Month: January 2023

But I’m sure it’s bad news for Biden…

Sometimes you need to look at the big picture: It's been an incredible rebound from the 2020 pandemic recession.

The US has recovered all output lost in the crisis and gotten back on trend.

GDP
2022: +2.1%
2021: +5.9%
2020: -2.8%https://t.co/gAM6bebF0l via @abhabhattarai pic.twitter.com/cEExbsVH95

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) January 26, 2023

Dean Baker has the details:

GDP Grow 2.9 Percent in 4th Quarter, Driven by Inventories and Service Consumption

GDP growth was in line with expectations, with the economy expanding at 2.9 percent annual rate, down slightly from the 3.2 percent rate in the third quarter. Inventory accumulation was the largest single factor, adding 1.46 percentage points to the quarter’s growth. Service consumption added 1.16 percentage points, while a smaller trade deficit added 0.56 percentage points. Housing was a major drag, with residential investment subtracting 1.29 percentage points from growth.

The quarter is likely to again show a healthy rate of productivity growth. Payroll hours increased at a 1.1 percent rate in the quarter. A sharp rise in people reported that they are self-employed is likely to raise hours growth to around 1.5 percent, leaving productivity growth in the range of 1.4 percent. This compares to reported declines in productivity in the first half of 2022. The turnaround in productivity will help to alleviate inflationary pressure going forward.  

Consumption Growth Moderates in Fourth Quarter

Overall consumption grew at just a 2.1 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, down from a 2.3 percent rate in the third quarter. Goods consumption continued to be outpaced by service, rising at a 1.1 percent annual rate, compared to the 2.6 percent rate for services. This reversing the shift to goods consumption caused by the pandemic.

The rise in goods consumption follows three quarters in which it declined. The biggest factor in the turnaround was vehicles, with sales rising at a 7.4 percent annual rate. This is mostly a story of supply chain issues being resolved. Sales growth is likely to be moderate in future quarters.

On the service side there were no obvious standouts. The category of housing and utilities grew moderately, after a sharp decline in utilities led to a fall in the third quarter. Health care consumption added 0.39 percentage points to the quarter’s growth. Nominal spending on health care services actually fell slightly as a share of consumption, continuing a pattern seen since the start of the pandemic.  

Decline in Housing Reverses Most of the Pandemic Increase

Residential construction fell at a 26.7 percent annual rate, only slightly smaller than the 27.1 percent drop in the third quarter. This was the seventh consecutive quarter of decline. This drop has largely reversed a surge in the sector early in the pandemic that raised its share of GDP from 3.8 percent in 2019 to peak of 4.8 percent.

The share for the fourth quarter was down to 4.0 percent. On the positive side, there is not much further room to fall. Housing starts are still at or above pre-pandemic levels. Due to supply chain issues slowing construction, the number of housing units still under construction is near pandemic peaks. The services associated with mortgage refinancing are included in this component. With the pandemic boom having collapsed to near zero, there is no further room for decline. This means that housing will be a far smaller drag on growth in 2023.

Mixed Story with Investment

Non-residential investment edged higher at a 0.7 percent annual rate in the quarter, as modest growth in investment in intellectual products offset a 3.7 percent rate of decline in equipment investment. Structure investment also grew at a 0.4 percent rate, the first rise since the first quarter of 2021.

We are likely to see investment grow at modest pace in the quarters ahead. The decline in in equipment investment was entirely attributable to a 23.4 percent rate of decline in information processing equipment. That is not likely to be repeated, but spending throughout the sector is likely to be weak on recession fears. There could also be some falloff from the 5.3 percent growth rate for investment in intellectual products.

On the plus side, investment in structures has likely bottomed out, after sharp declines in spending on office construction and hotels. With spending on factory construction increasing rapidly, this component should be a strong positive in 2023.

Trade Again Adds to Growth

Exports declined at a 1.3 percent annual rate, but that was less than the 4.6 percent drop in imports. As a result, trade added 0.56 percentage points to growth in the quarter. Trade is usually one of the areas hit hardest by interest rate hikes, as higher rates raise the value of the dollar and make U.S. goods less competitive.

That has not been the case thus far. First, the dollar rose sharply in 2021 and early in 2022. It actually has been falling in recent months as other central banks also aggressively hike rates. The other reason we are seeing an improvement in the trade balance is the shift from goods consumption, many of which are imported, to service consumption. This shift is likely to continue, which together with the fall in the dollar, could mean that trade continues to be a modest net contributor to growth going forward.

Government Spending Grows at a 3.7 Percent Rate, Adding 0.64 Percentage Points to Growth

The growth in government spending in the fourth quarter was the same as in the third quarter. This follows decline in the prior five quarters. Spending is now normalizing after the sharp pandemic related jump in 2020. We are likely to see somewhat slower growth in 2023, but the sector should still be a modest positive for growth.

