How Kevin McCarthy lost his Speakership job; SubStack management has gotten itself into the business of boosting vicious racist idiots; FT video on “semiconductor supremacy”; very briefly noted; &...
How Kevin McCarthy lost his Speakership job; SubStack management has gotten itself into the business of boosting vicious racist idiots; FT video on “semiconductor supremacy”; very briefly noted; & me, Pitney, Szali, me, Biden, & Bard on House procedure, how Kevin McCarthy is a liar, how Michael Lewis is now a Sam Bankman-Fried acolyte, McCarthy’s stupidity, McCarthy’s untrustfullness, and how Chief Crazy Horse yelled “Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam!” at the Battle of the Little Bighorn; plus briefly noted…
MUST-READ: What the Hell Happened in the US House of Representatives?:
The explanation that has come closest to convincing me and think is the most likely is that Kevin McCarthy miscalculated twice: (a) he thought that the Democrats in the House would vote against his clean-but-no-Ukraine surprise snap continuing resolution, and (b) he thought that House Democrats would not vote to vacate the chair because they would believe the “I’m lying to my caucus: ultimately I’ll cut the deal you want with you” pitch he made to them, and thus acquiesce in his continued Speakership.
What would the point have been of getting Democrats to block his clean-but-no-Ukraine surprise snap continuing resolution? It is that in the eyes of Kevin McCarthy and company Ukrainians are the new transsexuals: a set of people whom Democrats can be pinned to be seen to support, and that then it will be easy to use the right-wing grifting media Würlitzer to make that support unpopular. Why can Democrats be pinned to publicly support transsexuals (and Ukrainians). Because the Democrats are not monsters. What was supposed to have happened? House Democrats were supposed, in McCarthy’s mind, to have blocked his continuing resolution. And then Republican legislators and the ight-wing grifting media Würlitzer would have gone to town on “the Democrats shut down the government because they care more about Ukrainians than they do about you”. And McCarthy was surprised when the Democrats did not take the bait:
Aaron Fritschner: ‘On Saturday morning we had no idea what was happening. Scalise told the GOP they were moving bills that signaled imminent shutdown. This is what we expected. Then McCarthy suddenly and unexpectedly did an about face and announced a vote on a CR. We didn't know what to make of it. How to interpret this? McCarthy has resisted doing this all along, the wingnuts threatened to kick him out if he did it and he was running every play at their call. My immediate read was he wanted and expected us to vote against the suspension so we would be blamed for a shutdown…. So in this moment, you look to McCarthy for signals—And what signals is McCarthy sending us? Dems: “We would like to read the $200 billion, 71-page bill we've never seen. You promised 72 hours but we'll settle for 90 minutes.” Dems: “well we are going to take that time, but we are satisfied, we'll pass your bill to help you get out of the jam you created for yourself”. McCarthy: “the Democrats wanted to shut down the government and f*ck the troops!”:
It seems clear to me that McCarthy still has the “the Democrats shut down the government because they would rather pay the Ukrainians than pay our troops” talking point he was going to use after the continuing resolution failed, and never figured out what he really wanted to say once it had succeeded and the Senate—over the strong objections of McConnell, Bennet, and a bunch of others—acquiesced.
