RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trump-boom-is-real-11603659361?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

There’s often more to the macroeconomy than what meets the eye. My friend Alan Blinder published an op-ed recently declaring that the employment surge during Donald Trump’s presidency is a “convenient myth.” He noted that unemployment had declined steadily since 2010 and that there was no acceleration in job growth after the 2017 tax reform. But there’s little reason to think the expansion held for a record-long 10 years merely on its own steam; Mr. Trump’s policies gave it new life.

After any recession, employment grows quickly because there is a surplus of job seekers. Late in a recovery, when the unemployment rate has already fallen sharply, growth becomes much harder to come by. Common sense suggests that further progress is more difficult at a 4% unemployment rate than at 8%

It’s easy to look at steadily declining unemployment and conclude that no later variables had much effect. But a better question is how much unemployment declined relative to what experts predicted. Take the Federal Reserve, the body on which Mr. Blinder and I served together.

In December 2016, the Fed predicted that 2017 would close at a 4.5% unemployment rate. In fact, it ended at 4.1%. The Fed in 2016 also projected that 2018 would end with 4.5% unemployment, believing further improvement was virtually impossible. But unemployment reached 3.9% in 2018. Ditto for 2019: The Fed predicted 4.5%, but unemployment fell to 3.5% that year, a multidecade low. Under Mr. Trump, the unemployment rate fell to a level the Fed hadn’t even considered. The Fed’s 2016 predictions for GDP were 0.7 percentage points too low for 2017, 0.5 points too low for 2018 and 0.4 points too low for 2019.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/keep-an-eye-on-the-michigan-senate-race-11603659430?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Michigan hasn’t elected a Republican U.S. senator since 1994, and Republicans this year are working to save more than half a dozen seats in the upper chamber. But the Senate race in Michigan presents an unexpected pickup opportunity. Recent polls show Republican John James, a 39-year-old African-American Iraq war veteran, within striking distance of first-term Sen. Gary Peters and outperforming President Trump, who narrowly carried the state in 2016. The Real Clear Politics average has Mr. Peters leading 48.6% to 43.4%.

Mr. Peters, 61, was the only nonincumbent Democrat elected to the Senate in 2014. But his GOP opponent answered questions clumsily and repeatedly stumbled on the trail. Mr. James looks more formidable.

A Detroit native, he served eight years in the military before joining his family’s company, James Group International. He is now CEO of Renaissance Global Logistics, a subsidiary. Although he lost a 2018 challenge to Sen. Debbie Stabenow by 6.5 points, he was fighting a strong undertow: Democrats swept Michigan’s statewide offices, flipped two congressional seats and picked up five seats each in the state House and Senate.

Running on the same ticket as Mr. Trump may be both a blessing and curse. While the president may motivate Republican-leaning voters who didn’t turn out in 2018, he may do the same for Democrats. To flip the Senate seat, Mr. James will need to persuade moderates who dislike Mr. Trump but are leery of progressive policies.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/10/fauci-prepping-biden-victory-daniel-greenfield/

Don’t wear masks. Make everyone masks. Sure, why not? Just say it in a soothing voice with a pleasant bedside manner.

In a CNN interview on Friday, Fauci was asked if he thought Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s plan to fight for mandates on mask-wearing across the country would be helpful.  

Fauci told CNN’s Erin Burnett that it would be a “great idea” to have everybody wearing masks uniformly. He also responded to criticism that mandates on masks would be difficult to enforce. 

Everyone? In the entire country? Much of which, at a county level, has only experienced a limited infection impact?

As Fauci’s own mask-wearing, or lack thereof at sporting events, reminds us, he doesn’t believe any of this stuff.

But it’s the stupid thing that Biden has come up with on the advice of an advisor and donor base limited to the New York, San Francisco, and other big blue city crowd. And Fauci, readapting to the media’s expectations of a Biden victory, is all in on it.

“One of the issues though, I get the argument that ‘Well, if you mandate a mask, you’re going to have to enforce it and that’s going to create more of a problem,’” Fauci said. “Well, if people are not wearing masks, then maybe we should be mandating it.” 

This isn’t an actual thought.

But then again, Fauci doesn’t do actual thoughts. He does pleasantries. He never says anything substantial. Instead he says meaningless things, agrees with anyone he’s talking to, and does little expect give everyone the impression that he’s an empathetic professional, without actually substantiating that in any way. That’s what being a political doctor means.

All you can say about Fauci is that, unlike Birx, he’s better at faking warmth and relevance, but there’s still nothing there.

Fauci panders to anyone who’s in charge, and pivots from radically different views, because his goal is access to power, not to actually accomplish anything, but to be at the top of the heap.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/09/i-didnt-vote-for-trump-in-2016-but-id-crawl-over-broken-glass-to-vote-for-him-now/

I don’t care about the tone of his tweets nor if his opponents think he’s rude. I’ve seen that he is a patriot who genuinely loves the United States of America and its people.

Even though I had voted for every Republican presidential candidate since 1980, I didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016.

Many Republican nominees had been huge disappointments to me, and I wasn’t going to vote for yet another GOP candidate I thought would betray my trust. I couldn’t imagine Trump as a genuine conservative who would champion limited government, respect individual freedom and liberty, and protect the unborn — but was I ever wrong. Although I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, I would crawl over broken glass to vote for him in 2020.

In 2016, I was convinced Trump was just another New York liberal. On election night, however, I smiled. I was happy that at least Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be president, and I suspected that the next four years with Trump would at least be entertaining.

The primary reason I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 was that I didn’t believe him. I didn’t trust that he would be pro-life, a non-negotiable issue for me. His bluster and bravado didn’t appeal to me. I took him literally but not seriously, in contrast to his supporters who took him seriously but not literally (credit to Peter Thiel for identifying this significant distinction).

By the time Trump took office, I was willing to give him a chance. He was the president, after all, and deserved the opportunity to prove himself. During the first year of his presidency, I was impressed by his commitment to keeping his campaign promises, unlike most politicians. By the end of 2017, I classified myself as a Trump supporter because of what he had already done as president.