Picture on Inflation Continues to Improve

The core PCE rose at a 3.9 percent rate in Q4, down from 4.7 percent in Q3. This is still well above the Fed’s 2.0 percent target, but we know that rental inflation will be slowing sharply in coming months.

Also, this report seems to indicate that wage growth is moderating. Labor compensation grew at a 4.9 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter. If we assume that hours grew at 1.5 percent rate, that translates into a 3.4 percent pace of growth in the average hourly wage. This would be very much consistent with the Fed’s 2.0 percent target. This is especially true with productivity growth in the range of 1.5 percent.

The Economy Looks Strong Going Into 2023

On the whole this should be seen as a very positive report. The largest source of weakness, residential investment is virtually certain to be far less of a drag in future quarters. Investment growth may weaken, but should still be positive. Consumption growth is likely to remain moderate, with large Social Security cost of living adjustments provided a boost at the start of the year. And, there is more evidence that inflation is moderating.

So good news, right? Well, the media is having a hard time letting go of its recession predictions so expect to hear lots of caveats in the coverage. But the numbers are the numbers.

Earlier this week Chris Hayes and Elizabeth Warren talked up the idea of a soft landing, which looks more and more like a possibility.

LTPJ https://t.co/NKl63bURNk

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) January 25, 2023

Land the plane Jerome!

Not enough Republicans leave the GOP in my opinion, but a few have done it over the past few years. One of the most entertaining and articulate is Tim Miller’s whose book “Why We Did It” is one of the best apologias out there, is always interesting on this topic. If you have a half hour to kill, this is an interesting interview on that topic.

I understand that change is hard and that for many people transgender issues are confusing. (I’m not sure why, exactly, it’s not like it’s new. I knew transgender people back in the 70s…) The apparently desire among the right wing to cause harm to transgender people, ostracize them, discriminate against them — especially those who have turned it into a culture war crusade for cynical political purposes — is making me sick. And the fact that they feel the need to lie about constantly tells you everything you need to know:

On Jan. 11, 17-year-old Rebecca Phillips approached the lectern at a sparsely attended city council meeting in Santee, a suburb of San Diego, California. No item on the agenda brought her to city hall that night. Instead, she tearfully recounted how a local YMCA had followed state law and company policy by allowing a transgender woman to use the same locker room that she did. She had no contact with the woman and claimed only to have seen her, but the experience left her “terrified,” she said.

From there, a symbiotic network of local and national right-wing media began passing the story upwards, catapulting Phillips to the airwaves of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight in just six days. But while Phillips earned the adulation of a constellation of conservative and far-right actors—including a former politician himself accused of sexual misconduct in public bathrooms—the subject of her outburst became a national target.

Christynne Lili Wrene Wood, a 66-year-old Navy veteran and retired civil servant, had just returned home from a trip to Palm Springs when a friend from her beloved aqua aerobics class sent her a video on Instagram of Phillips speaking at thecity council.

“I just started crying and crying and shaking,” she told The Daily Beast. “I’m neither Sigmund Freud nor Carl Jung; I don’t know what evil pathology drives that. But there’s always got to be that convenient boogeyman. There’s always gonna be that ‘other’ that threatens ‘us.’”

If drag shows have been one focus of recent extremist rage at the LGBTQ community, it appears as if YMCAs may be emerging as a new proving ground for right-wing culture warriors. If so, the story of Rebecca Phillips points to just how swiftly that process can take off.

Phillips’ comments galvanized an existing network of right wing and far-right groups in greaterSan Diego, according to local disinformation researcherand journalist Brooke Binkowski. “There’s a very strong streak of far-right ideology here that has been here for generations,” she told The Daily Beast.

Santee specifically has an established reputation of extremism, earning it the moniker “Klantee.” The city has tried multiple times over the years to rehabilitate its image, most recently after news coverage of a man shopping at a local Vons wearing a Klan–style hood followed by a separate incident of a Santee Food 4 Less customer wearing a swastika face mask.

“The QAnon-friendly crowd and their adjacent groups have been demonizing trans people and throwing around the ‘pedo’ and ‘groomer’ labels for years now,” Binkowski said.

Little is known about Phillipsand her own politics, and neither she nor her parents could be reached for comment. Her father works as a retirement consultant while her mother, Susanna Hodge, is a Christian blogger and homeschools her six children. Her LinkedIn lists her as a director for a Christian homeschooling company.

Whatever the details of the teen’s own ideology, it took virtually no time at all for extremists to latch onto her.

