Here we go again with that hopey-changey scam

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Barack Obama was elected in 2008 on his vague promise of “hope and change.” It was a shrewd strategy. He played into Americans’ perpetual dissatisfaction with their elected officials. Who doesn’t want change in the political system, and what better thing to hope for?

Moreover, by running mostly on a slogan, he became an empty vessel for people to fill with their individual hankerings. If you hoped that college would be changed to make it tuition free, then Obama’s your man because, after all, he did promise hope and change. If you hoped your dad would change his criminal ways, then Obama’s your man because, after all, he did promise hope and change. If you hoped the Burger King down the street would change to a Chipotle, then Obama’s your man because, after all, he did promise hope and change.

You get the idea.

When Obama was elected, he promptly declared it was the start of a “fundamental transformation” in America. Once again, he kept everyone happy (well, not me) because he wasn’t specific. We had to wait and see.

It all worked for Obama, for long enough. He did fundamentally change America. For the worse, in my opinion. But he did change it.

You might wonder how Obama got away with a campaign so short on particulars. Why didn’t the press ask him for some?

Two reasons. First, the press wanted a Black man to be elected President and would settle for a half-Black one who “identified” as all Black. Indeed, they liked it better that way because this crowd is scared of fully Black men who have left the Democrat plantation. (See, Thomas, Clarence and Sowell, Thomas)

I voted against Obama for reasons having nothing to do with his race. It was because he looked far too liberal to me. His race was actually a positive for me. On election eve in 2008, I felt a bit of pride that America had elected a Black man to be President. What an opportunity for healing, I naively dreamed.

Second, the press even back in 2008 was overwhelmingly liberal, and, despite Obama’s vague campaign, they could see that he was too. People who hang with the Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers are plenty liberal if not downright radical.

These two factors set the stage for the press’s most obvious and shameless bias since the days of Franklin Roosevelt – when we had a world war to win. Because in the minds of the press, we had another world war to win.

Kamala Harris is trotting out Version 2.0 of Hope and Change. Of course she can’t call it that, since Obama owns that empty phrase and, besides, promising “change” sounds funny from someone whose distance away from the presidency the last four years was just a heartbeat, and a very feeble one at that.  

And even she is smart enough not to make a dramatic multicolored poster of herself like the one Obama traded on, pictured above. That’s sui generis. (Art, not so much.)

So . . . she ginned up something similar to “Hope and Change.” It’s “Joy.” We’re told her campaign is full of “joy.” Who dislikes joy?

“Donald Trump, that’s who!” is their punch line.

Just so that we don’t confuse joy with governing, maybe we should have a British-style monarchy where the monarch gets tasked with “joy” while the Prime Minister gets tasked with governing.

The reason for Kamala’s joy is that she looks forward to a future “unburdened by the past.” In other words, don’t judge her by her words and actions in the past, including the past four years. Instead, judge her by the words and actions you imagine her speaking and doing in the future. Anyone who dredges up her words and deeds of the past is not unburdened by the past and is a real killjoy.

Like Obama 16 years ago, she won’t spoil what you imagine her saying and doing in the future with any contradictory words today. Since she became the putative Democratic nominee a month ago, she has not held a single press conference and has not sat for a single interview.

It’s working. As in 2008, the press is mostly in the bag. They’ve half-heartedly criticized her for her metaphorical basement campaign, but you get the sense that what they’re craving are not answers to hard questions, but clicks. They want a press conference not to inform the public – they’ll make sure to make it a Press Conference Lite – but to motivate people to tune in to them and their lame questions.

That’s because, as in 2008, but even more so 16 years later, they want another Black president – this time a Black woman. And once again they’ll settle for one that’s only half-Black. In fact, they prefer it that way, since, as mentioned, fully Black people scare this crowd.

