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Instead of accepting responsibility for the suffering caused, though, wine-sipping elites continue to pretend everything is just fine and dandy. You see, because the inflation rate has gone down over the last year (it did spike upward again in August), you not only should be happy, but you should say thank you.

That attitude was perfectly illustrated by left-wing apparatchiks Justin Wolfers and Tom Nichols, with the former being an "economist" and the latter being an "expert" in whatever he claims to be on a given day.

I'm supposed to be impressed that inflation is now "only" 3.2 percent after the last two-plus years of massive cost increases?

Yeah, that's not how any of this works.

Democrats own the results of their big-spending policies, and it's not Republicans who care crazy for pointing that out. It's partisan imbeciles like Wolfers and Nichols who would rather go "ackshually" than admit how screwed up things are because it might threaten their grip on power.

YOU KNOW WHY THEY DON'T HAVE THE VOTES? NO EVIDENCE!

Three days ago, Jordan said it was “important” to hold a House vote before launching an impeachment inquiry. Now, he is singing a different tune.

Justin Barago​

Senior Media Reporter
Updated Sep. 13, 2023 5:59PM EDT / Published Sep. 13, 2023 5:34PM EDT

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) explained on Sunday why it was important for the House to vote on formalizing an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Just three days later, and after Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy flip-flopped on his vow to hold a vote before launching the probe, Jordan, one of the three co-chairs of the impeachment inquiry, pulled his own 180 by telling Fox & Friends, “We don’t need that to move forward” because McCarthy’s pronouncement “gives added weight to it.”

Despite having no concrete evidence to support Republican allegations that the president was involved in any wrongdoing as it relates to his family’s business dealings, McCarthy capitulated to MAGA hardliners on Tuesday and announced he was unilaterally opening an impeachment inquiry.

Eleven days earlier, though, McCarthy said the inquiry would only “occur through a vote on the floor of the People's House and not through a declaration by one person,” adding that it was a “serious matter” and the GOP “would not take it lightly or use it for political purposes.” With it clear that he didn’t have the votes from his own caucus, despite previously claiming he did, McCarthy instead decided to move forward on his own.

Jordan, a Trump acolyte and key architect of the GOP’s push to impeach Biden, insisted during a Fox News appearance on Sunday night that it was imperative that the House vote before formally launching the probe since it would allow the committees to obtain more information.

“When you actually have a resolution that the House votes on… the majority of the House supports, the courts understand that when you’re in this inevitable conflict with the executive branch to get documents and to depose certain witnesses, the courts understand the House is engaged in a fundamental constitutional activity, the impeachment power,” he told Fox News host Mark Levin. “So that’s why the impeachment inquiry resolution is important for us to be able to get the information.”

Jordan, however, was singing a far different tune the morning after McCarthy officially launched the inquiry without holding a promised vote.

“If it comes to a vote, if that’s what the speaker wants, I think he’ll get the votes, but we don’t need that to move forward,” Jordan said Wednesday morning on Fox & Friends.

Asked whether this inquiry announcement had given him any additional power in his Biden investigation, Jordan again shrugged off the need to hold a vote to formalize the impeachment probe.

“If the Speaker of the House, the second in line to the president, says we’re in an impeachment inquiry phase, I think that means something,” he said. “I think it will certainly mean something to courts when we get into the inevitable game that’s going to play out here.”
Jordan added: “When we want certain documents, we want certain witnesses to be deposed and the administration says no, no, no, they’re going to drag their feet on that. So when that happens, I think that gives added weight to it. And then if we go to a vote, which we’re not precluding from happening at all, the Speaker has not said that, if we go to a vote, I think that gives even more weight to that.”
Notably, back in 2019, Jordan felt that the House voting on an impeachment inquiry after the speaker had already launched it didn’t legitimize the process at all, specifically after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called a House vote on opening up the first Trump impeachment probe.
“Pelosi announces they’ll finally vote to open the impeachment inquiry. Codifying a sham process halfway through doesn’t make it any less of a sham process,” he tweeted.

If Kevin McCarthy thought he’d bought some goodwill from his far-right flank by launching an impeachment inquiry, his plan apparently didn’t work.


Sept. 13, 2023, 7:00 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is well aware of the fact that he has a right-wing flank that expects him to follow their orders. Indeed, the California Republican only managed to get his gavel in January following a humiliating 15-ballot process, due entirely to his most radical members.

