“Bill Clinton’s strategist, Jim Carville, coined the quip ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ to explain his successful strategy for winning the 1992 U.S. presidential election against incumbent George H. W. Although Carville advised Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, he apparently didn’t share that advice with Harris. In Harris’s defense, as one pundit explained, any incumbent president, and by extension, the Vice President, would have been blamed for the hammering our economy suffered by Covid’s tailwind. Inflation was a scourge that hurt Harris as it did for two previous presidents, Ford and Carter, who lost after serving one term due to significant inflation.” (11/11/24)
“The First World War ended in November 1918 when an armistice was declared at the ‘eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month,’ marking a moment of hope and the promise of peace. It was also a moment of great sadness and a sense of great tragedy. Many people prayed this would be ‘the war to end all wars,’ and that Armistice Day would serve as an eternal warning never to repeat the past. But then came World War II. After the end of World War II and the Korean War in 1945 [sic], veterans’ organizations pushed the Congress to switch the holiday’s name to Veterans Day, a day to honor those who fight in war.” (11/11/24)
“President Joe Biden has now joined the ranks of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush as a president whose Middle East policy crashed and burned spectacularly. Unlike Carter, who was stymied by the Iranian hostage crisis, or Bush, who faced a popular Iraqi resistance movement, Biden’s woes weren’t inflicted by an enemy. Quite the opposite, it was this country’s putative partner, the Israeli government, that implicated the president in its still ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as its disproportionate attacks on Lebanon and Iran, for which Biden steadfastly declined to impose the slightest penalties. Instead, he’s continued to arm the Israelis to the teeth. Israel’s total war on Palestinian civilians, in turn, significantly reduced enthusiasm for Biden among youth and minorities at home, helping usher him out of office. It also created electoral obstacles for Kamala Harris’s presidential bid.” (11/11/24)
“Looking at constituencies or issues misses the big point. On Tuesday, nihilism was on display, even a death wish, in a society wrought by cynicism.” (11/11/24)
“When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America between May 9, 1831, and February 20, 1832, he encountered a world that he believed might prefigure the political future for modern societies. He also found himself in the midst of an economy that had begun its rise to become the world’s biggest and most dynamic. Today, Tocqueville is celebrated as a political thinker whose insights in Democracy in America, The Old Regime and the Revolution, and lesser-known texts like his 1848 critique of socialism resonate over 150 years after his death. But with some notable exceptions, less attention has been given to how Tocqueville approached economic subjects.” (11/11/24)
“It’s the kind of scandal that makes you wonder, briefly, whether somebody made it up. But nobody made it up. In the wake of Hurricane Milton, a sub-boss of the Federal Emergency Management Agency named Marn’i Washington told FEMA workers who had the job of assessing storm damage in Lake Placid, Florida, to skip any houses with Trump signs.” (11/11/24)
“Democratic norms alert! The Associated Press and others have called the hotly contested Pennsylvania Senate race for GOP candidate David McCormick, since the outstanding votes give no hope for Sen. Bob Casey to close the gap — but Casey won’t concede as Democratic operatives try to overturn the will of the voters. Casey is even fundraising off his hopeless efforts to stay in power. This from the party that spent the entirety of the Biden term screeching about the threat such refusals posed to the Republic. And, like a rat jumping onto a sinking ship, perennial election villain and Dem superlawyer Marc Elias has entered the fray. Elias (the man behind cooking up the utterly bogus Steele dossier, and thus the whole two years of toxic Russiagate nonsense) is angling to force Pennsylvania into a recount.” (11/11/24)
Source: The American Conservative
by Peter Van Buren
“This was an angry election; none of that ‘which candidate would you rather have a beer with’ stuff here. Trump is an angry man representing angry constituents. Harris was angry that things were not going her way and constantly expressed the Hillary-esque idea ‘How could I possibly be losing to a guy like Trump?’ Both sides prioritized personal attacks over policy. At times it felt like elementary-school playground stuff, name-calling, but in the end it was much more serious than that. Harris lost because she tried to make ‘Trump is a fascist’ her closing argument, and no one was listening anymore.” (11/11/24)
“We are all different, but we all have at least one thing in common; society doesn’t fucking fit, and we all want out. None of this is a coincidence. It is all connected, from my so-called mental illness to yours. The growing diversity of people choosing to live outside the increasingly stultifying boundaries of normal is spreading and it’s about time. One of my favorite Marxists, Antoni Gramsci, referred to us as the Subaltern. Karl himself more derisively labeled us as the lumpenproletariat. Both essentially amount to an unorganized underclass amongst the post-colonial masses that exists on the margins — criminals, vagrants, migrants, convicts, drifters, loners, and lunatics, the homeless, the unemployed and the unemployable, an entire caste excluded from the socioeconomic institutions of society in order to deny the strange agency. But when society itself has become a sickness, we on the outside become the cure.” (11/10/24)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Marcos Falcone
“A few weeks ago, Uruguay—a country known for its political and economic stability in an otherwise usually turbulent South America—held what many considered to be one of the world’s most boring and uneventful presidential elections. But on the same day, Uruguayans also went to the polls to decide on a proposition that raised some eyebrows both at home and abroad: the nationalization of private social security, along with the lowering of the retirement age from 65 to 60 and the establishment of a minimum pension equivalent to the national minimum salary. The proposition was ultimately rejected, as a majority could not be reached. However, 39 percent of Uruguayans still voted in its favor, and its mere existence was a major cause for concern to investors.” (11/10/24)
