THE SHOW NOTES: Kanye Cancels Himself, The Primary Shuffle, & Media Coverage of FTX
Welcome! The US economy added 263K jobs in November.
MUST READ: Republicans Need to Embrace Early Voting - WSJ (paywall)
NEW: U.S. Pending Home Sales Drop for Fifth Straight Month in October Setting All-Time Record - Realtor
HEADLINE: Top Conservative Polling Firm: DeSantis Now More Popular With Trump Voters Than Trump - Dailywire
UPDATE: The Senate voted 80-15 yesterday to impose a labor contract on rail workers.
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Clip of the day: In the least surprising news of the day, Kanye West literally defended Hitler live on air with Alex Jones. After having his Twitter account restored following Elon Musk’s purchase of the company, he is now banned from the platform for tweeting a swastica.
Primary Shuffle
Democrats are planning to completely upend the way they pick a presidential nominee. Under the Biden-backed proposal, the order of the new Democratic primary calendar would be South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia, and then Michigan. This means the longtime Iowa caucus would no longer lead the nomination process. The New York Times raises a fair point:
The move would also be a reward for South Carolina, the state that saved Mr. Biden’s candidacy two years ago after he came in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, both of which are smaller and have a higher percentage of white voters.
Economic News
Despite efforts by the Federal Reserve to reign in economic activity to fight surging inflation, job growth and wage growth blew past expectations in November. Seema Shah - chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management - explained why this is a problem to CNBC:
To have 263,000 jobs added even after policy rates have been raised by some 375 basis points is no joke. The labor market is hot, hot, hot, heaping pressure on the Fed to continue raising policy rates.
Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX
BREAKING: The Justice Department wants to investigate fraud allegations against FTX according to a court filing just released this morning.
Media coverage: The New York Post has a fantastic piece on how the media covered Sam Bankman-Fried. Here’s an excerpt:
Just look at how his friends at The New York Times have treated him. In recent weeks they have tried to portray the collapse of FTX as — at the worst — a case of unfortunate mismanagement. The poor diddums billionaire boy just became too successful too fast. Problems are bound to happen. You know how it is.
This week the paper went one further. They actually hosted the fraudster at a New York Times event. Their description of him in the event program was “29-year old American investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.” Well that’s one way to describe him. At the end of the event the moderator asked everyone to join him in applauding their guest and the audience dutifully did so.
More: CNBC is equally culpable as they cheered on Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX without question over the past year. Watch this from Grabien:
The rest of the news:
Warnock holds a narrow edge over Walker in final undecided Senate contest - CNN
13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in the war - BBC
Newt Gingrich warns GOP: Biden's winning - Axios
Pennsylvania Republicans reconsider their war on mail voting - Politico
Iranian security forces kill anti-government protester celebrating World Cup defeat, rights group says - CNN
Putin fell down stairs, soiled himself as speculation over worsening health grows: report - NY Post
World’s oldest tortoise has seen off two world wars and the British Empire - MSN
World Cup 2022: Why Japan’s controversial goal vs. Spain stood despite appearing to go out of play - Yahoo
Data Scientists Grapple With How to Ask, ‘What’s Your Gender?’ - WSJ (paywall)
Tweets that caught my eye: