From Yahoo Finance:
Trump will inherit a housing market creaking under the strain of high prices and high interest rates
President-elect Donald Trump is inheriting a housing market that looks nothing like it did in his first term.
Affordability, measured by average home prices and mortgage rates, has markedly deteriorated and is coloring consumers’ attitudes toward the economy as a whole.
Buying and selling activity has slowed dramatically as homeowners stay put to avoid giving up the low-rate mortgages they got before 2022. Existing home sales in 2024 are on track to reach a nearly 30-year low.
Average 30-year fixed mortgage rates are north of 7%, compared with 4.09% at the start of his first term. A family that puts 20% down on a $400,000 home would pay $594 more each month now compared with the start of 2017.
Even finding a home at that price is increasingly challenging. The median home in the US sells for $420,400, 35% higher than just before Trump’s first term. Then, the median home cost $310,900.
The incoming Trump administration has promised to slash mortgage rates and home prices by instituting mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and easing federal regulations around building and land use.
But economists and housing market experts say sweeping changes are hardly so simple, and some of Trump’s proposed policies, like tariffs, risk worsening inflation and housing affordability.
“I don’t see how President Trump is going to get rates down, certainly not with higher tariffs, immigrant deportation, and deficit-financed tax cuts,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “That’s all very inflationary.”
Trump will suck, agaaaaain.
…easing federal regulations around building and land use.
This is the only move possible to assist at the moment. All else is a catch 22; lower rates means slowing economy, higher rates means no inventory.
We‘ll see how it all shakes out, but Trump can‘t do any worse than the last guy. I don‘t think anyone really believes at this point that Biden was actually making any decisions. The real power seems to have been held by his staff, who drafted paperwork for Biden to sign before he departed for long vacations at one of his numerous houses.
11:24 he can do a whole lot worse…..and he will.
11:24 geeezus you are stupid. “Numerous houses”….wake up numbnuts.
OrangeTurd will fix nothing….
However, the mix nut bag of ideologues and billionaires that don’t want to pay their way and actually want to be a Ceasarian Board of Directors, once the Orange Turd gets flushed down to the 6 feet under hole, might fix it simply they don’t want to pay taxes and want the plebes to pay for it.
So take away all the deductions of real estate, privatize Fannie & Freddie like they did to Sallie Mae and and voila is a pain in the behind illiquid investment.
To get a taste of the upcoming ruling Billionaire Board of America…..
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-interview.html
Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening.
Jan. 18, 2025
For a long time, Curtis Yarvin, a 51-year-old computer engineer, has written online about political theory in relative obscurity. His ideas were pretty extreme: that institutions at the heart of American intellectual life, like the mainstream media and academia, have been overrun by progressive groupthink and need to be dissolved. He believes that government bureaucracy should be radically gutted, and perhaps most provocative, he argues that American democracy should be replaced by what he calls a “monarchy” run by what he has called a “C.E.O.” — basically his friendlier term for a dictator. To support his arguments, Yarvin relies on what those sympathetic to his views might see as a helpful serving of historical references — and what others see as a highly distorting mix of gross oversimplification, cherry-picking and personal interpretation presented as fact.
But while Yarvin himself may still be obscure, his ideas are not. Vice President-elect JD Vance has alluded to Yarvin’s notions of forcibly ridding American institutions of so-called wokeism. The incoming State Department official Michael Anton has spoken with Yarvin about how an “American Caesar” might be installed into power. And Yarvin also has fans in the powerful, and increasingly political, ranks of Silicon Valley. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist turned informal adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has approvingly cited Yarvin’s anti-democratic thinking. And Peter Thiel, a conservative megadonor who invested in a tech start-up of Yarvin’s, has called him a “powerful” historian. Perhaps unsurprising given all this, Yarvin has become a fixture of the right-wing media universe: He has been a guest on the shows of Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, among others.
I’ve been aware of Yarvin, who mostly makes his living on Substack, for years and was mostly interested in his work as a prime example of growing antidemocratic sentiment in particular corners of the internet. Until recently, those ideas felt fringe. But given that they are now finding an audience with some of the most powerful people in the country, Yarvin can’t be so easily dismissed anymore.
One of your central arguments is that America needs to, as you’ve put it in the past, get over our dictator-phobia — that American democracy is a sham, beyond fixing, and having a monarch-style leader is the way to go. So why is democracy so bad, and why would having a dictator solve the problem? Let me answer that in a way that would be relatively accessible to readers of The New York Times. You’ve probably heard of a man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Yes. I do a speech sometimes where I’ll just read the last 10 paragraphs of F.D.R.’s first inaugural address, in which he essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me absolute power, or I’ll take it anyway. So did F.D.R. actually take that level of power? Yeah, he did. There’s a great piece that I’ve sent to some of the people that I know that are involved in the transition —
Who? Oh, there’s all sorts of people milling around.
Name one. Well, I sent the piece to Marc Andreessen. It’s an excerpt from the diary of Harold Ickes, who is F.D.R.’s secretary of the interior, describing a cabinet meeting in 1933. What happens in this cabinet meeting is that Frances Perkins, who’s the secretary of labor, is like, Here, I have a list of the projects that we’re going to do. F.D.R. personally takes this list, looks at the projects in New York and is like, This is crap. Then at the end of the thing, everybody agrees that the bill would be fixed and then passed through Congress. This is F.D.R. acting like a C.E.O. So, was F.D.R. a dictator? I don’t know. What I know is that Americans of all stripes basically revere F.D.R., and F.D.R. ran the New Deal like a start-up.
Listen to the Conversation With Curtis Yarvin
The once-fringe writer has long argued for an American monarchy. His ideas have found an audience in the incoming administration and Silicon Valley.
The point you’re trying to make is that we have had something like a dictator in the past, and therefore it’s not something to be afraid of now. Is that right? Yeah. To look at the objective reality of power in the U.S. since the Revolution. You’ll talk to people about the Articles of Confederation, and you’re just like, Name one thing that happened in America under the Articles of Confederation, and they can’t unless they’re a professional historian. Next you have the first constitutional period under George Washington. If you look at the administration of Washington, what is established looks a lot like a start-up. It looks so much like a start-up that this guy Alexander Hamilton, who was recognizably a start-up bro, is running the whole government — he is basically the Larry Page of this republic.
Curtis, I feel as if I’m asking you, What did you have for breakfast? And you’re saying, Well, you know, at the dawn of man, when cereals were first cultivated — I’m doing a Putin. I’ll speed this up.
Then answer the question. What’s so bad about democracy? To make a long story short, whether you want to call Washington, Lincoln and F.D.R. “dictators,” this opprobrious word, they were basically national C.E.O.s, and they were running the government like a company from the top down.
