THOUGHTS ON THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

There are two angles a reporter could have taken following Thursday's Biden-Trump debate hosted by CNN. One, "Biden has poor debate." The other, "Trump makes dozens of false statements." I'll leave it to you, dear reader to determine why every single reporter in the United States chose the former. Perhaps it's that left wing media bias I hear about every day from the 12 straight hours of right wing hosts who follow my show.

Before debates, campaigns work the refs and attempt to lower expectations. Any competent reporter knows this. So why did so many reporters repeat the GOP talking point that if President Biden had a good debate, it meant he had been given performance enhancing drugs beforehand? Competent reporters would behave one way, but actual reporters behaved differently? Why, I think we have our answer!

After Thursday's debate, we finally know for sure that 81 year old, relatively fit and trim Joe Biden is physically and mentally unfit to be president, while 78 year old Donald Trump, who is obese, subsists on a diet of Burger King and Milk Duds and who shows actual, clinical signs of dementia, is ready to rock.

CNN, we have one candidate who is a serial liar. Whatever will we do? Let's just not mention it. After all, determining and reporting the truth isn't our job, right. We don't report, you can't decide.

Joe Biden should have agreed to a pre-debate drug test, in return for Donald Trump agreeing to step on a scale and shoot a round of golf with a camera crew following him.

Unasked question Thursday: Mr. Trump, you complained repeatedly about your New York trial for falsifying business records, saying that the judge was a Democrat who was biased against you, yet in another of your legal cases, the judge was appointed by you and is clearly doing everything in her power to delay your trial until after the election. Is it your contention that only judges appointed by you can be fair and unbiased?

Republicans have been saying for months that Mr. Biden should step aside and let someone else gain the Democratic nomination. What is the only possible reason one would call for an opponent's removal from the ticket? The fear that they can't beat him. Have you heard a single reporter in the United States make this blindingly obvious point? Why not? 

The Democratic party is an embarrassment. The bed wetting, pants pissing whining of so many Democrats after the debate was pathetic. The Democrats don't need a better candidate, they need better Democrats. 

It's June. In June, 1992, the presumptive Democratic nominee was third in a three way race at 25%. He won. On election day 2016, the polls gave his wife a 60% chance of winning. She didn't.

THE BATTLE FOR TWITTER

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

A lot of people wondered why Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter.

There's no reason to wonder any more. Twitter has been an effective platform for liberals in a world in which they have few. Musk wants to stop that. The effort has been a massive failure so far, thanks to the beauty of free speech.

Musk gave "journalists" Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss access to internal documents detailing some of Twitter's moderation decisions. While online platforms are not required to do any moderation at all and can not be held liable for what users post, most platforms try to remove speech that is inherently dangerous. The "Twitter Files" alleged that under its previous management, the platform silenced conservative voices because they were conservative. The actual reporting showed nothing of the sort. It showed that Twitter followed its rules, blocking content that clearly violated its terms of service. When liberals on Twitter accurately described Taibbi and Weiss' reporting for what it was, what conservatives hoped would be a bombshell landed with a dull thud.

This is how the marketplace of ideas should work. The way to defeat bad speech is with good speech. The way to defeat falsehoods is with truth. Attempting to defeat bad speech by trying to silence it rarely works in a free society.

That brings us to Musk's banning from Twitter of several journalists who have written unflattering things, that is, told the truth about him. The claims he has made about why he banned the reporters don't stand up to any scrutiny. Unfortunately, a number of liberals and/or journalists have left, or are considering leaving Twitter. That would be a mistake. 

If liberals leave Twitter, it will become another large conservative-dominated platform, just as its new owner hopes.

Don't take the bait. We don't need more one-sided echo chambers. We need a robust marketplace of ideas. 

If you think I'm wrong, use your free speech right to say so. I'm @FlxTed on Twitter.

OMG, INFLATION IS...NOT A BIG DEAL? THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAW IN THE NEWS

Core inflation by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free

 

I saw an Associated Press article on inflation this week that was picked up by outlets all over the country, from CNY Central here in upstate NY to ABC News. 

