All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Steel Inquisitor]

https://www.vox.com/2014/9/24/683609...g-not-retiring
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...0G12V020140801

These are 2014 articles where people from liberal voices ask her toa retire all citing fears of her dying on the watch of a GOP. Fact is she gambled that she would die with a Dem in the WH, and she came close but second-place winner of the SCOTUS deathmatch means squat. Some articles in 2018 and one in 2020 highlighting the same. The fact is RBG's advanced age meant that the situation last Autumn was entirely forseeable. People repeatedly pointed this out.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...g-obama-trump/
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...-question.html

In politics when you gamble, you usually gamble with other people's lives and if your gamble works, you get the praise for landing on your feet. But if you lose, your action and decision to take that gamble doesn't look so hot. RBG focused a lot more on her career as a SCOTUS judge and a jurist and maybe she did good but the fact is that as a result of her refusal to step down a whole lot of innocent people are going to suffer under a fascist and fascisizing ideology of the GOP, while she shuffles off stage with a state funeral.

I don't think it's being disrespectful to call that out. Yes, it should never have come down to that. Yes it's unfair that we have a SCOTUS system without term limits or without court packing or other measures that doesn't put so many undue stakes on the court...but given that was the governing rules as far as RBG was concerned, she should have retired when she had the chance to hand her seat to a Dem appointee.

Calling out an 80 year old dead lady because she made the wrong decision to retire is not something I would say is respectful. Reality is not about the should it is about that is, and nobody can predict the future with true accuracy.

[JCAll]

Calling out an 80 year old dead lady because she made the wrong decision to retire is not something I would say is respectful. Reality is not about the should it is about that is, and nobody can predict the future with true accuracy.

Literally everyone was professing undying love for RGB the day before she died. That went out the window fast.

[numberthirty]

Calling out an 80 year old dead lady because she made the wrong decision to retire is not something I would say is respectful. Reality is not about the should it is about that is, and nobody can predict the future with true accuracy.

Here is the entire problem with this whole "True Accuracy..." bit you are on about...

Starting with Newt Gingrich winding up Speaker Of The House?

You didn't need anything like "True Accuracy..." to attempt to divine when it was going to be time to make a play.

The correct answer every single time from then until now was/is "When You Actually Have A Realistic Chance Of Winding Up With An Acceptable Person To Take Over..."

Not the second or third time that you might have such a chance. The first opportunity that presents itself.

The lay of the land was crystal clear for long enough that anyone should have been able to successfully do math that basic.

[Malvolio]

Republican hypocrisy in a nutshell.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Jack Whitley, the former Chairman of the Big Stone County Republican Party in Minnesota whose bigotry went into overload in November 2014 and compelled him to post on Facebook to say Islam is a form of witchcraft, all Muslims must accept Jesus or leave the United States, that the First Amendment in regards to Freedom of Religion does not apply to them, that practitioners of Islam are "parasites" and Satan has infiltrated most “supposedly religious” industries like Christian music, and the church needs to get more militantly anti-gay and anti-abortion to prove to him they’re serious about it. That got his Facebook account deleted, and since he was fired not just from his position as Big Stone County Chairman of the GOP, but even the hardware store where he worked

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Eric Turner, a man who served twelve terms in office over three decades in the Indiana House of Representatives until he resigned in November of 2014 for killing legislation that would have halted new nursing home construction in Indiana and could have potentially harmed his family's nursing home development business. Other than this major ethical lapse, we also noted that Turner kept trying to add amendments to Indiana's state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman, voted to drug test welfare recipients (but voted to block a bill that would have forced state legislators to do the same) and defund Indiana Planned Parenthood clinics. Turner didn't just resign in disgrace and retire from politics, he left the state of Indiana altogether.