So why is democracy so bad? It’s not even that democracy is bad; it’s just that it’s very weak. And the fact that it’s very weak is easily seen by the fact that very unpopular policies like mass immigration persist despite strong majorities being against them. So the question of “Is democracy good or bad?” is, I think, a secondary question to “Is it what we actually have?” When you say to a New York Times reader, “Democracy is bad,” they’re a little bit shocked. But when you say to them, “Politics is bad” or even “Populism is bad,” they’re like, Of course, these are horrible things. So when you want to say democracy is not a good system of government, just bridge that immediately to saying populism is not a good system of government, and then you’ll be like, Yes, of course, actually policy and laws should be set by wise experts and people in the courts and lawyers and professors. Then you’ll realize that what you’re actually endorsing is aristocracy rather than democracy.
It’s probably overstated, the extent to which you and JD Vance are friends. It’s definitely overstated.
But he has mentioned you by name publicly and referred to “dewokeification” ideas that are very similar to yours. You’ve been on Michael Anton’s podcast, talking with him about how to install an American Caesar. Peter Thiel has said you’re an interesting thinker. So let’s say people in positions of power said to you: We’re going to do the Curtis Yarvin thing. What are the steps that they would take to change American democracy into something like a monarchy? My honest answer would have to be: It’s not exactly time for that yet. No one should be reading this panicking, thinking I’m about to be installed as America’s secret dictator. I don’t think I’m even going to the inauguration.
Were you invited? No. I’m an outsider, man. I’m an intellectual. The actual ways my ideas get into circulation is mostly through the staffers who swim in this very online soup. What’s happening now in D.C. is there’s definitely an attempt to revive the White House as an executive organization which governs the executive branch. And the difficulty with that is if you say to anyone who’s professionally involved in the business of Washington that Washington would work just fine or even better if there was no White House, they’ll basically be like, Yeah, of course. The executive branch works for Congress. So you have these poor voters out there who elected, as they think, a revolution. They elected Donald Trump, and maybe the world’s most capable C.E.O. is in there —
Your point is that the way the system’s set up, he can’t actually get that much done. He can block things, he can disrupt it, he can create chaos and turbulence, but he can’t really change what it is.
Do you think you’re maybe overstating the inefficacy of a president? You could point to the repeal of Roe as something that’s directly attributable to Donald Trump being president. One could argue that the Covid response was attributable to Donald Trump being president. Certainly many things about Covid were different because Donald Trump was president. I’ll tell you a funny story.
Sure. At the risk of bringing my children into the media: In 2016, my children were going to a chichi, progressive, Mandarin-immersion school in San Francisco.
Wait. You sent your kids to a chichi, progressive school? I’m laughing. Of course. Mandarin immersion.
When the rubber hits the road — You can’t isolate children from the world, right? At the time, my late wife and I adopted the simple expedient of not talking about politics in front of the children. But of course, everyone’s talking about it at school, and my son comes home, and he has this very concrete question. He’s like, Pop, when Donald Trump builds a wall around the country, how are we going to be able to go to the beach? I’m like: Wow, you really took him literally. Everybody else is taking him literally, but you really took him literally. I’m like, If you see anything in the real world around you over the next four years that changes as a result of this election, I’ll be surprised.
In one of your recent newsletters, you refer to JD Vance as a “normie.” What do you mean? [Laughs.] The thing that I admire about Vance and that’s really remarkable about him as a leader is that he contains within him all kinds of Americans. His ability to connect with flyover Americans in the world that he came from is great, but the other thing that’s neat about him is that he went to Yale Law School, and so he is a fluent speaker of the language of The New York Times, which you cannot say about Donald Trump. And one of the things that I believe really strongly that I haven’t touched on is that it’s utterly essential for anything like an American monarchy to be the president of all Americans. The new administration can do a much better job of reaching out to progressive Americans and not demonizing them and saying: “Hey, you want to make this country a better place? I feel like you’ve been misinformed in some ways. You’re not a bad person.” This is, like, 10 to 20 percent of Americans. This is a lot of people, the NPR class. They are not evil people. They’re human beings. We’re all human beings, and human beings can support bad regimes.
As you know, that’s a pretty different stance than the stance you often take in your writing, where you talk about things like dewokeification; how people who work at places like The New York Times should all lose our jobs; you have an idea for a program called RAGE: Retire All Government Employees; you have ideas that I hope are satirical about how to handle nonproductive members of society that involve basically locking them in a room forever. Has your thinking shifted? No, no, no. My thinking has definitely not shifted. You’re finding different emphases. When I talk about RAGE, for example: Both my parents worked for the federal government. They were career federal employees.
That’s a little on the nose from a Freudian perspective. It is. But when you look at the way to treat those institutions, treat it like a company that goes out of business, but sort of more so, because these people having had power have to actually be treated even more delicately and with even more respect. Winning means these are your people now. When you understand the perspective of the new regime with respect to the American aristocracy, their perspective can’t be this anti-aristocratic thing of, We’re going to bayonet all of the professors and throw them in ditches or whatever. Their perspective has to be that you were a normal person serving a regime that did this really weird and crazy stuff.
How invested do you think JD Vance is in democracy? It depends what you mean by democracy. The problem is when people equate democracy with good government. I would say that what JD Vance believes is that governments should serve the common good. I think that people like JD and people in the broader intellectual scene around him would all agree on that principle. Now, I don’t know what you mean by “democracy” in this context. What I do know is that if democracy is against the common good, it’s bad, and if it’s for the common good, it’s good.
Part2
There was reporting in 2017 by BuzzFeed — they published some emails between you and the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, where you talked about watching the 2016 election with Peter Thiel and referred to him as “fully enlightened.” What would “fully enlightened” have meant in that context? Fully enlightened for me means fully disenchanted. When a person who lives within the progressive bubble of the current year looks at the right or even the new right, what’s hardest to see is that what’s really shared is not a positive belief but an absence of belief. We don’t worship these same gods. We do not see The New York Times and Harvard as divinely inspired in any sense, or we do not see their procedures as ones that always lead to truth and wisdom. We do not think the U.S. government works well.
And this absence of belief is what you call enlightened? Yes. It’s a disenchantment from believing in these old systems. And the thing that should replace that disenchantment is not, Oh, we need to do things Curtis’s way. It’s basically just a greater openness of mind and a greater ability to look around and say: We just assume that our political science is superior to Aristotle’s political science because our physics is superior to Aristotle’s physics. What if that isn’t so?
The thing that you have not quite isolated yet is why having a strongman would be better for people’s lives. Can you answer that? Yes. I think that having an effective government and an efficient government is better for people’s lives. When I ask people to answer that question, I ask them to look around the room and point out everything in the room that was made by a monarchy, because these things that we call companies are actually little monarchies. You’re looking around, and you see, for example, a laptop, and that laptop was made by Apple, which is a monarchy.