And, as in 2008, they are confident that Kamala is very liberal. Ridiculously so, to the point that even they cannot stop themselves from noting the absurdity of some of her proposals like federal price controls on groceries. (Hot dogs will cost only $0.14, but you have to stand in line two hours to get them – and don’t you dare complain, comrade.)

Soviet-style price controls on groceries aside, the press know that Kamala is in the bag for the left – meaning them – just as they are in the bag for her.

Will it work again? Probably. And then we’ll have Version 2.0 of “Fundamental Transformation.”

The left likes all this transforming, of course. But I sense that it leaves them unsatisfied. They want the transforming, but they’re disappointed that it seems to be happening in a peaceful sort of way, mostly. What fun is a revolution if no heads roll?

But the left typically overplays its hand. They don’t resort to conflict as a means of achieving change; they seek change as a way of provoking conflict. There’s still time for Version 2.0 to crash.

Secret Service helter-skelter

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Look out! Helter-skelter!

-Paul McCartney and the Beatles, et al

The phrase “helter-skelter” has a storied history (not that we’re burdened by the past, anymore). For centuries it meant something like “confused, disorderly and hurriedly.”

In my lifetime, it was the name of a heavy-metal song by an overrated pop group out of Liverpool with mop hair and skinny pants. A weird, murderous cult figure misinterpreted their song as a prediction of race war in America, maybe because it was on an album that came to be called the “White Album.” (Yes, “White” was capitalized, and they never did produce a “Black Album” or even a “black Album.”)

In short, the meaning of “helter-skelter” over the years has been, well, helter-skelter.

Helter-skelter perfectly describes today’s Secret Service.

Until recently, the head of the Secret Service was a close friend of “doctor” Jill named Kimberly Cheatle. She believed the mission of the Service was to be “diverse.”

Cheatle recruited people with the right sex, right skin shades, and right bedroom habits. She recruited at Gay Pride parades, boasted that she was “striving to be the gold standard of DEI,” hosted a seminar on “the respectful use of pronouns,” and dragged – er, bragged – that her efforts had resulted in “more transgender people” joining the Service.

To get women into the Service, they lowered the physical strength requirements for them. For example, a man must be able to do 11 chin-ups, while a woman need do only 4. Since the lighter women on average are “chinning up” only about 70% of the weight that men are, that means their raw chin-up strength is a small fraction of the men’s. It also means that not only women, but also men pretending to be women, need meet only the much lower women’s standards.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

The Service shot itself in the foot on a routine mission to protect President Trump at a modest campaign rally in semi-rural Pennsylvania. A messed-up would-be assassin with his dad’s gun climbed onto an obvious rooftop vantage and shot the President. The bullet tore through the President’s ear, missing his cranium by a fraction of an inch.

That rooftop within easy rifle range of the podium – even for a 21-year-old kid with no training – had never been secured. Moreover, agents of the Service had seen the shooter well before he fired, and were suspicious, but failed to confront him and failed to warn the President.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

When Trump fell behind the podium with the bullet wound to his ear, about two minutes passed before the Service agents were finally able to get him to his feet and off the stage. At least one of those agents was a woman who was not tall enough to shield the President, and evidently not strong enough to help him off the stage quickly.

Fortunately, the shooter had already been neutralized, else the President would have been a sitting duck. As it was, a person right behind the President was killed and another was seriously injured.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

This all occurred after the Trump campaign had requested additional Service protection. In a decision that almost certainly was made by Cheatle (and probably endorsed by the intern du jour who is running the White House), the request was denied.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

That was also after they had denied additional protection for Robert Kennedy, Jr., who is running against the Democrats this year. (Maybe the denial was because they weren’t aware of the fate of his father and uncle. Or maybe it was because they were.)

Look out! Helter-skelter!

Cheatle in subsequent testimony to Congress equivocated, lied, and cheatled. Er, cheated. In a rare display of bipartisanship, politicians of both parties decided she was not competent to protect politicians. She was pushed out of the Service.

It’s interesting how even Democrats suddenly believe in merit over diversity when it comes to protecting their own hides.

