America in Distress

F.B.I. Is Asked to Arrest Texas Democrats in Battle Over House Seats

The ruling party wants to arrest members of the opposition party who are trying to stop them from rigging the mid-term elections.

This is not something which happens in a democracy. MAGA is trying to create a one party dictatorship.

I make these every month based on FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) which gets its data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I’m not sure if I will bother this month as now I won’t trust the data.

DRW: Here’s “another way of looking at the health of the consumer. It measures the six month annualized change in Real Personal Spending for 2008 to 2025, ex-2020. ..

“.. In the first six months of this year this reading is a negative 0.1%.”

DRW: Friday’s jobs number “didn’t just happen. .. The six-month average for payrolls has been trending down .. since the beginning of 2022.

“.. The July reading of the six-month average is +81k, and that measure of payrolls has not been so low since January 2011, not counting the pandemic era.”

Police State alert:

Texas authorities have called on FBI Director Kash Patel to apprehend Democratic state lawmakers who fled the state to block a gerrymandering vote.

The President of the United States went on CNBC today and said: He won the 2020 election (he didn’t). He has a 71% approval rating (he doesn’t). The jobs numbers were rigged (they weren’t).

I could say something funny here, but I won’t. It’s just so damn dangerous to have him in the White House.

That's some chart.

S&P 500 Shiller CAPE Ratio hits 2nd highest level of all-time 🚨 The highest? Dot Com Bubble 👀

How did we convince retirees, nurses, teachers, cops, etc that their cost of living increase will be fairly calculated? BLS professionalism, now threatened. Transparency, now blocked. The main transparency institution, an advisory committee with broad membership, was disbanded in March /2

Looming problems from BLS statistics politicization. Social security benefits and many long term labor market contracts are indexed to the CPI. BLS makes the CPI. Recipients care about indexed cost of living increases, a lot.
/1

i have been thinking a lot about how the entire concept of “the deal” is antithetical to transparency, fair play and rule of law, as larry notes. the deal is necessarily nonstandard, ad hoc and dependent on the whims of the dealmaker

Republicans Are Planning to Carve Up Texas Like a Christmas Ham. We Should All Be Pissed. At Trump’s command, the Texas GOP’s redistricting maps strip voting power away from Black Texans and are an insult to us

"At Trump’s command, the Texas GOP’s redistricting maps strip voting power away from Black Texans and are an insult to us all—regardless of partisan stripes."

Billy Begala of The Barbed Wire on the Republicans' obscene gerrymandering efforts:

💯.

It's no longer a question of if authoritarianism comes to America; now it's just a question of how bad it gets, and how long it lasts.

It's here. We can get rid of it if we fight together.

Killing Democracy—And Not Bothering to Hide It The assault is happening in plain sight, from the Epstein case to Texas reapportionment to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"We’ve reached a new stage in the attempted authoritarian takeover of American democracy. It’s not just that the assault on the truth, the rule of law, a free society has picked up steam. The assault, from our own government, now proceeds openly and unashamedly."

www.thebulwark.com/p/killing-de...

New Hegseth Leak Reveals Secret Plan for Years of Troops on U.S. Streets Phil Hegseth wrote the document laying out how the Pentagon and DHS could help Donald Trump’s immigration plans “for years.”

Plans drawn up for the military occupation of the United States brought to you by the Hegseth brothers. Heavy media attention around the world, ignored by major US media. www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-memo-...

He was handed the absolute strongest post-Covid economy in the industrialized world. And he’s singlehandedly fucked it up. And eventually even many of his most diehard voters will realize it. And it’ll be a painful realization for them.

"Trump Appears At Least 100,000 Times in the Epstein Files"

#HeadlinesIWantToSee

‘The impact of shifting trade patterns on economic activity is at an all-time high (at least going back to the inception of the national accounts data in 1947.) It doesn’t require a huge imagination to see how this could exact collateral damage on the economy.’ blinks.bloomberg.com/news/stories...

EU military aid worth €6.6 billion has been frozen since the start of the year due to Hungary,Josep Borrell. The former EU foreign policy chief said that since early 2025, Ukraine has not received a single euro in weapons funding because Hungary blocked €6.6 billion from the European Peace Facility.

You can't have these jobs done remotely or by AI. You have to negotiate with the actual humans actually there who do the work.

Day in Trump's economy: > Wake up, check the news > BLS: "10 billion new jobs created" > Check my phone to see what today's tariff rates are. > Norway up 20%, Cambodia down 5% > Go to my iphone assembly line job where I make $7.25/hour > Spend next 4 hours putting chips inside phones > Take 15 minute break > Check my shitfartpisscoin holdings > Rugged > Watch the FOMC meeting > FOMC is just Trump > Trump goes on stage and announces he's raising rates from -10% to -5% > Also announces date of Jay Powell's public execution > AI manager scolds me for taking 16 minutes on my 15 minute break > It's only been 12 minutes > Call employee help line to complain > It's also AI > Go home frustrated > Complain to my girlfriend about my job > She's also AI

A brief analysis of the situation in Europe Europe finds itself at war. For the last three years Russia has tried to extinguish Ukrainian statehood. This article will not attempt to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the last three y...

”In what particular situation does Europe find itself vis a vis Russia, and based on the history and culture of Russia, what is to be expected from her?”

My brief analysis of what history teaches us about Russia, its conduct, and what it means for Europe.

I would want to know what the Ukrainians think. They have the experience.

A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.

CNBC Lora Kolodny article: Tesla must pay portion of $329 million in damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says Key Points A jury in Florida determined that Tesla should be held partly liable for a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash. The company must pay a portion of $329 million in damages to victims and a survivor, including compensatory and punitive damages. Tesla had argued that the driver’s behavior was to blame for the fatal crash, while plaintiffs claimed Tesla’s Autopilot technology was flawed and deceptively marketed.

Elon tweet: "Teslas can drive themselves!"

Two days ago: Tesla has to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for deceptively marketing Autopilot in a way that falsely made people think it could drive the car by itself.

Today: Elon Musk "Teslas can drive themselves!"

You know those Epstein files are buried under the new patio at the White House, right?

My Democratic colleagues and I just left the state of Texas to break quorum and stop Trump’s redistricting power grab.

Trump is trying to rig the midterm elections right before our eyes. But first he’ll have to come through us.

It’s time to fight back.

White House economist calls for 'fresh set of eyes at the BLS' after weak jobs report | Fox Business Video National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett discusses the latest jobs report, the firing of the labor statistics chief and the consumer impact of tariffs on 'Fox News Sunday.'

Hassett went on TV and claimed you can’t trust the economic data anymore because all the recent revisions are partisan.
A bald-faced lie.
Every serious economist still in this administration should resign. They are actively underminding the US economy by lending their credibility to this horse****