This is an example you use a lot, where you say, If Apple ran California, wouldn’t that be better? Whereas if your MacBook Pro was made by the California Department of Computing, you can only imagine it. I’m sorry, I’m here in this building, and I keep forgetting to make my best argument for monarchy, which is that people trust The New York Times more than any other source in the world, and how is The New York Times managed? It is a fifth-generation hereditary absolute monarchy. And this was very much the vision of the early progressives, by the way. The early progressives, you go back to a book like “Drift and Mastery” —
I have to say, I find the depth of your background information to be obfuscating, rather than illuminating. How can I change that?
By answering the questions more directly and succinctly. [Laughs.] Fine, I’ll try.
Your ideas are seemingly increasingly popular in Silicon Valley. Don’t you think there’s some level on which that world is responding because you’re just telling them what they want to hear? If more people like me were in charge, things would be better. I think that’s almost the opposite of the truth. There’s this world of real governance that someone like Elon Musk lives in every day at SpaceX, and applying that world, thinking, Oh, this is directly contradictory to the ideals that I was taught in this society, that’s a really difficult cognitive-dissonance problem, even if you’re Elon Musk.
It would be an understatement to say that humanity’s record with monarchs is mixed at best. The Roman Empire under Marcus Aurelius seems as if it went pretty well. Under Nero, not so much. Spain’s Charles III is a monarch you point to a lot; he’s your favorite monarch. But Louis XIV was starting wars as if they were going out of business. Those are all before the age of democracy. And then the monarchs in the age of democracy are just terrible.
Terrible! I can’t believe I’m saying this: If you put Hitler aside, and only look at Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Idi Amin — we’re looking at people responsible for the deaths of something like 75 to 100 million people. Given that historical precedent, do we really want to try a dictatorship? Your question is the most important question of all. Understanding why Hitler was so bad, why Stalin was so bad, is essential to the riddle of the 20th century. But I think it’s important to note that we don’t see for the rest of European and world history a Holocaust. You can pull the camera way back and basically say, Wow, since the establishment of European civilization, we didn’t have this kind of chaos and violence. And you can’t separate Hitler and Stalin from the global democratic revolution that they’re a part of.
I noticed when I was going through your stuff that you make these historical claims, like the one you just made about no genocide in Europe between 1,000 A.D. and the Holocaust, and then I poke around, and it’s like, Huh, is that true? My skepticism comes from what I feel is a pretty strong cherry-picking of historical incidents to support your arguments, and the incidents you’re pointing to are either not factually settled or there’s a different way of looking at them. But I want to ask a couple of questions about stuff that you’ve written about race. Mm.
I’ll read you some examples: “This is the trouble with white nationalism. It is strategically barren. It offers no effective political program.” To me, the trouble with white nationalism is that it’s racist, not that it’s strategically unsophisticated. Well —
There’s two more. “It is very difficult to argue that the Civil War made anyone’s life more pleasant, including that of freed slaves.” Come on. [Yarvin’s actual quote called it “the War of Secession,” not the Civil War.] The third one: “If you ask me to condemn Anders Breivik” — the Norwegian mass murderer — “but adore Nelson Mandela, perhaps you have a mother you’d like to [expletive].” When you look at Mandela, the reason I said that — most people don’t know this — there was a little contretemps when Mandela was released because he actually had to be taken off the terrorist list.
Maybe the more relevant point is that Nelson Mandela was in jail for opposing a viciously racist apartheid regime. The viciously racist apartheid regime, they had him on the terrorist list.
What does this have to do with equating Anders Breivik, who shot people on some bizarre, deluded mission to rid Norway of Islam, with Nelson Mandela? Because they’re both terrorists, and they both violated the rules of war in the same way, and they both basically killed innocent people. We valorize terrorism all the time.
So Gandhi is your model? Martin Luther King? Nonviolence? It’s more complicated than that.
Is it? I could say things about either, but let’s move on to one of your other examples. I think the best way to grapple with African Americans in the 1860s — just Google slave narratives. Go and read random slave narratives and get their experience of the time. There was a recent historian who published a thing — and I would dispute this, this number is too high — but his estimate was something like a quarter of all the freedmen basically died between 1865 and 1870.
I can’t speak to the veracity of that. But you’re saying there are historical examples in slave narratives where the freed slaves expressed regret at having been freed. This to me is another prime example of how you selectively read history, because other slave narratives talk about the horrible brutality. Absolutely.
“Difficult to argue that the Civil War made anyone’s life more pleasant, including freed slaves”? OK, first of all, when I said “anyone,” I was talking about a population group rather than individuals.
Are you seriously arguing that the era of slavery was somehow better than — If you look at the living conditions for an African American in the South, they are absolutely at their nadir between 1865 and 1875. They are very bad because basically this economic system has been disrupted.
I can’t believe I’m arguing this. Brazil abolished slavery in the 1880s without a civil war, so when you look at the cost of the war or the meaning of the war, it visited this huge amount of destruction on all sorts of people, Black and white. All of these evils and all of these goods existed in people at this time, and what I’m fighting against in both of those quotes, also in the way the people respond to Breivik — basically you’re responding in this cartoonish way. What is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? That’s a really important question in 20th-century history. To say that I’m going to have a strong opinion about this stuff without having an answer to that question, I think is really difficult and wrong.
You often draw on the history of the predemocratic era, and the status of women in that time period, which you valorize, is not something I’ve seen come up in your writing. Do you feel as if your arguments take enough into account the way that monarchies and dictatorships historically have not been great for swaths of demographics? When I look at the status of women in, say, a Jane Austen novel, which is well before Enfranchisement, it actually seems kind of OK.
Women who are desperate to land a husband because they have no access to income without that? Have you ever seen anything like that in the 21st century? I mean the whole class in Jane Austen’s world is the class of U.B.I.-earning aristocrats, right?
You’re not willing to say that there were aspects of political life in the era of kings that were inferior or provided less liberty for people than political life does today? You did a thing that people often do where they confuse freedom with power. Free speech is a freedom. The right to vote is a form of power. So the assumption that you’re making is that through getting the vote in the early 20th century in England and America, women made life better for themselves.
Do you think it’s better that women got the vote? I don’t believe in voting at all.
Do you vote? No. Voting basically enables you to feel like you have a certain status. “What does this power mean to you?” is really the most important question. I think that what it means to most people today is that it makes them feel relevant. It makes them feel like they matter. There’s something deeply illusory about that sense of mattering that goes up against the important question of: We need a government that is actually good and that actually works, and we don’t have one.
