BETTER CALL SAUL

Donald John Trump has abruptly parted ways !!! with five lawyers handling his impeachment defense, just over a week before the Senate trial is set to begin, CNN reported late last night.

Where’s Rudy or Alan or Ken or Jay??!

Supposedly, Trump had pushed for his defense team to focus on his baseless claim that the election was stolen from him.

In the last couple of hours, according to multiple outlets, Trump is disputing that that was the case but acknowledged that there were differences in opinion about the defense strategy.

However, Boy Orange has insisted that the case is “simple” and has told close advisers he could argue it himself and save the money on lawyers.

Talk about tickets to the Super Bowl…right??!

It’s very simple to old Lobsterman, Trump doesn’t need a defense team or any defense for that matter…

He’s got a bevy of Re’Trump’lican senators at his beckon call…Rover, rover take the bone over, or something along those lines.

FROTH on the HORIZON

The S&P 500 dropped 3.3% last week, though it remains up 66% from its March low.

The bubblelike behavior there has mostly been contained to a handful of individual stocks, NOT larger indexes.

Shares of unprofitable companies like GameStop and AMC were/are rising at a breakneck pace, engineered by the “boys in the student union” and disciples of Dua Lipa. Options activity is surging, bitcoin prices are near records and, and, and…

And, as I’ve said before, ALL the gents in their old school ties are pissed!!!

While recently, the broader stock market seems to be exhaling a bit.

With interest rates at rock bottom and further stimulus rattling around the table, many investors are being handsomely rewarded by putting their money into riskier, higher-yielding assets.

Plus, in many cases earnings have held up or been robust, despite a global pandemic.

Many Americans built up their savings during the pandemic – and stand to gain even more if Congress follows through on another stimulus package. And the prospect of low returns in most other assets has driven investors to buy stocks more aggressively.

Just remember:

• reflect on your past history lessons;
• and, don’t, for a second, think you can figure the peak of the market.

DRAGNET SHARKS from the FISH

From what we’re being told, the FBI is conducting a steady, methodical and painstaking investigation; along with cooperative assistance from state and local law enforcement.

Collectively, they will get the goods on these cowardly morons.

The country needs to see prosecutors, hopefully, take the accumulated evidence; set the maximum charges possible; demand the maximum penalties possible; and, prosecute each and every seditious traitor to the fullest extent of the law!!!

Whether that might give pause to other cerebral cortex-challenged malcontents running around woodlands, and open prairie, with their long guns on the weekends practicing their ”drills” to overthrow a duly elected government…well, our guess is probably better than mine.

But…

We’ve got to start acting like a nation of adults at some point!!!

Listen, a few of them might even think twice before deciding to follow a narcissistic con man and wannabe despot like Donald John Trump and/or the Handmaiden of the Insane – Marjorie Taylor Greene.

FBI agents around the country are working – 24/7 – to unravel the various motives, relationships, goals and actions of the thousands of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on 1/6.

As the bureau has described the Capitol insurrection, to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, many inside the bureau feel the Capitol riot investigation is their biggest case since the 9/11 attacks; and a top priority of FBI agents’ work is to determine the extent to which that violence and chaos was preplanned and coordinated.

And, here the word caution enters into the conversation.

There’s an important legal distinction between gathering like-minded people for a political rally – protected by the First Amendment – and organizing an armed assault on the seat of American government.

The task-at-hand: distinguish which people belong in each category, and who played key roles in committing or coordinating the violence.

Trying to determine how many people went to Washington seeking to engage in violence, even if they weren’t part of any formal organization, will NOT be something, in the way legitimate evidence, that can/will be done by a week from Thursday.

One of the comments cited in a FBI memo that has garnered a ton of attention declared Trump supporters should go to Washington and get “violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die.”

For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing. ~ Simon Wiesenthal.

LIFE’S WORKING PARTS

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. ~ Soren Kierkegaard.

THE WILD BUNCH

This week a ragtag bunch of folks sent shares in GameStop up 500%, along with others to stratospheric levels.

And, the kicker to this story, for this week any way, was the hedge fund crowd took it in the shorts!!! on the other side of these bets losing billions.

For ALL those who soiled themselves, during the hyperventilating over this week’s financial revolution, such investors should regard it as the latest phase in a long evolution – and, doubtful, it will disrupt markets overall.

Balance Sheets – Cash Flow – Leverage – Gross Margins…still have something to say when the word REALITY surfaces above ground.

Amateur “traders” – aka, The Wild Bunch –  are just asserting their advantages.

Wall Street, boys and girls, has ALWAYS been a casino.

NOTHING is new…except…

The Wild Bunch can communicate instantaneously, band together by the thousands, and buy or sell commission-free.

By shutting down the economy, the Coronavirus unleashed a new generation of ‘gamblers’ on the stock market: people, mainly young men, going stir-crazy from quarantine and the lack of professional sports to bet on.

So-o-o, they’ve turned to trading stocks.

At the WallStreetBets community on Reddit, the online platform, users are encouraged to embrace “volatility as an opportunity for fun.”

What’s the point in looking at a company’s balance sheet or figuring out how to do a discounted cash-flow analysis?!!??! 

Computer algorithms that pick up on certain trades and pile in to ride the momentum…what’s a Super Bowl??!