Since then, it has come out that Cheatle had a role in another incident. Cocaine was found last year in the White House not long after a visit by Hunter Biden. DNA tests on the area produced a “partial hit” with DNA that the Service had on file. That suggested that the perp was not the person whose DNA they already had on file, but was a relative of that person.

This isn’t Sherlock Holmes stuff. The obvious inference is that the perp was Hunter – a known cocaine user – and the relative whose near-matching DNA was on file was that of his father, Joe.

Cheatle (a Friend-of-Jill, you’ll recall) asked that the DNA evidence be destroyed along with the contraband cocaine. You don’t want to follow-the-science if it leads to places you don’t want to go.

Her underlings refused to destroy the evidence – an act that could constitute the crime of obstruction of justice. But the Service at her direction refused to pursue any further investigation. The excuse was that it would require interviewing some 500 persons who had been to the spot in question over the preceding weeks.

But that’s not true. They had established through the DNA tests that the person was a relative of a particular person whose DNA was on file. There could not be many suspects. The only suspects would be the relatives of the person whose DNA was a near-match, who had been on-site recently.

It’s highly likely that the person whose near-matching DNA was on file was Joe, and the relative was Hunter. So only one interview was necessary – an interview of Hunter. In fact, they could dispense with even that interview by simply asking Hunter for a cheek swab to check his DNA against the DNA they’d found.

But that would incriminate the criminal. And a mere interview would incriminate him further because he would deny it, thereby committing the additional crime of lying to the investigators.

To protect Hunter, they dropped the investigation.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

A few weeks ago, there was a campaign rally for Kamala Harris. Understandably, local retail businesses were asked to close down briefly for security purposes. Less understandably, the Service broke into one of the stores, put duct tape over the business’ security cameras, and used the bathroom for their own purposes. When they left, they failed to re-lock the store, and left the cameras duct-taped.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

Just today, an agent at a Trump rally abandoned her post to breast feed her baby that she’d apparently brought along with her.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

There might almost comedy in all this. But someone is apt to get killed.

Kamala is not as stupid as advertised

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In the death throes of his presidency (at least) Joe Biden threw his DEI hire, Kamala Harris, to the back of the bus. Then off it. And then under it.

The Worst President Ever promised/threatened that if he were to withdraw from the 2024 race, his $200,000,000 in campaign funds, plus or minus, would go to her.

Left unsaid was what everyone knew: She’d waste it because she was unelectable.

Joe’s threat became less threatening as time went on and campaign donors went away. Moreover, his physical state became shakier, as did his mental state. Everyone could see it. Even the poodle media like WaPo and NYT, which had covered for him just months earlier, were forced to acknowledge his state and their lie.

Kamala became what might be called in baseball “a late-inning substitution.” Or maybe they would call her “a closer.” If she succeeds, she gets the “save.” She’ll be a “saver” for the Democrats, and perhaps even a savior.

She may well succeed.

President Trump dismisses her as “not very smart.” In a literal sense, he’s right. She’s not very smart.

But Trump uses “not very smart” to mean “stupid.” In that, I think he’s wrong. She’s not as stupid as advertised. For example, she’s not as stupid as Vice President Dan Quayle was deemed to be (and neither was Dan Quayle).

Her Indian mother received a PhD in endocrinology from UC Berkeley. Her Jamaican father was an economics professor at Stanford. I know you’re not supposed to say this, but she comes from pretty good stock.

She earned a law degree from UC Hastings, the tenth-best law school in California according to US News and World Report. She should have gotten into a better school, given her parents’ academic connections, but she did get in and did graduate (sans honors).

Upon graduating, flunking the bar, and then passing it, Harris became a government employee, and has been one ever since. She started as a prosecutor in San Francisco, and was not a bad one. Although she pledged never to seek the death penalty in a case – and kept that promise – she defended the California death penalty in a court challenge, as her position required. She was considered fairly tough on criminals. She pushed for higher bail for violent ones, and issued citations against the parents of truant students for failing to get their kids to school. 