Why did McConnell think that House Democrats would not vote to vacate the chair? Well, it is what a bunch of Republicans thought—apparently including Gaetz-the-Moron. We have a very weird piece two days ago from Andrew Solender on October 1:
Andrew Solender: Gaetz’s plan to oust McCarthy meets chilly Dem reception: ‘What they’re saying: “I'm not going to follow Matt Gaetz to Peter Luger's Steakhouse,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a member of the Progressive Caucus. Cohen said McCarthy “shouldn't be put out” for putting a bipartisan stopgap funding bill on the floor: “He did the right thing … and I'll definitely vote not to vacate. I expect a good number of Democrats will as well.” Every time we work together, he loses his mind,” Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said of Gaetz…. “I see almost no way that Matt gets most of the Dems,” said one senior House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Many will vote present if they don't vote No on [House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’] recommendation”…
As Aaron Fritschner (again) writes:
Aaron Fritschner: ‘The supposed “institutional interest” would have us not only put out Republicans' many fires for them, it would have us do so based on our specific belief and trust that *McCarthy is lying [to his own caucus]*. Like, his lying is supposed to be a good thing, and what sells the arrangement for us. A speakership founded upon Democrats' trust that McCarthy will lie to his own guys and not to us is not rational, folks! It isn't sustainable or reasonable and it's no way to run the House. We needed him to give us any reason to help him and he very intentionally did not do so. People say "he couldn't make a deal it would compromise his power" and they're just wrong, that was a solvable problem. He could jave publicly or privately given us a sense the CR was good faith and we were going to get through the omnibus, stave off a shutdown, and help Ukraine. This came down to trust, and that's the word I saw and heard from House Democrats more than any other word. We did not trust Kevin McCarthy and he gave us no reason to. He could have done so (and I suspect saved his gavel) through fairly simple actions. He chose not to do that. Even after all that happened—January 6th, the debt limit crisis, his vengeance against our members, breaking his word to the President, impeachment, empowering the right wing—there were Democrats who were imho willing to help McCarthy if he had given them a reason. He didn't…
As Jack Pitney writes:
Jack Pitney: ‘I thought Dems might vote present to keep McCarthy dangling. But in hindsight, censuring Schiff and bouncing Schiff and Swalwell from the Intel Committee united the Dems in their loathing and contempt for him. They do not see him as honorable or trustworthy—because he isn't…
Economics: Anna Wong & Tom Orlik: Why a US Recession Is Still Likely—and Coming Soon: ‘Recession remains Bloomberg Economics’ base case…. Recessions are non-linear events. The human mind isn’t good at thinking about them…. Fed Hikes Are About to Bite Hard…. A Downturn Is Hiding in Plain Sight in the Forecasts.… And That’s Before These Shocks Hit…. Auto Strike… Student Bills… Oil Spike… Yield Curve…. Global Slump…. Government Shutdown: A deal to keep the government open has kicked one risk from October into November…. And the Credit Squeeze Is Just Getting Started…
Catherine Mann: Inflation Models and Research: Distilling dynamics for monetary policy decision-making: ‘The risk of tightening too little is more salient…. It would be prudent… to err on the side of tightening further in order to prevent the risks of further inflation persistence from crystalizing. If I am wrong, and there are excess negative effects to the real economy, it is an easier task to rectify as compared to regaining control over inflation…. We need to prepare for a world where inflation is more likely to be volatile in the future, and the neutral nominal rate is likely to be higher than in the past. While these might support a “3% inflation is close enough”, popular in some circles, it cannot be our guide. We need to communicate and act on our commitment to do what is necessary to achieve the 2% target, sooner rather than later…
Paul Krugman: A.I. could be a big deal for the economy (and for the deficit, too): ‘From 1995 to 2005… boom was driven by information technology…. Plot a continuation of the growth rate from 1973 to 1995…. By the time the productivity surge tapered off, productivity was about 12 percent higher than the previous trend…. Since A.I. is arguably an even more profound innovation than the technologies that drove the 1995-2005 boom, 15 percent isn’t at all unreasonable…
John Quiggin: ‘For any plausible valuation of the benefits of better health, the discrepancy between the US and the rest of the developed world more than wipes out the difference in mean income per head, without even considering working hours, mean vs median etc. But these two sets of numbers are always considered separately…
Joe Weisenthal: ‘One argument for attempting to reinvigorate domestic manufacturing… is basically “insurance” against future disruptions…. And then another is… to advance technologically, you need more people doing the doing. I find myself intuitively drawn to the second one. Otoh, Nvidia alone is worth more than Taiwan Semi. The market places a high value on what American tech companies are doing, even if it’s not the physical building. Basically this is what our conversation with Dan Wang and Modeled Behavior was about. Both legit perspectives. As a journalist I’m neutral…