The solution that you propose has to do with, as we’ve said multiple times, installing a monarch, a C.E.O. figure. Why do you have such faith in the ability of C.E.O.s? Most start-ups fail. We can all point to C.E.O.s who have been ineffective. And putting that aside, a C.E.O., or “dictator,” is more likely to think of citizens as pure economic units, rather than living, breathing human beings who want to flourish in their lives. So why are you so confident that a C.E.O. would be the kind of leader who could bring about better lives for people? It seems like such a simplistic way of thinking. It’s not a simplistic way of thinking, and having worked inside the salt mines where C.E.O.s do their C.E.O.ing, and having been a C.E.O. myself, I think I have a better sense of it than most people. If you took any of the Fortune 500 C.E.O.s, just pick one at random and put him or her in charge of Washington. I think you’d get something much, much better than what’s there. It doesn’t have to be Elon Musk.
Earlier you had said that regardless of what his goals are, Trump isn’t likely to get anything transformative accomplished. But what is your opinion of Trump generally? I talked about F.D.R. earlier, and a lot of people in different directions might not appreciate this comparison, but I think Trump is very reminiscent of F.D.R. What F.D.R. had was this tremendous charisma and self-confidence combined with a tremendous ability to be the center of the room, be the leader, cut through the BS and make things happen. One of the main differences between Trump and F.D.R. that has held Trump back is that F.D.R. is from one of America’s first families. He’s a hereditary aristocrat. The fact that Trump is not really from America’s social upper class has hurt him a lot in terms of his confidence. That’s limited him as a leader in various ways. One of the encouraging things that I do see is him executing with somewhat more confidence this time around. It’s almost like he actually feels like he knows what he’s doing. That’s very helpful, because insecurity and fragility, it’s his Achilles’ heel.
What’s your Achilles’ heel? I also have self-confidence issues. I won’t bet fully on my own convictions.
Are there ways in which your insecurity manifests itself in your political thinking? That’s a good question. If you look at especially my older work, I had this kind of joint consciousness that, OK, I feel like I’m onto something here, but also — the idea that people would be in 2025 taking this stuff as seriously as they are now when I was writing in 2007, 2008? I mean, I was completely serious. I am completely serious. But when you hit me with the most outrageous quotes that you could find from my writing in 2008, the sentiments behind that were serious sentiments, and they’re serious now. Would I have expressed it that way? Would I have trolled? I’m always trying to get less trollish. On the other hand, I can’t really resist trolling Elon Musk, which might be part of the reason why I’ve never met Elon Musk.
Do you think your trolling instinct has gotten out of hand? No, it hasn’t gone far enough. [Laughs.] What I realize when I look back is that the instinct to revise things from the bottom up is very much not a trollish instinct. It’s a serious and an important thing that I think the world needs.
Scouting for Billionaire’s Manifest Destiny
Trump Picks a Jet-Setting Pal of Elon Musk to Go Get Greenland
Negotiations over an 836,000-square-mile island may fall to a close friend of Elon Musk with experience in deal-making. Just not that kind of deal-making.
By Theodore Schleifer
Theodore Schleifer writes about wealthy political donors, especially those from Silicon Valley.
Jan. 16, 2025
Ken Howery is a quiet, unassuming tech investor who prioritizes discretion. And yet, he has ended up in the middle of two of the noisiest story lines of the incoming Trump administration.
One is the expanding ambition of Elon Musk, Mr. Howery’s close friend and fellow party-scene fixture since the two helped run PayPal 25 years ago.
The other is the expansionist ambition of Mr. Musk’s boss, President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has set his sights on buying Greenland, the world’s largest island.
As Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Denmark, Mr. Howery is expected to be central to what Mr. Trump hopes will be a real-estate deal of epic proportions. The only hitch is that Denmark, which counts Greenland as its autonomous territory, says the island is not for sale.
Whether he likes it or not, Mr. Howery, a globe-trotter known for his taste for adventure and elaborate party planning, is likely to find himself in the middle of a geopolitical tempest.
Mr. Trump has been explicit about his expectations for his new ambassador filling a once-sleepy post. When he announced Mr. Howery for the role, which requires Senate confirmation, he reiterated his designs on Greenland for the first time since winning the presidency.
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social late last year. “Ken will do a wonderful job in representing the interests of the United States.”
Thanking Mr. Trump on X, Mr. Howery mentioned not just the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen but also the U.S. Consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, saying he was eager to “deepen the bonds between our countries.”
On cue, Mr. Musk chimed in: “Congrats! Help America gain Greenland.”
Mr. Howery’s mission is an example of what awaits the crop of Silicon Valley donors who swarmed to Mr. Trump during the campaign and now intend to follow him into public office. While many are seasoned deal-makers, their private sector experience may only go so far in serving the unpredictable Mr. Trump.
Mr. Howery did not respond to requests for comment. In private conversations, friends say he holds traditional conservative views and is hardly a Trump die-hard. He is drawn to diplomatic roles not out of ideology but for the overseas experience, they said. He is expected to be in Washington this week, hosting a rooftop cocktail reception opening the inauguration weekend on Friday, according to a copy of the invitation.
Mr. Howery is, in fact, signing up for a second tour for Mr. Trump. He served as ambassador to Sweden for 16 months during Mr. Trump’s first term; a delayed Senate confirmation shortened his tenure.
Still, he received some practice in the art of explaining Mr. Trump to skeptics overseas. As Mr. Trump denigrated NATO, which Sweden was moving toward joining, Mr. Howery defended Mr. Trump as “unconventional” and he visited the Arctic, an important outpost for NATO’s defenses.
Persuading Denmark to part with Greenland may require Arctic diplomacy of a whole other level. Leaders in both Denmark and Greenland have repeatedly said they are not interested in a sale, and chortled at Mr. Trump’s approach to deal-making on social media.
“I think Ken Howery was an effective ambassador to Sweden several years back. I absolutely believe in the private-sector experience,” said Rufus Gifford, who served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Denmark and was a top fund-raising official on Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
“But I’d say this: If you’re entering into the political firestorm that would be Donald Trump’s stated desire to purchase Greenland, I don’t believe there’s very much on your résumé that can help you navigate that,” he said.
Mr. Howery’s résumé begins at Stanford University in the 1990s, where he showed an early interest in politics as an undergraduate editor in chief at the conservative Stanford Review. When he graduated in 1998, he connected quickly with Peter Thiel, The Stanford Review’s rabble-rousing founder, to execute the investor’s orders.
Mr. Howery and Mr. Thiel soon started PayPal, the online payment service, where they were later joined by Mr. Musk. The three became charter members of the “PayPal Mafia” that has grown to dominate Silicon Valley. Mr. Howery and Mr. Thiel, who are still very close, went on to start Founders Fund, one of the industry’s leading venture capital firms.
With blond hair and a youthful face, the 49-year-old Mr. Howery, who is known as Kenny by friends, has little of the abrasive swagger or edge of Mr. Thiel and Mr. Musk. Some close to him described him as more of a people-pleaser than a cutthroat corporate operator. Nearly all of Mr. Howery’s associates interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to damage their relationship with Mr. Howery, who typically shuns the spotlight.
