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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:09:52 GMT -8
These are things people actually said in court.
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ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he? WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ. ___________________________________________ My Opinion: Not All Defaults are Created Equal
In most cases when a nation defaults, it is because the country is broke, usually due to financial mismanagement. When they stop paying interest, there is little hope they will start paying again, including past-due interest.
If the US defaults, it will not be bacause we are broke. It will be because of jerks and idiots in Congress. Once the debt ceiling is raised, interest payments will resume including any missed payments on the debt. We might even pay interest on the unpaid interest.
No one will lose money if they hold US debt. There will be a delay in the payments.
Will that cause a global financial crisis? Will people and institutions rush to get out of the dollar? Will there be bank runs? I don't think any of those will happen.
I don't know if banks will have a problem. If the price of bonds crash, will they have to write down the value of government securities they hold?
Many domestic government payments incuding Social Security and SNAP will be delayed. Government workers and vendors may not be paid. For many people, including mostly poor people, this will be a big problem.
However, to your typical holder of US debt, this will be a blip.
A Different View from CBS News:
Washington, D.C., where 1 in 4 jobs are tied to the federal government, would be hardest hit, becoming the "poster child" for a financial disaster, they said. States with large federal facilities, such as national laboratories or military bases, would be next in line. That includes Hawaii, which is home to the United States Pacific Command and to 11 military bases; Alaska, with vast federal land holdings; and New Mexico, home to Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"While the public sector typically serves as a stabilizing force, in the case of a breach it supercharges its economic fallout," wrote Moody's Analytics economists Mark Zandi, Adam Kamins and Bernard Yaros.
Also vulnerable are regions that rely heavily on federal spending, including those with defense contractors. "Professional services firms suffer, hurting white-collar support firms in and around the Beltway, particularly Northern Virginia," Moody's said. "Aerospace is also hurt, impacting states including Connecticut, Kansas and Washington."
Even a short debt ceiling breach, in which the government defaults for less than a week before lawmakers raise the government's borrowing limit, would likely push the economy into a recession, according to Moody's. In this scenario, 1.5 million people would lose their jobs, pushing unemployment from its current rate of 3.4% to 5%, while nation's gross domestic product would shrink by 0.7%.
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:23:26 GMT -8
Perhaps the Most Confusing Headline I Have Ever Read
NBC: "Prince Harry loses bid to challenge decision not to let him pay for U.K. police protection"
Fortunately, I don't Give a Damn Prince Harry or Any of His Relatives
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:24:28 GMT -8
Pants on Fire
A former FBI field agent and key Republican witness on the House Judiciary Committee’s “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government” may have lied under oath about receiving financial aid from a Donald Trump ally, the Guardian reports.
Garret O’Boyle — described by the Washington Post as "a suspended FBI special agent from the Wichita Resident Agency in Kansas" — was a star witness last Thursday for the “weaponization” subcommittee, a Freedom Caucus brainchild purporting to uncover clear evidence that the U.S. government, “and in particular the Justice Department, has unfairly targeted conservatives,” as NBC News reports.
Per the Guardian, O’Boyle was asked at one point "whether Kash Patel, who held multiple roles in the Trump administration, is helping finance O’Boyle’s legal counsel.”
“Not that I’m aware of,” O’Boyle said, according to a transcript of the exchange.
"The answer has raised eyebrows because, during a previous interview with the House of Representatives’ [weaponization] subcommittee in February, O’Boyle disclosed that his legal fees are being paid by a nonprofit organisation called Fight With Kash, also known as the Kash Foundation and run by Kash Patel," the Guardian reports.
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:28:09 GMT -8
Sam Grizzle Ask Another Poker Player for a Loan. His Friend Tossed Him a Wad of Cash. "Aren't You Going to Count It?" Sam Asked? "Why? You Arent' Going to Pay It Back Anyway."
Former President Donald Trump responded to an amended defamation complaint filed by rape accuser E. Jean Carroll with more potentially defamatory denials.
The former president was found liable earlier this month for defamation and sexual abuse by a jury, which ordered him to pay $5 million in damages, and Carroll asked a court to amend her initial case to seek additional damages after he repeated his denials during a CNN town hall days later -- which Trump repeated yet again Tuesday morning on his Truth Social website.
It Doesn't Matter How Much They Award Her If He Never Pays.
