Inflation

There are things that a president or Congress can affect, and there are things they can't. One thing that a president's policies can't substantially influence is inflation. 

During Trump's term, inflation was low; though most of Biden's term, inflation has been high. This has caused some voters to conclude that for purely economic reasons, Trump is a better choice for president. The question to ask, one which most people looking for a non-racist rationale for voting for Trump don't ask is "What specific actions did Trump take to keep inflation low and what specific actions did Biden take that resulted in high inflation?" The answer? None and none.

Most economic metrics have been on a positive trend since Obama's first term as we recovered from the recession caused by the housing crash, continuing through the first three years of Trump's term. Then came Covid. The economy virtually shut down for most of 2020. Due to the resulting lack of travel, gas prices dropped precipitously. These unusually low prices would make the return to more normal prices in 2021 and 2022 seem worse than it was. Other factors contributed to high inflation. The fast recovery in 2021 left many businesses scrambling to ramp up production, increase staffing and restart the stalled supply chain. The Econ 101 principle of supply and demand will cause prices to go up in this scenario. There's a theory that the stimulus checks issued in both the Trump and Biden administrations "overheated" the economy, contributing to increased demand with not enough supply. Wages have been going up in most industries, which is another factor. Let's not forget the probability that corporations are taking advantage of the situation to unnecessarily raise prices. Rents have skyrocketed - but this is a function of local property taxes and has nothing to do with anything on the national level. Gas prices, after a peak in 2022 have slowly receded to pre-2020 levels. 

Both Trump and Harris have talked about reducing inflation, even though there's not really anything they can do about it. Harris floated an idea about targeting price gouging. Trump has suggested ending income tax on overtime; both have talked about ending taxes on tips. Trump has made vague promises about rolling back prices. Inflation has slunk back to a more normal level, so whoever gets elected in November can claim to be presiding over low inflation. What both Harris and Trump hope we don't realize is that once prices go up, they're not going back down, at least not macroeconomically. 

If you're looking for reasons to vote for either candidate, the inflation rates of the last few years shouldn't be among them.

Confession: I Have Voted for Republicans

Until fairly recently I would vote for the person, rather than the party. I have voted for Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians. After seeing how, with the election of Barack Obama, the Republican Party had turned into a party that prided itself on racism and ignorance, I vowed I'd never again vote for a member of that party. (In reality the change to the Republican Party had been underway at least since the 90's, as Newt Gingrich turned his party into nothing more than an anti-Clinton caucus)

Republican platforms used to emphasize fiscal responsibility, limited government, a strong military (with strong international alliances), and free trade. While taken to extremes, all of these positions could be harmful. Government is not a business where profit is the prime motivator. Government cannot be so limited that we're run by oligarchs. Regulations are necessary to protect those who are not part of the 1%. Free trade cannot be an excuse to abuse workers or eviscerate unions. But they are also, in theory, good policies when balanced by social programs, investment in infrastructure, reasonable regulation and worker's rights. Republicans of the past, while tending to be conservative, were also willing to work with Democrats and come to compromises, balanced approaches to governance. Republicans and Democrats at the state and local level were often indistinguishable from each other. A mayor or a governor was focused more on strictly local concerns and not their fealty to a president or other national figure. 

I still think some conservative principles make for good government. Fiscal concerns need to balance our desire to solve society's problems - you can't just throw money at everything thinking money will solve everything. I believe a strong military is essential, although I also believe we should be more circumspect about when we get involved in other countries' problems. In general I support free trade without a lot of barriers like tariffs, which often accomplish nothing other than raising prices for consumers - protectionist policies should be reserved for circumstances where foreign businesses are truly attacking ours. 

But there's really not a choice any longer. Any possible pros of Republican governance are swamped by the cons of not only their cultish devotion to Losin' Don, but the party's transformation into a vehicle for mindlessly attacking anything progressive or liberal. The flip side of that is that any liberal Democratic positions that I am uncomfortable with are immaterial compared to the horrors of incipient fascism that the Republicans represent. 

Opinions vs. Facts

There are some things that are objectively true no matter whether you agree with them or not, and there are things that are subjective, a matter of opinion. That ubiquity of social media has convinced many of us that all information is of equal value and truth is determined by what our opinion about the information is. 

