U.S. sales.

CMS announced the first 10 drugs to be negotiated on Aug. 29:

Eliquis          

Bristol Myers Squibb

Jardiance

Boehringer Ingelheim

Xarelto

Janssen Pharms

Januvia

Merck Sharp Dohme

Farxiga

AstraZeneca AB

Entresto

Novartis Pharms Corp

Enbrel

Immunex Corporation

Imbruvica

Pharmacyclics LLC

Stelara

Janssen Biotech, Inc.

Fiasp, Fiasp FlexTouch, Fiasp PenFill, NovoLog, NovoLog FlexPen, NovoLog PenFill

Novo Nordisk Inc.

The negotiated prices would take effect in 2026 with a minimum discount from the list price at 25%.

The Chamber of Commerce's lawsuit is one of several similar cases challenging the program. The others were filed by individual drugmakers and by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the leading drug industry lobbying group.

Companies that have sued over the program include J&J, Merck, Bristol Myers and Boehringer Ingelheim, which make drugs on CMS's negotiation list.

The Chamber of Commerce was the only plaintiff to ask for a preliminary injunction halting the price negotiations while its lawsuit proceeds. The other lawsuits are moving at a slower pace, and judges may not rule on them until next year.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said there is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits drug price negotiations. Many other countries already negotiate drug prices.

He's So Old

Yeah - fuck that.

Here's what Biden's done so far this week.

• Creates 9-state offshore wind supply chain pact while funding $72m towards manufacturing
• American Climate Corps launched
• DOD to review DADT discharges
• Free at-home COVID tests return
• EPA announces $4.6B climate grants
• TPS re-designated for Venezuela, protecting additional 450k legal migrants
• $37M University of Phoenix debt forgiven
• Exec Order for East Palestine recovery
• Prohibits Americans from investing in some Chinese companies
• Directs Agencies to Account for Climate Change in Budgets
• Creates new office of gun violence prevention
• Meets with world leaders - including Zelenskyy - and gives powerful speech at UN

Why - what've you been doing?

Joe's Alright

Biden's age is a concern. He dodders a bit - he seems not as steady on his feet as I think he oughta be.

So fuckin' what?

He's doing most everything we hired him to do, and he can do more for us if we can get some dog-ass Republicans out of his way. (and Manchin and Sinema too)

Next Steps

Biden's not doing enough? He's not getting done what he said he was going to do?

1. He's not the king, fuckwad. He has to work around "conservative" obstruction
2. He knows what to do and how to do it
3. You'll vote for a 3rd party candidate? Try to act like you're not stoopid enough to risk putting Republicans back in power

Biden’s new Climate Corps will train thousands of young people

It comes after a similar program was dropped from the Inflation Reduction Act

President Biden on Wednesday announced an initiative to train more than 20,000 young people in skills crucial to combating climate change, such as installing solar panels, restoring coastal wetlands and retrofitting homes to be more energy-efficient.

10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint

The American Climate Corps comes as Biden seeks to win over young voters, a critical constituency, before next year’s presidential election. Polls show that climate change is a top concern for young people, who are more likely than older generations to face raging wildfires, stronger storms and rising seas in their lifetimes.

The initiative resembles a proposal that was included in an early version of Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The Civilian Climate Corps was ultimately dropped from the final version of the legislation during private negotiations last summer between Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).

Since then, many Democrats and climate activists have called on Biden to use his executive authority to resurrect the Civilian Climate Corps. In a TikTok video Monday that racked up more than 16,000 views, the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate group, declared that “Dark Brandon would pass a CCC” — a reference to a meme that Biden’s 2024 campaign has embraced.

Youth climate activists have criticized the Biden administration for approving new fossil fuel projects such as the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, with the hashtag #StopWillow going viral this spring. They say the president must do more to curb America’s dependence on fossil fuels, the leading cause of global warming, to lock in their support.

“I can’t speak on behalf of every single youth voter, but if President Biden continues to take bold climate action like this, I think it could go a long way,” Varshini Prakash, co-founder and executive director of Sunrise Movement, said in an interview. “Young people need to see more policies like this from the administration in the lead-up to the election.”