At the time, the GOP leader agreed to tweak the chamber’s motion-to-vacate-the-chair rules, which had the intended effect: In the current Congress, it’s now easier for the speaker’s members to try to oust him in the event that he disappoints them.

Amidst unsubtle chatter that such a vote might very well happen, McCarthy, scrambling from a position of weakness, yesterday announced an evidence-free impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden. If the Republican leader hoped that would satisfy the extremists in his midst, he quickly learned otherwise. Politico reported:

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) ramped up his threats to Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s grip on the gavel. During a floor speech and a subsequent phone call with reporters, Gaetz warned that the Californian was “out of compliance” with agreements House Republicans made during the leadership race and that it could spark an attempt to strip his gavel.

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“I rise today to serve notice: Mr. Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role. The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate, total compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair,” Gaetz said on the floor.

The far-right Floridian didn’t stop there. Gaetz promoted his floor remarks online with all-caps message that read, “The speaker has failed America.”

The congressman also told reporters that if McCarthy tries to prevent a government shutdown this month with a “clean” stop-gap spending package, that would trigger an immediate vote to fire him. Gaetz added that he also intended to launch the same effort if the House speaker didn’t also move forward with a variety of other far-right priorities, including subpoenas for the president’s relatives.

Evidently, the announcement about an impeachment inquiry didn’t have much of an effect. (Gaetz recently denounced the idea, saying he wants to skip an inquiry and go straight to votes on impeachment articles.)

Of course, it’s not just Gaetz. Politico also reported:

House conservatives are glad they finally got their impeachment inquiry. But they were quick to say it won’t shield Speaker Kevin McCarthy from potential efforts to boot him. Their issues with McCarthy when it comes to government spending, they argue, are separate from any impeachment considerations. Plus, they criticized him Tuesday for moving too late to launch a formal inquiry into President Joe Biden.

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The report quoted a half-dozen House Republicans saying that a vote to take McCarthy’s gavel away might very well happen, regardless of the newly announced impeachment inquiry. “If you are trying to do the impeachment inquiry, thinking that is going to somehow keep you away from the motion to vacate … that’s not going to work,” Rep. Cory Mills of Florida explained.

If the House speaker thought he’d bought some goodwill from his far-right flank, his plan apparently didn’t work.


Steve Benen

Among those unconvinced on the GOP’s impeachment push: voters​

On impeachment, congressional Republicans are not only lacking in evidence, they're also missing public support for their anti-Biden crusade.


Sept. 12, 2023, 2:37 PM CDT
By Steve Benen

From the perspective of House Republicans, they’d ideally have some evidence to bolster their impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. They do not. They’d also ideally have some unanimity among their ranks as part of the endeavor. They don’t have that, either. They’d also ideally have the support of the GOP colleagues in the Senate. They don’t have that, either.

But at least the public is on the party’s side, right? Actually, no. The Washington Post recently summarized the latest data:

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Americans agreed, 51 percent to 33 percent, that Hunter Biden’s legal troubles were “independent of and unrelated to” Biden’s service as president. Independents said that by a 2-1 margin, and even 32 percent of Republicans agreed. And while half of Americans in the Fox News poll saw something illegal in Hunter Biden’s actions, 38 percent said the same of the president’s supposed connection to “his son’s business dealings.” That 38 percent is overwhelmingly Republican, with just 33 percent of independents seeing something illegal in the president’s actions.

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These results were not necessarily inevitable. Much of the public is cynical and inclined to believe the worst about political officials in positions of authority. With prominent GOP voices spending months peddling bizarre claims about “bribery” and “corruption,” it stands to reason that a lot of voters, especially those who don’t keep up on day-to-day developments in the news, might start to assume that there’s some legitimacy to the Republican attacks, reality notwithstanding.

But at least in recent polling, GOP claims aren’t exactly winning over wide swaths of the public.

The same Post analysis noted that when the Democratic-led House pursued Donald Trump’s impeachment, “majorities of Americans and sometimes nearly 6 in 10 supported the two Trump impeachment efforts early on.”

It might be tempting to think that support for Trump’s impeachment was stronger because Trump was a more scandal-plagued and unpopular figure, but when it comes to approval ratings, Biden and his predecessor had nearly identical public support at comparable points in their term.

The difference is, Trump was responsible for actual wrongdoing, which was bolstered by considerable evidence. The same simply cannot be said about his successor.