Like it or not, what constitutes a fact in some realms is determined by experts. There are many areas in which I am incompetent to render an opinion - medicine, and it's subcategories of epidemiology and virology among them. I am happy to defer to my primary care physician for most medical situations, and to the CDC and other boards of experts in matters of pandemics. Can the experts, in medical science or any other field, be wrong? Of course. Science, in every category, advances and learns as time goes on, unfortunately, sometimes from its mistakes. But the response to the possibility that an expert might be wrong is not to reflexively and mindlessly disregard anything an expert tells you simply because they are an expert. Just because the answer might seem counter-intuitive to a non-expert, or involve discomfort or inconvenience doesn't mean that it's wrong. Surfing the internet looking for some crackpot to validate your ill-informed opinion is unlikely to yield any real answers either. 

The thing about deferring to professionals, whether they are scientists with advanced degrees and a track record of results, or seasoned reporters working for established news agencies, or economists who understand the interplay of the myriad variables that make up our economy, is that we know who they are. We can check their reputations without necessarily understanding fully their field of expertise. Professionals will check their sources, make sure that their results can be duplicated, verify their math and underlying assumptions, before making an unequivocal statement. The non-professionals, be they bloggers, or podcasters, or some Bubba with a Twitter/X account can say anything. If they have a large enough following then the unsourced rumor that they just started is going to sprint around the globe multiple times before the truth can get its shoes laced up. I put politicians firmly in the camp of non-professional, by the way. 

The "stealing and eating cats and dogs" in Springfield Ohio rumor is a textbook example. One person posted about it on Facebook, only to later recant and take her post down. There was one police call (months ago) about a missing cat (which soon after turned up). The Facebook post was shared, it was picked up on X, people who themselves did not having a missing pet showed up at a City Council meeting to complain about immigrants stealing and eating pets. A candidate for the presidency repeated the rumor during the debate and was quickly fact-checked and corrected, which caused all the believers in this rumor to double down. Photos were shared, not of immigrants in Springfield stealing and eating pets, but of a mentally ill American woman in another Ohio city killing a cat and possibly eating it; a photo, also in another city, of man carrying a goose, which as it later turned out, he was picking up off the road after it had been run down. No actual evidence that immigrants are stealing and killing pets has surfaced, yet the believers are not dissuaded one bit. On social media platforms you'll often hear the phrase "the mainstream media isn't reporting this" - usually the reason is that it isn't happening. Long established reputable news organizations aren't know for publishing unverified rumors and the CDC isn't going to recommend that you inject disinfectant. 

Does this mean that everything that you see on social media is wrong? Of course not. But finding the truth in a given situation takes more than scrolling through Musk's online junkyard and searching for something that "makes sense" to you and fits with your preconceived view of the world. In my observation most of what I see posted on X is nothing but opinion. Occasionally there's a well researched and thought-through analysis (some that make me reconsider my opinion on the matter) but usually it's just someone screaming into the ether. 

A tactic that I see fairly often is a tweet with a photo or video clip attached where the tweet describes the attached image at odds with the image itself.  A recent example showed First Lady Jill Biden at a cabinet meeting. One tweet claimed that she was "sitting in" for President Biden others claimed she was running the cabinet meeting and pointed out that she was sitting at the head of the table. This of course spurred a lot of outrage for MAGA world, where they all assumed that Dr. Biden was pulling an Edith Wilson. But a glance at the photo would reveal that President Biden was there and was sitting in the seat where presidents traditionally sat (center of the long side of the table, on the right in this photo, in front of the flags) and Dr. Biden was a guest addressing the cabinet. 

Mainstream media has its own biases, the experts sometimes get it wrong, but looking to X for truth is idiotic. 

The Trump-Harris Debate

I'm usually of the opinion that debates are useless, that the participants don't really answer the questions and the moderators don't hold the candidates' feet to the fire, asking follow up questions. I certainly don't believe you can clearly declare winners and losers. After Tuesday's debate, I'm changing my mind, at least about this one. 

The debate between former President Trump and President Biden, was short on substance as usual. Biden presented his ideas and policies and mostly answered the questions, but he did so in such a halting manner, appearing confused and befuddled, and once even trailed off into unintelligible mumbles. All Trump had to do was stand up straight and speak in a confident tone and he appeared to be the stronger candidate. It brought focus to a situation which many Democrats had long feared: that Biden was not mentally and physically able to effectively campaign. (Whether he can still effectively lead for the remainder of his term is an open question). So the Democrats closed ranks and united behind Vice President Harris.

