Max Kennerly
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maxkennerly.bsky.social
Max Kennerly
@maxkennerly.bsky.social
170K followers 1.8K following 8.2K posts
Nearly 20 years in court as a law-talking guy for plaintiffs, now a mix of stuff. Posts too much about politics.

email [email protected]
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maxkennerly.bsky.social
Democrats should ask: when residential natural gas prices are at their highest ever, why are we exporting a record amount? Why not use it to make energy more affordable here?

The GOP has no answer for this; it contradicts everything they claim they're doing.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
US liquefied natural gas exports are set to hit a record high this month, helping to tame prices in Asia and Europe as winter begins. The US is expected to ship 10.7 million tons in November, according to predictive ship-tracking data from Kpler. That’s up roughly 40% from the same month last year, the data showed. EIA, U.S. price of natural gas, residential
November 28, 2025 at 4:00 AM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Love how academia is being attacked and reshaped, under the iron fist of the government, with the heavy influence of a guy whose experience in the field is defrauding students with scam for-profit universities.
Apollo Global Management, where Mr. Rowan is chief executive, has for years held education-related investments, including a big stake in the University of Phoenix, a titan in the for-profit college industry that has drawn broad scrutiny for quality and cost concerns. The University of Phoenix has itself been a prime example of many of the problems that Mr. Rowan has highlighted in his attacks on academia. Its graduation rates are modest, and its alumni tend to earn low salaries and have high debt, much of it federally financed. According to the most recent edition of the Department of Education’s College Scorecard, the school’s graduation rate was 25 percent; the national midpoint for four-year colleges was 58 percent. Ten years after enrolling, median earnings for students were $37,752; the national midpoint for four-year schools was $53,747. But the university’s average annual cost, $13,571, was much lower.
November 24, 2025 at 11:13 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
🎶one of these sentences is not like the others🎶
James Blunt (born James Hillier Blount, 22 February 1974) is an English singer, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his songs "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover". As a British Army captain in the aftermath of the Kosovo War, Blunt was involved in the British refusal to engage Russian troops at Pristina Airport. After leaving the army, he rose to fame in 2004 with the release of his debut album Back to Bedlam, achieving worldwide fame with the singles "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover". His first album had sold over 12 million copies worldwide by December 2009, topping the UK Albums Chart and peaking at number two in the US. "You're Beautiful" reached number one in thirteen countries, including the UK and the US. Back to Bedlam was the best-selling album of the 2000s in the UK,[2] and is as of 2018 one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history.[3]
November 21, 2025 at 4:29 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Still incredible how "the economy" was the top priority for voters in 2024 and so they voted in someone who in January 2025 started doing what he said he'd do and they immediately recognized that was terrible for the economy and their personal finances. 🤷‍♂️
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Chart, US Consumer Sentiment Falls Close to Record Low, Views on personal finances sink to lowest in 16 years
November 21, 2025 at 4:24 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Congrats to the Teamsters (especially their awful president) and all the other truckers & freight workers who voted themselves into a "structural goods recession."

In October, truckload freight volumes declined for the fourth consecutive month.

www.cnbc.com/2025/11/20/t...
Teamsters union members back Trump over Harris by nearly 2-to-1 margin By September 18, 2024 | updated 1 year ago It was a remarkable moment Monday night at the Republican National Convention, surely creating some amount of confusion among longtime Republicans, when Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, delivered a stemwinder of a speech in prime time. He called former President Donald Trump a “tough S.O.B.” ‘This is a structural goods recession’: U.S. freight market is starting to roll over as Chinese trade plummets Published Thu, Nov 20 20258:56 AM ESTUpdated Thu, Nov 20 202511:37 AM EST For the first time in 2025, rates for van, flatbed, and refrigerated loads in October were all lower on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis, according to the DAT Truckload Volume Index. “Freight volumes in the third quarter and October reflect what we’re seeing in the broader goods economy, with shippers drawing on inventory built up earlier in the year to reduce their exposure to tariffs and weak consumer demand,” said Ken Adamo, DAT chief of Analytics. “As a result, the traditional peak holiday shipping season looks virtually non-existent this year,” Adamo said. Van truckloads were down 3% compared to September, and 11% year over year. Refrigerated truckloads were down 2% month over month, and 7% year over year. Flatbed truckloads were down 4% month over month and 3% year over year. The reduced level of dry van and temp-controlled loads that are moving now through the supply chain are goods moving from distribution centers to retailers. The causes of the trade decline range from weakness in housing and manufacturing to energy costs, and shippers pulling forward imports earlier in the year and building inventories to reduce tariff impacts.
November 21, 2025 at 1:48 AM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
This is legal jargon for "you and your lawyers are full of shit," which is really not something that should happen when the "you" is a federal government agent and the "your lawyers" are the federal government's lawyers.
"Mr. Cantu, when you say Costa Rica is not an option for removal ... where does that come from?" U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis interjected. "Counsel," Cantu said referring to the State Department attorney. "The point has been made that this witness knows zero information about the content of the declaration," Xinis said.
November 20, 2025 at 10:56 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
The USDA has designated 444 counties as farming-dependent; their average vote share for Trump was 77.7%.