On this date in both 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, who after taking office, had thea Republican-controlled state legislature abuse the procedure of "immediate effect" votes to repeatedly pass legislation by a voice vote determined as "won/lost" by the Republican acting as Speaker of the House at the time to grant Snyder a rubber-stamp to do things like cut funding from public school classrooms to pay for retirement funds for school employees when a much more prudent use of taxpayer money to solve that crisis would not have been to give $1.7 billion in corporate tax breaks while also raising taxes on lower class families. Snyder also made Michigan a right-to-work state, with false promises of job creation that never arrived and the only real result was to reduce membership in unions. He also repeatedly attempted to get legislation passed to start drug-testing welfare recipients, only to watch predictably as the program cost a fortune and drug testing and found statistically no significant drug use. As in, NONE. But perhaps the most controversial of the legislation signed by Gov. Snyder was Michigan's new emergency manager laws, which would allow a city's local officials to place a lone individual in charge after an "emergency", which in Detroit, was meant to be the city declaring bankruptcy. This was despite the measure being placed on the ballot in November of 2012 and rejected, so a new version was hastily thrown together by the Michigan GOP. And, it's that emergency manager law that allowed Governor Snyder to place Michael Brown as Emergency Manager of Flint, Michigan on November 29th, 2011. Dennis Rick Snyder's chief of staff then began insisting the city's water supply be provided by the Flint River, known for being particularly corrosive, because hey, let's save a couple hundred dollars a year on cheaper ideas. Well, the switch came in spite of repeated warnings from, y'know, smart water engineers, and in April of 2014, and the lake water began corroding the old lead pipes leading into the city... meaning those lead particles were actually in people's drinking water, and poisoning them. Children were drinking the water, which slows their development, as well. Six months later, General Motors stopped using the water in their Flint plants, as it was too corrosive to touch engine parts. As the contamination began to be bad enough that residents could actually visibly SEE the iron and lead in water that was clearly brown over several months... the Snyder administration lied and told people the water was still safe. Internal e-mails however, show they KNEW they had a major city drinking poisoned water for months, and their attempts at a coverup meant people were still drinking it. The Snyder administration actually tried arguing with the findings of the scientists who were trying to survey the damage that was done. The damage to the pipes would take YEARS to fix (and still isn’t, as of this posting as he just left office). Gov. Snyder's response to the crisis (that he helped create) was tepid, and in the meantime, an outbreak of Legionairre's disease occurred from the river water, leading to at least nine attributed deaths. His promise to bring in an independent investigator in to investigate how bad his administration botched things was also quickly broken when Snyder's own campaign donor became the "independent investigator". Rick Snyder was called before Congress to be raked over the coals about Flint, is still likely to get called to be grilled about potentially obstructing the federal investigation into his incompetence now that Democrats have control of that body again. The only reason Snyder was not impeached for his incompetence is that Michigan, hhas a nearly impossible process for removing a governor from office. What really pisses us off here at CSGOPOTD, though, is because of Rick Snyder's incompetence... Flint, Michigan still does not have clean drinking water, 69 months after this crisis began (YES, that’s almost SEVEN YEARS NOW) and only days ago, Snyder finally was charged with a crime in his role for poisoning a city's water supply.

On this date in 2019 "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Allen Quist, a former Minnesota state legislator who served four terms there back in the 1980s, twice ran for Governor of Minnesota in both 1994 and 1998, made two runs for Congress to serve Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District in 2010 and 2012, and tried to get back into the Minnesota state legislature unsuccessfully in a special election in 2013. Now, we want to point out that Allen Quist is a political mentor to another CSGOPOTD alumni here, Michelle Bachmann, and if you know anything about politics, you know you had best buckle up for a lot of crazy. Some of the more insane things Allen Quist has said, done, and believes:

• As a Minnesota State Senator, Allen Quist “went undercover” at a gay bookstore to see if people were having gay sex there in the bathroom. Quist denied this in 2012, but finally admitted it after the interview where he confessed to it in the 1990s was unearthed by reporters.
• In 1986, when Quist’s first wife was tragically killed in a car accident while six months pregnant, he had her fetus placed in her arms at her open casket funeral. (Quist has been quoted as saying that he believes abortion should be classified as a first degree homicide.)
• In 1988, Quist argued against having a gay counseling center at the University of Minnesota-Mankato, comparing it to building a center to support the Ku Klux Klan.
• In 1993, while campaigning for Governor of Minnesota, Quist called for mandatory AIDS testing to be done on anyone seeking a marriage license.
• In a 1994 interview, Allen Quist argued that men have a “genetic predisposition to lead the family”. He repeatedly denied making this statement during his 2012 campaign, until audio emerged.
• In 2010, Quist cited his desire to go to Congress because he considered defeating liberals to be a more important battle than defeating terrorism:
• Allen Quist argued that “human beings lived alongside stegosaurs” citing an artist’s image from a 12th Century Cambodian temple as proof.

