bit in the past month. Food was flat, didn't go up or down, and shelter was a little bit up, 2%. Now, but the core inflation, that would be the stuff that's not energy, food, or shelter. I think that's what core inflation is. That had a 3.1% inflation, which would be high. So your major categories were good, but some of the other ones were not. So you could find whatever story you want in the inflation numbers. It's either too high or it's not.

But to make things even more fun, the Federal Reserve, if the inflation looked high, would be highly inclined to lower the interest rates, which would be really good for markets, which is why the stocks are way up this morning. So we can't even tell if inflation is good news or bad news because if the inflation is high, the stock market goes up because that means that the interest rates will probably be artificially driven down a little bit to battle the inflation and that's good for stocks. So I can say with certainty that inflation is either up or down and that the net effect of that inflation being either up or down is that it'll be either good or bad and the cause will either be the tariffs or no effect from the tariffs. So all of those movies are playing at the same time. Pick one.

Well, in the most predictable news, the Texas Democrats went AWOL so that there would be no vote on redistricting in Texas because they didn't like how the map was being drawn. So the Democrats did their usual theater kid thing and they made a big deal about it and they made some cringy social media posts and then Texas got tough and acted like they were going to have them all hunted down and arrested and I don't know fired and their pay would be cut and all kinds of threats. But the one thing that we can all be sure of is that it wouldn't last. It's not as if the Democrats were never coming back because if they never came back, they would get removed from office. So they didn't really have any play. The only play they had was getting some attention like they're fighting.

Now, this is very consistent. And by the way, they're already back and Texas has already voted in the new redistricting map. So everything they did was a waste of time, but it fell into the Democratic strategy of cursing more and fighting harder. So it was a fake fight. They wanted to pretend that they were really serious and they're fighting hard, but they had no fight. They had no play whatsoever. In the end, Texas was definitely going to get what the majority wanted, and they did. So pathetic. Very pathetic.

Apparently Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has threatened to lock up Beto O'Rourke because Beto was raising money to help the Democrats be AWOL and keep them in food and transportation while they're gone. And apparently Paxton has filed a motion for contempt in court against him with a maximum sentence of $500 fine and/or 6 months in jail. That's a weird law, isn't it? That the maximum sentence is either, well it could be both, but it could be $500 or it could be six months in jail. Do you think Beto O'Rourke is going to get six months in jail? I don't think so. But Paxton says, quote, "I'm working to put him behind bars." So there's another video of Beto O'Rourke cursing more and saying that they got to fight more. Fuck this, fight, fight more. That's all they got. Cursing and pretending to fight.

Well, there's a new wrinkle in the story of Smartmatic and Fox News. You may know that Smartmatic, the voting machine company, do they do only software or do they do hardware? I can't remember. But they've got a lawsuit against Fox News for defamation. I guess Fox News must have claimed that there was some irregularities with their technology and they didn't like it, so they're suing the