That does not mean Mr. Howery is a wallflower. He is known in part for his elaborate parties and lifestyle: In November 2020, he threw himself a birthday party at a castle near Stockholm. (Mr. Musk later said he contracted Covid on that trip.)
For a Halloween celebration in 2022, he invited plenty of billionaires, including Mr. Thiel, to a castle in Transylvania, Romania, for a “Transylmania” party, according to a social-media post from one of the planners, who said it required seven months of effort. (Although he no longer had his diplomatic job, Mr. Howery included an insignia of his ambassadorship on the thank-you letters to the planners.)
Mr. Howery, who is unmarried, has a daredevil streak, according to friends, some of whom have watched his global exploits with alarm. Calling himself an “explorer” who has been to 99 countries, he travels widely to surf and kite-board or chase tornadoes and thunderstorms. In 2008, he raced a Tesla Roadster in the Gumball 3000, a 3,000-mile road race with varying global routes. He has recently taken an interest in yacht racing, competing in competitions around the world in his Gunboat 68 Tosca. He has learned free diving in Fiji and trained to be a chef for three months in Paris, according to social media posts that are now private.
Yet, Mr. Howery’s public persona has largely been defined by his tight relationship to the world’s richest man. People who want to get notes or even packages to Mr. Musk have been told to send them to Mr. Howery first, Mr. Howery has told associates. Job-seekers have sent their résumés to Mr. Howery for delivery to Mr. Musk.
And Mr. Musk has often slept at Mr. Howery’s home in Austin in recent years, although Mr. Howery has told others that he does so less than he used to.
Mr. Howery has been there as Mr. Musk’s wealth and interests grew. He advised Mr. Musk on the purchase of Twitter, and invested personally in Mr. Musk’s other new businesses, including Neuralink and xAI.
But unlike some other friends of Mr. Musk, he does not flaunt his relationship: “I’m friends with Elon. I really don’t like to comment on my personal friendships in a public forum,” he told a Swedish interviewer in 2019. “But obviously an amazing person. Very inspirational.”
He has joined Mr. Musk in growing more and more political during the Trump era; he attended the Republican National Convention as part of a contingent of tech leaders who party-hopped at times with Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Howery is a member of the Rockbridge Network, an ascendant group of Republican donors, many with Silicon Valley ties.
This September, he co-hosted JD Vance, Mr. Trump’s vice-presidential pick, for a fund-raising dinner in Austin.
Image

Elon Musk has been a close friend of Mr. Howery’s since the two helped run PayPal 25 years ago.Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times
When Mr. Musk decided to start a super PAC last spring, he asked other donors to pitch in first to help him to hide his involvement for as long as possible. In June 2024, Mr. Howery made some of the very first contributions, making four separate $250,000 contributions to cover the super PAC’s initial costs.
“He went out of his way to donate and be helpful when I was helping to raise money for President Trump at the start of Elon’s America PAC,” recalled Joe Lonsdale, a friend and fellow Republican donor.
After Mr. Trump’s victory, both Mr. Musk and Mr. Howery have reaped rewards. Mr. Howery has been a reliable presence at Mar-a-Lago since election night, and he accompanied Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk to the recent SpaceX launch in Boca Chica, Texas.
After his abbreviated tenure in Sweden, Mr. Howery began to strategize with friends about angling for a European encore. He bandied about several countries and ended up on one with half the population as his last Scandinavian one.
But he told friends that he was specifically enticed by Denmark in part because of the possible Greenland acquisition. The challenge of working on one of the most complicated real-estate transactions on behalf of a real-estate mogul is one that could bring Mr. Howery the sort of attention he prefers.
After all, even as Mr. Howery keeps a low profile, he has, in private conversations over the years, mused about running for office some day, possibly in his home state of Texas.
Who is going to build them? Spent much time around a large development? Sweep up the immigrants and there wont be any labor left. They’re all immigrants, though the food trucks are fantastic, especially if you can get in with one of the old ladies selling stuff out of her minivan.
Not a whole lot of domestic product in those developments. Tariffs may be a bit of an isssue.
Almost all building regulations and codes are local. Feds don’t have much of anything to do with them. There may be some commonalities amongst certain codes like plumbing codes amongst some states, but that is about it.
Just like everything Trump does expect a lot of bluster, and a lot of pain.
STFU
Chad Powers says:
January 18, 2025 at 11:24 am
We‘ll see how it all shakes out, but Trump can‘t do any worse than the last guy
The Grifter in Chief
Donald Trump Launches TRUMP Meme Coin—Token Nears $6 Billion Market Cap
Late stage capitalism:
At 9:01 PM ET last night, a trader bought $1.09 million worth of Donald Trump’s memecoin, TRUMP.
The owner of this wallet is still holding these coins with an unrealized profit of $185 MILLION
joe is trying to figure out what history will say about his reign. What is his legacy? Whatever is left of his mind, I’m sure he regrets listening to his handlers. Success or failure should have been the result of his decisions only. Instead, his legacy will be marked by a 33% approval and the demise of the democrat party. No one saw the latter happening so abruptly but then, no one ever sees the bullet before getting whacked. The previous party of the people morphed into a gender-confused mess, an escaped experiment, a science fiction catastrophe. Like a rabid dog, it had to be put down.
We’re hours away from a renaissance, the return to strength, to red, white and blue, to tradition, heritage and common sense. We needed the last four years to contrast the good and bad freedom has to offer. We’re back to ideals and standards, balance and performance-based achievements. I don’t know why those concepts anger some. I can only hope those same folks learn to shed their resentment.
Trump is inheriting again. This time it’s a strong economy.
I see the stooges are staying busy on this lovely holiday weekend, and being even more miserable than usual as the end of the Biden error nears. I like the way Jonathan Turley put it after Joe’s illegitimate declaration of a 28th amendment; instead of his time in office simply having been odious, it will now be remembered as having been both odious and absurd!
Meanwhile, the Joe-lovers here are being just as absurd as ever; Hughes insinuating that we won’t be able to build houses unless we leave the border wide open and accept as many illegals (and criminals and crazed arsonists) as want to come through, and LACKS, screeching that T is going to ruin everything as his city burns to the ground due to Dem incompetence and disregard for law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. It might be a new year, but you duds are as hopeless as ever. Keep your chins up though, in 4 years you’ll have your choice of Carmella, Gavin Gruesome or AOC for president!
Anyone see this interview?
