Insanity Wrap: Is Mark Kelly the Most Dangerous Man in the Senate?

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Kaliningrad Oblast) wants to know if the feds can censor private messaging platform to stop bank runs like the one that hit SVB. That’s the big crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap — an entire week’s worth of lefty nuttiness wrapped up in one easy-to-swallow medicated news capsule.

Plus:

Nikki Fried proves again she’s probably a GOP plant (or at least as dumb as one).
Vivek Ramaswamy has the good news and the bad news about SVB.
If Portlanders get any more gaslit, the EPA is going to have to shut them down.

Before we get to today’s big story, here’s a short video to make you lose whatever little faith you might still have in humanity.

This Is Not a Sane World, Exhibit #1,000,006

Is it surprising that Signature Bank failed?

Their executive team spent millions of dollars to produce music videos & TV shows about themselves

Try not to cringe as you watch this: pic.twitter.com/16K70FQq5o

— Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA (@GRDecter) March 13, 2023

I didn’t make it even 30 seconds into this one, how about you?

Cringey corporate self-promotion videos have been around for almost as long as video, so it isn’t a big deal that Signature Bank produced a few. The question is: Can you produce cringey corporate videos and keep your finances in order?

Mark Kelly Wants to Control Your Social Media

Mark Kelly, Social Media Censor — Rob Schumacher/The Arizona Republic via AP, Pool

Until today, I would have told you that West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin was probably the dumbest, or maybe even the most dangerous man in the Senate. His 2016 election year comment — “Due process is what’s killing us right now” — inspired me, a pistol shooter, to buy my first rifle. It was even one of those extra-deadly super-assault AR-15s with the chainsaw attachment. Not in four decades of watching politics had I witnessed an elected official so explicitly and blithely corrupt his oath of office.

But then along came Mark Kelly.

Red-pilled California activist Michael Shellenberger’s Public substack grabbed an exclusive on Monday about a weekend conference call concerning the SVB bailout. There, Kelly “asked representatives from the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation (FDIC) if they had a way to censor information on social media to prevent a run on the banks.”

Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie was also on the call and told Public, “I believe he couched it in a concern that foreign actors would be doing this but he didn’t suggest the censorship should be limited to foreigners or to things that were untrue.”

So the way Kelly sees it, Americans sharing facts are a danger. This guy ran as a moderate — and got away with it, too.

It isn’t often I praise Swamp bureaucrats, but according to Massie, they “just sort of took a pass on the question.”

According to a fascinating WSJ piece from Sunday, apparently, the SVB run was “organized” — that’s too strong a word, hence the scare quotes — on apps like Slack and WhatsApp. “Spooked customers,” according to the WSJ, “whipped out their phones and opened their banking apps. With a few taps and swipes, their money was on its way.”

Rachel Louise Ensign, one of the authors of the piece, called it “the first bank run ever organized over Slack.”

But Slack isn’t social media, is it? It’s an internal communications platform, closer in function and spirit to text messaging than it is to Twitter or Facebook. And Sen. Mark Kelly, perhaps the most dangerous man in the Senate, wants to know if the Treasury Department can somehow get its grubby hands all over your private communications.

Before We Continue, Here’s a Short Video to Restore Your Faith in Everything…

Dogs are the best.. 💪 pic.twitter.com/v6aCe48nZg

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) March 13, 2023

Spoiler: Dog wins!

Good News, Bad News

Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t just a longshot 2024 GOP presidential contender, he’s also a co-founder of Strive Asset Management. He knows a thing or two about finance.

That’s why I took him seriously when he wrote on Sunday that “SVB’s situation is different from that of most U.S. banks.”

“SVB was regulated like a bank but looked more like a money-market fund,” added Andy Kessler.

The details are a bit technical, but more broadly, Ramaswamy noted that:

SVB also had a concentrated client base of tech startups whose needs for capital were highly sensitive to rising interest rates. Yet SVB itself had the highest concentration of any major bank in mortgage-backed securities, also especially sensitive to that risk factor. This is an egregious oversight specific to SVB. Its investment portfolio was 57% of total assets, more than twice its peer average of 24%.

“Either SVB was incompetent or this is a case of moral hazard, taking excessive risk and expecting political favors and bailouts,” Ramaswamy concluded.

So the good news is that SVB seems to have been a special case and not the first bank failure in a cascade caused by nationwide systemic risk. The bad news is that the bank’s big (and well-connected) depositors are getting bailed out anyway.

Quote of the Week

Joe Biden is good for the economy, pass it on.

— Nikki Fried (@NikkiFried) March 13, 2023

I said it yesterday on Instapundit, and I’ll say it here again today: More and more she looks like a Republican plant. I mean, if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could actually choose a Democrat foil, could he possibly do any better than Nikki Fried?

Your Weekly Dose of Mandated Unity

Dozens wake up to smashed car windows in SE Portland

It’s bad enough that vagrants enjoy so much control over parts of Portland that they spend their nights smashing car windows and not necessarily even stealing anything. But worse are attitudes like the one displayed by Portland resident Jake Kelly, quoted here by KGW News.

“We had kind of been tipped off about car jackings, car theft, vandalism being on the rise in the [Pacific Northwest], but we didn’t want to lean too much into that narrative,” he told KGW. “We didn’t want to, like, judge.”

Virtue doesn’t signal itself, folks.

Some Americans are so gaslit that you wouldn’t want to stand next to them anywhere near an open flame.

Previously On Insanity Wrap: ‘Lynching the Deplorables’

That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

Leftwing people don't annihilate disabled people or burn books. They also typically don't build concentration camps. https://t.co/zTDVLF0bOB

— Daniela Nadj (@DanielaNadj) March 11, 2023

If you need a smile today, the replies to self-described “academic” Daniela Nadj are *priceless*.

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