The day after Phillips spoke at city hall, a screen recording of her comments appeared on the Instagram page for SanteeParents4Choice, a group that emerged in the thick of the pandemic in opposition to masking requirements in Santee schools. Tracie Thill, the group’s founder and a former special education aide in the Santee School District who says she was fired for refusing to adhere to the district’s COVID testing policy, ran a failed campaign for school board in 2022.

SanteeParents4Choice held a rally in front of the YMCA on Jan. 18 that was reportedly attended by a range of actors outside the group, including right-wing and far-right locals. The YMCA closed early as a safety precaution after receiving threats—threats that have rippled to locations across the country, according to Shelly McTighe-Rippengale, the group’s executive vice president for San Diego County.

“Our YMCA and our staff continue to be the target of credible threats, negative attention, and electronic attacks simply for serving our mission and obeying state law,” she said in an email to The Daily Beast.

Thill could not be reached for comment.

A local news stationthat has been linked to the right, KUSI, picked up the story a day after SanteeParents4Choice, running it online with the headline “Santee YMCA allows naked man to use women’s locker room with underage girls.” In a television segment, KUSI brought on Carrie Prejean-Boller, a former Miss California USA who first obtained political notoriety when she came out against gay marriage in the televised finals of the 2009 Miss USA competition. In 2021, she received attention for appearing at a local school board meeting to decry mask mandates, declare the pandemic over, and threaten to run for school board (she did not).

Prejean-Boller praised Phillips as a “hero” for sharing her story.

Phillips herself also appeared on KUSI, this time expanding the scope of her attack against the YMCA to its gender-inclusive policies for sleepaway camps. (According to the San Diego YMCA policy, sleeping arrangements and group assignments should “reflect each child’s identified gender” and staff will “not disclose information regarding a camper’s identity without their express consent.”)

In quick succession, the story traveled from KUSI to the New York Post and Daily Mail. A game of telephone played out in the process, with Mail, OAN, and The Daily Wire reporting that Phillips had seen a penis in the locker room. But Phillips herself had said in her city council comments only that she had seen a “naked male.” On local TV, she got a bit more specific, saying that she “did not see the man’s front side.”

Get ready for the kicker:

In fact, it would have been impossible for the teenager to see a penis, because Wood underwent gender-affirming surgery in 2016.

What terrified this teenager so much about seeing the backside of this woman in a locker room is something she’ll have to take up with a therapist, but the idea that everyone assumed she’d been flashed with a penis tells you all you need to know. They are looking for excuses to act like cruel bigots, which they clearly are by nature, and trans people are easy targets. It breaks my heart to see it.

There’s more on this story at the link if you can bear to read it.

What else is new?

Charles W. Cooke at National Review skewers Trump, saying he “has completely lost his grip on reality.” (Did he ever have it?) Needless to say the MAGA cult could not care less what National Review says about their hero.

There was a point in time at which Trump’s unusual verbal affect and singular nose for underutilized wedge issues gave him a competitive edge. Now? Now, he’s morphing into one of the three witches from Macbeth. To peruse Trump’s account on Truth Social is to meet a cast of characters about whom nobody who lives beyond the Trump Extended Universe could possibly care one whit. Here in the real world, the border is a catastrophe, inflation is as bad as it’s been in four decades, interest rates have risen to their highest level in 15 years, crime is on the up, and the debt continues to mushroom. And yet, safely ensconced within his own macrocosm, Trump is busy mainlining Edward Lear. Day in, day out, he rambles about the adventures of Coco Chow and the Old Broken Crow; the dastardly Unselect Committee; the (presumably tasty) Stollen Presidential Election; the travails of that famous law-enforcement agency, the Gestopo; Joe Scarborough’s wife “Mike”; and other unusual characters from Coromandel. “Where the early pumpkins blow / In the middle of the woods / Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò / Who STOLLE THE ELECTION / Don’t you know?”

These characters come and go as the world passes indifferently by. But Trump’s heroism remains the one constant. It is the dream of any artist to play both performer and critic, and, on Truth Social, Trump is living the dream. At times, his penchant for self-elevation makes God’s declaration in Genesis “that it was good” look positively bashful. Apropos of nothing, he will declare to himself: “‘TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING’ One of [sic] most often used current phrases or statements. Wow, such a magnificent compliment. Thank you!” Other evaluations are equally gushing. His appraisal of the social-media company of which he is the sole potentate: “TRUTH SOCIAL IS SOOO GREAT!” His review of his golfing abilities in a competition that, astonishingly enough, he managed to win despite missing its first day: “Competed against many fine golfers, and was hitting the ball long and straight,” which “in a very real way . . . serves as a physical exam, only MUCH tougher.” His assessment of his presidency, and of the 2020 election that he lost by millions of votes: “I did a GREAT job as President, maybe the best.” And then: “I Ran twice, did much better the second time (Rigged Election!)” I tell ya, Charley, I coulda been a contender.