investigatemidwest.org/2024/11/13/t...
This map shows the nation's 444 farming-dependent counties and President-elect Donald Trump's share of the vote in each. Trump won all but 11 of these counties in the 2024 presidential election.
November 20, 2025 at 12:47 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Surely we can all relate to this sequence of events. Happens to me several times a year. 🙏
Later that night, Sam and George argue over his treatment of women and his habit of spying on the intimate acts of a neighbor with his consent. George later visits the minister who performed the wedding and learns that the woman is Jenny Miles, daughter of a prominent Beverly Hills dentist. The following day, while spying on his neighbor, George hits himself with the telescope and falls down an embankment, causing him to miss Sam's phone call. Still obsessed with Jenny, he schedules a dental appointment with her father and learns that Jenny and her husband David have gone to Mexico for their honeymoon. The effects of a large amount of treatment accompanied by a heavy dose of novocaine, aggravated by immediate heavy drinking, leave George completely incoherent. Sam finally reaches him on the phone, but mistakes him for an intruder and calls the police, who hold George at gunpoint while trying to understand his gibberish. George visits his neighbor's house to take part in an ongoing orgy, but Sam spots him through his telescope, widening the rift between them.
November 20, 2025 at 11:52 AM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Uhhhh you have to see this for yourself to really get it. It's a bunch of mouth-foaming blog posts strung together.

(FYI: Judge Brown, the target alongside George Soros of 100+ pages of Judge Smith's invective, has the most Texas Republican bio you've ever seen. 🤷‍♂️)
Jerry E. Smith, Circuit Judge, dissenting: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night!”1 I dissent from the entirety of Judge Brown’s opinion granting a preliminary injunction. * * * * * PRELIMINARY STATEMENT I append this Preliminary Statement to dispel any suspicion that I’m responsible for any delay in issuing the preliminary injunction or that I am or saw slow-walking the ruling. I also need to highlight the pernicious judicial misbehavior of U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown.2 Jeff Brown wikipedia page
November 19, 2025 at 10:39 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Amusing to see the rhetorical flourish that betting against AI is betting against thermodynamics.

That's exactly backwards! Thermodynamics is AI's enemy! Don't take my word for it, ask Nvidia, they readily admit that energy constraints are the biggest problem for data centers.
Jensen Huang of Nvidia on an earnings call: "Not only do are we the most energy efficient, our perf per watt is the best of any computing platform."
November 19, 2025 at 2:53 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
A man in his 40s, like Hanania, is attracted to 17-year-olds because he sees girls & women as things, not people.

As things, they look woman-shaped, so someone like Hanania thinks this is fine.

But if you see them as people, a 17-year-old is someone who not that long ago was in elementary school.
@RichardHanania · Nov 15 To call being attracted to 17 year-olds pedophilia is basically calling all men pedophiles. It's like saying all white people are racist on account of the society they were born into. Reject all forms of bigotry. @dylanc78 I'm 47. I have not been attracted to 17 year olds for 30 years. @RichardHanania Maybe you’re impotent? 9:17 AM · Nov 15, 2025
November 18, 2025 at 7:18 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Even Mark Sanford? He seems like a decent fellow, perhaps oh that's not good
wikipedia page for mark sanford, with 17 mentions of "affair"
November 18, 2025 at 4:42 AM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Master and Commander opening title meme ("oceans are now battlefields"), with added "journalistic ethics preclude multiple romantic entanglements with subjects you were supposed to profile"
November 18, 2025 at 2:35 AM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Hunt for Red October "you've lost another submarine?" meme, but it's "you had sex with another republican you were writing a story about?"
November 18, 2025 at 2:27 AM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Bizarre stuff from Pillard, Wilkins & Garcia on the DC Circuit. Two of their colleagues (Katsas & Rao) undermined the district courts with a flagrantly improper order for partisan reasons. The least they can do for the rule of law is formally reverse that order, rather than whatever this tripe is.
A midstream intervention by an appellate court into a district court’s ongoing effort to identify potential contemnors must surely be reserved for truly exceptional circumstances. We doubt this order presented such circumstances and met the demanding standard for mandamus relief. That said, any errors in the panel’s analysis do not warrant the further step of en banc review. Despite the seriousness of the underlying facts, the product of the panel’s intervention— the actual order it has issued—has no further practical effect, nor does it establish any binding precedent.
November 16, 2025 at 10:24 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Maher's list of "common sense" "fix things" would be nothing but niche too-online right-wing obsessions.

"Ivy league too woke" and "handful of trans athletes nationwide" would be right at the top. There'd be no mention of stuff like "perhaps reduce the number of medical bankruptcies."
He said this was a result of Dems wanting to “reinvent everything” and being “anti-common sense,” rather than just tailoring their message to the average American. “They’re just asking for politicians to fix things,” Maher added.
November 16, 2025 at 9:30 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Going back to Summers' talk about how women don't want to work hard and don't have high end aptitude, we could ask:

What fraction of young men must deal with a creep with substantial power over their career hitting on them using tips from an infamous pedophile? 🤔
www.thecrimson.com/article/2005...
There are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference’s papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the—I’ll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are—the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described. Another way to put the point is to say, what fraction of young women in their mid-twenties make a decision that they don’t want to have a job that they think about eighty hours a week. What fraction of young men make a decision that they’re unwilling to have a job that they think about eighty hours a week, and to observe what the difference is. And that has got to be a large part of what is observed.
November 16, 2025 at 1:24 AM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Republicans have never let the filibuster stop them from doing something they actually wanted to do.