Anyone who read that article is going to believe things about the current state of inflation that are untrue.

"A measure of inflation that is closely monitored by the Federal Reserve eased but remained at an elevated level in October, likely reinforcing the Fed's intent to keep raising interest rates to cool the economy and slow the acceleration of prices."

The reporter is telling us inflation is still high, and that the Federal Reserve might once again raise interest rates, making it harder for you to afford a car loan or to refinance your mortgage. What is this measure that the Fed closely follows?

"Thursday's report from the Commerce Department showed that prices rose 6% in October from a year earlier. That was the lowest level since last November and was down from a 6.3% year-over-year increase in September. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation over the previous 12 months was 5%, less than the 5.2% annual increase in September."

There's a lot to unpack here, beginning with murky writing. Prices did not "rise" 6% in October from last year or any other time. He means to say prices were 6% higher in October than they were in October, 2021. That's not the same thing. 

Does the Fed really make interest rate decisions based on where prices are compared to a year ago? If we have a bout of inflation, that year-over-year number is going to remain high until we have a full year with low or no inflation. I hope the Fed looks at where inflation is now and where it seems to be going in the future. I wonder what those numbers show?

"On a month-to-month basis, prices rose 0.3% from September to October. For core prices, the increase was 0.2%."

Well, wait just a minute. Prices didn't rise by 6% in October, they rose by 0.3%. And core prices, the every day staples most of us buy, rose by 0.2%. That's an annual inflation rate of roughly 2.4%. In fact, inflation largely ended after the first half of this year. The monthly rates of increase for July through October were zero, 0.1, 0.4, and 0.4%. That means the annual inflation rate in the second half of this year has been roughly 2.7%. Why didn't he say so? 

On a side note, the story makes no mention of income gains, which have eased the effect of inflation. Workers on the lower end of the income scale, who are most affected by rising prices, have made the greatest gains. Prices were 6% higher in October than a year ago? Wages were 6.8% higher, making the effect of inflation on the average family......less than nothing!

His is far from the only article that confuses the math. I have seen a number of similar stories that make it appear that prices are "rising" frighteningly every month. Here's how the BP, the Baker Press, would report this story:

"Inflation, which reached its highest levels since the '80s in the first half of 2022, has eased significantly in the second half of the year. When solid wage growth is factored in, the average American family has felt little impact." 

Let's see whose math the Fed uses when they hold their next meeting.

YOU SAY GOODBYE, I SAY HELLO

Credit: pxhere.com

You can't go wrong with a Beatles song title as the title of your first post.

Remember Admiral James Stockdale? He was H. Ross Perot's presidential running mate. Remember H. Ross Perot? In the first vice presidential debate that year, the Admiral opened by saying "who am I? Why am I here?"

Let me answer those same questions. For 19 years, I was Program Director at Finger Lakes News Radio in Geneva, NY and for 15 of them, hosted the Finger Lakes Morning News. It became increasingly difficult to wake up at 4AM as I entered my 60s, and so last November, I accepted an offer to join the staff at fingerlakes1.com. I had been appearing on one of their podcasts on a regular basis, and I was told I would report on local news, host podcasts, write blogs, and eventually, host the site's live flagship morning show.

Well, it turns out websites are subject to the same revenue difficulties being faced by local media throughout the country, and I was laid off in September of this year. 

I approached Finger Lakes News Radio about returning to my old job, and the answer was no.

You can take the boy out of the media, but you can't take the media out of the boy. 

With the staffing cuts that have hit the local media in recent years, there are a lot of stories that aren't being told, so I'm going to tell them. My intent is to bring you original local news, newsmaker interviews, and occasional observations on the state of the world and craft beverages.

If you listened to me on the radio, you know I have a lot of opinions and haven't been afraid to express them. I'll express some of them here, but there are a lot of places where you can go for political opinions (see my blog list on the right) and I don't think many minds are being changed these days.

So here we go. Let me know what you think, and what you'd like to see and hear covered, and I'll do my best to oblige, but I won't get up at 4AM to do it.