Throughout his public career, Trump has resembled nothing so much as a drunken talk-radio caller from Queens, and, on Truth Social, readers get the treat of watching him at the zenith of his rhetorical powers. Nobody — and I mean nobody — can shift gears as fast as Donald J. Trump. One moment he’s proposing that the solution to the Supreme Court leak is to “arrest the reporter, publisher, editor—you’ll get your answer fast,” or, if that fails, “put whoever in jail.” The next, he’s describing the prosecution of his business associate, Allen Weisselberg, as “the greatest Witch Hunt of all time.” His repertoire is unmatched — and unmatchable. He can do edgy insult comedy for the people listening in at the bar: “The reporter was a shaky & unattractive wack job, known as ‘tough’ but dumb as a rock.” He can make numbers up off the top of his head: “The change in the Election was Complete & Total, with Millions of votes switched, at least 17%.” He can use hyperbolic analogies: “Our Country is SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer.” He can even do angry: “May he Rot In Hell!” He can do anything.

Anything, that is, except focus on the world outside — where the problems that Donald Trump once used to propel himself into the White House remain real and pressing, whether or not he chooses to engage with them.

He never focused on the problems. He was always just engaged with his crowds, which were energized by the talk-radio approach to “issues” and vehicles for their grievances. I have a feeling that once he gets back on the road he’ll be back in the saddle.

But yes, he sounds even more demented than usual on Truth Social. It will be interesting to see if he’s any different when he gets back on twitter and Facebook.

Let people know whom to blame when the GOP strangles the recovery

Democrats should promote the hell out of the Biden recovery (Washington Post):

The U.S. economy grew by 2.1 percent in 2022, notching six months of solid growth despite widespread concern that the country might be on the brink of a recession.

Those fears have been assuaged — at least for now. The economy posted another consecutive quarter of steady expansion between October and December, with economic activity increasing at a 2.9 percent annual rate. Consumer spending contributed to the strong fourth-quarter showing, especially given the slumps in large parts of the economy, including housing and manufacturing.

Admit weak spots where they exist (inflation is coming down, but is still too high), but trumpet the upsides. The GOP would even in a downturn.

“You may see [growth] and think the economy is out of the woods, but that would be entirely the wrong read,” said Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities America who expects a recession midyear. “There are a lot of variables that are all pointing in the same direction: There’s a housing recession. Manufacturing looks like it’s approaching recession. We’re seeing weakness in temp hiring. And it’s doubtful we’ve felt the full effects of all of the Fed’s rate hikes.”

The 2022 economy was, in many ways, defined by stubborn decades-high inflation. Higher prices on housing, food and gas strained family budgets and cut into corporate profits. The economy unexpectedly shrank in the first half of the year — setting off a flurry of recession fears — then returned to growth in the second half.

Washington Post economic columnist and Editorial Board member Heather Long tweets cold water at her paper’s own report painting a picture of an economy teetering on the edge of recession. Look at the bigger picture!

Yes, there are problems — inflation is still far too high and poverty, while it dipped during the crisis b/c of gov't aid, is also still too high.

But to recover all jobs and output in basically 2 years is remarkable.

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) January 26, 2023

Economics is not my area. But then, facts are not the GOP.’s Neither are deficits when it’s a Republican president signing off on them. Politics is more a driver of the national narrative than economics.

Sure, you can’t buy groceries or gas with GDP, one respondent, observes. Even so:

More broadly, in the decade following the Great Recession, the U.S. economy grew between 1.5 percent and 2.9 percent each year. Although 2022 growth falls squarely within that range, economists say the seesawing numbers behind that average — two quarters of contraction, followed by two quarters of expansion — mask a host of unusual and conflicting data points.

“Unlike most recessions, where the bottom essentially falls out everywhere, we’re in a period where the pain is hitting pockets of the economy at different times,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab. “Everything isn’t pointing in the same direction, which isn’t the norm. It’s unique to the covid era.”

For every negative signal, there is a positive one. It’s Joe Biden’s and Democrats’ job to accentuate the positives as loudly as the GOP will the negatives and attempt to engineer more ahead of 2024. National politics is not about the raw numbers as much as about who controls the narrative the public hears.

Good policy is useless without good politics, Biden believes. Hard-sell the large-scale legislative achievements and double down on delivering more.

Your evil government, the lizard people’s evil government

A report issued Wednesday by the Secret Service finds that one-quarter of mass shootings in the U.S. between 2016 and 2020 were motivated by ” a belief system involving conspiracies or hateful ideologies involving anti-government, anti-Semitic, and misogynistic views.” Lina Alathari, the chief of the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, told reporters the conspiracies included beliefs such as 9/11 never happened, or that the United Nations was coming to take their guns, or that aliens or lizard people were preparing to take over the world.