POSSIBLE THIRD VACCINE

Johnson & Johnson said yesterday it would seek emergency use approval early in early February for its one-shot Coronavirus vaccine after results from a late-stage study showed it provided strong protection against COVID-19.

If the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grants the request, which seems likely amid the slow and uneven rollout of vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, Johnson & Johnson has promised to deliver 100 million doses in the United States by the end of June.

Because the vaccine can be administered in one shot – unlike the other vaccines, which require two – that would mean full coverage for 100 million people.

In the clinical trial, which involved 43,783 volunteers across the world, a single shot prevented 66% of moderate and severe cases globally; and 72% in the US.

Worldwide, the shot prevented 85% of severe cases and none of the vaccinated people needed hospitalization or died from COVID-19, according to results released yesterday by Johnson & Johnson and the National Institutes of Health.

Great news!

Scaling up production and the logistics in distribution has to be confronted !!! with authority, NOT just spouting fairy tales, handing out colored balloons and looking for sea gulls.

h/t: National Institutes of Health and Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Boston.

PAY ATTENTION

Yes, I know…you need a new program every day.

Do the numbers of the back of their jerseys match the player wearing them!!!

At this moment in time, it certainly seems like the vast majority of Re’Trump’licans are comfortable staying in the flabby arms of Donald John Trump.

Their collective message is extremely hard to understand/discern: it would seem like their angst centers on rallying around a common grievance that big government, big media and big business are trying to shut them up, shut them out and shut them down.

 The pollution from 4chan appears to be working, and is engrained in the souls of ALL fellow-travelers.

The post-Trump sycophants believe Planet Rationale is an existential threat to their community breakfast table.

Calls for calm and rethinking among the Elephants dissolved yesterday when Kevin McCarthy, Minority Leader of the House, traveled to get his new marching orders from the disgusting presence of the Orange Loser at Mar-a-Lago.

At the same time, Matt “Boy-Toy” Gaetz (R-FL), a vocal Trump huckster, drew 1,000 people at a rally in Wyoming where he attacked House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney, a lightning rod on the right after she voted to impeach Trump.

“Washington, D.C., mythologizes the establishment power brokers like Liz Cheney,” Gaetz said. “But there are more of us than there are of them.”  

More of us than them…??!

SATAN’S PEN?

Joey Biden’s legacy will NOT come down to undoing Trump’s excesses with the stroke of a pen.

We’re 8 days in of the new president, and there are multiple reports Joey has severe writer’s cramp.

Biden has committed to rejoining the Paris climate change agreement, ending the Muslim travel ban, cancelled the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, rescinded funding for and halted construction on the Wall at the southern border, reaffirmed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, mandated mask-wearing on federal grounds, moved to end the federal government’s reliance on private prisons, reversed the ban on transgender military service, and called for agency assessments aimed at advancing racial equity.

Re’Trump’licans are whining about presidential overreach and accusing Biden of betraying his pledge to seek unity.

Tribalism – in ALL forms – lives!

NO way to make law…or, influence old pals.

Allow me to put it another way: The ‘middle’ has been hijacked.

The pen is NOT unity nor healing.

Recognizing we’re only a week-plus, with the new sheriff, but there are many of us that our greatest fears were that Joey would be the puppet president of the alt-Left and, based on the moments at hand, such fears may be warranted.

What Biden’s legacy will depend on is/will be his ability to hammer out agreements with the snake-pit, aka, Congress. 

THE LATEST GAMBIT

There appears to be NOT enough rocks to hide under…

So-o-o, two senators, from opposite sides of the aisle, are working, as I type, to build support for censuring Donald John Trump [remember the Orange??!] over his rhetoric ahead of the 1/6 Capitol insurrection as an alternative to proceeding to an impeachment trial likely to result in his acquittal.

May I present, Senator Susan Collins, from my home state of Maine, and Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA). 

Boy Orange‘s trial is set to begin in earnest in February, and Dems would need support from at least 17 Re’Trump’licans to convict Trump.

Senate Majority Leader Chuckie Schumer (D-NY) rejected the suggestion that the Senate should set aside the trial and said yesterday – again – that the Senate would proceed as planned.

“Make no mistake – there will be a trial, and the evidence against the former president will be presented in living color,” Chuckie said.

It’s a shame there won’t any trained gladiators in the arena!!!

IN a SERIOUS HOLE

NOT since 1946…and, I was there.

Alright, just 3-years old…nevertheless.

The Coronavirus upended American business and households, making 2020 the worst year for US economic growth since 1946.

It is the first time the economy has contracted for the year since 2009, when Gross Domestic Product shrank by 2.5% during the depths of the Great Recession.

It’s also the worst year for economic growth since 1946, when the economy shrank by 11.6% as the nation demobilized from its wartime footing.

The Labor Department separately said the number of workers seeking unemployment benefits dropped last week, indicating a recent easing in the pace of layoffs though the labor market remains mired in a winter slowdown.

New jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, dropped to 847,000 in the week ending January 23rd, down from a revised 914,000 the week before.

Claims have for months remained well above the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000.

To state the obvious, the economy has a long way to go before it heals.

More than 15 million Americans are on unemployment, and jobs that depend heavily on person-to-person contact – such as at hotels, bars and restaurants – may NOT return until the pandemic ends, if ever.

As Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said yesterday there is “nothing more important to the economy right now than people getting vaccinated.”