October 16, 2024

The Most Unserious Presidential Candidate Of All Time?

October 16, 2024/ Francis Menton

The American presidency has definitely had its ups and downs over the years, but at least the occupants of the office, and the contenders who have sought it, have taken the job of being President seriously.
Until now, uniformly, they have thought it important to outline some kind of a vision for the country, and to propose policies intended to achieve that vision. Even if in some instances you might disagree entirely with the candidates’ vision, at least they had it. Or, if they really didn’t have a vision, or much of one, then they pretended to.
In this sense, has there ever been a more fundamentally unserious candidate for President than Kamala Harris?

October 12, 2024

More DOJ And FBI Corruption

October 12, 2024/ Francis Menton

A couple of weeks ago I posed the question of whether the recently-initiated federal prosecution of New York Mayor Eric Adams is legitimate, or whether it is yet another instance of abject corruption by our Department of Justice and FBI, in this instance pay-back by the prosecutors for Adams’s criticism of the regime’s immigration policies.
To help you as you ponder that question, it might be useful to look at a few other things that the DOJ and FBI are recently up to.
As Item Number 1, Justice “Special Counsel” Jack Smith chose the date of October 2 — 34 days before the upcoming election — to file his brief laying out his reasons why ex-President Trump does not qualify for immunity from prosecution under the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling in Trump v. United States. . . .

October 10, 2024

October 10, 2024/ Francis Menton

Have you seen any economic news coming out of Cuba recently? With barely a couple of exceptions, if you read the U.S. Corporate Media, likely you have not.
Searching for the most recent articles on Cuba’s economy from mainstream sources just now, I find nothing in the Washington Post about Cuba’s economy since May 2022; nothing from the New York Times since a piece in April rehashing the usual litany of Cuba’s long-known economic failures; silence at CBS since a piece in April quoting a Cuban official as “blam[ing] the U.S. for exodus of migrants, economic issues”; nothing from CNN since a March article discussing “power cuts and food shortages.” And so forth. OK, Cuba’s economy has performed poorly for decades, ever since Castro’s revolution 65 years ago. We already knew that. But are there any important new developments we should know about?
I last wrote about the economic situation in Cuba about a month ago. The news I could find then already made the World Bank “data” appear ridiculous.
Since then, more facts have dribbled out to make Cuba look like a full-on disaster.

October 07, 2024

October 07, 2024/ Francis Menton

Today is the first anniversary of the massacre perpetrated by Hamas on Israel. One year ago today, about 1200 hundred people were killed in the surprise attack, and about 250 taken hostage. Almost all of those killed or taken hostage were civilians, and the large majority were either women, children, or the elderly. About 100 remain as hostages today.
This sad occasion gets me to thinking about the term “Islamophobia.” I don’t even remember this term existing in my youth. This piece in The New Republic in 2011 traces the origin of the term to the 1970s. But from those relatively recent origins, the term “Islamophobia” has risen fast in the ranks of the epithets generally used to condemn non-conformists to the progressive project as evil people. Other such terms include racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and trans-phobia.
Why is the term “Islamophobia”?

October 05, 2024

October 05, 2024/ Francis Menton

Usually, I don’t waste much time watching the presidential or vice-presidential debates; but on Tuesday I watched most of the vice-presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz. I applaud Vance on a skilled performance.
But I particularly want to comment today on the overt hostility that Vance faced from the moderators, which is unfortunately typical of the hostility of the corporate media toward all Republican candidates.
If you watched some or all of the debate, you probably came away with a general impression of the moderators attempting to help Walz; but without a transcript it is difficult to remember specifics.
Fortunately, CBS has produced a transcript of the debate. So I thought it might be informative to go through the transcript and compile some of the more absurd efforts of the moderators to give a boost to Walz.

October 01, 2024

October 01, 2024/ Francis Menton

Back in July, I had a two posts (here and here) comparing the then candidates for President, Biden and Trump, on the issue of who is the greater “threat to democracy.”
The posts reviewed actions of each candidate that may be viewed as such threats. For Trump, those things included J6, plus seeking legal advice and then bringing litigation as to what he claimed was fraudulent conduct in the 2020 election; for Biden, the things included having the prosecutors bring phony criminal charges against political adversaries, engaging in a systematic effort with social media platforms to suppress the opposition’s speech, extra-constitutional expansion of the regulatory state, hundreds of billions of federal dollars to fund the political Left, the student-loan-forgiveness vote buying program, and opening the southern border.
Whew — quite a list! Obviously, the contest wasn’t close.
But now comes to my attention another whole category of threat to democracy emanating from the Biden-Harris Administration. This is one I have been somewhat aware of, but I have not been fully aware of the vast extent and systematic nature of the effort. Likely, this category is the worst of all the threats discussed in the extent to which it represents fundamental attack on the constitutional structure.