How will the Climate Corps work?

As part of a recruitment push, the White House on Wednesday will launch a new website where Americans can sign up to learn more about the workforce training program. All participants in the program will be paid, administration officials said, although they declined to disclose specific salaries.

The officials, who are closely monitoring the United Auto Workers’ ongoing strike against Detroit’s Big Three automakers, emphasized the program would help young people secure high-quality jobs after their training is complete.

The administration “will specifically be focused on making sure that folks that are coming through this program have a pathway into good-paying union jobs,” White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi said on a Tuesday call with reporters previewing the announcement. “We’re very keenly focused on that.”

Zaidi said the initiative could help train the next generation of electricians. The country faces a dire shortage of electricians, who are needed to install a host of climate-friendly technologies, including heat pumps, efficient air conditioners and electric car chargers.

Biden’s push to transition to electric vehicles has become a key sticking point for the striking autoworkers, who fear the shift to EVs will mean fewer jobs and lower pay. The new initiative demonstrates that “green jobs can be good jobs,” said Trevor Dolan, industry and workforce policy lead at Evergreen Action, a climate advocacy group.

The Civilian Climate Corps was dropped from the climate bill. Now what?

Where did the idea for the Climate Corps come from?

Biden is not the first president to envision such a program. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put more than 3 million young men to work planting trees, constructing trails and making improvements to the nation’s infrastructure. However, the New Deal-era plan limited leadership roles to White men, whereas “this climate corps will uplift and empower a diverse and inclusive workforce,” Prakash said.

Biden’s move bypasses gridlock on Capitol Hill, where Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have introduced legislation to establish a Civilian Climate Corps that is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House. In recognition of this reality, Markey and Ocasio-Cortez sent a letter to the president on Monday urging him to take executive action.

“We must mobilize and train Americans to tackle the threats climate change poses to our communities by putting people to work on thousands of projects with one shared sense of purpose,” Markey said in a statement.

How much will the Climate Corps cost?

Democrats had proposed $30 billion in new funding for the Civilian Climate Corps that was included in the early version of the Inflation Reduction Act. In contrast, the new initiative will rely on existing funding sources, although administration officials declined to say how much money the program will receive or where these dollars will come from.

In the absence of federal action, eight states have established versions of climate corps programs, many of which are embedded in state governments and receive federal funding from AmeriCorps. The White House announced Wednesday that an additional five states — Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Utah — will move forward with climate corps programs that are funded through public-private partnerships, including AmeriCorps.

In California, which established the nation’s first climate corps program in 2020, participants have sought to divert food from landfills — a significant source of climate pollution — to residents who struggle with food insecurity. Meanwhile in Michigan, the program has partnered with Wayne State University to help Detroiters protect their homes from flooding, which has been exacerbated by rising global temperatures.

Civilian Climate Corps programs take off in states across the country

Hunter's Laptop

First - if Hunter Biden broke the law, then Hunter Biden should be held to account and taken down.

Oh, wait - Hunter Biden actually has been found to have broken the law, he's stood before the man, admitted to being a tax cheat, and he's paid us what he owed.

He's also pled guilty to a gun charge (he lied on his background check), which is something that's almost never prosecuted.

BTW #1, I have yet to hear any Republicans squawking about how poor Hunter's 2A rights have been trampled on by a tyrannical government.

OK, but still, he got off easy. What about all the horrible things he's accused of doing in the 2014 - 2016 timeframe? Rudy Giuliani's pal got Hunter's laptop for us and it's just loaded with proof.

BTW #2, some serious questions remain largely unanswered about "the laptop":

• Does it actually exist?
• How was it obtained?
• What about the chain of custody?

I'm not saying there's absolutely nothing to it, and that Hunter Biden is innocent like a spring lamb. I'm betting there is, and he's not.

But I'll bet way more on the obviously dead solid certainty that Republicans have their new Benghazi, and it doesn't matter what the truth is - they're going to flack the fuck out of that one narrow aspect of it, trying to drive Joe's numbers down.