Massimo Pigliucci: ‘Plutarch on how to work on one’s anger: “My pledge was to begin by spending a few days doing the equivalent of going without drinking and alcohol—avoiding anger.… And then… a month, two months, doing this… to remain untainted by pernicious speech, unnatural actions and emotion”…
Energy in the Executive: Duncan Black: Little Things: ‘One thing which angered me during the Obama administration was their failure to do the little things that were well within their executive power (or the types of things they could slip into legislation without much controversy). They could always argue that big bad Max Baucus or the Republicans were preventing them from doing the big stuff, but where was the little stuff?…
John Ganz: Not-so-Briefly Noted: The Past Weeks in Fascism…. Anatoly Kuznetsov’s… Babi Yar…. “How pleasant it is, after all: to treat all politics of whatever kind with utter contempt, to dance, to love, to drink and sleep and breathe. To live. God give you strength! The only thing is that I can see from my little window that while some people are loving and sleeping, others are busy making handcuffs for them…. I say to you: THE PERSON WHO TODAY IGNORES POLITICS WILL REGRET IT…
I think this gets it exactly right. If McCarthy wanted to stay Speaker, he needed to not focus on either appeasing the crazy MAGA Republicans—because they would never stay appeased—or on appeasing Trump—who would never come to anyone’s rescue. He needed to build bridges as an effective Speaker so that Democrats would be willing to vote “present”. And he never did that:
IsMcCarthy making this a vote of “no confidence”? Or is he actually making a deal with the Democrats while saying he is not? Do remember that Boehner and Pelosi had an effective cospeakership that dared not say its name for quite a long time:
Neofascism Watch: Am I crazy? Did Kevin McCarthy really break his debt-ceiling deal word and bond with Joe Biden just so that he could do Vladimir Putin a favor?:
GPT-LLM-ML Hallucination Watch: Google’s Bard: I would really, really like to meet the human being who claimed that Chief Crazy Horse cried out “Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam!” at the Battle of the Little Bighorn:
Press Secretary: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
POTUS: I just have a few remarks.
First, I would like to congratulate the Republican caucus in the House for their bold action in ousting the Speaker of the House for the first time in American history.
America has seen world wars. It has seen civil war. It has seen a Great Depression and numerous other financial panics. It has seen the promulgation of Jim Crow laws that basically made apartheid the law of the land in a third of the country. It has seen the overturning of those laws. It has seen abortion made a universal right, then that right taken away. It has seen alcohol banned, then re-legalized. It has seen numerous assassinations, riots, mass murders, and gun violence that has claimed well over a million American lives since 1968.
And in all that time, in all those crises, in 246 years of self-government of the people, by the people, for the people, no one has ever thought to depose the Speaker of the House without any backup plan.
I salute the House Republicans for their vision and creativity.
Lesser minds might think, "What caused Republicans to finally pull the trigger on something that has never happened in all our history? Was it war? Plague? Economic devastation? The Second Coming? Nuclear meltdown? Chinese invasion? Mass murder committed by the Speaker?"
Those lesser minds fail to appreciate the subtlety and genius of this GOP caucus. You see, they detected a far greater evil that they leapt to oppose. And that evil was - accidental cooperation with Democrats.
They could resist the urge to oust a Speaker over, say, the attack on Fort Sumter. They could hold their fire during Watergate. They refrained all through the Great Depression. Lack of legal drink for fourteen long years did not cause them to change horses in midstream. *They even willingly submitted to be led for many years by an ultimately convicted pedophile wrestling coach.*
No, it was Speaker McCarthy's failed attempt to pin what he thought was an inevitable closure of the federal government on Democrats, by putting forward what he thought was a poisoned chalice - a 45-day funding extension that provided no support for Ukraine - that doomed him. For Democrats drank that poisoned chalice down in one gulp, but the only one poisoned was Kevin.
To a political Svengali-Swami-Guru such as Matt Gaetz, this was just cause for Speakercide.
Again, lesser minds might struggle to understand how a representative reported to have taken underaged girls across state lines for immoral purposes (New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/.../matt-gaetz-sex-trafficking... ) could possibly invoke "Save the Children" against Democrats.
But that's all blood under the bridge. Not that many of these Republicans have ever seen blood up close. Their Messiah, The Former Guy, has told them that all U.S. military service members are "suckers" and "losers," and they have, for the most part, avoided military service like... well, not the plague, they don't avoid those. But like something awful. My dog Commander has shed more blood of trained armed people than almost any Republican House member I know of.
So I submit to the greater wisdom of the House Republicans.
But I just have one question.