E.g., nationwide abortion ban: it's not because the GOP likes playing fair, it's because some Republican Senators promised they wouldn't do that and don't want to be forced to vote yes/no on one.
@DaveMcCormickPA I've been clear: I do not support a national abortion ban & believe any law should make exceptions for rape, incest, & when the life of the mother is in danger.
November 13, 2025 at 9:49 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Lower Treasury rates are generally better for the economy, but (1) this is a confession they have no "affordability" plan at all, and (2) they haven't made much progress on rates anyway, 10-year still >4%.

Republicans' real "affordability" plan is to blow up the data agencies then lie about it.
Market Yield on U.S. Treasury Securities at 10-Year Constant Maturity, Quoted on an Investment Basis (DGS10) White House National Economic Director Kevin Hassett said the record-long government shutdown means that some of the economic data that was supposed to be collected in October may never be recorded, making it difficult to get a comprehensive look at the health of the US economy. “I’ve been told that some of the surveys were never actually completed, so we’ll never, perhaps, even know what happened in that month,” Hassett told CNBC on Tuesday. “We’re going to be staring a little bit in cloudy, cloudy weather for a while until we get the data agencies back up.”
November 12, 2025 at 6:55 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Fake Trump post: Very low ratings at the failing GLOBE THEATRE for Slick Willy Shakespeare's HAMLET. I told Richard Burbage to not get involved with that loser! By next year nobody will be doing these plays anymore. Jun 13, 1599, 12:25 PM
November 12, 2025 at 3:39 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
This allows Trump (via DOJ) to use taxpayer money to bribe eight GOP Senators. It's that simple, there's no other way to describe it.

And where's the compensation for people injured by the Trump admin's unlawful conduct through DHS & DOGE?

Take a bow, @schumer.senate.gov, you did this.
Because the provision is retroactive to 2022, it would appear to make eligible the eight lawmakers whose phone records were subpoenaed by investigators for Mr. Smith as he examined efforts by Donald J. Trump to obstruct the results of the 2020 presidential election. Each violation would be worth at least $500,000 in any legal claim, according to the bill language. The bill would also sharply limit the way the government could resist such a claim, taking away any government claims of qualified or sovereign immunity to fight a lawsuit over the issue. The Republican senators whose phone records were subpoenaed as part of the investigation were: Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania also had his phone records subpoenaed but would not be eligible because he is a member of the House.
November 10, 2025 at 9:23 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
How much lead do you have to ingest to think you can sell voters on your victory of creating new convoluted HSAs to replace (and, likely, be less than) what used to be a couple button clicks on the ACA marketplace website? Nobody asked for this and nobody will like it.
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
A key development that appeared to break the logjam in the negotiations was that Senate Republicans proposed that some healthcare funding be provided directly to households rather than be used to pay for a one-year extension of enhanced ACA subsidies. That GOP proposal involves sending federal money into flexible-spending accounts instead of to insurance companies that use the money to offset the cost of premiums, so consumers pay a smaller monthly bill. The money could be used to cover deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs, which Republicans see as a way to give consumers more choice and control healthcare inflation.
November 9, 2025 at 9:24 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Gov't-backing of 50-year mortgage would create more buyers, but 'more demand, same supply' means prices go up. Plus, a buyer who can't afford monthly payments of a 30-year mortgage probably shouldn't be on a 50-year either, they're likely to default.

It'd just be inflating the bubble a bit more.
S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index
November 9, 2025 at 3:47 PM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Schumer aside, this is a bonkers detail. Lyndon B. Johnson spinning in his grave upon learning that there are Democratic Senators who messed up a vote count of merely 10. 😂
At Thursday’s meeting, they told their caucus colleagues that they now had ten votes to re-open the government in exchange for no real Republican concessions. At that, much of the rest of the caucus went ballistic, and some of the supposed ten said that, in fact, they were not willing to vote for any such deal.
November 9, 2025 at 3:32 AM
maxkennerly.bsky.social
Who wants to use a credit card / go to a store when you can't tell if the form of payment you brought is accepted until you try it?

The best explanation here is: they know much of the American economy is more collusive than competitive, so consumers generally won't have a choice anyway.
If an agreement is finalized, consumers could see big changes at the register. Merchants that accept one kind of Visa credit card wouldn’t have to accept all Visa credit cards, for example. Under the current talks, credit-card acceptance would be divided into several categories including rewards credit cards, credit cards with no rewards programs, and commercial cards, the people familiar with the matter said. Some stores might turn away rewards cards, which charge them higher fees and in recent years have become very popular with consumers. But stores that reject those cards would face the risk of declining sales.
November 9, 2025 at 2:08 AM