Steve Benen

One Republican put his cards on the table for everyone to see. It was immediately obvious that what he perceived as face cards were actually jokers.


Sept. 13, 2023, 12:18 PM CDT
By Steve Benen

When it comes to the Republicans’ new impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden, there are basically three categories of GOP members. One contingent, made up of many senators and House members such as Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, concedes that the party doesn’t have any incriminating evidence against the incumbent Democrat.

A second faction, which includes members such as Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, acknowledges the absence of evidence, but argues that an impeachment inquiry might somehow uncover relevant information.

But perhaps most interesting is the third group: Republicans who pretend that they really have uncovered incriminating evidence, despite what the other two GOP contingents say, and despite reality.

When announcing the new impeachment inquiry yesterday, for example, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pointed to a series of details, presented as if there’s a legitimate underlying controversy. A Washington Post analysis took a closer look at each of the California Republican’s claims and found that McCarthy’s case amounted to little more than “exaggerations, irrelevancies, and dishonesty.”

Soon after a group of far-right Republicans held a press conference of their own where a reporter asked Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, what “actual evidence” GOP members have that would “merit an actual impeachment inquiry.” He didn’t seem to appreciate the question, responding:

“You can see that the homes that the Bidens own can’t be afforded on a congressional or Senate salary. You also understand that it’s not normal for family members to receive millions of dollars from overseas interests. Those things aren’t normal.”

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Growing visibly agitated, the right-wing congressman continued to reference a series of related claims, including a renewed focus on the Viktor Shokin firing in Ukraine, before telling the reporter, “If you can’t see that, if you are that blind...” at which point he turned the microphone over to someone else.

The problem, whether Perry appreciates this or not, is that he was speaking in such a way as to suggest Republicans have uncovered meaningful evidence of wrongdoing. That has not happened.

The president’s homes are entirely affordable given his personal finances. It may not be “normal” for a politician’s relatives to get money from overseas interests, but (a) none of this money appears to have ended up in the president’s pocket, making his relatives’ incomes irrelevant; and (b) if Republicans were serious about this point, they’d probably take a greater interest in the billions Jared Kushner got from Saudi Arabia following his White House tenure.

As for the Shokin matter, we’ve known for years that in 2015, the Obama administration, European diplomats, the International Monetary Fund, and other international organizations leaned on Ukraine to fire the prosecutor because he refused to investigate corruption. Biden has bragged about this because he successfully implemented U.S. policy, which enjoyed bipartisan backing at the time. This isn’t scandalous in the slightest.

As part of his tirade, Perry declared yesterday, “That’s what we have.” Right. Exactly. The Republican congressman put his cards on the table for everyone to see, and it became immediately obvious that what he perceived as face cards were actually jokers.


Steve Benen

Yeah, what about Jared's Billions from Saudi Arabia?

Child poverty rate jumps thanks to Joe Manchin and every single Republican

The U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday that poverty spiked last year, with child poverty more than doubling from 5.2% to a shocking 12.4%. The sharp increases are almost entirely due to the canceled expansion of the Child Tax Credit enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic but killed by West Virginia “Democrat” J

oe Manchin in 2022, who joined with every single Republican Senator to gut the social safety net and heap more hardship on America's working families. His commitments to big pharma and big oil, however, remain bulletproof.

It’s easy to grow inured to the alliance between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, but it matters that they’ve effectively linked arms on 2024 messaging.


Sept. 13, 2023, 7:40 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

Donald Trump’s response to each of his criminal indictments has been inherently conspiratorial: The former president expects the public to believe that his partisan foes secretly worked with prosecutors and grand juries, across multiple jurisdictions, as part of an elaborate plot to undermine his 2024 candidacy.

It is, to be sure, a ridiculous idea for which there is no evidence. But the Republican has pushed the line on a nearly daily basis, and he’s similarly encouraged his allies to trumpet the same line.

One of his most notable benefactors apparently got the message. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday waded into the debate over the criminal charges faced by Republican election candidate Donald Trump, saying the cases against the former U.S. president amount to political “persecution” and expose U.S. weakness.

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During an economic forum, Putin said the indictments show “the whole rottenness of the American political system, which cannot claim to teach others about democracy.” The Russian leader added, “What’s happening with Trump is a persecution of a political rival for political motives.”

In other words, when it comes to 2024 messaging, Trump and Putin have effectively linked arms and started reading from the same script.