She dated a well-connected California politician who was 31 years her senior named Willie Brown. He obligingly appointed her to several state government positions. She ultimately wormed her way up to the position of Attorney General of California, and then was elected United States Senator.

She gets difficulty points for those high acrobatic positions, even if no style points.  

Her 2020 presidential campaign flopped before the year 2020 began. But give her credit. Four years later, she’s the Democratic candidate. She’s done that without having won a single delegate, ever. She has now jockeyed herself into a close race with former President Trump.

For a person who lost humiliatingly four years ago and got thrown under the bus this year, she’s done alright. She’s in the Big Leagues.

Her policies? To me as a conservative, most of them are terrible. But since when do American voters bother to evaluate policies? It’s about politics, not principles.

In politics, she’s far more clever than the guy currently in the Oval Office basement, because she’s far smarter.

Here’s an illustration. She decided this week not to choose as her running mate the governor of Pennsylvania, a must-win state for her.

The reason Harris passed over him is that he’s Jewish and has been outspoken in his defense of Israel against the barbarian invaders. The governor’s religion and his outspokenness have earned him the contempt of the well-funded terrorist sympathizers in the Democratic Party.

Harris thus showed an abhorrent willingness to compromise principles in order to pander to antisemitism, but also showed a remarkable political shrewdness in doing so.

She might not be very smart, but she’s plenty crafty.

Where do you draw the line on biological men competing in women’s sports?

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Olympic boxing sunk to a new low last week. An Algerian boxer with XY chromosomes – the ordinary definition of “male” – and commensurate male testosterone levels – beat up a woman in front of thousands of cheering spectators.

The woman who was beat up had to quit 46 seconds into the match, apparently with a broken nose. In tears, she said in her native Italian “not fair, not fair” and explained afterward that she’d “never been hit so hard in my life.”

The XY boxer was declared the winner. Yesterday, the XY boxer won again in a decision where all three judges favored the XY boxer in all three rounds – it was effectively a 9-0 decision – and is headed toward the finals as a clear favorite for the gold medal.

This XY person had previously been disqualified from competition by the International Boxing Association for having tested positive for XY chromosomes and testosterone levels well above the normal range for women – and within the normal range for men.

But the International Olympic Committee disregarded those tests in a feud between them and the IBA. The IOC says the XY has a passport with “female” checked on it, and that’s good enough for them.

The follow-the-science crowd was thus persuaded, ironically, not by a chromosome test or a testosterone test, but by the bureaucrats of the Algerian passport office.  

XY chromosomes result in male anatomy, including testicles. That’s where testosterone is produced. (Testosterone is also produced in female sex organs, but in miniscule levels compared to what’s produced in male testicles.)

Testosterone produces larger, denser muscles, and greater size and strength. This is seen throughout athletics, and is the reason that almost all competitions are divided between male and female competitors.

When men compete against women, the result is a gross mismatch. We saw this in college swimming a few years ago when a swimmer with XY chromosomes who was ranked about 460 in collegiate men’s swimming decided to compete as a woman, and immediately achieved a number one ranking in the women’s sport.

In boxing, the punching power of a male is over two and a half times that of a female. Even that does not tell the whole story. Men are naturally quicker, and so they can land a punch easier and dodge their opponents’ punches easier. Their facial and other bones are bigger, thicker and denser, so they can absorb a punch better. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a man boxing against a woman is like a man boxing against a boy.

What kind of man wants to win a medal by beating up a boy or a woman in front of a cheering crowd?

A bad man, that’s what kind. A man who is arguably a deviant, attention-seeking, woman-beating sadist.

So, where do you draw the line? The IOC is apparently saying that people with XY chromosomes and male testosterone levels can compete against women – so long as they pretend to be women (at least until they launch that first punch).

