Archive for 2024

June 2, 2024

JON GABRIEL: Trump isn’t the reason why Biden is down in the polls. Inflation is.

It’s tough to change the narrative when every trip to a store, restaurant* or barber shop serves as another anti-Biden campaign ad.

According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, Americans prefer Trump’s economic policies to Biden’s by a 10-point margin. Abstract warnings about the end of democracy won’t distract moms and dads from worrying about their weekly budget.

When it comes to the economy, Arizona is doing better than most states. We rank fourth in job growth, unemployment is below the national average, and the Phoenix area has the lowest inflation in the U.S.

And yet. It just doesn’t feel like boom times, nor will it in November.

According to the Joint Economic Committee, the average Arizona household spends $1,202 more per month than it did when Biden was inaugurated. Over that same time frame, they’ve cumulatively spent an extra $29,052 thanks to inflation.

A lot of things are going wrong** for Biden, from immigration to foreign wars to concerns about his age. But his biggest problem is that things simply cost too much.

He can’t stop voters from noticing that.

* As Kate Hyde joked on Twitter last week:

** Hard to think of illegal immigration as “going wrong” for Biden, when it’s been one of his (and/or his handlers’) goals from day one:

● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

● Former Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”

● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 2nd, 2024

HARSH, BUT FAIR:

“I’m sadder than I let on.”

Posted at 12:14 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 2nd, 2024

FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY, THE PIVOT BEGAN: ‘Did I miss the memo?’: Hospital workers in full PPE applaud George Floyd protesters as they march past.

As Greenwald writes in his follow-up tweet, “That episode single-handedly destroyed trust in public health officials, proving they’d politicize their expertise when convenient. Corporate media celebrated a douchebag-lawyer shaming families at deserted beaches, then — overnight! — cheered densely packed street protests.”

QED: Shot: Grief and COVID-19: Mourning our bygone lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiological crisis, but also a psychological one. While the situation provokes anxiety, stress and sadness, it is also a time of collective sorrow, says Sherry Cormier, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in grief and grief mentoring. “It’s important that we start recognizing that we’re in the middle of this collective grief. We are all losing something now.”

Many people are reckoning with individual losses, including illness and death due to the novel coronavirus, or loss of employment as a result of economic upheaval. But even people who haven’t lost anything so concrete as a job or a loved one are affected, Cormier says. “There is a communal grief as we watch our work, health-care, education and economic systems — all of these systems we depend on — destabilize,” she says.

—The American Psychological Association, April 1st, 2020.

Chaser: APA’s action plan for addressing inequality.

Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to you while still reeling from the tragic murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the ongoing protests, which are reverberating in a shockwave throughout our nation and around the world.

These recent events present us with an urgent challenge—as an association, discipline and profession, and individual psychologists—to bring our expertise to bear to address the range of underlying problems these events represent from discrimination to racism, which have resulted in long-standing social, economic, and political inequalities, from police brutality, to the disproportionate spread of the coronavirus among black and brown people, to the soaring unemployment rates among communities of color.

APA is urging psychologists to share their thoughts and recommendations for using the power of psychology to address the “pandemic of racism,” both in the short and long term. As part of that process, we must also examine our role as a field and as an association in perpetuating these ills.

—The American Psychological Association, June 2nd, 2020.

Note the photos atop those Webpages. The April 1st post is illustrated by photos of an elderly white woman looking frustrated in her apartment, and a young black woman staring wistfully into the distance outside the window of her apartment, with the photos separated by a white dividing line to emphasize both persons’ isolation from the world. Contrast that with the photo of the massed protestors carrying “Black Lives Matter” placards atop the June 2nd post.

NPR also pivoted on June 2nd, 2020:

The DNC-MSM and local mayors turned on a dime from enforcing hard-line lockdown rules and shaming anyone who went to church or got a haircut, to letting rioters congregate with impunity. As Bill de Blasio was quoted four years ago today, “When you see…an entire nation, simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seated in 400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services.”

Flashbacks:

● After telling GOP to downsize convention due to COVID-19, N.C. governor marches in crowded protest.

● NJ governor admits COVID-19 double standard, says recent protests are different from business owners’ complaints.

● De Blasio: Large Group Protests Are Acceptable, Religious Observances Are Not.

● NPR: Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests. “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” they wrote.

● The Suicide of Expertise.

● Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 2nd, 2024

June 1, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Enjoy your Saturday.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 1st, 2024

WELL, GOOD: Arkansas Supreme Court sanctions Pulaski County circuit judge over ruling on guns in courthouses.

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Friday rebuked Pulaski County Circuit Judge Morgan “Chip” Welch for violating rules of the Code of Judicial Conduct that require judges to promote confidence in the judiciary, demonstrate impartiality and act without bias.

The written admonishment comes in the form of an unsigned order that requires Welch to take a six-week online judicial ethics course by the end of July plus complete another three hours of ethics training before October. . . .

“Labeling and referring to an opinion by the Supreme Court of Arkansas as ‘LOCO’ erodes public confidence. His written opinion stating that the Supreme Court’s opinion ‘creates a new class of unlicensed, heretofore untrained, armed lawyers in courthouses of the State’ also erodes public confidence. To suggest that this court created a class of armed lawyers is dangerous, and it undermines the public’s understanding of the judiciary’s role,” the order states. “We interpret laws, we do not make them, and Judge Welch’s suggestion to the contrary damages the public’s view of the separation of powers and the role of the judiciary.”

The LOCO label was found to be a violation of Rule 2.3, a prohibition against showing bias or prejudice. The order invokes a ban on negative stereotyping while noting his duties include conducting commitment hearings in mental-health court.

“[We] think he should be more circumspect with his word choice. Using the Spanish word loco, meaning crazy, cavalierly referring to another court’s judicial order in a joking manner exceeds the bounds of appropriate judicial behavior. And when given an opportunity to respond, to admit only that he should have had better editing skills, suggests a lack of judicial maturity and reflection,” the order states.

Further, judicial code Rule 2.2 regarding impartiality and fairness was violated when Welch “made it clear in his written order that he disagreed with this court’s interpretation of the statute and with the statute itself. His opinion was sprinkled with disparaging remarks about the court’s interpretation of the statute.” . . .

The gun issue was before the high court as a result of a 2022 lawsuit by three lawyers, Chris Corbitt, Ben Motal and Robert Steinbuch, who argued that Act 1087 of 2017, codified as Arkansas Code 5-73-122, allowed lawyers as “officers of the court” to carry handguns into the state’s courthouses and courtrooms. Welch dismissed the suit in March 2023, leading to the appeal that brought the issue to the Supreme Court this year.

It’s a mistake to cross Prof. Steinbuch.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 1st, 2024
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