Scary Stuff about Biden.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880674586486067387
LAX,
Here is a link to an article in Town & Country describing Biden‘s real estate portfolio.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/a33809100/joe-biden-real-estate-homes/
Bidens gift to America:
Close to an all-time high in the labor force participation rate, a proxy for a very strong labor market
• A surge in reshoring activity of US manufacturing jobs after reshoring progress declined under Trump
• An industrial policy that overwhelmingly benefits GOP districts: ~75% of energy bill spending is going to GOP districts, many of which are located in swing states
• The largest surge in manufacturing-related construction spending on record, which appears directly tied to passage and implementation of the Chips bill; key locations include Arizona, Ohio and New Mexico
• Highest YTD equity gains in an election year since 1936, contributing to the highest solvency measures in over two decades for US corporate defined benefit plans
• On Trump’s proposed tariffs: of ten states with the highest shares of imports to state GDP, 8 are GOP states
• The inflation surge was painful but has subsided; wages are rising faster than rising rents; and the Fed was able to raise policy rates to stem inflation without triggering a recession for the first time in 60 years
$TRUMP good move,
he should shill out a coin every month, sucking the blood of vampires.
It will innovate the path to Hunger Games. Thanks MAGA for the hard work.
In 4 years of constant abuse and grift, this period will end crypto for good. Very bullish for shiny metal.
Wow! Is anyone seeing this fireworks display at Trump’s inauguration party in Sterling VA.? I’ve never seen a display like it. Incredible! And there’s a guy singing operatic verses and songs. What an incredible sight. The whole thing is one big crescendo! Putting the nation and the world on notice. Wow, now this guy is singing Nessun Dorma!
( )( )====D – T – r- u- m – p- 💦
Eddie and SmallPen1s
How much of $Trump crypto did you swallow.. err buy?
You know, put your money where your mouth is and all..
No better way to sell out the country than by crypto lahndering. $30Billion overnight in Trumps pocket.
But yes, Hunter’s laptop
We are now officially in the “find out” phase.
FAFO
TrumpCoin is over $67 now, giving it a fully diluted valuation of $66 Billion. That makes it worth more than Royal Caribbean Cruises, Schlumberger, Target, Hilton, Metlife, Aflac, Snowflake, General Motors, Allstate, Barclays, and Occidental Petroleum
It’s Idi Amin level corruption
Not a fan of President Trump but after all the ongoing Lawfare since 2020 where they attempted to bankrupt him, I can understand him wanting to make a few bucks to cover his legal expenses. Let’s face it, many of those legal cases involved contorting the law to Get Trump.
Lets not insult Idi Amin.
8:12, Tell me you love Donald by telling me you don’t like Donald
And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
“I’ll take remnants of a progressive party for $1,000, Alex.”
These meme coins really are meaningless and so are the “values” attached to them. A student of mine years back showed me a coin he programmed and a couple of transactions got the “market cap” up to $500k. There’s probably a few million in transactions going back and forth to crank the “cap” up to the “billions”.
Who needs TikTok when you have this blog
Who needs TikTok when you have this blog
When is the njrereport IPO?
Typical hypocrisy of hard core Maga running to enjoy the benefits of Big Government Socialist Europe.
To live anywhere but the Maga territories of Oklahoma, Mississippi, Kentucky or Alabama
After the inauguration, if the new president wants to fix housing, I have a soffit that can use repair.
People freaking out over a meme coin as if it’s the first one..Look folks it’s illegal to trade this garbage elsewhere in the world for a reason. Even the freeking Taliban banned trading in cryptocurrencies.
Look Look I have stash of NFTs I bought in 2021. I will be rich rich rich when I retire!!
About 99% of those 5,000+ NFT collections are worthless including the most famous collections that have effectively gone to zero. If you go look at opensea lots and lots of fake bids. These people should be shut down and prosecuted for fraud.
Same holds here with these meme coins. The Ponzi can only continue with new rubes join the game.
It’s the Greater Fool fallacy and there is no other truth.
Juice Box says:
January 19, 2025 at 9:41 am
“People freaking out over a meme coin…It’s the Greater Fool fallacy and there is no other truth.”
Why do you think dopes like Unstable and RantLoud are so upset — those two literally are the Greater Fools and surely have been burned by stuff like this before. In any case, can you imagine having to live with either of these miserable, whiny duds for the next 4 years? I’ll never understand people who can’t move on after the person they voted for lost an election — very womanly behavior from these two.
They think that someone who has a paper position in a meme coin listed at 20 billion market cap can unload it without collapsing the price to zero. It’s fake paper wealth. Kinda like my Jose Canseco rookie that was worth $200 in 1985 yet I can’t get a quarter for it today.
Grim, 9:01, there’s a lot of frustration out there and this blog brings some sanity as much as there are nut cases here. At least the nuts have the same priority and cisibility as the sane ( like me of course ;- )).
You could run some google ads with mastadon or bluesky or rednote keywords.
Just don’t become evil. lol
grim says:
January 19, 2025 at 9:01 am
Who needs TikTok when you have this blog
For those of you who voted (and thank you from me), Hunter repaid you around 1PM yesterday. Posted to the National Instagram page of the main running website.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE-qnvTJL2i/?igsh=MWswNTl3amdjZ3Bwdg%3D%3D&ig_mid=A3E39140-9CFB-4F7F-8E03-950EB545858D&utm_source=igweb
Chi,
Great finish, what a kick that kid has. I actually voted twice but not sure second vote counted. You have every right to be proud of your son, Enjoy the rewards.
I’ve been hearing that everyone has been getting sick. Well, crashing a bit now and developed a fever. I’m going to love shoveling snow tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll do a shot of Silk City Bourbon before I step outside.
ChiFi,
Awesome!
Eddie,
I was sick from Dec 24th to Jan 3rd, had to go on antibiotics because my lymph nodes were swollen and my eyes were discharging and I’d wake up with them shut. Everyone in my family had the same. Antibioitics knocked it out right away but after I finished them 3 days ago, something seems to be attacking me again.
BRT,
I’m leaning towards viral here, feels like the flu. Throat and sinuses not too bad, body aches, slight fever, paperweight feeling in head and fatigued; though, I am moving about and doing things. Every so often need to get a 10-minute couch nap and then up again. I want to say I’ve always been resilient with sickness so I hope I didn’t just jinx myself. I hope you’re not backsliding, drink fluids!
SmallGov 11:02, assume much?
Never gambled,
Never bought crypto,
Nor NFTs
And my friends say I am the life of the party,
But I will fight for speaking out your misguided hatred.
*fight for your first amendment rights
The story though is not about me or you, Smallman.
It is about the open fraud being committed by your lord.
With crypto there is no more campaign financing limit.
You want favors? Just buy $Trump.
Yet, I may watch the inauguration tmrw, cuz I have some family attending.
