Opinion
By Jeff Childers
10/24/24
Good morning, C&C family, it’s Thursday! And there are only twelve days left till the election and this phase, at least, will be over. Today’s roundup: Wall Street Journal discovers two-year-old downward trend in home sales that it failed to report on till now and finds baffling; Nobel economists soil themselves stumping for the Cackling Candidate, but it gives us a great chance to compare platforms; competing Georgia rallies tell momentum story; and leftist mag finds things to like in Michigan’s Trump supporters and may have made the best argument for Trump you’ve ever seen.
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
🔥🔥 The Wall Street Journal ran a shocking article yesterday with the eye-popping headline, “Home Sales on Track for Worst Year Since 1995.” Not only are home sales bottoming out at thirty year lows, and for the second year in a row, but prices stubbornly remain near record highs. In other words: stagflation is back.
At first, I thought finally, we’re getting some honest reporting about the economy. But as I read, I quickly found the article was just another psyop. None of the article’s experts were quoted about the cause of the headline’s depressed home prices.
Readers who invest the time to read the story remain completely clueless about the two most important questions: what’s causing it? And, how can we fix it? The article studiously avoided causes, blame, or even suggestions for improvement, since suggesting ways to fix the problem would expose what caused it in the first place.
Our looming Real Estate Crash Part Deux has a simple cause, and that cause has a name which rhymes with ‘Poe Diben.’
Real estate crashes are caused by federal virtue-signaling and market manipulation. The 2008 crash was caused by a Clinton-era law forcing banks to give mortgages to high-risk, low-income, low-credit scorers (as stealth reparations). Our current slow-motion economic derailment was caused by Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which was named on Opposite Day, and by the Biden Administration’s money-printing spree that rivals a convention of sex workers given purses packed with stolen credit cards and a six-hour head start before the cardholders report their cards as missing
It’s an accurate analogy, assuming, that is, those credit cards had trillion-dollar limits.
But let’s try to find a good use for the Journal’s awful report on the deplorable state of the residential real estate market anyway. The story was rife with possibility, offering a terrific journalistic hook, totally ignored by the Journal’s amateur scribblers. For most Americans, their home is their biggest and most significant asset, so they’re likely to pay attention to articles about their value.
Writing stories people want to hear about used to be the media’s main goal.
The sagging home market is an intractable, two-front problem, as the article grudgingly admitted. High mortgage rates make homes unaffordable. But poor sales are also keeping a lid on already-high home prices. If the Fed lowers rates, home prices are likely to skyrocket, and everybody knows it:
That stagflastic paradox should have been the story’s real lede, the key point or theme that should have been plastered in the headline and in the story’s first paragraph. But the Journal obscured this shocking development, to confuse its own readers so it could protect the worst presidential candidate the Democrat party ever undemocratically selected.
Media is supposed to inform, not confuse, its consumers. Duh. That’s how far into clown world we’ve traveled on our creaking economic unicycle. Our graft-filled, NGO handout-happy, socialist/fascist politico-economic system is like a morbidly obese clown riding that creaky unicycle. The unicycle is us, the taxpayers.
The longer Democrats remain in charge, the fatter the clown will get, and sooner or later, we’re going to collapse under those sweaty folds of flesh and will never be seen again.
How the Wall Street Journal stays in business this way remains a mystery. Is the government subsidizing corporate media? Or should we rather ask, how much is the government subsidizing corporate media? (For national security, of course.)
🔥 The other side of the journalistic malpractice coin is that the Wall Street Journal could easily have —but didn’t— used our critically low home sales as a hook to compare the two candidates’ economic plans. It’s only twelve days from the election!
Why couldn’t the reporters —there were two of them— just shoot a quick email to both campaigns asking for a comment? Was that really so hard?
Apparently, for reporters Nicole Friedman and Gina Heeb at the Wall Street Journal, yes, emailing presidential campaigns for a comment —even though their press offices are staffed 24×7— was too hard. So was texting or calling. Oh well. (My college journalism professor would have failed them both.)