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:29:06 GMT -8
Today's "Ick" Momment
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has reportedly agreed to fork over some big cash for the rights to own a chapstick once used by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
According to Politico reporter Olivia Beavers, House Republicans on Tuesday morning had a fundraising auction that included the rights to own the aforementioned chapstick.
A Greene spokesman tells Beavers that the Georgia congresswoman put in the winning bid that totaled $100,000.
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:30:56 GMT -8
It's Not Like I Needed Another Reason to Hate the British Royals
The body of a teenage prince captured by British troops will not be returned to his remaining family in east Africa, the British royal family has said, in the latest high-profile feud over the legacy of its brutal colonial past.
Buckingham Palace has refused a repeated request to repatriate the remains of Prince Dejatch Alemayehu of Abyssinia — which includes modern-day Ethiopia — who was taken from his home at age 6 in 1868 and died just over a decade later in England.
His body is buried at Windsor Castle, one of King Charles III's official residences and the traditional site of British royal funerals and weddings.
Alemayehu was taken from Africa after British forces defeated his father and looted his imperial capital, in one of the most notorious military operations of Britain's colonial era. Ethiopia has been asking for the prince's remains and other treasures to be returned for the last 150 years.
Fasil Minas, a descendent of the Abyssinian royal family and a relative of Alemayehu, told the BBC: “We want his remains back as a family and as Ethiopians because that is not the country he was born in.”
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:33:01 GMT -8
Isn't It Nice When a Father and Son Steal Together?
A father and son from Massachusetts have both been sent to prison for running an elaborate lottery fraud scheme designed to enrich themselves and help prize winners avoid paying taxes on their windfall, prosecutors said.
Ali Jaafar, 63, and Yousef Jaafar, 29, both of Watertown, cashed in 14,000 winning lottery tickets over a roughly 10-year period, laundered more than $20 million in proceeds, and then lied on their tax returns to cheat the IRS out of about $6 million, the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston announced Monday.
The Jaafars purchased winning lottery tickets at a discount from people who wanted to avoid identification by the state lottery commission, which withholds taxes and outstanding child support payments from payouts.
After purchasing the tickets, using the stores that sold them as go-betweens, the Jaafars claimed the full prize amount. Although they reported the winnings on their tax returns, they also claimed equivalent fake gambling losses as an offset to avoid federal income taxes, prosecutors said.
Ali Jaafar was sentenced to five years in prison. Yousef Jaafar received a sentence of more than four years. They were also ordered to pay $6 million in restitution and forfeit the profits from their scheme.
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:34:12 GMT -8
Was the Last Line Really Necessary?
A Northern California motorist who stopped to help a family of ducks safely cross the road was struck and killed by a teenage driver, officials said Monday.
The terrible accident happened Thursday at about 8:15 p.m. PDT near the corner of Park Drive and Stanford Ranch Road in Rocklin, about 25 miles northeast of the state capitol in Sacramento, Rocklin police said.
The man was "trying to help some ducklings that were in the intersection" when the younger driver, headed east on Stanford Ranch, fatally struck him, according to a police statement.
The ducks were not harmed.
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:36:09 GMT -8
Are They the Cable Nonesense Network?
On May 10, CNN CEO Chris Licht turned over his network to Donald Trump. He filled an auditorium in New Hampshire with hand-selected Trump supporters. He instructed them to cheer for their man, and not to express any disapproval. He purposely stranded host Kaitlan Collins in a position where she had no means of preventing Trump from bullying her, speaking over her questions, or simply bypassing her to stir his crowd into a frenzy. Trump loved it so much that he stuck around well after the cameras stopped rolling, bantering with the adoring crowd. Thanks to CNN, Trump had a very good night.
Licht thought it was a good night for CNN as well. The event pulled in over 3 million viewers, allowing CNN to momentarily top Fox as the most-viewed cable channel. Better still, in Licht’s view, CNN “Made a LOT of news,” he wrote to his staff the morning after the event. “And that is our job." Oddly enough, many people still believe that the job of a news network is to report the news, not create it.
Now the numbers are in a week after the broadcast, and as The Daily Beast reports, Licht’s effort to turn CNN into a right-wing news engine resulted in exactly the sort of disaster anyone might have predicted: bringing CNN its lowest ratings in eight years, sinking to less than half the viewers of MSNBC, and even falling below radical right outlet Newsmax.
Overall, Nielsen ratings for CNN were down double-digits, as were the network’s key demographic of viewers between 25 and 54 when compared to the week before the Trump stunt. Average daily viewers fell to 429,000 compared to 976,000 at MSNBC.