But why must they pretend to be women? Pretending to be a woman does not make a man into a woman any more than pretending to be a duck makes a person into a duck – no matter how much they look, act and quack like one.

This pretending encourages deceit. It says, “We’ll let you compete as a woman so long as you lie.”

Prominent athletes have condemned these spectacles between women and pretend-women, from gay tennis great Martina Navratilova to transsexual Caitlin Jenner who won gold as Bruce Jenner.

Like them, I don’t care about a person’s sexual “identity.” If they want to hold themselves out as a man when their chromosomes and testosterone says they’re a woman, or vice versa, that’s fine by me. I’ll even play along by using their “preferred pronouns” if that makes them feel good.

But Navratilova, Jenner and I draw a rational, science-based line that does sacrifice women’s athletics on the altar of political fashions. That line is this: People with male chromosomes and testosterone should not compete as women in women’s sports. The result is unfair to women and destructive to their sports.

We’re headed to a world where the only sports are male sports and transgender “female” sports. Women with XX chromosomes need not apply, because they cannot effectively compete against the XYs.  

It’s not only unfair and wrong; it’s dangerous. It’s only a matter of time until before a man kills a woman in the ring. The IOC will have that woman’s blood on their hands.

Does “accepting” gays mean we have to pay them to mock our religion?

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Twenty-six years ago, the media reported that a young man named Matthew Shepard was beaten and strung up on a Wyoming barbed wire fence to die. The beating and murder were because Shepard was gay.

The perps were quickly found, tried for murder, convicted, and sentenced to prison. They’re still there.

It was a good news story about bad news and was widely reported. But it wasn’t true.

It has since been shown that Shepard and one of the perps were in the drug business together. Shepard was due to receive a $10,000 shipment of meth. The perp himself was gay and had been in a gay relationship with Shepard. 

So, it wasn’t a hate crime by a straight Wyoming redneck against an innocent 21-year-old gay guy. It was a drug deal gone bad between two gay lovers.

But never mind that. Gay advocates seized on Shepard’s death as evidence of hatred in the heartland toward gays. His death spurred new federal hate crime laws, where criminally attacking someone becomes even more criminal if the someone is gay. (A friend in the law professor business is fond of saying that it’s impossible to commit just one federal crime.)

The flip side of that, of course, is that criminally attacking someone is now a little less criminal if the person is not gay.

Notably, the hate crime law passed in response to Shepard’s murder was, of course, not in effect at the time of his murder. The perps were nonetheless arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced – a sentence they’re still serving – for committing a crime.

It’s called murder, and the penalties are severe. Regardless of whether you hate the victim.

I’m guessing that you remember the Matthew Shepard story, but never saw the debunking of it. The debunking never got much coverage. Gee, I wonder why.

Fast forward four decades. Now we have the quadrennial spectacle called the Olympics. It’s become a little like the Superbowl. It’s infused with media money that wants to juice it up to sell you stuff.

In the Superbowl, that means a half-time show with celebrities who “accidentally” expose themselves and expensive television commercials that compete for edgy obscurity.

In the Olympics, we of course have doping scandals, but they’re not nearly as interesting ever since East Germany joined the Dark Force of capitalism. We do still have the mini-scandal of men winning women’s events on the pretense that they’re feeling feminine, that day, but that will sort itself out as the real women keep losing to them.

Today’s scandal is that the opening ceremonies included a bit where gay men dressed in drag mockingly imitated Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.

For those of you who were raised in the Church of No-religion and went to the College of No-education, the Last Supper is a large mural painted at the end of the fifteenth century on a convent wall in Milan by an Italian who was the quintessential Renaissance Man – a creative genius of art, engineering, science and architecture. It depicts the artist’s imagination of the supper between Jesus and his disciples the night before his crucifixion. It’s considered a masterpiece of art and a treasure of Christianity. It’s worth seeing.

