The Rose Garden and White House happenings: the voters were listening
I do wish Haley had been on the ticket — the WSJ presents her opinion today…
Trump Isn’t Perfect, but He’s the Better Choice
If you like his policies but are put off by his tone or his excesses, consider the cost of the past four years.
By Nikki Haley
Nov. 3, 2024 at 12:37 pm ET
Millions of people love Donald Trump, and millions hate him. Each group will vote accordingly.
But there are also millions whose views on Mr. Trump are mixed. They like much of what he did as president and agree with most of his policies. But they dislike his tone and can’t condone his excesses, such as his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021. This third group of Americans will determine whether the former president returns to the White House.
To that group, I’ll point out that Mr. Trump isn’t the only one on the ballot. This election isn’t a referendum on him. It’s a choice between him and Kamala Harris.
I don’t agree with Mr. Trump 100% of the time. But I do agree with him most of the time, and I disagree with Ms. Harris nearly all the time. That makes this an easy call. Here are the facts most relevant to me.
Americans today on average face some $13,000 in higher annual costs than they did four years ago. Prices on nearly everything—food, gasoline, utility bills, insurance—have gone up. This is the direct result of the Biden-Harris agenda, which stoked inflation and stuck families with the bill. Americans are stuck with another bill, too: the national debt. It has reached nearly $36 trillion, thanks in part to Ms. Harris’s tie-breaking votes on the grossly misnamed American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act. Despite its title, the latter is still boosting inflation. Its estimated price tag has more than doubled since President Biden signed it, and it is funding projects that are largely stalled. As president, Ms. Harris would make America’s fiscal crisis even worse.
Then there’s national security. The Biden-Harris agenda has made the world far more dangerous. Our southern border is our most pressing security threat; Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have made it dramatically worse. Their debacle in Afghanistan not only created a new terrorist state; it also signaled weakness that sparked Russia’s war against Ukraine. Their appeasement of Iran has enriched that despotic regime and emboldened it to pursue war with Israel through its terrorist proxies. And the administration’s weakness toward China has done nothing to impede the communist power’s expansion at our expense. This is the world that Biden-Harris failures have given us in four short years.
A Trump administration would be different. It wouldn’t be perfect. But I agree with Mr. Trump that we need to keep taxes low and cut them more. I agree that we need to roll back trillions of dollars in special-interest handouts. I agree that we need to expand American energy to empower our families and job creators while making us less dependent on foreign energy.
I agree with Mr. Trump that America should be strong—far stronger than we are today. When he was president, Russia didn’t invade another country, Iran was on its heels, China received serious pushback for the first time in decades, and our southern border was more secure. The world is unsafe under Biden-Harris, and we shouldn’t expect that to change under a Harris administration.
These are enormous policy differences that will affect the lives of every American and much of the world.
Will Mr. Trump do some things I don’t like in a second term? I’m sure he will. If that was the question before voters, then I imagine Mr. Trump would lose. But that isn’t the question in any election. No politician gets everything right. For those of us clear-eyed enough to see Mr. Trump’s flaws and honest enough to acknowledge them, the question is whether we’re better off with his policies or his opponent’s. On taxes, spending, inflation, immigration, energy and national security, the candidates are miles apart. And Mr. Trump is clearly the better choice.
Ms. Haley was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (2017-19), and governor of South Carolina (2011-17) and a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Americans today on average face some $13,000 in higher annual costs than they did four years ago. Prices on nearly everything—food, gasoline, utility bills, insurance—have gone up. This is the direct result of the Biden-Harris agenda, which stoked inflation and stuck families with the bill. Americans are stuck with another bill, too: the national debt. It has reached nearly $36 trillion, thanks in part to Ms. Harris’s tie-breaking votes on the grossly misnamed American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act. Despite its title, the latter is still boosting inflation. Its estimated price tag has more than doubled since President Biden signed it, and it is funding projects that are largely stalled. As president, Ms. Harris would make America’s fiscal crisis even worse.
If you think prices were higher under Biden, wait til you see how much higher they get when Trump adds a gigantic sales tax on every imported product (and the retaliatory tariffs other countries will impose will shut off demand for our exports, which will make sure our unemployment rate shoots up as well).
With luck, we'll actually never find out just how badly Trump will destroy the economy, and we can look forward to your continued dishonest whining about Biden/Harris for the next eight years.