From the time it was clear that she would be the replacement nominee to the day of the debate Harris was written off as a weak candidate. That she had no accomplishments, that she was a "DEI Hire", that she was unintelligent, that she was incoherent when she spoke and had no plans. All of that was put to rest on Tuesday night.

I'm going to concede that she could have more clearly answered some of the questions. But I'll give any politician a pass if answering a question about a mistake is a no-win scenario. In a perfect world I'd like to see our elected office holders come clean when they erred, but what happens in reality is that the mea culpa becomes an out-of-context clip or meme that is used to attack them. For example, former Speaker of the House Pelosi has recently said that she takes responsibility for the events of January 6th, not because she actually did anything wrong, or incited the rioters, but because she was taking a "the buck stops here" position due to her position as Speaker. Right wing trolls have used this brief quote to claim that Pelosi was the instigator of the attempted overturning of an election. Harris addressed some of the questions aimed at her weaknesses and did as well as anyone - what she didn't do was attack the moderators for asking, calling them "nasty" and losing her temper. About the only time she got even a little bit rattled was when she talked about her change of position on fracking. 

MAGA world is accusing her of lying throughout, but most of what they are calling lies, might be misleading or out of context.

• The Trump National Sales Tax: Trump isn't proposing a national sales tax per se, but Harris is saying that his huge tariffs increases as effectively a tax increase since they will be levied on sales
• Trump supports Project 2025: Trump has specifically disavowed the plan, but many of his own proposals are mirrored in Project 2025, and in general they are not that different
• Trump calls for a bloodbath if he loses:  Trump used the term "bloodbath" to describe the state of the auto industry if he lost in November
• Trump will sign a national abortion ban: Trump says he won't, his VP pick, Vance, says he will. Trump has been all over the map on abortion, but he did very specifically nominate 3 avowedly anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court

Many of the other things that the Trumpists are calling lies, were, in fact, true. One example is the post Charlottesville quote "there were very fine people on both sides". He said it, Harris quoted it accurately. Snopes recently posted an article debunking a misquoting of his statement - he did not literally say "Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists are very fine people". Snopes was clear in their article that most of the people on one side were Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists and that he did say "there were very fine people on both sides". 

Trump has bragged that he doesn't need to prepare for debates, whether this is true or not is up for debate (ha ha), but it's very obvious that Harris did prepare. The questions were ones that you would expect and she thought through ahead of time how she would respond. She didn't need to be given the questions prior to the debate. Trump is bragging that he won and also that the debate was rigged against him. Harris is accused of wearing CIA quality in-ear receivers so that she could be fed answers. Repeating information heard through an earpiece in real time would not have resulted in the smooth, no hesitation, delivery of Harris' responses. 

Trump did himself no favors. His responses were, from the start, defensive and rambling. His claims of baby executions and cat eating by immigrants (still no videos of that, despite every American having a cell phone camera with them 24/7 - if there is, I will gladly admit Trump was right) was only the tip of the iceberg. What really decided the winner of the debate in my opinion was how Harris was able to take control and goad Trump into losing control and lashing out angrily over inconsequential things like the size of rally crowds and whether people left early. She kept her cool and determined the way things proceeded. 

Harris did say she was willing to debate again, but Trump has come out and said that he will not agree to any other debates...because he won. His rationale was that a loser in a prizefight will always ask for a rematch...even though after he debated Biden, Trump immediately asked to meet for another debate! make up your mind Donnie!

I doubt many minds were changed. The Trump cult is still 100% for Trump. The Harris camp isn't going to defect to Trump. Maybe a few people along the undecided fringes (who are these people?) will realize that Harris is a strong candidate and will be a strong president. I believe that some lukewarm anti-Trump voters will decide that sitting it out isn't in the cards any longer.

Meanwhile Losin' Don and his minions continue on, evil minds plotting destruction, sorcerers of death's construction, poisoning brainwashed minds. 

Social Media Censorship

A clip from a speech that Vice President Harris made in 2019 when she was a Senator running for president is making the rounds on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Typically the tweet starts with something along the lines of: "Kamala: I will censor content on X that I don't like", followed by a clip where she doesn't say anything like that. In the clip she is actually saying:

"We'll put the Department of Justice of the United States back in the business of justice. We will double the Civil Rights Division and direct law enforcement to counter this extremism. We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy. And if you profit off of hate, if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyber warfare, if you don't police your platforms, we are going to hold you accountable as a community.”

