Day: March 12, 2024

The GOP House Caucus are like those fools in horror movies who know exactly where the monster is, and instead of running for their lives, they say cheerfully: “Let’s ask the monster if he’d like tea or coffee.”

Everyone is leaving the GOP House. The House on Capitol Hill has become completely dysfunctional. Sanity, tranquility, and getting ANYTHING done have become estranged from GOP House members. Its family is scattering. GOP Rep Ken Buck has announced he will leave Congress NEXT WEEK.

At this point, I half expect the GOP will not have the House majority for much longer, and I’m talking about BEFORE the election. Buck was brutally honest, calling out the dysfunction in Congress and saying that this is: the worst year of the “nine years and three months I’ve been in Congress.”

There’s more. Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash, Buck said OTHER Members are feeling the same way, which raises the question of who is next. It really is like playing a game of clues. It could be anyone. Buck said GOP house members have descended into “bickering and nonsense. And not really doing the job for the American people.”

Buck also said that he hears from people who are unhappy with Trump everywhere he goes. Buck had announced he was not planning to seek reelection, but he was NOT expected to leave this quickly. He is leaving the GOP with another vacant seat in a sea of disappearing Congresspeople.

I say the GOP is not the GOP anymore. They are the Trump party. That is why they need to lose every election. They are a pale shadow of what they once were, and since that shadow has only one objective – staying loyal to Donald Trump — it appears the dysfunction will simply go on and on and on.

The post Another one bites the dust appeared first on Palmer Report.

A New Jersey school district has apologized for an email to staff encouraging them to “contextualize” lessons about Ramadan by explaining how Israel prevents Palestinian Muslims from celebrating the holiday as it “enacts a genocide.” 

It also refers to the U.S. and Israel as “co-conspirators.”

Israel and the U.S. have rejected claims that Israel’s military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack is genocidal.

“Personally, I am disappointed, angered, and saddened by the communication that occurred,” wrote Kevin F. Gilbert, acting superintendent of the South Orange and Maplewood school district, in an email Monday to parents and the school community.

He described the memo as “politically inflammatory” and wrote that it “mischaracterizes a historically complex problem.”

The email was distributed to staff at Columbia High School on Monday, the day after Ramadan began, and offered “9 considerations for your classroom.” It explained the holiday, terms associated with it and how to wish someone a good Ramadan in Arabic.

But one line in particular shocked many at the school, located in Maplewood, a New York City suburb with a sizable Jewish population. “It is imperative to contextualize that the U.S. is a co-conspirator with Israel, preventing Muslim Palestinians from partaking in Ramadan as the Israeli Zionist occupation enacts a genocide against them.” 

The kerfuffle over the email is but one example of how the war in Gaza has heightened tensions far from the conflict. On American college campuses, and at some high schools, Jewish and Israeli students and staff say they are harassed by pro-Palestinian, anti-war demonstrators who charge them with supporting a genocide.

The school retracted the email within hours, after many in the community who had seen it on social media and elsewhere decried it as antisemitic propaganda.

“My first reaction was first, ‘Okay, this looks fairly benign,” said Michael Goldberg, parent of a 2020 graduate of the school and a former member of South Orange’s town council. “But then as you continue to read, you realize how ugly and antisemitic information was embedded in the document.”

“I was disgusted,” he said.

The post NJ school district retracts email encouraging staff to teach about Ramadan in context of Israeli ‘genocide’ of Palestinians appeared first on The Forward.

Andrew Chen

• The Grand Canyon is popular, so I visited in February to avoid the busy summer months.
• Temperatures were brisk, but I still experienced the stunning views and trails of the national park.
• I loved the peaceful atmosphere, the empty roads and paths, and the offseason hotel pricing.

The Grand Canyon has always been on my travel bucket list, with its sweeping views that warp one’s sense of distance, cliff faces that tower over rugged hiking trails, and buildings steeped with history.

But Grand Canyon National Park is one of the most visited national parks in the United States, and it gets especially crowded in the summer months.

When my travel partner and I started planning a February trip to Arizona and Nevada to escape the cold northeast winter, I figured it would be the perfect time to visit the iconic landmark.

By visiting during the offseason, I was hoping to avoid crowds while still getting the Grand Canyon experience. Here’s what I found.

The South Rim is the only part of the national park that’s open during the winter months. We arrived on a Sunday and got into the park in minutes.There were only a few cars at the entrance gate to the national park when we arrived.

Andrew Chen

We had no problem finding a parking spot. The parking areas closest to the visitor center were mostly full, but lots further away had plenty of empty spaces.We were able to get a parking spot close to the visitor center.

Andrew Chen

There weren’t a lot of people around the visitor-center area. I imagine that this space gets very busy in the summer.Everything at the visitor center was open, but there were no crowds or lines.

Andrew Chen

The Grand Canyon gets snow in winter, but when we visited, it hadn’t snowed for weeks. Still, I saw some areas roped off for snow storage. It looked like these areas were used to store snow after it got cleared from the main paths.

Andrew Chen

We took a free shuttle to the trailhead of the South Kaibab Trail. There was plenty of room on the bus.Everyone got a seat on the shuttle bus.