“Mental illness is not a barometer for dangerousness and it is not a correlation for mass attacks. The vast majority of individuals with mental illnesses in this country will never be violent. In fact, often, they are the victims of violence,” Alathari said. At least six were radicalized online.

“One attacker had started subscribing to an online message board about 18 months prior to his attack,” she said. “He later told law enforcement that that’s when he became radicalized and started hating Jewish people.”

Half were motivated by personal grievances (the typical perpetrator) including romantic or family relationships, work, or legal issues. Over half of attackers experienced depression, psychotic symptoms, or suicidal thoughts prior to the attacks.

The report, the latest in a string of such NTAC studies, examined 173 attacks over the period during which three or more people were injured or killed, excluding the attacker, in a public or semi-public place. In sum, 513 people were killed and an additional 1,234 people were injured. Lone attackers initiated nearly all the killings.

NBC News:

More than three-quarters of all attacks involved firearms, and over 80% of attacks that used guns resulted in at least one death, the report found. Most of the attackers used handguns, but one-third used “long guns,” a category that includes automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Attackers who used weapons other than guns fatally wounded victims in fewer than 50% of attacks. 

In over one-quarter of all mass shootings, the attackers possessed firearms illegally.

Asked whether the trends called for gun reform, Alathari said, “Our research informs policy, and we really hope communities take preventative action to make sure that they are mitigating any possible risk of a tragedy like this happening again.”

With so many mass shootings over the period, it is unclear whether the attacks in the report represent the sum total of attacks that fit the criteria stated above or whether NTAC selected these 173 events from them. If they were selected, then how?

As Anand Giridharadas writes in “Winners Take All,” the world’s billionaire elite will work to solve global problems (such as poverty) that their own activities help perpetuate using the vast wealth generated through market capitalism. Just so long as proposed solutions do not require them to reconsider market capitalism or to reduce wealth inequality: to pay more in taxes or to make less by paying their workers more and more fairly.

It is the same with guns, isn’t it? We will entertain solutions to the plague of gun violence only so long as they do not cost us our guns.

Tucker Carlson has been busily rehabbing (checks notes) …. Richard Nixon these days, saying that he took on the Deep State and they chased him out of office. Seriously. I guess this is what he meant by “taking on the Deep State”.

This is the transcript that proved President Richard M. Nixon guilty of obstruction of justice. For more than a year the President had told the American people that he had done nothing to interfere with the FBI investigation of the Watergate break-in. But the release of this transcript by the White House in August 1974 prompted large numbers of congressional Republicans to switch from defending the President to calling on him to step down or face impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.

Less than a week after the break-in, the FBI would discover that a check in the bank account of one of the Watergate burglars had been written to Nixon’s Midwest finance chairman. It was evidence that the burglars had been paid from Nixon campaign contributions—a potentially explosive revelation.

“[T]he FBI is not under control.” H. R. Haldeman

White House chief of staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman presented President Nixon with a plan to cut off the investigation before it led to this “problem area.” Haldeman and chief domestic adviser John D. Ehrlichman would tell the CIA to ask the FBI to “stay the hell out of this.” The plan was to make it seem like the FBI was about to unearth some secret CIA activities, when in actuality the FBI was about to learn potentially incriminating information about Nixon’s reelection campaign. Nixon quickly agreed to the plan, never realizing that it would cost him the presidency.

“[W]hen you open that scab there’s a hell of a lot of things.”President Richard Nixon

Tucker no doubt thinks this is exactly as it should be.

I guess I’m just surprised the attempt to rehabilitate Richard Nixon didn’t come sooner. It’s a natural.

This should be interesting. Semafor reports that they are in talks to put together the GOP primary debates. It sounds as though they are going to try to ferret out the super extremists and trip up Trump. Hookay….

The RNC wants Republican candidates to be put to the test during primary debates — even if that means having networks that conservatives normally shy away from host the events.

The debate committee is meeting to discuss the criteria for the first gathering of the 2024 presidential field on Wednesday. They have a request for proposal out to news outlets, the first of its kind, that’s due back by February 15.

“I don’t think we can isolate ourselves to just conservative news media,” Jonathan Barnett, an Arkansas committee member, told Semafor.

A Republican familiar with the conversations said the RNC is considering pairing mainstream outlets with conservative outlets as co-moderators, a regular feature of 2016 debates as well, to address member concerns about bias. The RNC’s proposal request includes a section for networks to fill out that dives into whether they’d be open to partnerships.