WaPo takes a look at it for us.

Here we go again: An explosive Hunter Biden laptop email needs context

Republican lawmakers expressed outrage last week after Fox News published a 2015 email chain from Hunter Biden’s laptop in which a Ukrainian energy company executive suggested that the “ultimate purpose” of Hunter’s hiring by the company was to shut down investigations of the company’s owner. The email exchange took place about one month before then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine with the express purpose of seeking the removal of the country’s top prosecutor.

Never mind that Tucker Carlson, then a Fox News host, devoted an entire show to this email in October 2020. “Did Joe Biden subvert American foreign policy to enrich his family?” Carlson asked.

The Hunter Biden saga apparently can be endlessly recycled for maximum impact.

“The calm, judicious, steady reveal of incredibly condemning evidence that clearly incriminates the Biden crime family will eventually alarm even the most ardent supporters” of Biden, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) told Fox last week.

However, working with our colleagues in Ukraine in 2019, we carefully documented the legal cases involving the energy company, Burisma, and its founder, Mykola Zlochevsky. The information continues to be relevant to assess whether the 2015 email chain provides evidence that Hunter Biden was acting to influence U.S. policy through his father at the time.

Biden and the Ukrainian prosecutor

The email chain is part of 217 gigabytes of data on a hard drive purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden and obtained by The Washington Post from a Republican activist. A small portion of the data, including the chain, was verified by two security experts who examined it for The Post, so we are able to cite these emails and provide links.

On Nov. 2, 2015, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden, who was a Burisma board member, and two of Hunter’s associates regarding the hiring of a U.S. public relations firm to bolster Burisma’s image.

“I would like us to formulate a list of deliverables, including, but not limited to: a concrete course of actions, incl. meetings/communications resulting in high-ranking U.S. officials in Ukraine (U.S. Ambassador) and in U.S. publicly or in private communication/comment expressing their ‘positive opinion’ and support of Nikolay/Burisma to the highest level of decision-makers here in Ukraine: President of Ukraine, president Chief of staff, Prosecutor General, etc.,” Pozharskyi wrote, using a nickname for Zlochevsky. “The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former U.S. policymakers to Ukraine in November aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support on Nikolay’s issue to the Ukrainian top officials above with the ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine.”

After responding with an email suggesting he wanted “one more conversation” with Blue Star, the PR firm, Hunter Biden told Pozharskyi that he was “comfortable” with Blue Star and “you should go ahead and sign.”

Nine days later, the U.S. Embassy announced that the vice president would be traveling to Ukraine in December to meet with the Ukrainian president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, and members of parliament. Separately during this period, Blue Star indicated it was beginning to engage with U.S. and Ukrainian officials to shape perceptions of the company.

Here’s where the story gets complicated. A key purpose of Joe Biden’s December 2015 trip was to press Poroshenko to remove the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. Biden’s pressure eventually led to Shokin’s firing. But whether he was a shakedown artist operating at the behest of his son depends on whether Shokin was viewed as an impediment to investigating Burisma. Shokin has since claimed he was ousted because he was getting too tough on Burisma, but the available evidence shows the opposite is true.

- snip -

The Bottom Line

The available evidence shows that U.S. policy, executed but not developed by Joe Biden, operated independently of his son’s efforts to engage a PR firm to burnish Zlochevsky’s image. Biden’s efforts to oust the prosecutor only plausibly benefited Zlochevsky if Shokin had moved aggressively against Zlochevsky. But documents and interviews instead show Shokin had failed to act — which was a key reason the international community, led by the United States, sought his removal in the first place.

Promises

There's plenty about Joe Biden that falls way short of anything anybody would consider perfect.

But I have to ask: When did we start thinking the leaders we elect would be - or could be - perfect? A government of, by, and for the people means we look around at all the normal everyday folks, we choose a few who we think can do a job for us, and we put them to work.

We give them 2 or 4 or 6 years, and if they're not up to snuff, we get to send 'em packin' and hire somebody else.