Andrew Chen

The trails can get icy in the winter and there were warning signs at each trailhead. We’d brought crampons to add traction to our shoes.We only encountered a few pieces of ice on one of the trails.

Andrew Chen

I was in awe as I caught my first glimpses of the Grand Canyon. I’d seen photos before, but the size and depth of the formations were jaw-dropping. The little bit of remaining snow added a nice touch to the views.

Andrew Chen

I knew daytime temperatures in the winter could drop below freezing, but we were lucky to have 55-degree Fahrenheit weather for our afternoon hike. It was partly cloudy during our hike.

Andrew Chen

Some parts of the trail were wet and muddy, but others were completely dry. We only encountered a little bit of ice in a shaded area.Portions of the trail were quite wet.

Andrew Chen

We passed people going in both directions on the trail, but it didn’t feel busy at all. There were periods of up to 10 minutes where we didn’t encounter anyone at all.We often had the trail to ourselves.

Andrew Chen

We turned around at a scenic point called Cedar Ridge, which was mostly empty, too. There were amazing views and very few people at Cedar Ridge.

Andrew Chen

After the hike, we tried to catch the sunset at a lookout point near the visitor center. But more clouds had rolled in, so we couldn’t see much. We could only see a bit of the sunset in the distance.

Andrew Chen

For dinner, we headed to Harvey House Cafe in the Grand Canyon Village and had a tasty, simple meal.The food tasted good and was exactly what we needed after an afternoon of hiking.

Andrew Chen

We stayed the night at Kachina Lodge, one of the Grand Canyon Village hotels. It was only $150 — less than half of what the same room would cost in the summer.I learned these rooms can get very pricey during the summer months.

Andrew Chen

The next morning, we drove down Hermit Road, an area only accessible by shuttle bus for most of the year.Private vehicles are only allowed on Hermit Road from December to February.

Andrew Chen

In the winter months, there’s no shuttle service and the road is open to private vehicles.Since there were no shuttle buses, the bus stops were available for use as vehicle parking.

Andrew Chen

There were very few people using the trails and lookout points in this part of the park. We had a few of the spaces completely to ourselves.This lookout point appeared to be built to handle a lot of people.

Andrew Chen

Grand Canyon Village was sparsely populated during the day as well, and it looked like the park was using the offseason to work on construction projects.There was some construction work on one of the paved walking paths.

Andrew Chen

Even though we left the park in the middle of the day, the roads were mostly empty.There weren’t very many cars on the road.

Andrew Chen

Overall, we had a fantastic winter trip to the Grand Canyon. The lack of crowds gave us a peaceful atmosphere to enjoy the views, leaving me with no regrets about visiting in the low season.Even if it had been a bit colder, I would still be happy with our decision to visit in the winter.

Andrew Chen

Bear stock market

• Morgan Stanley CIO Mike Wilson reiterated his bearish stock market view on Tuesday.
• Wilson cited “FOMO” trading activity among investors as reason to stay cautious on stocks.
• “We are seeing speculative activity pick up in a meaningful way,” Wilson said.

Morgan Stanley CIO Mike Wilson reiterated his bearish stock market view on Tuesday, telling Bloomberg Surveillance Radio that he’s seeing more signs of speculation among investors.

“We are seeing speculative activity pick up in a meaningful way,” Wilson said.

Wilson has a year-end S&P 500 price target of 4,500, representing potential downside of about 13% from current levels. The only Wall Street strategist more bearish than Wilson is JPMorgan’s Marko Kolanovic, who has a 4,200 year-end price target.

Wilson has held a bearish view on stocks for over a year,and admitted to Bloomberg that he was caught off guard by the 26% rally in stocks since their late-October low.

But the surge in speculation among investors, according to Wilson, is a good reason to stay cautious on the stock market going forward. Wilson highlighted the trading boom in daily expiration options as evidence of this heightened speculation.

“I would say the daily expiration option markets is probably your single best example of that. We have a lot of people sort of, you know, in the stock market its like prop bets, almost like DraftKings and things like that, that to me is signs that exuberance is pretty high,” Wilson said.

And while the exuberance “doesn’t have to end in tears,” it also doesn’t mean that investors have to chase the latest rally.

“We have a situation where people are reaching risk because there’s FOMO. That’s where the pendulum is right now. And that’s why we’re probably a little bit more cautious than some of our peers,” Wilson said.

Wilson’s bearish view on the stock market has been challenged not only by a stock market that’s sitting at record highs, but by peers on Wall Street who have been raising their price targets in recent weeks to play catch-up.

But Wilson is unfazed.

“I think a lot of folks, all they’ve done is raise their price targets based on higher multiples, and we’re not willing to do that because we don’t see the condition, we don’t see the justification for higher multiples given that we basically have no earnings growth across the broader economy, a situation that’s still kind of a difficult operating environment,” Wilson said.

With that, Wilson suggested that it makes more sense to buy individual stocks than it does to buy the broader index.

“We’re going to be very selective and that’s why we think you have to be a stock picker here, you can’t just buy the index,” Wilson said.