This is, of course. putting aside the fact that you, and Ms Haley, are pardoning Trump for his disqualifying attack on the Capitol and tolerating (though in your case maybe embracing?) the deep cruelty and violence Trump has inflicted and promises to inflict upon immigrants. Again with luck, we'll be able to avoid the disgusting sight of you and other Trump supporters justifying the concentration camps, midnight raids, and storm troopers rounding up anyone who might be "illegal," and instead we'll get to see you hyperventilate about Harris' "failures" on "the border" for the next eight years.
Does anyone have any statistics on the ratio of women to men who are in deadly cults? It boggles my mind that after all the insults trump lobbed at Nikki, she’s still choosing him over a woman, who’s a thousand times better than this man.
13000 in higher expenses per family?
total horsepoop.
i.e. food for MAGA
drummerboy said:
13000 in higher expenses per family?
total horsepoop.
i.e. food for MAGA
whatever the number is, inflation adjusted median income was only a few hundred dollars less in 2023 than it was in 2019. And it's higher than it was in 2020, you know who's last year in office.
Classic misleading use of statistics. And we wonder why the average person doesn't know anything about the economy.
ml1 said:
drummerboy said:
13000 in higher expenses per family?
total horsepoop.
i.e. food for MAGA
whatever the number is, inflation adjusted median income was only a few hundred dollars less in 2023 than it was in 2019. And it's higher than it was in 2020, you know who's last year in office.
Classic misleading use of statistics. And we wonder why the average person doesn't know anything about the economy.
It's an average. That includes Elon Musk, who since 2020 took out enormous loans to buy and destroy Twitter, and now has to pay millions more in interest payments than he did before, so that skews the average. All those legal bills Trump has to pay, and the criminal settlements, also go into that average. Also all the legal bills and settlements of all of Trump's criminal supporters.
A Wall Street Journal opinion page piece behind a paywall may not be the least that Nikki Haley could do to support Trump, but it's close to the least. It strikes me as not so much a principled argument in favor of him, but more like a "I hope this is enough so that I'm not insulted or threatened" gambit.
PVW said:
ml1 said:
drummerboy said:
13000 in higher expenses per family?
total horsepoop.
i.e. food for MAGA
whatever the number is, inflation adjusted median income was only a few hundred dollars less in 2023 than it was in 2019. And it's higher than it was in 2020, you know who's last year in office.
Classic misleading use of statistics. And we wonder why the average person doesn't know anything about the economy.
It's an average. That includes Elon Musk, who since 2020 took out enormous loans to buy and destroy Twitter, and now has to pay millions more in interest payments than he did before, so that skews the average. All those legal bills Trump has to pay, and the criminal settlements, also go into that average. Also all the legal bills and settlements of all of Trump's criminal supporters.
so it's not a median.
Another classic way to lie with statistics. In a skewed distribution use mean instead of median.
PVW said:
ml1 said:
drummerboy said:
13000 in higher expenses per family?
total horsepoop.
i.e. food for MAGA
whatever the number is, inflation adjusted median income was only a few hundred dollars less in 2023 than it was in 2019. And it's higher than it was in 2020, you know who's last year in office.
Classic misleading use of statistics. And we wonder why the average person doesn't know anything about the economy.
It's an average. That includes Elon Musk, who since 2020 took out enormous loans to buy and destroy Twitter, and now has to pay millions more in interest payments than he did before, so that skews the average. All those legal bills Trump has to pay, and the criminal settlements, also go into that average. Also all the legal bills and settlements of all of Trump's criminal supporters.
here's the source for this nonsense number
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation-households-need-extra-11400-these-states-its-even-higher/
DaveSchmidt said:
drummerboy said:
13000 in higher expenses per family?
do you think that answers some question?
have your expenses gone up by 13K?
Thought-provoking (and disturbing to think about) reflection from Robert P. Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), and author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future and White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award, and which are both excellent books.
https://www.whitetoolong.net/p/donald-trumps-dangerous-closing-message
Excerpt -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Down the home stretch of the campaign, Donald Trump has doubled down on his message of Christian nationalism and white grievance. While his speeches have indeed become more meandering and more extreme, they nonetheless contain a coherent appeal that taps key elements from authoritarian playbooks around the world, including 1930s Nazi Germany:
- The once proud nation and the Christian institutions that made it that way are in decline and in danger of being destroyed. We must fight, fight, fight to make this nation great again.
- The nation was once racially and religiously pure but is now being contaminated by elements from without and defiled by enemies from within.