If the House is out of business... how will you impeach me?
Maybe you need to pick your next leader from amongst your swelling stable of former wrestling coaches implicated in molestation scandals. Gym Jordan, I guess someone else will have to run the fake impeachment hearings! https://www.nbcnews.com/.../referee-says-he-told-rep-jim...
Jill and I eagerly await the resumption of this fantasy-fiction serial. The Writers' Strike kind of left us with an empty pipeline for fantasy fiction nighttime entertainment.
Best of luck to the House Republicans... and God Help America.
Krugman: Yes. A big AI induced shift in the aggregated supply curve would look to fiscal policy like an increase in benefits in the NPV's of its spending calculations which for any given discount rate would mean deficits are less bad or even good. Now could AI raise discount rates enough to reverse that?
WHITE HOUSE PRESS BRIEFING
October 4, 2023
Press Secretary: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
POTUS: I just have a few remarks.
First, I would like to congratulate the Republican caucus in the House for their bold action in ousting the Speaker of the House for the first time in American history.
America has seen world wars. It has seen civil war. It has seen a Great Depression and numerous other financial panics. It has seen the promulgation of Jim Crow laws that basically made apartheid the law of the land in a third of the country. It has seen the overturning of those laws. It has seen abortion made a universal right, then that right taken away. It has seen alcohol banned, then re-legalized. It has seen numerous assassinations, riots, mass murders, and gun violence that has claimed well over a million American lives since 1968.
And in all that time, in all those crises, in 246 years of self-government of the people, by the people, for the people, no one has ever thought to depose the Speaker of the House without any backup plan.
I salute the House Republicans for their vision and creativity.
Lesser minds might think, "What caused Republicans to finally pull the trigger on something that has never happened in all our history? Was it war? Plague? Economic devastation? The Second Coming? Nuclear meltdown? Chinese invasion? Mass murder committed by the Speaker?"
Those lesser minds fail to appreciate the subtlety and genius of this GOP caucus. You see, they detected a far greater evil that they leapt to oppose. And that evil was - accidental cooperation with Democrats.
They could resist the urge to oust a Speaker over, say, the attack on Fort Sumter. They could hold their fire during Watergate. They refrained all through the Great Depression. Lack of legal drink for fourteen long years did not cause them to change horses in midstream. *They even willingly submitted to be led for many years by an ultimately convicted pedophile wrestling coach.*
No, it was Speaker McCarthy's failed attempt to pin what he thought was an inevitable closure of the federal government on Democrats, by putting forward what he thought was a poisoned chalice - a 45-day funding extension that provided no support for Ukraine - that doomed him. For Democrats drank that poisoned chalice down in one gulp, but the only one poisoned was Kevin.
To a political Svengali-Swami-Guru such as Matt Gaetz, this was just cause for Speakercide.
Again, lesser minds might struggle to understand how a representative reported to have taken underaged girls across state lines for immoral purposes (New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/.../matt-gaetz-sex-trafficking... ) could possibly invoke "Save the Children" against Democrats.
But that's all blood under the bridge. Not that many of these Republicans have ever seen blood up close. Their Messiah, The Former Guy, has told them that all U.S. military service members are "suckers" and "losers," and they have, for the most part, avoided military service like... well, not the plague, they don't avoid those. But like something awful. My dog Commander has shed more blood of trained armed people than almost any Republican House member I know of.
So I submit to the greater wisdom of the House Republicans.
But I just have one question.
If the House is out of business... how will you impeach me?
Maybe you need to pick your next leader from amongst your swelling stable of former wrestling coaches implicated in molestation scandals. Gym Jordan, I guess someone else will have to run the fake impeachment hearings! https://www.nbcnews.com/.../referee-says-he-told-rep-jim...
Jill and I eagerly await the resumption of this fantasy-fiction serial. The Writers' Strike kind of left us with an empty pipeline for fantasy fiction nighttime entertainment.
Best of luck to the House Republicans... and God Help America.
Krugman: Yes. A big AI induced shift in the aggregated supply curve would look to fiscal policy like an increase in benefits in the NPV's of its spending calculations which for any given discount rate would mean deficits are less bad or even good. Now could AI raise discount rates enough to reverse that?