I have not been able to find a text of the full speech, so I don't for sure what the context is for these remarks. It's also unclear what she intends by "hold them accountable". What is clear is that does not mention censoring social media platforms or shutting them down. I can draw some conclusions based on who she is speaking to and what was going on nationally. 

She is addressing the NAACP, a Black advocacy organization, and there had been a number of killings inspired by racial animus that had been abetted by social media posts. She specifically invokes the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. One can infer from her remarks that she is targeting online incitement to violence. I have seen arguments that what she is saying amounts to de facto censorship, if not censorship de jure. Free speech is not absolute. There are laws making certain narrow categories of speech illegal. Two examples are libel (although libel is more of a civil matter) and the previously mentioned incitement to violence. Individuals can be held to account in a court of law, but social media platforms cannot be. Why is that?

Section 230 of the 1934 Communications Act as amended in 1996 states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." In other words, a social media platform is not responsible to moderate their content (except for child pornography and bootleg movies) and cannot be held responsible for what gets posted there, like a publisher of a newspaper or the producer of a television or cable program would. Both former President Trump and President Biden are in favor of repealing Section 230. Trump was for this mainly (in my opinion) because Twitter (when it was still Twitter) was fact checking his tweets and was allegedly suppressing conservative and Trump-supporting content. I'm not sure what Biden's motivation is. (Side note: it's funny how the Trumpists were up in arms about how Twitter was "censoring" right wing speech, even though it was a private company that had every right to do so and now they're celebrating Musk who is doing similar things to left wing speech [which he categorizes as "propaganda"] because as a private owner he has every right to do so). In the larger context Harris isn't suggesting anything that the last two presidents have already suggested (she's not really suggesting anything, since the clips that are circulating are from five years ago). What she said in that speech, right or wrong, unconstitutional or not, is mainstream, but as usual her opponents ignore this and brand her words as that of a communist. 

For all the hand wringing and pearl clutching by Harris' opponents, do they ever consider the anti-free speech actions of their avatar, Losin' Don?

• In 2020, after Twitter began appending fact checks to his tweets Trump issued an executive order tat effectively re-interprets Section 230 and involves the government in platforms' moderation policies. In other words, Trump did what his supporters allege that Harris' 5-year old words indicate she will do - if their interpretation is correct
• In 2017 Trump publicly mused about changing the libel laws to make it easier for the government to sue media organization. In effect, to give the government a cudgel to prevent criticism of the president
• In 2020 Trump sued Facebook and Twitter for not publishing some of his posts and tweets
• In 2017 Trump halted whistleblower protections
• Trump aides call the press the opposition party
• Trump repeatedly call the mainstream press the enemy of the people
• Trump campaign calls for holding the media accountable (wording sound familiar?) for trying to rig the election

There's more, some more overt than others, but Trump's antipathy toward a free press should not be a surprise to anyone. 

If Harris' 5-year old speech is indicative of her current policy position and it means censorship, of course I'm concerned, (1) I don't believe that's the most logical, reasonable inference to be made and (2) Her election opponent has already engaged in more direct anti-free speech actions.

Policy vs. Personality

In every election, whether for President of the United States or for mayor of a small town, there's a the age-old question about what's more important, policy or personality. "Policy" should be the more obvious answer, but the reality is that most people consider personality, at least partially, as an important metric upon which to base a decision. 

In most elections candidates make a lot of promises. Sometimes they follow through, other times they don't. Sometimes they simply can't. Many times shit happens. Did George W Bush plan on presiding over a global war on terror when he was running? Did Barack Obama think he was going to walk into a recession when he threw his hat in the ring? Did Donald Trump anticipate a worldwide pandemic? Whatever they thought they'd be doing, events conspired against them. Even in the best of times Presidents are not dictators, they have to contend with two other co-equal branches of government, which may or may not be sympathetic. At best, campaign promises should be taken with a grain of salt and viewed only as a rough guide to how he or she will govern. After all, the point of campaigning is to convince more people to vote for you than for the other candidate, and getting down in the weeds of detailed policy proposals is going to lose most voters, and bore many of them. 

Often opposition to Trump is caricatured as "orange man bad", or TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome, or "mean tweets". And I'm sure that there are people who oppose him just because he's an asshole, but for most it's deeper than that. While anyone who thinks they are qualified to be president has to possess a healthy ego and self regard, Trump's personality goes well beyond that. He is a narcissist who has demonstrated that whatever he thinks, no matter the evidence against it, is the right way - the only way. During his time in office, and during the campaign this year, he has demonstrated an abysmal ignorance of how things work, how anything works. Sure, a president can't know everything, but they have to have a willingness to learn, to lean on subject matter experts to help them arrive at the best decisions. This ignorance manifested itself in his view of how tariffs work, how NATO is funded and whether injecting disinfectant is a good idea, among many other areas.  He said out loud that he would be a dictator, but just on his first day, as if that made it acceptable. 