Fortunately, CNN ran a helpful story yesterday to tell Democrats what to think, headlined, “23 Nobel Prize-winning economists call Harris’ economic plan ‘vastly superior’ to Trump’s.”
Vastly superior? Are we talking about the same Kamala “Wine Box” Harris? Nobel prize-winning? Albert Nobel must be spinning in his grave so fast that he’s probably created a space warp and left this part of the multiverse for good. See ya; I’m outta here.
In a just world, these economists would have to give their Nobel prizes back, even though most were probably awarded for something about diversity and equity and woke virtue signaling instead of any practical economic theory. But I digress. Their so-called “letter,” addressed to nobody, is just a piece of paper that looks like it was typed by a first-time computer user, rather than anyone who should’ve gotten a Nobel prize
Don’t be shocked: Their short letter was, shall we say, big on angry (not joyful) rhetoric but a wee bit light on specifics.
In fact, their stupid letter was so pathetic that most of the articles about the story did not even link the letter. Better to keep it out of sight. (To its credit, CNN did).
Plus, the media got convenient amnesia about the eerily similar letter by the 51 liars, I mean former intelligence officials, who signed that letter last time ‘round confirming the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian psyop. It wasn’t. They lied.
At this point, I think we’re all pretty tired of so-called experts telling us what to think.
In their brief note, the far-left, letter-signing economists claimed —without evidence!— that Kamala’s economic plan is “vastly superior” to Trump’s economic plan. I’m not sure they read either plan. For one thing, they cited the worst possible part of Kamala’s plan to make their point. Just wait.
Before we get to that, neither the letter (nor CNN) addressed the economic elephant in the room: both politicians were in office for four years! We don’t have to guess! We can just look at what each candidate did while they were in office. Trump wins hands down in the Real World™ (see previous story about home sales). But these economists live in Marxist-fantasy virtual reality, where pink-horned unicorns trot on highways made of rainbow-colored candy ribbon.
Anyway, conclusively proving that, these days, Nobel prizes are handed to woke economists as fast as free cell phones are handed to illegal immigrants, the economists only cited Kamala’s worst plan, to “enhance competition, and promote entrepreneurship.”
This cite was based on a Kamala campaign proposal calling for Congress to pass a $50,000 tax deduction for first-time small businesses. Credulous economic experts explain it is designed to encourage a groundswell of new business creation, leading down the road to a stronger middle class.
What a crock. It’s fake, fake, fake. And it only takes a second to see it. They didn’t even try to hide it that hard. Anyone who can’t see it should never again be called an economist. They should be called dumkopfs.
A tax deduction is not the same as a tax credit, which would have been much better. Kamala’s notional tax deduction would ostensibly allow a first-time startup business to deduct $50,000 from its first-year’s pre-tax profits, lowering the total amount of its profits that would be subject to tax.
The main problem is: STARTUP BUSINESSES DON’T MAKE PROFITS SO THEY DON’T PAY TAXES AND SO THEY CAN’T USE TAX DEDUCTIONS.
It is well-known that it takes up to three years for most new businesses to start being profitable. Kamala’s tax plan only encourages starting sure things, businesses that expect to make money right away without having to do any spadework.
That miniscule cohort includes only illegal businesses (drugs, sex work) and a teeny tiny category of small businesses that don’t require any startup capital or customers.
So, that’s a problem. But it gets worse. Second, Kamala has also proposed to increase corporate tax rates, for fairness. So any startup small business that wins the entrepreneurial lottery and actually makes a first-year profit, and so gets the deduction, must pay higher taxes on the rest of its profits. So it’s not at all clear whether even the lucky few are any better off, between the first-year Kamala deduction and the higher tax rate.
That ridiculous charade is the same “economic plan” the 23 economists relied on to opine Kamala’s plan was “vastly superior.”