But part of the goal, the person said, would be to ensure candidates don’t get “softball questions that aren’t of substance” and that they are forced to “talk about policy and give answers.” The RNC meeting notably comes after a midterms in which a number of candidates popular in conservative media circles struggled to connect with independent voters in the general election.

The RNC has tried to exercise more control over debates throughout the last decade in response to Republican complaints that moderators were hostile to their candidates or focused on fringe topics. They voted last year to pull out of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has sanctioned general election debates over the last four decades.

Iowa GOP chair Jeff Kaufmann told Semafor that it’s a good thing the RNC is reaching out to networks outside the right, because it proves that candidates are willing to take tough questions even as they decry bias by moderators.

“It’s just a matter of being completely and utterly fed up with a deck that is deliberately stacked against them,” he explained, expressing a viewpoint that’s been widely echoed within the party.

Matt Wolking, who served as a senior aide on Trump’s 2020 campaign, said the RNC should not put “legacy media up on a pedestal” given that Republican primary voters have increasingly moved on to other options. Still, he saw advantages to the move.

“I think it’s important, for Americans and voters, to make it as easy as possible for them to be exposed to the Republican Party, Republican candidates, Republican ideas,” he said.

How candidates respond is an open question. Star politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have chosen to sidestep traditional news outlets almost entirely in favor of conservative media and the debates would be a significant test. Donald Trump, known for his attacks on the Washington Post and CNN, has also attacked right-leaning outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch in recent months. In 2016, he pulled out of a FOX News debate before the Iowa caucus after the network refused to drop Megyn Kelly as a moderator.

For the GOP primaries, they really don’t need the mainstream media and I suspect they know that. That’s why I think they’re trying to weed out the freaks including Trump. But they will find out that they’re all freaks because in a Republican primary, they have to be to win.

And I think there’s a very good chance these debates won’t even happen if Trump refuses to do them. Whether they like it or not, he’s still the frontrunner. This poll was released yesterday:

This is what the MAGA cult worships. And it’s pathetic.

He just can’t stop lying:

Donald Trump has declared himself a winner … again.

Trump announced on his social media platform on Tuesday that he won the Senior Club Championship at Trump International Golf Club in unincorporated West Palm Beach last weekend, despite not playing the first round of the tournament.

Members arrived the second day surprised to see Trump with a five-point lead, according to the Daily Mail. But Trump never played the first round as he was attending a funeral in North Carolina of ardent supporter Lynette Hardaway, known by the moniker “Diamond” of the conservative political commentary duo Diamond and Silk.

Trump told tournament organizers he played a strong round on the course Thursday, two days before the tournament started, and decided that would count as his Saturday score for the club championship. That score was five points better than any competitor posted during Saturday’s first round.

Trump called it a “great honor” to have won “on of the best courses in the Country, in Palm Beach County,” in his post on Truth Social.

“Competed against many fine golfers and was hitting the ball long and straight,” he wrote. “The reason that I announce this on fabulous TRUTH is that, in a very real way, it serves as a physical exam, only MUCH tougher. You need strength and stamina to WIN, & I have strength & stamina – most others don’t. You also need strength & stamina to GOVERN!”

It’s not the first time he’s either cheated or lied about winning a golf championship. He’s been doing it for years:

Donald’s Trump’s boast about winning 18 club championships is a lie that’s so over-the-top Crazytown it loses all credibility among golfers the second it’s out of his mouth. To double check, I called the only guy who could come close: George “Buddy” Marucci, of Philadelphia. Like Trump, Marucci belongs to more clubs than you can fit in your bag. Like Trump, he’s in the right age bracket, at six years younger than Trump. Like Trump, he’s got all the money he needs to play as many club championships as he can fly to. Unlike Trump, he’s as fine a golfing businessman as you can find. Marucci took 19-year-old Tiger Woods – 24 years his junior – to the last hole of the 1995 US Amateur before finally losing.

So, Buddy Marucci, do YOU have 18 club championships?

“Ha!” he laughed. “No way. I have a few, but nowhere near that many. It’s hard to win a club championship. I might have eight. Tops.”

This is a guy who’s been breaking par for the past 45 years. He belongs to nearly every creamy course in the world – Winged Foot, Seminole, Pine Valley, Cypress Point. If it’s on a top 10 in the world list, Marucci probably has a locker there.

When Trump told Gary Player he’d won 18 championships, Player scoffed. “I told him that if anyone beats him, he kicks them out. So, he had to win.”

Was Trump’s name on the wall of any clubs he didn’t own? Nope. Was it on the walls at Trump Washington in Virginia, a course that was already up and running when he bought it? Nope. Or Trump Jupiter, which was a Ritz Carlton course when he bought it? Nope. Was it on the wall at any of his own courses he’d opened? Oh, yes.