That's how it's supposed to work anyway.

BTW, this is not the tirade about what the fuck happened that we're stuck with a buncha fuckers in office who don't do what we need them to do, but we can't seem to fire them? That's a repeat rant for another time.

What I'm on about here is that Biden is trying to make some headway in the fight against plutocracy by going after predatory lending in "public" education, but he keeps getting stiffed by a Supreme Court that's bent so far to the right, they're coming up behind themselves, and just might disappear up their own asses pretty soon.

He stays in there though, hacking away at an entrenched faction of coin-operated congress critters who are hellbent on keeping us under Wall Street's thumb.

Millions of American households are paying the monthly bills with their credit cards, piling up trillions of dollars in debt, making payments that more or less keep them just solvent enough to stay afloat, but never getting a chance to break free. It's very reminiscent of Robber Barons and Company Stores - but more like we're on the verge of becoming a full-blown feudal system complete with Lords and Serfs.

I guess my point is: Biden keeps trying, and he's about all we've got. We need to work on getting him some help.

Education Department announces student loan forgiveness for 800,000 borrowers

The action is a result of what the department calls a “fix” to income-driven repayment plans. It’s expected to provide $39 billion in federal student loan forgiveness.

WASHINGTON — The Education Department announced Friday it would automatically forgive student loans for more than 800,000 borrowers.

The action is a result of what the department calls a “fix” to income-driven repayment plans. It's expected to total $39 billion in federal student loan forgiveness.

The department said the move will address administrative issues in the income-driven repayment system. Under the plans, federal student loan borrowers are eligible for forgiveness after 20 or 25 years of payments, depending on the plan. But for some, qualifying payments that “should have moved borrowers closer to forgiveness were not accounted for,” it said in a news release.

The Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in debt for 43 million federal student loan borrowers in a 6-3 ruling last month, dealing a blow to one of his key campaign promises.

Immediately after the ruling, Biden said his administration would explore other avenues for relief. “Today’s decision has closed one path. Now we’re going to pursue another,” he said.

Biden also said he was directing the Education Department to formulate a new plan for loan forgiveness grounded in the Higher Education Act. He promised the proposal would be “legally sound” while warning that “it’s going to take longer.” The specifics of the new plan have yet to be announced.

Friday's announcement is a smaller step the Biden administration is taking to pursue federal student loan relief with existing authority.

“For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress towards forgiveness,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “By fixing past administrative failures, we are ensuring everyone gets the forgiveness they deserve.”

Today's Biden-ing

Some dogs are just straight up assholes. They bark all day and all night, and they go charging and snapping and snarling at anyone who even looks like he might step foot in their yard.

They're not just a major nuisance - they're a legit threat to the whole neighborhood.

Pointing out the fact that the dogs are a problem is important, but the people who own those dogs are the real problem.

So you make the owners of the dogs the issue - the subject of the debate. Most people will be able to see that while the dogs are bad, the owners of those dogs are either allowing the problem to persist, or they're encouraging the asshole behavior for very possibly nefarious purposes.

"Get your fuckin' dogs under control, Kevin." --Joe Biden

Opinion

Biden has a theory of MAGA that just might be working

Now that Congress has passed the debt limit deal, explanations for President Biden’s success in negotiating the outcome are abounding. Among them: Biden drew on his long experience in Washington to achieve bipartisan compromise; he avoided claiming a win so Republicans could support it; he didn’t get distracted by the media’s second-guessing.

Here’s another way to understand this unexpected outcome: Biden is operating from a largely unappreciated theory of MAGA, and in some ways, it’s working.

Passage of the deal, which averts default and economic calamity, was decisively bipartisan. The Senate approved it Thursday night with 17 Republicans backing it, after it passed the House with support from more than two-thirds of House Republicans.

This happened even though the deal’s spending cuts are not close to what Republicans sought. Yes, the outcome legitimizes the debt limit as a tool of extortion and imposes cruel new work requirements on many food stamp recipients. But Republicans didn’t use this showdown to crash or cripple the economy, as some observers (including me) worried they might.