Trump's personality is such that he takes everything personally. Those who disagree with him are sick, evil, deranged, un-American, treasonous. Enemies of the people. He has made it clear that he will exact revenge on those who he believes have wronged him. A president has to be the president of all the people. All the people may not agree about how a president does their job, but it has to be clear that the president puts the welfare of all the people first. Trump pits us against each other. There's us and them. And his "us" are who he views as the "real Americans" and the rest of us...

So, while the policies that I'm aware of are enough to disqualify him from receiving my vote, who he is should disqualify him from receiving anyone's vote.

Arlington

Soldiers die in war. Soldiers die when there isn't a war. Soldiers die when there is bad planning by civilian leadership. Soldiers die when there is bad execution by military leadership. Soldiers die even in the midst of what seemed like a good plan. 

Should the withdrawal of our military from Afghanistan gone smoother, more orderly? In retrospect - of course. The withdrawal in its last stages was chaotic with Afghans clinging to departing aircraft and mobbing the airfield. A terrorist attack killed thirteen service members. When things like this happen, someone has to get the blame. And who is the most appropriate target for that blame? The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces and the metaphorical buck stops with him. And he certainly was blamed. 

To listen to the pro-Trump/anti-Biden voices, you would think that the thirteen deaths were the only ones to have occurred. It's true that they were the only military deaths in Afghanistan in 2021, but there were also 15 military deaths in 2017 (12 killed-in-action KIA); 16 (13 KIA) in 2018; 23 (17 KIA) in 2019 and 11 (4 KIA) in 2020. Where was the outrage and recriminations toward Trump during that time? There wasn't any. People outside MAGA world understood that deaths happen. When military deaths happened when Biden was president, it became political. 

I'm not going to pretend to understand the grief of the families who lost their loved ones during that terrorist attack. They have every right to express their anger and point the finger at who they believe is to blame for the death of a family member. But the Trump campaign has politicized the grief of these families in order to score points. 

Let's jump to the Arlington visit.

Last week media, including social media, reported that Former President Trump participated in a wreath laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the thirteen service members who were killed in a terrorist attack during the withdrawal from Afghanistan on the third anniversary of their deaths. It was also reported that neither President Biden nor Vice President Harris attended. The reports gave the impression that this was an official commemoration that Trump attended. MAGA-oriented social media accounts quickly jumped on this story, accusing Biden and Harris of "not showing up" for this commemoration. Something seemed off about this story, so I dug a little to get some context. A quick Google search indicated that the only "official" wreath laying ceremonies take place on Memorial Day and Veterans Day with the President laying the wreath (although the president does not always do so). Anyone can apply to do a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns, and they occur every single day of the year. The application was made by Marlon Bateman, a Trump administration State Department official, on behalf of the family of one of the service members killed in the attack. Initially NPR reported that the memorial was for three of service members, not all thirteen, although I can no longer find that reference, so it may have been incorrect. It was clear, although it was not reported as such, that this was a privately sponsored event that Trump was invited to and that Biden and Harris were not invited to. This context did not surface until NPR reported a few days later that a campaign video was made from images of the event, including images taken in a prohibited area, and that a Trump aide pushed an Arlington staffer, ignoring her instruction to refrain from recording in the prohibited area. 

Once the full story came out Trump was rightly criticized, but being his usual self, doubled down, lying that he had received permission, or that the families had authorized the video in Section 60 (which they had no authority to do). Gaslighting proceeded in full force, with MAGA world spreading the lie that those chiding Trump were attacking Gold Star families.  And amid the denial that he was there for political purposes, his campaign released a campaign video of him strolling among grave stones. What can I even say about the disgusting "thumbs up" photo at the gravesite?

And somehow - somehow people believe that Trump supports the military, even after disrespectful events like this, after he ridiculously states that the Presidential Medal of Freedom is "better" than the Medal of Honor - on top of all the ugly things he has said about the military over the years. "Suckers and Losers"; "I like those who weren't captured"; "I always wanted a Purple Heart"...and on and on. 

And yet...there's still a chance he'll be re-elected.