Given everything we’ve learned about their partnership over the course of the last several years — it was, after all, Putin’s government that worked to put Trump in the White House in the first place — this might not seem especially surprising. Indeed, the former American president continues to side with the Russian leader about all sorts of things, so it stands to reason that his ally in Moscow would echo his political talking points.

But of particular interest was Trump’s reaction to Putin’s comments. The Republican used his social media platform overnight to publish this message shortly after midnight:

“It’s all happening, even worse than anyone projected. President Vladimir Putin of Russia is using Crooked Joe Biden’s illegal Banana Republic style treatment of his Political Opponent, who is beating him badly in the Polls, to condemn America and all of the good things it once stood for. The whole World is watching as the USA is being torn apart by dreams of Election Interference!”

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It’s as if Trump believes his ludicrous conspiracy theories have merit because they’ve now been publicly validated by the Russian dictator.

It would’ve been easy for the former president to simply ignore Putin’s comments. Given the atrocities and alleged war crimes Russia is committing in Ukraine, the Republican might’ve even considered a stay-off-my-side posture.

But instead, Trump thought the smart move would be to highlight Putin’s condemnations of the United States and willingness to endorse his conspiratorial nonsense.

This did not go unnoticed by one of the former president’s GOP rivals.

“If you are on the same side as Putin, you might want to rethink your position,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said.


Steve Benen

Between Kevin McCarthy's failure to rein in House Republicans on a mission to help Trump with a politically ill-advised hollow impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, and Mitch McConnell's failure to pull Tommy Tuberville out of his long-running, anti-abortion political stunt that is doing increasing damage to U.S. military readiness, Republicans in Congress appear poised to win their own echo chamber at the cost of losing the American public.

Trump plotted privately with House Republicans on Biden impeachment

The 4-times indicted ex-president has been meeting secretly with GOP leadership in recent weeks to coordinate today's announcement by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy that Republicans are launching an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Elise Stefanik, Chair of the House GOP conference, and shadow party leader Marjorie Taylor Greene have been meeting with him regularly, often at his private Bedminster golf club.

Now it makes sense why McCarthy’s live-on-camera announcement felt more like a hostage declaring his captors are treating him well.

John Fetterman torches Kevin McCarthy over impeachment announcement

Despite months of dog-and-pony-show hearings turning up nothing but nude screen shots of Hunter Biden sex tapes and so-called "informants" and "whistleblowers" who failed to deliver the goods, Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry anyway. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman summed it up the desperate move like only he can, correctly characterizing the inquiry as a "big circle jerk on the fringe right,” before telling the GOP, “Go ahead, do it. I dare you.”

From PFF ...

QB Caleb Williams -- 39
LT Jonah Monheim -- 39
LG Emmanuel Pregnon -- 39
C Justin Dedich -- 39
RG Jarrett Kingston -- 39
WR Mario Williams -- 35
WR Duce Robinson -- 33
RT Michael Tarquin -- 31
C Kilian O'Connor -- 26
WR Kyron Hudson -- 26
RT Mason Murphy -- 26
QB Miller Moss -- 26
TE Lake McRee -- 22
RB MarShawn Lloyd -- 21
WR Dorian Singer - 20
WR Tahj Washington -- 20
LG Alani Noa -- 18
WR Ja'Kobi Lane -- 18
LT Elijah Paige -- 18
WR Zachariah Branch -- 18
RT Andrew Milek -- 18
RB Austin Jones -- 18
WR Brenden Rice -- 17
WR Michael Jackson III -- 15
WR Josiah Zamora -- 14
RB Quinten Joyner -- 13
TE Jude Wolfe -- 13
TE Carson Tabaracci -- 9
LT Tobias Raymond -- 8
LG Micah Banuelos -- 8
RT Cooper Lovelace --- 8
RG Andres Dewerk -- 8
RB Darwin Barlow -- 7
RB A'Marion Peterson -- 3
RB Matt Colombo -- 3

Damn... after all the crap boomer fans have done in the past year plus... I totally believe this..

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I just looked at the top 5 schools in the AP rankings, and each of the Power 5 conferences are represented. I wonder how often that has happened.

This man's memory is nuts!

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Trump Is Top Choice for Nearly 60% of GOP Voters, WSJ Poll Shows​

Support for DeSantis collapses in postdebate survey​

Donald Trump has expanded his dominating lead for the Republican presidential nomination, a new Wall Street Journal poll shows, as GOP primary voters overwhelmingly see his four criminal prosecutions as lacking merit and about half say the indictments fuel their support for him.