Quist is now into his late seventies, and unlikely to ever win political office.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day profiled former Colorado State Senator Kent Lambert, who served in office from 2011-2018 after spending the prior four years to that in the Colorado House of Representatives. He earned himself a day under CSGOPOTD’s radar because of his twelve year career of homophobia, including how during the 2007 session when he filed a formal ethics complaint against the Colorado Education Association for sending emails making claims Lambert disagreed with (it was dismissed by the Colorado Legislative Council’s Executive Committee) and his attempt to ban adoption by same-sex couples. In 2010, he went “all in” to by badmouthing Matthew Shephard, the victim of a hate crime, when the foundation named for him was to be centered in Denver, saying ”What Hickenlooper did was compare people in rural Colorado to terrorists and murderers because of the homosexual up in Wyoming that was assaulted.” By 2013, as the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling approached, Lambert grew incensed enough with state governments around the country, including his own, trying to legalize gay marriage that Lambert referred to just civil unions for gay and lesbian couples as “mind control”. We’ll keep this profile very brief, and note that in 2010, Lambert also sponsored anti-immigrant legislation based on Arizona’s SB 1070 to Colorado, sponsored a bill to attempt to change the meaning of a “person” in the legal definition of murder to include fetuses to outlaw abortion, and sponsored legislation to remove background checks on firearm transfers. After coming up against term limits in the Colorado state legislature in 2018, Kent Lambert was forced to retire, and as such we will retire his profile and take a look at another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 956-45, since this was established in July 2014.


Cindy Pugh

Welcome to what is the 956th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Cindy Pugh, a former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2012-2018. She was a Tea Party organizer prior to 2012 who became a disciple of Michelle Bachmann (uh oh) and upset Steve Smith in the GOP primary for 33B when he was, at the time, the longest-tenured member of the Minnesota GOP.

In the six years she was in office, she had several extreme decisions in her voting record, including but not limited to her vote against legalizing same sex marriage, her support of transphobic public bathroom legislation, her sponsorship of a bill to create unnecessary regulations upon abortion clinics in the hope of having them all shut down in the state, her vote against equal pay legislation, and her vote against raising the minimum wage in Minnesota during the greatest period of income inequality in our nation in a century. And yet, NONE OF THAT is why we’re profiling Pugh.

In January of 2018, Pugh decided to go on Facebook and lob Islamophobic conspiracy theories. She claimed “a friend” (never named) went to a caucus training held at a local mosque, where he alleged he witnessed Muslim-Americans being taught to “penetrate” and “infiltrate” American politics to enact a Muslim political agenda. It was bigoted enough that the Minnesota GOP almost unanimously condemned her remarks. Pugh tried to pass off her post as an attempt to create interest in the caucus process for Minnesotans, but nobody was buying her bulls***.

When the Blue Wave hit in 2018, Pugh was defeated by Democrat Kelly Morrison and was bounced out of the state legislature. She was last seen trying to moderate sex education classes in public schools, and filing a baseless lawsuit against Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips for supposedly violating the Stock Act. We’re thinking this will be the first and only time we profile her.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Barring a backlash in midterms, yeah would have.

I've always been of the belief Moscow Mitch sacrificed the House in the 2018 midterms to seat Kegger Kavanaugh on the bench and would've done the same with RBG if she retired early like Democrats insisted (in hindsight) she had done. And, I'm sure Ginsberg knew that too.

====================

2nd Officer Who Responded To U.S. Capitol Insurrection Dies By Suicide, Chief Says

Jeffrey Smith died Jan 15, just over a week after he responded to the violent Capitol Hill insurrection. Another line item on the butcher bill of Trump and insurrectionist Republicans in Congress.

**********

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Puts Kevin McCarthy On Notice: ‘QAnon Members’ Control House GOP

The Democratic lawmaker warns that the Republican caucus has taken a “nefarious turn” toward conspiracy theories and white supremacy. And McCarthy flew down to Florida to kiss the ring of Donald Trump. Meanwhile....

**********

RNC Chair Calls QAnon ‘Beyond Fringe’ And ‘Dangerous’

In an interview with the Associated Press RNC Ronna McDaniel forcefully condemned the pro-Trump conspiracy theorists. People need to pay attention, those nutbags are a serious threat.

**********

Seattle Area Hospital Under Fire After Offering Donors Easy Access To COVID-19 Vaccine

Overlake Medical Center reportedly sent an email to about 110 top donors with a link to sign up for appointments “by invite” only. This is both predictable, and disgusting! Meanwhile....

**********

Fauci On Trump Team Using Him In Ad: ‘What Is This Bulls**t That You People Are Doing?’