I’m sure the gay Parisian in charge of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics thought the mocking of an icon of Christianity and western culture was very edgy and, therefore, artistic. I’m surprised there wasn’t someone more sophisticated to say “Oh, the mocking of Christianity thing? Hasn’t that been done?”

Because yes, it has. About a thousand times. I suppose it was edgy when an “artist” made a jar of urine with a submerged crucifix and called it “Piss Christ.” But that was nearly forty years ago, for Chrissake. The latest “edginess” is fake nuns in drag at baseball games.

Yawn.

There’s a reason I bring up these stories of Matthew Shepard and this week’s opening ceremonies of the Olympics. (BTW, women’s beach volleyball is more entertaining than most other women’s sports. Superbowl wardrobe malfunctions have nothing on these gals.)

It’s because they raise a question in my mind.

I’ve never had an issue with gays, mind you. A few of my friends and family are gays. I admire the struggle it must have been and the courage it must have entailed.

Anyway, I have enough stuff in my bedroom and my past to avoid judging people for what’s in theirs. (I say these sorts of things just to ensure that I’ll never succumb to pressure to run for political office or even – especially! – to serve on my HOA.)

All that said, there’s something amiss about publicly mocking people’s religion, especially when the mockery is just for publicity, faux edginess, and to sell stuff.

I don’t mock gay people for being gay. Now that would be edgy in today’s culture. Gay people don’t mock Islam or the Prophet. That would be edgy in today’s culture. Nobody mocks transsexuals. That would be edgy.

Why is it OK to dig up the most overused trope of political correctness by mocking Christians and Christianity?

There’s nothing edgy about mocking Christians. It happens all the time now. In fact, it always has. The first mocking of a Christian was of Christ who died a humiliating death after an excruciating torture. Almost all his disciples were later mockingly tortured to death as well.

This mockery of Christianity continued unabated up to the present with fake nuns in drag at baseball games.  

That said, I object to renewed mockery of my Lord and Savior by attention-seeking queers who are being paid to do so with public funds.

I understand that mocking Christians is part of your gig. It apparently gets your rocks off. You insult Christians to the point that they’re angry and hurt, and then you go home (I hope) to get your jollies about it in your bedroom.

I suggest that you masturbate to something else. I remind you that when it comes to mockery, you live in glass houses.

Does JD’s wife know he’s a racist?

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President Trump’s pick for his running mate, JD Vance, is a little hard to criticize. His mom in hillbilly Kentucky was a drug addict. He was saved, and raised, by his grandmother.

JD returned the favor in a way; he later saved his mom. He announced at the Republican National Convention that she’d been sober for many years (though he failed to mention that it was with his help). She beamed, and the crowd cheered.

JD joined the Marines, got a degree from Ohio State, and went to Yale Law School where he was an editor of the Yale Law Review. He became a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. He wrote an account of growing up called “Hillbilly Elegy” which became a best seller. He was elected to the United States Senate at age 37.

The left hates achievers. Especially when they do it on merit rather than skin color or sexual preference. If they’re conservative, they get dubbed “racists” for that.

To support the “racist” smear, the left will spin and even invent stories. In JD’s case, they’ve focused on his venture capital work.

After working for two venture firms, JD started his own. He named it after a power in the J.R.R. Tolkien books – Narya, which was a power to resist tyranny and despair.  

Rachel Maddow sees something ominous in this. She notes that if you take the “N” at the start of “Narya” and reposition it to the end, you have . . . [drum roll] . . . “Aryan.”

So, there you have it. Irrefutable proof that JD is a secretly self-identifying “Aryan.” As in the Hitlerian kind.

As for Tolkien, the left has long hated his depiction of a world with good and evil. The left doesn’t believe in evil, you see.

Pause to consider the reasons that a group of people would deny the existence of evil. And then consider the consequences of that denial.

Maybe I’m a little too hard on them. They do believe in one type of evil. They believe that conservative people are evil – like JD. They believe that such people deserve to be smeared with the “racist” label, as Maddow has smeared JD, and any other vile label.