- The political opposition is not just misguided or wrong on policies; they are sick and evil people who want to destroy the country.
- Only one political leader, chosen by God for this moment, can save the country. He alone can restore order and glory to the nation and restore white Christian America. He alone bring us back to being ”one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God.”
drummerboy said:
DaveSchmidt said:
drummerboy said:
13000 in higher expenses per family?
do you think that answers some question?
have your expenses gone up by 13K?
considering the average household most likely has a mortgage as its biggest expense (by far) most probably haven't seen a 20% increase in their overall monthly expenses.
drummerboy said:
do you think that answers some question?
Yes, I do: Yours. The compounding effects of inflation can sneak up on even the keenest mathematical minds.
have your expenses gone up by 13K?
Probably not, but in addition to ending college tuition payments and having our son move out within the last four years, I’m a below average American.
ml1 said:
considering the average household most likely has a mortgage as its biggest expense (by far) most probably haven't seen a 20% increase in their overall monthly expenses.
If you apply the latest 2.4% annualized overall inflation rate for 2024, the increase in housing costs for homeowners since 2021, according to the BLS, is 17.3%.
DaveSchmidt said:
If you apply the latest 2.4% annualized overall inflation rate for 2024, the increase in housing costs for homeowners since 2021, according to the BLS, is 17.3%.
I don't think applying the overall inflation rate to housing is appropriate. But whatever the number is, it's high enough to suggest to me a lot more homeowners must have ARMs than I ever suspected.
Regardless, if we are using overall averages, the typical household hasn't lost $13K a year in buying power. So Haley is being misleading by leaving out that pertinent fact.
Another nugget from the BLS list I’m citing:
Even for homeowners, the biggest monthly expense, on average, is food, not housing. And (again applying 2.4% overall inflation for 2024, which is the best I can come up with, and close to the Fed’s floor-level target), food costs are up 23.4% since 2021.
drummerboy said:
why do I bother?
Cheer up. You don’t bother me.
The point about the skewing vis-à-vis median and mean is a good one. But mean is how the BLS tracks and reports household expenses, and $13,000 didn’t appear out of thin air. Averages aside, the BLS list can still offer insight into our spending habits and how the cumulative percentage increases — valid whether you buy $1 million or $100 worth of groceries every month — may surprise those of us who can comfortably absorb them.
fwiw, i think our monthly credit card total is about $1,000 higher per month than it was 4 or 5 years ago, so not totally out of line with $13,000 a month. (We're probably a little on the high side in income, retired, no child care, no mortgage, low mileage, most "goods and services" go on the card, including recently a few hundred/month for spouse's political contributions.
Higher or lower for a more typical household??
Mean vs average is a real point, but my post was more trolling mt for supporting a candidate who's promising a truly disastrous economic policy. (not to mention a morally monstrous one)
DaveSchmidt said:
The point about the skewing vis-à-vis median and mean is a good one. But mean is how the BLS tracks and reports household expenses, and $13,000 didn’t appear out of thin air. Averages aside, the BLS list can still offer insight into our spending habits and how the cumulative percentage increases — valid whether you buy $1 million or $100 worth of groceries every month — may surprise those of us who can comfortably absorb them.
still. Pointing out the increases in prices and leaving out the increases in income is not having an honest discussion of the issue.
It doesn't mean there aren't people who can't absorb price increases. But Haley is writing about the aggregate and not individuals.
Really, PVW, blaming mt for your incorrect perception is not grown up! What country do you plan on moving to IF Trump wins?
mtierney said:
Really, PVW, blaming mt for your incorrect perception is not grown up! What country do you plan on moving to IF Trump wins?
Please explain to me how I'm wrong -- or are partisan cartoons the only way you know how to communicate?
PVW said:
Please explain to me how I'm wrong -- or are partisan cartoons the only way you know how to communicate?
don’t forget… she’s the grown up one here…
drummerboy said:
someone's gonna have to explain that last cartoon to me.
President Biden on Halloween pretended to gnaw on a baby's leg as a joke because the baby was dressed as a chicken.
Also, you know, George Soros, Jewish Cabal, child trafficking, adrenochrome breakfast, baby-eating, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Does this man know time people start work on voting day??? Let alone what election workers actually do all day?? And he expects us to count accurately until it’s done?! Does he understand the verification of count, and crudeness of messages on paper ballots, that invalidates that vote?!