Biden’s theory of MAGA helps explain this outcome. Biden ran in 2020 on the idea that the country faced an existential threat from the far right, highlighting white supremacy, political violence and President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attacks on democracy. This year’s reelection launch highlighted the assault on the Capitol and cast “MAGA extremists” as a threat to American “freedom.”

However, in promising to restore “the soul of the nation” in the face of this threat, Biden has continually distinguished between MAGA Republicans and more conventional ones. This approach has been criticized by those of us who see much of the GOP as extreme and dangerous — after all, many elected Republicans helped whitewash Trump’s insurrection — and think Biden’s characterization of non-MAGA Republicans plays down that broader threat.

But Biden’s reading served him well in the debt limit standoff. Contrary to much criticism, Bidenworld believes that refusing to negotiate at the outset was key: It forced Republicans to offer their own budget, which created an opening to attack the savage spending cuts in it.

Notably, Biden and other Democrats relentlessly characterized those cuts as destructive and dangerous in the MAGA vein. Bidenworld did believe that some MAGA Republicans were willing to default and force global economic cataclysm to harm the president’s reelection, a senior Biden adviser tells me, but also that many non-MAGA Republicans ultimately could be induced not to go that far.

That seems to be what happened. As political scientist Jonathan Bernstein points out, the outcome falsified the prediction that the GOP as a party would use that leverage to inflict maximum chaos. Meanwhile, the cuts themselves won’t be nearly as damaging to the economy as the ones in the 2011 standoff, as the New York Times’s Paul Krugman explains.

This illuminates Bidenworld’s broader theory of the MAGA GOP: The way to defeat the MAGA threat to the country is to marginalize it within the GOP coalition — that is, to contain it.

“He has never hesitated to call out the extreme MAGA wing of the Republican Party,” Kate Bedingfield, a senior adviser to the 2020 Biden campaign and to the White House through February, told me. “But he gives Republican voters and legislators who reject that wing of the party a place to go.”

Something similar happened in the 2022 elections. Biden and Democrats in tough races tried to strike a balance between reaching out to Republican voters and GOP-leaning independents while casting MAGA extremism as a clear and present danger to the country. It worked: Many prominent MAGA senatorial and gubernatorial candidates lost, partly because many Republican voters decided to vote Democratic.

The debt limit outcome was far from a uniform victory: Most of the GOP did engage in hostage-taking and debt limit extortion throughout much of the process, legitimizing extreme tactics before balking at going all the way.

Despite all this, the fact that so many non-MAGA Republicans voted for the deal — and that Democrats and Republicans alike are celebrating this as a bipartisan success — could mean the party as a whole isn’t broadly perceived as extreme and hostage to MAGA heading into 2024.

“The downside of the deal is that it gives vulnerable House Republicans separation from their MAGA counterparts,” Dan Sena, a senior Democratic operative during the 2018 Democratic House takeover, told me. “That could be a challenge.”

There is a tension in Biden’s approach to the GOP. His initial rationale for running was that the GOP is largely hostage to an extremism that foundationally threatens the American experiment. His reelection case is that he has begun to defuse that threat and another term will complete that task.

Yet Biden also plainly believes that conducting the nation’s business on a bipartisan basis is inherently stabilizing. That sometimes requires treating the opposition — or a large swath of it — as a mostly conventional political party, which risks mitigating perceptions of the threat it poses.

In the debt limit outcome, that tension proved far more navigable than many, including me, expected. How this tension will play out in 2024 is hard to predict, but for now, the Biden theory of MAGA has mostly been vindicated.

Stop underestimating Joe Biden.

Oy

We know GOP Rat-Fuckers stole Ashley Biden's personal diary.

There's no reason right now for me to believe they didn't pull the same shit with Hunter Biden's laptop.

What we don't know of course, is whether or not this lawsuit is the right move. We'll probably have to wait for quite a while, but it can't have been cooking without some involvement of Joe Biden's team. So, maybe good and maybe not - we'll see.