Speaking of racism, some of the real thing was on display this week. In what the media dubbed “an antiwar protest,” the left marched in DC during Bibi Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Half the Democrats boycotted the speech. This “antiwar protest” was an appalling antisemitic march depicting Netanyahu as a horned monster with bloody fangs. Numerous signs called for a “final solution” to the Jewish “problem.”

One other thing about JD. He met a woman in Yale Law School and married her. She happens to be a Asian-American who practices Hinduism. Both her parents immigrated legally from India.

JD and Usha have been married ten years and have three half-Asian children. During their marriage, he converted from Protestantism to Catholicism.

I wonder if Usha and the kids know JD is a racist. Count on Rachel Maddow to break the news.

Is Joe Biden dying?

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I’ll just give the facts:

He’s 81-years old.

He’s shown a distinct decline in his physical and mental state.

The White House announced last week that he has COVID.

He was pushed out of the presidential election by people who are familiar with his physical and mental state.

He has essentially disappeared since then – for over 48 hours.

He apparently traveled to the vicinity of Las Vegas. There are reports that he suffered a medical emergency there, and emergency assistance was called.

His handlers refused the assistance, and instead flew him back east, according to local authorities.  

My prayers for him and his family.

And the winner of the pool to predict the date of Joe’s dropout is . . .

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Readers will recall that a couple of weeks ago, I started a pool to predict Joe’s dropout date. First prize was a day or evening of hiking and drinking with me around, or in, Aspen. (There’s no truth to the rumor that second prize was two days, and third prize was three.)

The pool filled and flooded, the dam burst, and I was deluged with more predictions than I can shake a Speedo at, through my two websites and by direct email correspondence.

My own prediction was too early by over a week, so at least I won’t be drinking alone.

The winning prediction was within about four hours. The winner predicted 10 a.m. on July 21.

As you know unless you’re as somnolent as Joe, you know he quit not with a bang, but a whimper. No press conference, no Oval Office teleprompter speech, not even a hug or a handshake. Just a tweet. To my knowledge, the guy is still holed up in his basement in Delaware; there’s been no public appearance.

Much of the White House staff learned of his walkaway not from Joe or any other private announcement, but from the tweet.

It’s inconceivable that Joe himself wrote the tweet, so at this point it’s still just hearsay. It’s possible that Joe will wake up tomorrow and tell us that his Twitter account was hacked, Anthony Weiner style.

But the contest panel of judges – er, judge – has convened, reached a quorum, and unanimously decided that we’ll go with July 21 as the quitting date, at least for now.  

I would love to give you the name of the winner, so that he can enjoy not just the prize but also the adulation of millions and perhaps an interview with Andrew Breitbart. But I won’t reveal his name until he permits me to.

You see, not all my readers want to be identified as such. Go figure.

But the winner knows who he is. I invite him in a comment to give me permission to let everyone else know who he is as well.

Meanwhile, congratulations to this intrepid prognosticator. What’s your prediction for the stock market tomorrow?

Joe, did you just break up with us – by text?

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One of three things happened this afternoon. Either (1) the Lord Almighty told Joe to quit the race, or (2) the polls said there was “no way” he could win, or (3) he got hit by a train.

Because he assured us over the last weeks – most recently the last few days – that those were the only things that would cause him to quit.

I suppose there’s one other possibility that he neglected to mention. Barack might have told his butt boy to get the hell out, else Barack would spill the beans on Joe’s family business.

So . . . Joe did what Joe had to do.

But by text??? What kind of chickensh*t scoundrel breaks up by text? No press conference? No teleprompter speech from the Oval Office? Not even one from his Delaware basement?

It’s bad enough to be Starbucked. We’ve been texted.

Oh, I know there’s the story that he has a bout of COVID, which is why he’s retreated to the basement again (though we were also told the symptoms were mild).