Speaking with The Atlantic, Anthony Fauci described the Trump White House as a “surrealistic experience” run by a man who was “not interested in the outbreak.” Imagine what would've happened if Trump won a second term. Horrifying!

**********

Terror Bulletin Warns Of More Politically Motivated Violence After Biden Inauguration

The Department of Homeland Security cited “a heightened threat environment” across the country. And this threat comes not from Blacks or Muslims, but WHITES!

[Robotman]

Proud Boys Leader Was A ‘Prolific’ FBI Informant

Tarrio repeatedly worked undercover with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on cases involving drugs, human smuggling and gambling, his own lawyer, a federal prosecutor and an FBI agent all said during a 2014 court hearing, Reuters report.
The right-wing leader allegedly turned informant after he was arrested in 2012 for fraud.


So have the police been letting the Douche Boys get away with more because Tarrio was working for them? I wonder if he’ll now have a huge target on his back because he’s been outed as an informant.

[numberthirty]

Proud Boys Leader Was A ‘Prolific’ FBI Informant

Tarrio repeatedly worked undercover with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on cases involving drugs, human smuggling and gambling, his own lawyer, a federal prosecutor and an FBI agent all said during a 2014 court hearing, Reuters report.
The right-wing leader allegedly turned informant after he was arrested in 2012 for fraud.


So have the police been letting the Douche Boys get away with more because Tarrio was working for them? I wonder if he’ll now have a huge target on his back because he’s been outed as an informant.

So...

You got the folks trying to convince other folks that this "Q" character is smack dab in the middle of everything that is "Really..." happening.

"Q" is right in the midst of all the stuff that the man is supposedly "Actually..." doing, and he/she never once thought to let everyone know that this guy was a rat?

That's what you want me to believe was actually happening?

[Steel Inquisitor]

My problem with this entire argument isn't that specific individuals shouldn't be held accountable for their actions, it's that you're attempting to paint an entire group of people by the worst actors among their number. It's the same thing Fox News does with the BLM movement. "The evil left", happy with nothing less than the destruction of our country and everything we hold dear! Except they're not. They just see the way to a better country going down a different path. Some are bad actors (though a very small percentage of the population) just as there are in far-right and even centrist camps, and those individuals should be held accountable when their actions are over the line. I don't think anyone (myself included) has ever disputed that here.

It's not about the left as a whole it's the and actors on the left, which you continue to diminish and ignore how badly they're acting despite them doing things like destroying peoples lives for just having a different opinion. No bad actors should be tolerated by the left, all they do is make the left look bad by association, especially when they're welcomed with open arms. But this argument is that you against holding them accountable, the Bernie Bros have been erased or diminished in these conversations despite their acts being proven, instead Democrats and their victims should just move on. Don't conflate my argument with Fox News, the Bernie Bros aren't BLM by any stretch. Frankly, its insulting to let the Bros slink behind the left to use them as a shield for accountability, that's a tactic the right uses to defend groups like the Proud Boys.

But I feel like this is more of an emotional reaction to try to label and dismiss people who hold different political opinions than you. And I repeat, I think labeling anyone who disagrees with you as not only wrong but "evil" in order to keep your narrative of the world pure and unchallenged is far more dangerous than posting memes of mittens. It's how you end up in a bubble and reacting emotionally against anything that doesn't fit within that bubble. People have different opinions than you. You are not always going to be right, whatever your feelings (this goes for everyone, we all have blind spots and ignorance).

Except I'm not the one who's been calling them evil. Bernie Bros destroying lives is not having a difference of opinion, that's what the GOP are doing right now after January 6th. This is projection. I'm fine with disagreeing with the left on things, I just don't like it when the people involved try to threaten and doxx other candidates supporters and Democratic officials. That's breaking the law, not having a political opinion. This problem does have to do with bubbles, but not like you think it does. The left, as a group, are supposed to be about accountability so why are they having such a problem holding criminals in their own ranks accountable? That's not a good look for the movement, and implies a bigger problem then the Bernie Bros is afoot. That they're just saying the quiet part out loud. I would very much say making death threats and doxxing is a blind spot for the Bernie Bros, which is baffling why your argument is that I should just ignore it? That's exactly what the GOP do when they're caught doing something bad, they want unity over accountability. Where's the accountability for the Bernie Bros? And again conflating the memes as though that's all the problem with Bernie Bros is. If that was it, nobody would care. It's disingenuous to reduce the subject to that statement s it diminishes the pain the Bernie Bros have done to their victims and harmed the movement's relationship with the coalition.