Hunter Biden sues laptop repair shop owner, citing invasion of privacy

The lawsuit, a countermove against John Paul Mac Isaac, escalates the legal battle surrounding the president’s son at a sensitive moment

Hunter Biden has filed a sweeping countersuit against the computer repair shop owner who said that Biden dropped his laptop off and never claimed it, a legal action that escalates the battle over how provocative data and images of the president’s son were obtained nearly five years ago.

In the counterclaim, filed on Friday morning in U.S. District Court in Delaware, Biden and his attorneys say that John Paul Mac Isaac had no legal right to copy and distribute private information. They accuse him and others of six counts of invasion of privacy, including conspiracy to obtain and distribute the data.

The 42-page filing goes into significant detail on the ways Hunter Biden’s data became public, a development that propelled it into the maelstrom of the last presidential campaign and, since January, to the center of a Republican-led congressional investigation of the president’s son.

The lawsuit could draw further attention to a sordid chapter in Hunter Biden’s life, one involving nude photos, sensitive audio and a trove of personal texts and emails. The countersuit is in part an attempt by Hunter Biden and his lawyers to reframe the story, focusing it on a private citizen whose privacy was allegedly invaded rather than a man who critics say traded on his father’s name and benefited from his political connections.

“As a result of Mac Isaac’s unlawful agreement and his conspiracy with others, Mr. Biden’s personal data was made available to third parties and then ultimately to the public at large, which is highly offensive, causing harm to Mr. Biden and his reputation,” the suit states. “The object of invading Mr. Biden’s privacy and disseminating his data was not for any legitimate purpose but to cause harm and embarrassment to Mr. Biden.”

The move is a response to a suit filed by Mac Isaac himself last year and amended several times since, alleging that Hunter Biden defamed him by saying he had illegally accessed the data — when in fact, Mac Isaac contends, the laptop became his property when it was abandoned in his shop. The repairman’s suit also targeted CNN, Politico, the Biden campaign and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.).

Hunter Biden’s decision to respond with an aggressive legal challenge of his own intensifies the battle with his critics, just as Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, prepares a high-profile investigation into the president’s son. The dynamic could become an awkward distraction for President Biden, who is expected to launch his reelection bid within weeks.

Hunter Biden is seeking a jury trial to determine any compensatory and punitive damages. The suit also asks the court to require Mac Isaac and others to return any copies, or partial copies, of any data belonging to the president’s son.

It marks the first legal filing from Hunter Biden and his attorneys since his laptop emerged as a point of intense interest for the president’s political adversaries, and it reflects a newly aggressive approach by a legal team that Hunter Biden put in place in recent months. That team had previously sent criminal referrals and cease-and-desist missives to various people, but this is the first time the attorneys have formally gone into court.

Still, the legal move required delicate positioning by the president’s son, who has never explicitly confirmed that the laptop was his.

Hunter Biden does not concede in his lawsuit that he dropped off the laptop, received an invoice or neglected to pick it up. In response to such claims by Mac Isaac, the filing states, “Mr. Biden is without knowledge sufficient to admit or deny the allegations.”

But he does acknowledge that some of the data that has been released publicly belongs to him, and concedes that Mac Isaac could have obtained it in April 2019.

“This is not an admission by Mr. Biden that Mac Isaac (or others) in fact possessed any particular laptop containing electronically stored data belonging to Mr. Biden,” the filing says. “Rather, Mr. Biden simply acknowledges that at some point, Mac Isaac obtained electronically stored data, some of which belonged to Mr. Biden.”

Hunter Biden argues that if even Mac Isaac did have his unclaimed laptop, Delaware law would have restricted his ability to access or distribute the data on it.

Mac Isaac and his allies have often pointed to a signed receipt saying that any property not retrieved after 90 days would be forfeited. But Biden’s attorneys say that agreement had flaws.

The boilerplate terms, they say, were contained in small print at the bottom of the page, well below the signature line. Delaware law says that personal property is only deemed abandoned after one year, and that certain steps have to be taken, such as posting public notices asking that the owner retrieve the property.