That number for MSNBC represents a 44% gain since Licht was put in place by Warner CEO David Zaslav. Licht has been very good for MSNBC.
Both Licht and Zaslav have expressed a desire to move CNN to the right, supposedly in a bid to restore credibility to the network. Zaslav rushed to Licht’s defense following the town hall event and cited a poll showing that before the event, trust in CNN’s content had increased. What he failed to point out was that reported trust in CNN had gone up much less than trust in any other news network. And again, those numbers were from before Licht’s stunt.
Efforts to turn CNN into the other Fox were already eroding their position relative to both CNN and actual Fox. Now that Licht has demonstrated the lengths to which he’ll go in an effort to give Trump and his supporters the floor, that slow bleed of viewers has become a rush for the doors.
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:39:19 GMT -8
Will She Become the Modern Harold Stassen?
A judge on Monday dismissed the only remaining legal claim in Republican Kari Lake’s challenge of her loss in last year's race for Arizona governor, affirming the election of Democrat Katie Hobbs.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson said Lake failed to prove her claim that Maricopa County did not verify signatures on mail ballots as required by law.
Lake was among the most vocal of last year’s Republican candidates promoting former President Donald Trump’s election lies, which she made the centerpiece of her campaign. She has built a loyal following among Trump supporters and is openly considering a run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Kyrsten Sinema, an independent and former Democrat. Lake is also often mentioned as a potential vice presidential pick for Trump.
While most other election deniers around the country conceded after losing their races in November, Lake did not. She has touted her legal battle in fundraising appeals and speeches around the country.
Who Is Giving Money to This Loser?
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:45:44 GMT -8
Paul Krugman: Be It Ever So Humble, ...
First things first: The reduction in commuting time is a seriously big deal. Before the pandemic, the average American adult spent about 0.28 hours per day, or more than 100 hours a year, on work-related travel. (Since not all adults are employed, the number for workers was considerably higher.) By 2021, that number had fallen by about a quarter.
Putting a dollar value on the benefits from reduced commuting is tricky. You can’t simply multiply the time saved by average wages, because people probably don’t view time spent on the road (yes, most people drive to work) as fully lost. On the other hand, there are many other expenses, from fuel to wear and tear to psychological strain, associated with commuting. On the third hand, the option of remote or hybrid work tends to be available mainly to highly educated workers with above-average wages and hence a high value associated with their time.
But it’s not hard to make the case that the overall benefits from not commuting every day are equivalent to a gain in national income of at least one and maybe several percentage points. That’s a lot: There are very few policy proposals likely to produce gains on that scale. And yes, these are real benefits. C.E.O.s may rant about lazy or (per Musk) “immoral” workers who don’t want to go back into their cubicles, but the purpose of an economy is not to make bosses happy.
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:46:12 GMT -8
Iran on the Rio Grande
Texas lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state, part of a newly energized national effort to insert religion into public life.
Supporters believe the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer in favor of a high school football coach who prayed with players essentially removed any guardrails between religion and government.
The bill, which is scheduled Tuesday for the House floor, is one of about a half-dozen religion bills approved this session by the Texas Senate, including one that would allow uncertified chaplains to replace trained, professional counselors in K-12 schools.
Texas’ biennial legislative session is short, chaotic and packed, and it was not certain Monday whether the Ten Commandments bill would definitely get a vote Tuesday. If it doesn’t by midnight, it’s dead for the session. But groups that watch church-state issues say efforts nationwide to fund and empower religion — and, more specifically, a particular type of Christianity — are more plentiful and aggressive than they have been in years. One group says it is watching 1,600 bills around the country in states such as Louisiana and Missouri. Earlier this year, Idaho and Kentucky signed into law measures that could allow teachers and public school employees to pray in front of and with students while on duty.
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Post by mhbruin on May 23, 2023 8:47:35 GMT -8
One is the Lonliest Number That You'll Ever Do
Poor and incomplete data collection makes it difficult to know the full scope of people held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. But a first-of-its-kind analysis is aiming to become a benchmark for tracking the practice — part of a larger effort as cities, states and the federal government weigh how to limit its use.
About 122,840 people in federal and state adult prisons and federal and local jails were placed in restrictive housing — informally known as solitary confinement — for 22 hours or more on a given day in mid-2019, according to a new report released Tuesday based on the most recently available government data.
That amounts to about 6% of the total U.S. prison and jail population at the time.
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