The new survey finds that what was once a two-man race for the nomination has collapsed into a lopsided contest in which Trump, for now, has no formidable challenger. The former president is the top choice of 59% of GOP primary voters, up 11 percentage points since April, when the Journal tested a slightly different field of potential and declared candidates.

The initial 2026 Rivals100 was just revealed. Take a look at the coverage:

Top 10 Countdown for 2026 class
Meet the initial five-stars in 2026
Tuesdays with Gorney: Thoughts on the 2026 rankings
Who's the top player at each position in 2026 class?
2026 Rivals100

Gasoline prices above ⬆️

Interestingly, the Gasoline price jump coincides with the CPI index level at the start of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Note this index is up 78% since President Biden took office...

Even GOP Senators Are Clowning on McCarthy’s Biden Impeachment Inquiry​

Many Republicans are reportedly just as unhappy as Democrats with the decision to push forward with the inquiry, with one GOP senator calling it “a fool’s errand.”

AJ McDougall​

Breaking News Reporter
Updated Sep. 12, 2023 5:42PM EDT / Published Sep. 12, 2023 5:34PM EDT

The call is coming from inside the House—and the Senate.

Though it was hardly a surprise that the launching of a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden would be received icily by Democrats, it seems Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and his allies will also have to contend with discontented lawmakers within their own ranks.

A number of Senate Republicans who spoke to The Hill on Tuesday did not mince words about the announcement, with one anonymous legislator labeling it “a fool’s errand.”

“It’s a waste of time,” that senator said, explaining that, even if the House could force through a vote to impeach Biden, the Democrat-controlled Senate would never allow it to go through.


“Maybe this is just Kevin giving people their binkie to get through the shutdown,” they speculated, referring to a looming Sept. 30 deadline to pass a continuing resolution and stop the government from grinding to a halt.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) full-throatedly criticized the choice to move forward with an inquiry. “The bar for impeachment seems to get lower and lower every year,” she said, according to Reuters. She told other reporters that the process would distract from Congress’ ability to pass the dozen-odd bills needed to avert a shutdown.

Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the minority whip, was diplomatic in his response, telling reporters that he didn’t think “it’d be advantageous if this thing went further, with all the other things we have to do.”

Other Republican senators were less than enthusiastic about possible impeachment proceedings.


“I’m not for going through another damn trial to be honest with you,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told CNN on Monday.

Tuberville said he didn’t believe House Republicans had “enough time” to see an impeachment through, given that 2024 is an election year. He warned his colleagues: “You better have an ironclad case… Make sure you got what you need to have. Don’t be guessing. Don’t just be throwing mud.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) called the move “frustrating,” sounding resigned as she pointed out to The Hill that she hadn’t seen any actual evidence of impeachable offenses. “I’m going to default to the position that the House is going to do what the House is going to do, and we’ll have to react to that,” she said.

The mood was similarly tepid in the other congressional chamber. Even members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, the body to which McCarthy was widely seen as capitulating in announcing the inquiry, weren’t satisfied. Mere minutes after the speaker’s announcement, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) slammed McCarthy for not having gone far enough.

“This is a baby step following weeks of pressure from House conservatives to do more. We must move faster,” he said from the House floor. Gaetz also shoehorned in a now daily threat that he would begin the process of attempting to oust McCarthy if he was not brought into “immediate total compliance” with the caucus’ demands.

Among the senators who did express support for the inquiry were Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT).

“It’s clear President Biden and his son have engaged in corruption,” Daines said, per Reuters. “I’ll let the House do its job, but I’ll be ready to be a juror if there’s an impeachment.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), the only Republican to vote to convict Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial, voiced cautious approval for a probe into Biden’s activities as president.

“The fact that the White House has been singularly silent and has coddled Hunter Biden suggests that an inquiry is not inappropriate,” he said. “That’s very different from an impeachment. Actual impeachment would require the evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor. That has not been alleged.”

Democrats, on the other hand, roundly and predictably denounced the inquiry. The best reaction of the day undoubtedly came from Sen. John Fetterman, who wiggled his fingers and made spooky noises when asked about it.

“Oh my God, really?” he wailed, his hands on his temples. “Oh my gosh. Oh, it’s devastating. Ooooh, don’t do it, please don’t do it. Oh no, oh no.” LOL!!!