Trump International in West Palm Beach, Florida, has a plaque on the wall that lists all the men who’ve won the men’s club championship. Trump appears three times: 1999, 2001, and 2009. But hold on. The course wasn’t even open in 1999. Turns out, then White House spokesperson Hope Hicks admitted to the Washington Post, Trump played in a “soft opening” round on 1 November of that year with “a group of the early members,” and declared it the club championship.

Congratulations?

On 17 March 17 2013, Trump tweeted he’d won the club championship again at Trump International. But the plaque for that year lists the winner as “Tom Roush.” The catch? It wasn’t really the club championship at all. Trump won the “Super Seniors Club Championship,” which at most clubs is reserved for players 60 and older. Something to be proud of, sure, but not within a Super Walmart of beating the best young players in the club. The difference between “Club Champion” and “Super Senior Club Champion” is the difference between Vanna White and Betty White.

[…]

At Trump Bedminster in New Jersey, Trump once won a senior club championship from 87 miles away. He’d declared that the club should start having senior club championships for those 50 and up, but he forgot that one of the best players at the club had just turned 50. Having zero chance at beating the guy, he went up to his Trump Philadelphia course on the day of the tournament and played with a friend there. Afterward, according to a source inside the Bedminster club, he called the Bedminster pro shop and announced he’d shot 73 and should be declared the winner.

The pro, wanting to stay employed, agreed. His name went up on the plaque. “But then,” says the source, “somebody talked to the caddy up in Philly and asked him what Trump shot that day. The caddy goes, ‘Maybe 82. And that might be generous.’ He pulls that kind of shit all the time around here.”

He pulls that kind of shit everywhere and has for years. And, as we know, he continues to tell the Biggest Lie of all.

He’d rather make a complete fool of himself than ever admit he lost. I guess that’s what his followers must love about him.

“If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have [Eric] Swalwell on any committee. … Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistleblower.” — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), remarks to reporters, Jan. 12

Glenn Kessler fact checks the charges against Swalwell and Schiff. Guess what? Kevin McCarthy is full of shit:

Two years ago, when House Democrats removed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from all House committees after she espoused extremist beliefs and approved of violence against prominent Democratic politicians, McCarthy and other Republicans warned that the precedent-shattering move would come back to haunt them. Traditionally, each party had selected its own committee members and meted its own punishment.

Late in 2021, the Democratic-controlled House also removed Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) from all committees after he used official resources to create and post an animated video depicting the killing of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and violence against President Biden.

It’s apparently payback time. McCarthy announced that he would block two prominent California Democrats — Reps. Eric Swalwell and Adam B. Schiff — from serving on the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff had been chair and is the ranking Democrat.

But unless you have been a regular consumer of right-wing media, you might be puzzled by the accusations used to justify their expulsion. Indeed, McCarthy’s reasoning is specious and vague, especially when compared to the actions of Greene and Gosar.

Greene’s statements and social media posts were widely publicized and, even though she renounced her statements just before the House vote, 11 Republicans backed removing her from committees. Gosar’s removal was back by two Republicans. There is no similar support in the Democratic caucus for barring Swalwell and Schiff from the Intelligence Committee. Meanwhile, Republicans said they are giving Greene and Gosar committee assignments in the new Congress.

McCarthy’s staff did not respond to repeated inquiries from The Fact Checker asking for a deeper explanation. So we will have to examine these claims without his cooperation.

Eric Swalwell

In 2020, Axios reported that a suspected Chinese intelligence operative called Christine Fang had developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including Swalwell. She reportedly targeted up-and-coming Bay Area politicians through campaign fundraising and networking. She first met Swalwell when he was a council member in Dublin, Calif., Axios said.

She also volunteered for Rep. Ro Khanna’s unsuccessful 2014 House bid, helped with a fundraiser for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and appeared in photos with Khanna, Swalwell, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and then-Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.).

But here’s the rub: The Axios article never says Swalwell did anything questionable. Fang was a bundler for his campaign, though Axios said there were no signs of illegal contributions, and at one point she facilitated the placement of an intern in his Washington office.

The article’s unnamed sources claim Fang had sexual relations with two unidentified Midwestern mayors, but there is no suggestion of impropriety on Swalwell’s part.

The article says that when the FBI alerted Swalwell and other House members to its concerns about Fang’s activities, Swalwell immediately cut ties with her. She abruptly left the United States for China in 2015 during the FBI probe. There is also no evidence she obtained or passed on classified information, Axios said.

In an interview with CNN in 2020, Swalwell said he was “shocked” to learn of the individual’s ties back then. “Just over six years ago, I was told about this individual. And then I offered to help. And I did help. I was thanked by the FBI for my help,” he said. He said he did not share any classified information.

