Bark Twice if You Think Nikki Haley’s Replacement Isn’t Getting Confirmed by August

For the last few months, I’ve been watching this market, which asks whether Kelly Craft, who is President Donald Trump’s nomination for U.N. Ambassador, will be confirmed before the August Recess:

I’ve watched this marketplace go from a 60/40 to a 90/10 and now back down to 60/40 and it has made me think about a few things. The first one is that I am pretty sure President Trump does not even know there is a job called, “U.N. Ambassador” and just tells his staff to fill this post the same way he fills his guest list at a Trump Tower party. That means stuffing it with hot babes like ex-Ambassador Nikki Haley and current nominee Kelly Craft, while he and Jared make all the important decisions while being jerked-off by John Bolton in the GOP VIP room. Nikki Haley basically got woke to this and quit her job last year, which gets us to the present.

The second thing that is important to remember is that no one in America actually cares what the U.N. does, unless we are about to bomb a foreign country. I personally have been extremely frustrated that CNN has gone years without showing cruise missiles blowing-up people who live in caves. I figured this was just the liberal media covering up Trump’s accomplishments again, but then I realized that the Trump Administration has been extremely stingy with it’s unilateral military strikes.

This goes a long way towards understanding why Trump and the GOP Senate don’t give a crap that the position of U.N. Ambassador is vacant. That is because we are not currently demolishing any foreign countries that George W. Bush or President O’Bama didn’t already blow up first. It is also just good fiscal policy to delay hiring an expensive full-time employee in New York City when there is almost nothing that the USA needs to apologize for at the UN right now. That money is way better spent at home where there are constantly bad things happening.

All of this is context since this market’s deadline is effectively Congress’s August recess, which means that urgency is important to getting it done in time. One of Keendawg’s Rules about Congressional procedure is this: Congress behaves like water. It is slippery and biased towards taking the path of least resistance. In Kelly Craft’s case, the legislative river is also backed up at a very dangerous point, because August Recess is where “must-pass” bills start skipping the line. And her nomination is not must-pass.

On scheduling alone, this market is going to be close. The Senate has a standing rule that committees have to give a week’s warning before holding any important meetings, like a Foreign Relations Committee vote to recommend Kelly Craft to the whole Senate. This committee vote has not been scheduled, which means that the earliest Kelly Craft’s nomination can reach the floor is July 16, barring some weird circumstances. But there is also a lag between when a nomination is approved by the committee and when the whole Senate gets to vote on it. I took out my stop watch and found that, on average, that lag is 11 days for appointments to replace Trump’s original cabinet members.

That puts Craft’s nomination on the Senate floor July 29, since July 27 is a Saturday. Add in that Senate Democrats are guaranteed to filibuster Kelly Craft due to the fact that she is from coal money and thinks that climate change is a baloney, and you get another 30 hours of delay for cloture — which means a vote on July 31. That leaves a three day buffer between the average time for nomination consideration, and the Senate’s target adjournment date. This should be frightening to people betting YES on this market, because three days before a month-long recess is exactly when there are more must-pass bills backed-up on the Senate Clerk’s desk than there are Ubers full of drunk people at 2 AM in a Taco Bell drive through. FYI, there is actually a lot of me that thinks this market, which only has 2000 active shares in it, has dipped from 90/10 to 60/40 because one savvy trader realized what I did, and dumped all of his position.

Is this a lock? Nope. But as I said, my bias is to assume that when Congress is presented with the option to work a little harder to get something done or to head out on vacation, they’ll usually reach for the cooler, crank a few brewskies, and call it a day.

And in closing, I will add this: markets that pivot on Congressional procedure are not ones that get a lot of attention on PredictIt because most traders just want to model polling data and Trump’s tweets and call themselves political experts. But if you go through my record, you will see that I am an absolute savage when it comes to anticipating Congress’s moves. I am basically astounded that Mitch McConnell doesn’t call me every Friday to ask me what he is going to do next week, because I am that good. PS, here is a photo he took with me once when I was fat.

And as a reminder, I also have an autographed photo of John Boehner watching basketball.

You honestly couldn’t find two better pieces of proof that I am a genius.

So I am getting into the marketplace as a NO. I think this is a 50/50 market, not 60/40. I’m willing to take the risk. Are you?

KEENDAWG.

Keendawg

Founder. Surfer. Gambler.

Follow him on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/keendawg

See author's posts

Support SSG. Members get access to early picks and exclusive content.