How’s it going down in Florida these days? The inflation rate hit a two-year low in June but the financial relief may not be felt in Florida. The Federal Reserve raised the interest rate again on Wednesday in an effort to lower inflation. It comes as the Tampa Bay area still has among the highest inflation rates reported, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater has a Consumer Price Index, which is measured for inflation, of 7.3% for the year ended in May. Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index grew at an annual rate of 3% in June — the smallest increase since March 2021, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. South Florida is also reporting similar numbers. The CPI for Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach is at 6.9% in June from the year before. […] Those like Nhick Ramiro Pacis of Tampa keep an eye on his budget from the rising costs at the grocery to his insurance. “It’s really affecting a lot of people. Not only me,” Pacis said. Like other Floridians, Pacis has had to make adjustments.
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In light of the news that Trump ordered his minions to “erase the server” that held the surveillance footage outside the storage room at Mar-a-lago, I’m just going to leave that here for you to enjoy. Trump projection 101.
Trump addressed the new superseding indictment: Donald Trump on Friday defended the handling of surveillance footage at his Florida home that is at the center of major new criminal charges in the federal case over the former president’s retention of classified documents. “These are my tapes that we gave to them,” Trump told a conservative radio host in his first public interview since being accused of the new crimes. “And they basically then say, ‘That’s not enough,’” Trump said on “The John Fredericks Show.” Trump, the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, also vowed to continue his campaign even if he is convicted and sentenced. “Not at all, there’s nothing in the Constitution to say that it could,” Trump said when asked if being sentenced would end his presidential bid. Later in the day, Trump fired off several social media posts raging against the Department of Justice.
Be careful with your car’s AC North Carolina ain’t Phoenix, but it’s still hot. Especially on the coastal plain. Probably where you are as well. CNN’s Alexandra Meeks issues a warning in her “5 Things” newsletter: More than 140 million Americans from coast-to-coast are under heat alerts today. Parts of the Northeast will see their highest temperatures this year while temperatures in the Midwest will be up to 20 degrees above normal. The extreme weather has also gripped the country’s southern tier from Southern California to Florida since June. And Phoenix, one of the hardest-hit cities in this summer’s scorching heat, is in its fourth week in a row of temperatures over 110 degrees, smashing a previous record of 18 straight days. President Joe Biden is expected to announce actions to combat extreme weather in a briefing today as the heat wave expands across the US. This was Phoenix in May: Another toddler got burned the same way in Colorado this month. Solar-heated hot tub You thought Florida was too politically hot for trans people?
“To serve Man,” indeed “The Beat with Ari Melber” on Wednesday featured a segment in which astrophysicist Adam Frank offered skeptical commentary on the congressional UFO/UAP hearings. In her wrap-up, MSNBC’s Katie Phang quipped that she got her information on aliens from a “documentary” called Independence Day. I like a good movie about aliens as much as the next person, but they are movies. The Twitter/Xitter/whatever comments on the hearings were withering. Most ran along the lines of, “So aliens travel here possibly from hundreds of light years away only to crash? Repeatedly?” Perhaps what we need more than a congressional hearing on UFOs/UAPs is one on the credulity pandemic.
As I write this, CNN is reporting that Trump’s lawyers are meeting with the Special Counsel today as the Grand Jury has convened in DC. Buckle up. Meanwhile, here’s Trump caterwauling last night. It would appear he knew …. something: Lol! “We’ll have fun on the stand with all of these people that say the Presidential Election wasn’t Rigged and Stollen. THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY!!!” he declared, spelling “stolen” as he often does, as “stollen,” which is actually a popular German Christmastime dessert.
He sounds a little uhm — over-stimulated to me. Meanwhile, one of the most right wing members of congress doesn’t care for this idea that slavery was actually beneficial for the enslaved: And …. DeSantis, of course, goes after Donalds: Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. affirmed to superintendents Wednesday afternoon that the standards will be approved in their current form. Responding to Donalds, Diaz slammed the congressman as “supposedly conservative” and part of the federal government trying to “dictate Florida’s education standards.” “This new curriculum is based on truth,” he said. “We will not back down from teaching our nation’s true history at the behest of a woke @WhiteHouse, nor at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman.” Jeremy Redfern, the press secretary for Gov. Ron DeSantis, also called Donalds a “supposed conservative.” “Supposed conservatives in the federal government are pushing the same false narrative that originated from the @WhiteHouse,” Redfern said.
Overthrowing democracy is not like a health care debate or a highway bill A good piece by Mark Z Barabak in the LA Times: Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. That is an incontrovertible fact. And yet for many Republicans — including most of those seeking the party’s 2024 nomination — Trump’s irrefutable loss and direct responsibility for the Jan. 6 insurrection are a verity they dodge and duck. At least right now. Florida’s flailing governor, Ron DeSantis offers a prime example. The won’t-back-down-culture warrior, who gleefully stoops to swat at teachers and transgender people, meekly tucks his tail when it comes to Trump’s Big Lie and Jan. 6. DeSantis won’t say if he believes President Biden was duly elected and suggests it’s wrong to call the assault on the Capitol “a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States” — though how else would you define a violent attempt to overturn the result of a free and fair election? South Carolina Sen.
Even Fox can’t deny it anymore. Dean Baker with the deets: Soaring Structure Investment Makes Up for Slowing Consumption, as GDP Grows at 2.4 Percent in Q2 The economy grew at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter, as strong investment growth offset slower consumption growth. Consumption spending grew at a just a 1.6 percent annual rate, down from a 4.6 percent rate in the first quarter. However, non-residential investment grew at 7.7 percent rate. Investment accounted for 0.99 percentage points of the growth in the quarter, only slightly less than the 1.12 pp attributable to consumption. Soaring Factory Investment Continues to be Major Factor Driving Growth All the categories of investment showed healthy growth in the quarter, with equipment investment growing at a 10.8 percent annual rate after falling the prior two categories. Those drops were likely driven largely by continuing supply chain problems with cars and semiconductor chips. Structure investment increased at a 9.7 percent annual rate after growing at a 15.8 percent annual rate the last two quarters. This is driven by factory construction growing at a 94.0 percent annual rate.
Really???? Dreher is a big fan of modern fascist Viktor Orban, so I’m not surprised. In case you don’t know, Nate Hochman was fired from the Desantis campaign this week after surreptitiously creating and disseminating two highly offensive videos, the first attacking transgender people (and Trump) and the second extolling DeSantis’ leadership using Nazi imagery: DeSantis was warned and so was Dreher. They didn’t care. Tim Miller wrote about the hiring months ago: There is no role in which the old maxim “personnel is policy” is more apt than that of presidential speechwriter. And there is good reason for that role to hold its exalted place in the mythos of the office. Trump’s “American Carnage” was no doubt shaped by the dark, nativist views of his Gollum-like muse. Obama’s West Wing–era hopey-changey optimism was colored by the earnest and youthful pod-bros who wrote for him. And Bush’s Chesterton-infused evangelizing was sculpted by the faith of Michael Gerson and Matthew Scully.