And when people are wrong you're not helping the situation when you treating them like they're nazis (unless they're actually nazis).

They don't have be Nazis to be scum which should be booted out of political spaces for breaking the law and act like there left version of Trumpers. How does normalising criminals attacking their victims help the left? The solution isn't to just shrug, call them scamps and move on like nothing horrific happened.

[Tami]

McConnell Was Done With Trump. His Party Said Not So Fast.

WASHINGTON — Three times in recent weeks, as Republicans grappled with a deadly attack on the Capitol and their new minority status in Washington, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky carefully nudged open the door for his party to kick Donald J. Trump to the curb, only to find it slammed shut.

So his decision on Tuesday to join all but five Republican senators in voting to toss out the House’s impeachment case against Mr. Trump as unconstitutional seemed to be less a reversal than a recognition that the critical mass of his party was not ready to join him in cutting loose the former president. Far from repudiating Mr. Trump, as it appeared they might in the days after the Jan. 6 rampage at the Capitol, Republicans have reverted to the posture they adopted when he was in office — unwilling to cross a figure who continues to hold outsize sway in their party.

“Anybody surprised by that vote wasn’t paying attention before yesterday,” said Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a close ally of the Republican leader.

He made clear to associates after the Jan. 6 attack that he viewed Mr. Trump’s actions around the riot as impeachable and saw a Senate trial as an opportunity to purge him from the party, prompting an article in The New York Times that his office notably did not challenge. In a letter to colleagues, Mr. McConnell signaled he was open to conviction, a stark departure from a year before when he had declared that he was not an “impartial juror” in Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial and guided him to acquittal.

And then last week, in a speech on the Senate floor, Mr. McConnell flatly said the president had “provoked” the mob that sent the vice president and lawmakers fleeing as it violently stormed the Capitol, trying to stop Congress from formalizing his election loss.

They were striking moves for Mr. McConnell, who for four years consistently supported and enabled Mr. Trump, including backing his refusal to concede the election for more than a month after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner. Mr. Trump spent that period spreading the false claims of voter fraud that fueled the Jan. 6 rampage.

Still, the always-restrained Kentuckian never mounted a campaign to persuade other Republicans to join him, knowing how difficult it would be for his party to break from someone who polls indicate that half of its voters believe should remain their leader. If all senators were voting, it would take 17 Republicans joining every Democrat to convict Mr. Trump, something that seemed all but unthinkable after Tuesday’s vote.

“Let’s face it: Many of the people there — they want to be re-elected, most of them,” said Bob Corker, a former Republican senator from Tennessee who retired in 2018 after clashing with Mr. Trump. “For those people, whose service in the Senate is their entire life, I’m sure just what they are hearing back home has an effect on them.”

When Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, raised an objection to Mr. Trump’s trial, arguing that trying a former president would be unconstitutional, 45 of the 50 Republicans in the Senate — including Mr. McConnell — supported his challenge.

By Wednesday, the Republican Party stated an official position against holding Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

McConnell Was Done With Trump. His Party Said Not So Fast.

No surprise there. All those gutless Republicans in Congress fear losing support from Trump's legion of lemmings if they vote for impeachment. Hell, Trump's recent threat to launch his own political party no doubt hardened the GOP's resolve to continue kissing his orange ass, thus Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's trip to Florida so he could be first in line to start the anal osculation. Trump has gone from political figure to godfather, and I'm having a hard time deciding which is worse.

[Immortal Weapon]

Is financial news within this thread boundaries? What's going on in the stock market is crazy. I'm having a ball seeing hedge fund managers get fucked

[numberthirty]

Is financial news within this thread boundaries? What's going on in the stock market is crazy. I'm having a ball seeing hedge fund managers get fucked

Yep.

Think this whole thing got a few mentions around noon yesterday.

It's interesting, if nothing else.

[Mister Mets]

Of course, the GOP would always have nuked the filibuster for the supreme court majority they always enjoy. There are no principles but the continuance of minority GOP rule in the Republican party.

It was an easier vote with Gorsuch (a conventionally qualified candidate replacing another conservative) than it would have been with Kavanaugh or Coney Barrett.

Democrats wasted the filibuster on Gorsuch.

Calling out an 80 year old dead lady because she made the wrong decision to retire is not something I would say is respectful. Reality is not about the should it is about that is, and nobody can predict the future with true accuracy.

This gets into some weird questions. Should Supreme Court justices act like politicians, timing their departures based on partisan advantage?