But wait? Wasn’t he vaccinated with that stuff that makes it impossible to get COVID?

It’s we the people who’ve been dumped, but somehow I’m not feeling particularly humiliated. But since the relationship is over, Joe, would you, Lady McBiden and Hunty please get out of our damn house?

Right now – before I get a restraining order!

P.S. I owe one of you discerning readers a prize for coming closest to picking the date on which Joe would announce his quitting. I have a boatload of entries to sort through to figure out which of you is the winner. But stay tuned!

Is “cheap stuff” the right goal for our trade policy?

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Economists – who have predicted seven of the last four recessions – will tell you that trade tariffs are bad. The reason tariffs are bad is that they make imported goods more expensive. The money for the tariff has to come from somewhere, so it gets built into the price of the product.

So, the effect of an American tariff on, say, televisions made in China is to raise the prices to the American consumer.

OK, I buy that. But what does that mean in real life?

It means that a family in Peoria that would like to buy a 60” TV might have to settle for a 52” screen.

That strikes me a something less than catastrophic. If that’s a “global trade war” then these economists never studied the lead-up to World War Two.

But still, I admit that settling for a 52” TV rather than a 60” TV is not a positive. It’s a negative. Especially if you combine it with settling for a phone with a camera having 2X zoom rather than 3x zoom, and settling for a car that goes 0-60 in 5.9 seconds rather than 5.6 (both of which are way faster than the muscle cars of yesteryear, by the way), and settling for a dishwasher that you can turn on and off easily but not from France.

So, I do acknowledge that tariffs entail some cost to people who like to buy stuff – and we all do like to buy stuff. But that’s not the whole story. Credit Donald Trump and J.D. Vance for starting a discussion on this.

There are several legitimate reasons for tariffs. One is to protect a strategic American interest. Steel is used throughout industry, from buildings to tanks. Sure, we could import all our steel from China, for now, but what happens when we close our steel mills and then have a conflict with China and they cut off our supply?  

A second reason for tariffs is to use them as a bargaining chip. Foreign countries sometimes unfairly protect their industries from American goods, whether it’s the vineyards in France or the chip-makers in Taiwan. We can unilaterally remove our own trade barriers while they retain theirs, but a smarter approach is to threaten a tit-for-tat where we impose barriers unless they remove theirs. This typically works.

Everyone admits both of these reasons. Weighing and applying them can be complicated, but there’s no doubt about their legitimacy.

A third reason for tariffs is more subtle. It’s to protect American culture – and French and Italian and Korean culture.

Economists will tell you that the best economy is the one that’s the most efficient. That sounds logical. It means that if wine can be produced most efficiently in Italy, then that’s where is should be produced. If steel can be produced most efficiently in China, then that’s where it should be produced. If AI software can be produced most efficiently in America, then that’s where it should be produced.

The reason that efficiency trumps everything else, the economists will say, is that the efficient production of goods leads to the lowest prices for those goods. Low prices mean greater availability to poor people. What could be more important than globalized trade that results in cheap goods for poor people?

Culture, that’s what. And the best culture is not necessarily the most efficient one.

Maybe good wine can indeed be produced more efficiently in Italy than in France (my own judgment notwithstanding). Does that mean the French vineyards should be put out of business?

Maybe cars can be produced more efficiently in Korea than in Italy (which is surely the case). Does that mean the car factories in Italy should be demolished so that they can be made into vineyards and we should all drive a KIA and not a Ferrari?  

An economist would answer “yes.”

But an economist knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Destroying those French vineyards exacts a cultural toll on the French countryside and its people that is impossible to assign a Euro value to. Destroying those Italian car factories that build automotive works of art is almost like destroying Florence.

And what about the personal toll on the workers and their families?

What’s that you say? They should “learn programming?” But AI is putting programmers out of business too.

Economic efficiency is not the highest and best goal of a trade policy, especially in a rich culture. The loadstar of our trade policy – and our foreign policy – should be something more than that.