“And contrary to Mac Isaac’s claim that property left in his shop is abandoned property after 90 days, he admits in his recently published book and in other media appearances that he actually began accessing what he claims he had in his possession as Mr. Biden’s data long before 90 days had expired from when he claims any property or data was left in his shop,” the suit states.

The counterclaim also argues that even if the laptop had been abandoned, that would only give Mac Isaac the right to the equipment, not the data stored on it.

“In fact, the Repair Authorization form states that the Mac Shop will make every effort to ‘secure your data,’” the suit states. “Reputable computer companies and repair people routinely delete personal data contained on devices that are exchanged, left behind, or abandoned. They do not open, copy, and then provide that data to others, as Mac Isaac did here.”

The countersuit also cites Mac Isaac’s statements that he made copies of Biden’s hard drive and distributed them to a number of people, including his father Richard Mac Isaac, his uncle Ronald J. Scott Jr., and Robert Costello, an attorney for former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. “Mr. Biden gave none of the individuals identified in this counterclaim permission to access, copy, disseminate, post or otherwise distribute any of his data, however they came into possession of it,” the filing states.

“Mr. Biden had more than a reasonable expectation of privacy that any data that he created or maintained, and especially that which was the most personal such as photographs, videos, interactions with other adults, and communications with his family, would not be accessed, copied, disseminated, or posted on the Internet for others to use against him or his family or for the public to view.”

An attorney for Mac Isaac did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The data alleged to have come from the laptop has been the subject of intense scrutiny dating from stories that the New York Post published just before the 2020 election. At the time, The Washington Post repeatedly asked Giuliani and Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon for a copy of the data to review, but the requests were rebuffed or ignored.

In June 2021, Jack Maxey, who previously worked as a researcher for Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, delivered to The Post a portable hard drive that he said contained the data. He said he had obtained it from Giuliani.

The Post asked two security experts to examine 217 gigabytes of data on the drive, and they found nearly 22,000 emails carrying cryptographic signatures that could be verified using technology that would be difficult for even the most sophisticated hackers to fake. The vast majority of the data — and most of the nearly 129,000 emails it contained — could not be verified, the security experts said.

Hunter Biden has said previously that he is unsure if the laptop is his and he does not remember dropping it off, but he has conceded that his memory in the depths of what he has admitted was a serious drug addiction was not reliable. His allies also suggest that materials later made public may be a mix of materials obtained in various ways.

The new filing on Friday is the latest evidence that Hunter Biden has adopted a new legal strategy after years of largely keeping quiet about the laptop and the contents it purportedly contained. A few months ago he hired Abbe Lowell, a lawyer known for hard-nosed tactics, and earlier this year Lowell sent a series of blistering letters to state and federal prosecutors urging criminal investigations into those who accessed and disseminated his personal data. His team also sent a separate letter threatening Fox News host Tucker Carlson with a defamation lawsuit.

The higher-profile strategy has not been endorsed by all of those in Hunter Biden’s orbit. Those close to President Biden and the White House, in particular, have made it clear they would prefer a more conservative, quieter approach.

In a separate letter on Friday, Lowell notified the judge that Hunter Biden’s lawyers wanted to meet as soon as possible to discuss a discovery phase in the lawsuit, during which they would seek documents. Lowell said Hunter Biden’s team would be requesting a deposition from Mac Isaac “as soon as feasible” and that he also planned to seek testimony from a range of others involved in the matter.

They include Bannon, Giuliani and Maxey. The attorneys are also seeking testimony from conservative activist Garrett M. Ziegler, who has uploaded some of the data in his possession, and Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist from whom Hunter Biden sought treatment.

Ablow, who has been close to Republican activist Roger Stone, had one of Hunter Biden’s laptops at his Massachusetts-based office. That laptop was seized by agents who raided Ablow’s office in February 2020, and it was eventually returned to Biden. Some of Hunter Biden’s close associates have theorized that that laptop may have been the basis of the hard drives that were later distributed by Trump allies.