But it should have been foreseeable in early 2014 that Republicans had a good chance of flipping the Senate later that year, and the White House a few years later.

Ginsburg's daughter suggested she stayed on because she wanted to be replaced by the first female President.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/m...sor-obama.html

In an interview with Elle Magazine in the fall of 2014, Ginsburg said that “anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided.” No one as liberal as she was could get confirmed, she suggested. She noted that her work production hadn’t slowed. “She had beaten the odds every day of her life and had weathered serious illness in 1999 and 2010,” Resnik says. “Fairly, from her perspective, she saw herself as able to manage the health challenges of aging.”

But Republicans retook the Senate in 2014, as Chemerinsky predicted. The window closed for Ginsburg to step down while Democrats had the power to confirm her successor. “She thought she had clarity about her capacity to do the work,” Resnik says. “She saw around so many corners in the court’s jurisprudence. Why wasn’t she able to see around this one?”

When Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia after his death in February 2016, Ginsburg had a chance to become the senior justice of a liberal-moderate majority of five. She would have capped off her career by writing majority opinions in major cases, making a mark on the law that largely eluded her (with the important exception of her 1996 majority decision that found the all-male admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute, a state-supported military college, unconstitutional). Instead, Republicans blocked Garland, a move Ginsburg did not anticipate, according to her daughter, Jane C. Ginsburg, who is a law professor at Columbia.

Then Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election, upending the gamble Ginsburg had taken. “I think that Mother, like many others, expected that Hillary Clinton would win the nomination and the presidency, and she wanted the first female president to name her successor,” Jane Ginsburg emailed me on Sunday. When I asked if Justice Ginsburg reflected differently on her decision to stay after her cancer came back, Jane answered, “Not to my knowledge.”

This ultimately means that the Democrats lost a Supreme Court seat due to prioritizing identity politics.

Is financial news within this thread boundaries? What's going on in the stock market is crazy. I'm having a ball seeing hedge fund managers get fucked

It is unambiguously news. The New York Tmes has an overview.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/b...reet-bets.html

But the trade that captures the David-versus-Goliath nature of the moment involves GameStop, the troubled video game retailer that was once a fixture in suburban malls.

On Wall Street, individual investors are often derided as “dumb money,” destined to lose against the highly compensated analysts and traders who buy and sell stocks for a living. But in recent days, individual investors — many of them followers of a popular, juvenile, foul-mouthed Reddit page called Wall Street Bets — have upended that narrative by banding together to put the squeeze on at least two hedge funds that had bet that GameStop’s shares would fall.

While the hedge funds and other professional money managers had been shorting GameStop’s shares, betting that its stock was doomed to further decline, the retail investors — online traders, mom-and-pop investors, small brokers and others — have been pushing the other way, buying shares and stock options. That caused GameStop’s market value to increase to over $24 billion from $2 billion in a matter of days. Its shares have risen over 1,700 percent since December. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, the market value rose over $10 billion.

The tribal framing online, as a kind of team sport pitting plucky upstarts against well-heeled Wall Streeters, has been especially helpful in motivating more investors to participate. This week, Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, fueled the trading by posting about the Reddit page on Twitter. And speculation is growing that other investors are seeing fresh opportunities to push the stock even higher.

Ben Patte, 16, a high school student in Wisconsin who said he made $750 off GameStop stock, said the campaign felt like vindication for himself and fellow young traders. “It’s a good opportunity to make money and stick it to the hedge funds,” he said. “By buying GameStop, it’s kind of like beating them at their own game.”

No one knows how this ends. Some analysts say the intense activity could eventually prompt a wider sell-off in the market by forcing hedge funds on the losing side of these trades to sell parts of their portfolios to raise cash to cover their losses. While this speculative frenzy played out on the market’s sidelines, the S&P 500 fell more than 2.5 percent on Wednesday, its worst day since late October, as the Federal Reserve gave a glum assessment of the economy and before a number of big tech companies announced their earnings.

“What happens in situations of stress is that people are forced to raise funds and that often means selling your winners,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers in Greenwich, Conn. “How does it end? Badly. Eventually, the bigger the balloon, the louder the pop,” said Mr. Sosnick. “When does it end? I don’t know.”

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On Wednesday, the retail brokerage firm TD Ameritrade put restrictions on the trading of GameStop, AMC and other stocks, citing “unprecedented market conditions.” And market regulators could step in.

But for now, the siege is on.

Elizabeth Warren says that this calls for regulation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ity-psaki-says