In December 2020, an unnamed FBI official told the San Francisco Chronicle that “Swalwell was completely cooperative and under no suspicion of wrongdoing.”

Nevertheless, McCarthy essentially hides behind a classified briefing to suggest that Swalwell did something wrong: “If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee.” Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got the same briefing and told reporters she had no concerns — though of course she would be expected to defend a fellow Democrat. But it strains credulity that she would keep him on the committee if the FBI had warned he was compromised.

In an interview with MSNBC last week, Swalwell said that then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was aware of the FBI investigation in 2015 and did not act to remove him from the Intelligence Committee.

Ryan, who became speaker in October 2015, after Fang left the United States, “was not briefed on Rep. Swalwell in 2015,” Ryan spokesman Kevin Seifert said. John A. Boehner was the speaker at the time of the briefings in early 2015.

“It was standard practice at the time Boehner served as Speaker for counterintelligence officials to notify the Speaker and Minority Leader and the Republican and Democratic leaders of the intelligence committee when counterintelligence briefings were provided to Members on either side of the aisle,” saidBoehner spokesman Dave Schnittger.”We unfortunately cannot discuss or confirm specific instances of the notifications he received during his time as Speaker because these notifications routinely involved sensitive or classified information.”

“It’s purely vengeance,” Swalwell said of McCarthy’s action.

Adam B. Schiff

McCarthy’s beef with Schiff is even weaker. He claims that Schiff “lied to the American public” about whether he knew the whistleblower who triggered the impeachment investigation into whether President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation of Joe Biden in exchange for a promised White House meeting and delivery of U.S. military aid.

During the impeachment probe, Schiff tried hard to avoid having the whistleblower’s name revealed publicly, often cutting off questions that might expose the official. Eventually, right-wing media published the name of an intelligence officer, though that individual has never been officially confirmed as the whistleblower.

But we can find no evidence that Schiff lied about whether he knew the whistleblower’s name. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) repeatedly challenged Schiff during the impeachment investigation — “you have said, even though nobody believes you, that you don’t know who the whistleblower is” — but Jordan’s spokesman did not respond to repeated queries asking for evidence of McCarthy’s claim. During Trump’s trial, Schiff again denied knowing the identity of the whistleblower.

It’s possible that McCarthy is thinking of something different — our Four-Pinocchio ruling that Schiff falsely claimed, during a 2019 interview with MSNBC, that the Intelligence Committee had not spoken to the whistleblower. In fact, the whistleblower approached a House Intelligence Committee staff member for guidance before filing a complaint with an intelligence community inspector general. But that sort of dissembling to the media is not the same thing as lying in a congressional hearing.

“Kevin McCarthy continues to falsely assert I know the Ukraine whistleblower,” Schiff said in a statement to The Fact Checker. “Let me be clear — I have never met the whistleblower and the only thing I know about their identity is what I have read in press. McCarthy’s real objection is we proved the whistleblower’s claim to be true and impeached Donald Trump for withholding millions from Ukraine to extort its help with his campaign.” Schiff added: “It is predictable and sad that McCarthy has to smear other members of the House to retain the support of his QAnon conference members. The Intelligence Committee membership is too serious a business to be the subject of partisan slander — we have important work to do to keep the country safe and it’s a shame that means so little to the new speaker.”

McCarthy further has claimed that Schiff put the country “through an impeachment that he knew was a lie.” We’re not sure what he means by that. One can argue — as Republicans often did — that the transcript of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky showed that the president did not flatly suggest a quid pro quo.

But the congressional investigation under Schiff’s leadership clearly proved an official link was established and made clear to Ukraine. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union at the time and a key player on Ukraine policy, testified that he came to believe that a White House meeting and $391 million in aid to Ukraine had been made contingent on Zelensky’s announcing an investigation of Biden. Zelensky even planned to do so on CNN — but that was canceled when the whistleblower’s allegations became public.

Perhaps one can question whether this was an impeachable offense. But you can’t say this was not evidence of a pressure campaign.

The Pinocchio Test

McCarthy clearly warned there would be payback if Democrats started choosing which members could serve on House committees. The Democrats punished two Republican lawmakers — and now he wants to punish two Democrats. But in contrast to the public actions or statements made by Greene and Gosar, widely condemned at the time, these expulsions appear based on figments of imagination.

Schiff has consistently maintained he did not know the identity of the whistleblower — and no evidence has emerged to the contrary, despite McCarthy’s claim that he lied about it. As for Swalwell, there is no evidence he did anything wrong, despite McCarthy’s claim that a classified briefing suggested something nefarious.

McCarthy earns Four Pinocchios.

He is a liar and a coward. Everyone knows that. It’s exactly what the MAGA Republicans like about him. He is their puppet.