On the other hand, President Trump’s economic plan includes tangible, measurable things that affect the entire economy rather than a tiny cohort of maybe small businesses:
- implementing targeted tariffs to increase investment in the U.S. (economists hate tariffs, but since sanctions as basically reverse-tariffs, they inarguably worked wonders for Russia’s economy),
- lowering corporate taxes to spur new business formation and innovation,
- massively expanding domestic energy production to lower the price of everything, and
- massively deregulating businesses to put rocket fuel in the economy.
Apart from poo-pooing Trump’s proposed tariffs, they didn’t discuss any of his other plans. The paltry 22 economic experts who signed their love letter to Kamala should be considered about as reliable as the 51 intelligence experts who lied about Hunter’s laptop. Take your silly letter somewhere else.
📈 The Associated Press ran a snide story this morning under the anodyne headline, “Donald Trump tells supporters to ‘just vote’ at Georgia rally organized by Charlie Kirk.” Like the WSJ, the AP also buried its lede. The rally was organized by Turning Point’s Charlie Kirk, and was MC’eed by Tucker Carlson. Behold this picture from the Gas South Arena in Duluth, Georgia, taken by Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN News):
CLIP: Trump explains MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, plan at Turning Point Duluth Rally (1:06).
Just look at that astonishing crowd. Today Kamala also holds a rally at the Halliford Stadium in Clarkston, Georgia, where she’ll be propped up by Barack Obama (63), Spike Lee (67), Tyler Perry (55), Samuel L. Jackson (75), and aging rocker Bruce Springsteen (75). Are they trying to corral black folks or senior citizens? We’ll see how all those old-timers do.
Maybe she is going after seniors. Consider this Newsweek headline from Tuesday:
Ninety percent of black Georgians voted for Joe Biden in 2020. This year, surveys show the Indian-Jamaican candidate enjoys only around 73% black support — a -17% plunge. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s poll gave Trump a nearly four-point overall lead with likely Georgia voters in the key tossup state, with 47% going for the former president, and only 43.4% for Kamala.
At least she’s not campaigning from Joe’s basement.
🔥 Let’s turn next to the mystery that is Michigan. One article this week stood out above all others. Three days ago, the elite, far-left New Statesman ran a well-written Michigan-election story headlined, “Letter from Michigan: ‘No one I know is voting for Kamala Harris.’” Read it.
The reporter, Bruno Maçães (doubtful), went to Michigan in person to hate on Trump and find out why anyone in their right mind would vote for a crude-talking convicted criminal. I won’t say the experience changed Bruno’s mind. But he came as close to changing his mind as a wavering hardcore liberal can.
Bruno is holding the red pill in his sweaty, trembling hand. Just swallow it!
Expecting to find “the sophisticated edgelords I have come to know from online discussions on social media,” Bruno instead found “salt-of-the-earth types, brought together by a common sense of economic disadvantage.” Many even wore t-shirts that said, “I’m With The Felon.” At the end of the day, Bruno found much with which to empathize, in a very on the one hand, on the other hand sort of way.
Then came the longest paragraph in the story. It astonished me. Standing alone, this paragraph might encapsulate the best argument for re-electing Donald J. Trump that I have ever seen. Read this:
Listen to me carefully now: none of those things were true four years ago. America has prematurely aged and even far-left reporters like Bruno Maçães can see it.
The Biden treatment has been neither safe nor effective.
Will America even be able to walk by itself after four more years of the same treatment? We cannot let that happen.
There was also good news. After going and looking for himself, seeing the candidate and interacting with his supporters, and talking to Detroit Muslims, Bruno became convinced that Trump will win Michigan. And, Bruno supposed, without Michigan, Harris will have a difficult time winning at all:
This morning, corporate media is citing new polls showing Harris newly leading in Michigan (within the margin of error). It’s hard to imagine how this could possibly be true, after what folks like Bruno have reported from the ground. I doubt it.
Have a tremendous Thursday! Return here tomorrow morning for Friday’s terrific roundup of essential news and commentary.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