The whole point of the moves in crypto is that they are going to get the Fed to back it. The great theft begins.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4912/all-infohttps://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4912/all-info
Fast Eddie says:
January 19, 2025 at 2:21 pm
“Throat and sinuses not too bad, body aches, slight fever, paperweight feeling in head and fatigued…”
Same here, Ed. Hit me at work on Thu. Made for a miserable schlep home from NYC; nothing like standing in line at the Port Authority when you just feel like crashing. COVID test was negative. And I’m definitely starting to feel the age-effect; not that things hit me harder, but the symptoms seem to linger a bit longer.
Lets not confuse bitcoin with $trump. While the former is more distributed because of its history the latter sprung overnight and this bill is not going to regulate or have anything to do with it.
RentL0rd says:
January 19, 2025 at 2:37 pm
“It is about the open fraud being committed by your lord.”
Stop with corruption nonsense already. It makes you sound even sillier than you normally do. Your guy essentially built a family business around selling access to him while he was Oblama’s veep, and then gave a 10-year blanket pardon to his corrupt kid to keep a lid on things. Let’s see how many other family members and Biden Inc associates he pardons on his way out the door.
Rent, not so fast. Here’s an interesting read. Watch this space!
https://x.com/Princey21M/status/1880932630377763186
Wow. My head is spinning. But just wow!!! @ Fab 3:22
SmallGovConservative,
Not a fanboy of Biden, but it does appear he and his family sold access while he was VP and received millions of dollars for no work or service performed. Interestingly the main stream media had zero desire to cover the story and ask some basic journalistic questions. Meanwhile a misdemeanor bookkeeping error by Trump, beyond the statue of limitations was magically transformed into 34 felonies. It‘s a strange world we live in.
Dave Chappelle Broke His Own Record for Longest SNL Monologue Ever
He also cited a report that called the fires the most expensive natural disaster in American history, and it makes sense to him:
“People in L.A. have nice stuff. I could burn 40,000 acres in Mississippi for six or seven hundred dollars.”
He and his family sold access while he was in office “legally” as well under the guise of Hunter Biden, artist extraordinaire. Kinda like how Hillary commanded 250k per speech and a week after he defeat, she gets $25k.
oh look, Trumpcoin lost half it’s value in the past 30 minutes. It will be back to real market value in short order and you can stop throwing a hissy fit actually believing he’s the richest man in the world for 2 days.
https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1881089997820072037/photo/1
If you are late to $TRUMP, you can dig into $MELANIA. Well done MAGA, well done.
Hunter should take this masterclass from this first family. He just f’ed around for less than hundred mil.
Don’t panic, don’t give up, just be aware of what is ahead. I see it as a 2 part of a hurricane.
Part 1 is the hurricane’s arrival winds going one way. There are 4 yrs of evidence of his behavior. Many first term staff members wrote book to describe him. He failed upward because of the real estate industry he got nepo-babied in, as well as the ones he pursued afterward in gambling, entertainment and politics are industries were psychopathic behavior gets a head start. Look up Dr. Paul Babiak and Dr. Robert D. Hare and explore the world of psychopaths in the corporate setting in their book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.
Will have the “Eye of The Hurricane” moment when he drops dead, again 78yrs + 300lbs+ & high levels of stress are not a good recipe for longevity.
Part 2, is when the winds go the other way. Here is where it could get real ugly, simply because all of the democratic safety breakers, switches, guardrails which were made of laws and traditions enforced by people with characters went out the window. So the group that towers over the others in this stage will be hell bent in consolidating power come hell or high water.
The belligerents are the Clericalist (christian nationalist, catholic conservatives, anyone that says god too many times) affecting social mores, the NeoFeudal Tech Lords aka let AI rule the world, the Autotarky Nationalist looking for a way to create a new preferred industrial class, old Wall Street/Globalist financiers, plus a few more knowns and unknowns.
Overall, the biggest danger is you do a little war game is if this new obsession with Greenland gets going and he orders Grenada like invasion. If it happens it will severely stress and possibly destroy NATO which Putin will love and he will move on into the Baltic countries rattling nukes. It will give a green light to China to go for Taiwan and would not be surprise if North Korea moves into South Korea rattling nukes too. In short a multi-theatre world war with a starring cast of D+ sore knee benders.
In other news…
The Eagles game is a real nail biter. That is football weather but difficult to hold onto the ball.
When Hunter does it, off with their heads. When Trump does it? Intelligent move. Of course, MAGA can do no wrong.
When Jared pulls in $2Billion, its just business!
What just happened?
Melania Trump, the First Lady of the US, just launched her own memecoin, MELANIA.
Less than 48 hours ago, Donald Trump launched TRUMP which just erased $7.5 BILLION in market cap in 10 MINUTES.
Feels wickedly illegal
Biden pardons Anthony Fauci, now we are doing pardons for “innocent” people as well
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol…
Why? Were crimes committed? Why do these people need protection?
Today is going to be glorious. Is there anything better than celebrating MLK day?
Saying the quiet part out loud.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1881112314713419785
Re Trump and Melania coins.
Pump and a Dump folks by all the insiders including those influencers out there like Dave Portnoy.
Portnoy says he made a quick million overnight on the 18th by buying it at 5 PM and selling at 5 AM on the Trump coin and flipped the winnings to the Bills to win the Superbowl.
https://x.com/stoolpresidente/status/1881075826919367026
Fab – Yes Starlink was used to hack the election….
The left need not worry. Trump will do what he always does. Fail. It shouldn’t take to long either. The sooner he commits to repeating his failed economic policies of tariffs and tax cuts, the sooner his cult followers realize they were duped again.
Media also fails to report the “exchanges” and these meme coins.
This is all shades of fraud like SBF and the FTX criminal enterprise as many of these exchanges claim to be Defi.
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/meteora-vd/
Look some obscure offshore exchange did not generate $10 Billion in actual real money dollars for meme coins in trades in the last 24 hours. They claim they are some kind of Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker (DLMM). You cannot move that kind of money around without an actual bank, and they didn’t it’s all meme coin flipping nonsense.
Their codebase is out on GitHub. Some severe security flaws were found. There are bound be more including back doors.
Stay away far away..
Hak Tua says:
January 20, 2025 at 10:02 am
“failed economic policies of tariffs and tax cuts…”
Another dope that thinks the problem with govt is NOT that it spends too much, but that law-abiding, tax-paying citizens don’t provide it with enough tax revenue; what an imbecile! Is that you LACKS? I suppose you think the reason your reservoirs are emptied during fire season and your fire hydrants have no water, is because your already highest-in-the-nation tax burden isn’t quite high enough.
Legal counsel timed it right before inauguration.
Grifter in Chief never disappoints
grim says:
January 20, 2025 at 8:10 am
Feels wickedly illegal
TRUMP and MELANIA are bearish for BTC because they reveal the scam inherent in all cryptocurrencies. You invent a new form money, and YOU get to start out with 100% of it? Or rather, as an early adopter, you get the privilege of minting it at a much lower cost than everyone else will eventually have to pay to mint it?
What kind of scam is that? It’s capitalist wealth accrual completely divorced from any kind of value creation. A way to get rich without having to contribute anything or make anyone’s life any better. All you have to do is convince other people that they’ll get rich too, if they buy your made-up thing and extend the absurd game that you’re playing.
-Jesse Livermore
What a beautiful, crisp morning! No wind, brisk air, a blue hue in the snow shadows, the inauguration of the greatest political comeback in American history, a historic 200 executive orders to be signed on day one and the outgoing legacy of a failed presidency that will be not only known as the worst ever but will mark the end of the democrat party: 1828 – 2025. The phrase, “It’s Morning in America” has never been more true than it is today!
Fauci at a bare minimum lied to Congress during the hearings. Most but no all of the scientific community circled the wagons when it came to the GOF research lies. However not all, there was a lone Rutgers professor Dr. Richard H. Ebright who was out there early on in the very beginning of the pandemic calling out these lies on social media.
Then there is the actual NIH grant proposals and grant progress reports make it clear
that the grants funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan. The actual reported documents show that NIH grants supported the construction of mutant SARS-related coronaviruses that involved blending different types of viruses together. The result was a lab-generated virus that could infect human cells, he said, adding that at least three of the lab-generated viruses “exhibited between 10x to >100x higher viral loads in humanized mice”.
It’s all there in their own NIH documentation, the coverup sometimes however is worse than the crime. Fauci would not go down and those involved in the cover-up won’t have to face the music either with his pardon.
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new-details-emerge-about-coronavirus-research-at-chinese-lab/
Dr. Richard H. Ebright posted this today on twitter as a remined to the Media and everyone else that says these pardons are real pardons, because to accept them means admission of guilt.
“Corrected version: “The issuance of these pardons must be understood as an acknowledgment that the individual engaged in criminal wrongdoing, and acceptance must be understood as an admission of guilt for criminal offenses.”
Burdick vs. United States, 1915:
Then again the Special Prosecutor found Biden to be not to be competent enough to stand trial for stealing classified documents. Perhaps one could argue then he was also not competent enough to issue executive actions, pardons and commutations.
So Biden Pardoned a sitting Senator Adam Schiff ? That has to be a first?
What about poor Bobby Menendez?
Musk, Pichai, Bezos and Zuck all bought some nice seats for the inauguration.
I remember when the Right used to complain about how many executive orders Obama used. Of course Trump is making Obama look like a Saint. Once again, MAGA can do no wrong.
The grifter in chief is gonna grift. Of course, MAGA can do no wrong.
Ohh I see Tim Cook too……. So what was his gift a cool million too?
Fat Eddie,
I must agree with you again here “will mark the end of the democrat party: 1828 – 2025″. It blew up on its on bs.
The Clinton machine/Third Way corporate democrats copied Lee Atwater in the way they transformed the Democratic Party into the Rockefeller Republican party. It did the equivalent to its voters of what Lee Atwater did with the GOP and its Southern Strategy.
The Clinton machine/Third Way Democrats sold out the working/middle class. But every time something was sold off it was coated in double speak that aimed at the emotional hearts of liberals. No different than Lee Atwater used coded language to give a new meaning and to divert from real goals.
In Atwater code – Tax Cuts became an emotionally loaded way to inflict pain on the minorities, however in reality a tax cut is a just a gift for whoever makes that large income and those southern voters sure did not make that income.
In Clinton code – Selling off Sallie Mae & deregulating Wall Street/Fannie/Freddie became allowing all minorities to have an opportunity to climb the housing/educational/entrepenuer ladder in a politically correct way. If you notice episodes of political correctness come about when there are democrats in power but they are trying to obscure what is actually happening in their selling out. Clinton – sold out to corporate America, Obama-sold out to Wall Street.
Here is from Wikipedia.
Southern strategy”
This article is part of a series on
Conservatism
in the United States
As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to political scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of the interview was printed in Lamis’ book The Two-Party South, later reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater’s name revealed. Bob Herbert reported on the interview in the October 6, 2005, issue of The New York Times. On November 13, 2012, The Nation magazine released a 42-minute audio recording of the interview.[16] James Carter IV, grandson of former president Jimmy Carter, had asked and been granted access to the tapes by Lamis’ widow. Early in the interview, Atwater argued that Reagan did not need to make racial appeals, suggesting that Reagan’s issues transcended the racial prism of the 1968 “Southern Strategy”:
Atwater: But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I’ll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act.
Later in the interview, Atwater was questioned about the implicitly racist aspects of the “New Southern Strategy” carried out by the Reagan campaign:
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don’t have to do that. All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he’s campaigned on since 1964, and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger”. By 1968, you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this”, is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger”. So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.[17]
Yes, saying the quiet part out loud.
https://x.com/RickChapterTwo/status/1881337188782346601
Next up will be filing to run in 28. He will look to bypass the 22nd amendment
The word “reveal” should be replaced with “provide the latest example of”.
What it “reveals” is the character of the sponsors.
Very Stable Genius says:
January 20, 2025 at 10:17 am
TRUMP and MELANIA are bearish for BTC because they reveal the scam inherent in all cryptocurrencies. You invent a new form money, and YOU get to start out with 100% of it? Or rather, as an early adopter, you get the privilege of minting it at a much lower cost than everyone else will eventually have to pay to mint it?
What kind of scam is that? It’s capitalist wealth accrual completely divorced from any kind of value creation. A way to get rich without having to contribute anything or make anyone’s life any better. All you have to do is convince other people that they’ll get rich too, if they buy your made-up thing and extend the absurd game that you’re playing.
-Jesse Livermore
11:59,
Ah, Lee Atwater… he liked to jam, died from a brain tumor. Not sure what your “this day in history” diatribe is about but… whatever makes you feel better, I guess.
O’Biden pardoned his family on the way out the door. Does anyone know why they would need a pardon?
Oh, by the way, they can’t plead the 5th now when called to testify before a congressional committee.
What a weasle he did not pardon the dog…..
“President Biden pardoned five members of his family in his last minutes in office, saying in a statement that he did so not because they did anything wrong but because he feared political attacks from incoming President Donald J. Trump.
“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” he said in his last statement as president. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”
Mr. Biden’s action pardoned James B. Biden, his brother; Sara Jones Biden, James’s wife; Valerie Biden Owens, Mr. Biden’s sister; John T. Owens, Ms. Owens’s husband; and Francis W. Biden, Mr. Biden’s brother.
The White House announced the pardons with less than 20 minutes left in Mr. Biden’s presidency, after he had already walked into the Capitol Rotunda to witness the swearing-in of Mr. Trump before leaving the Capitol for the last time as president.”