The Real Debate Is At The Kitchen Table

On Friday, The American Thinker posted an article about the real debate in this presidential election cycle–it wasn’t on television–it is at the kitchen table.

The article reports:

ABC staged a debate this week.  A presidential debate.  Ostensibly between former president Donald J. Trump and former senator Kamala Harris, but in actuality between Trump and the partnership of Harris and ABC.

There is always media bias.  To some extent, unconscious media bias is unavoidable.  But we don’t expect it to be blatant; the viewer doesn’t expect antics like we saw this week, when the ABC moderators repeatedly declared Mr. Trump’s statements lies, and never called out Ms. Harris’s blatant lies. 

We call it “fact-checking” today, a term coined in social media for when our high-tech overlords punish a writer for stating something with which the gurus disagree.  But it’s not really fact-checking, is it?  It’s an invasion of a conversation, a denial of free speech, a thumb on the scale.  In the case of a presidential debate, it’s electioneering.

And it virtually invalidates the value of our constitutionally protected free press in this process.  ABC’s refusal even to try to act as an impartial host rendered this debate useless.

So let’s look instead at the other debates — millions of them — going on in America, both that day and every day in 2024.

Across the country, there are millions of families shopping in their local grocery store.  More of them must choose the discount grocery compared to five years ago; more must use coupons, or activate their store’s discount app on their cell phones today.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. When we vote on election day, we need to remember the impact the change of administration in 2020 has had on almost all Americans. Some of the ‘celebrities’ who are supporting Kamala Harris have not been impacted by the economic policies of the past three years–so until everything collapses, the economy is not a concern of theirs. However, the rest of us will be living with the results of the coming election.

The article concludes:

There are many more such debates taking place across America, in the family car, over the kitchen table, or in the bedroom after the kids are asleep, as hardworking everyday American couples try to compromise on some way to get through these hellish years of Bidenflation.

It’s not one mistake, one policy choice, one single culprit. It’s the entire Biden-Harris regime — their executive orders, their agency regulations, their foreign policy, and their general incredibly thoughtless wastefulness, in everything they touch and everything they do.

Every American knows that the election of Kamala Harris would mean four more years of all this.

These are the debates that matter to the American public this week.

These personal, private, tragic debates — as the cost of living has gone up by three, four, five times as much as salaries have — are the debates on the minds of American working families, and small business owners, and retirees, and young adults desperately trying to look ahead to a future that can’t possibly seem promising.

Forget the debate that ABC ruined on Tuesday.

These other conversations, these other tough choices and compromises — these are the debates to which we should be paying attention.

The Choice Is Between Bad And Awful

On Wednesday, Armstrong Economics posted an article about inflation and recession.

The article reports:

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari has advised against anticipating near-term rate cuts. While speaking to the Financial Times, the Fed president stated that people would simply prefer a recession to continued inflation.

“I have learned that the American people—and maybe people in Europe equally—really hate high inflation. I mean, really viscerally hate high inflation,” he told the Financial Times’ The Economics Show podcast. Kashkari is speaking as if we are not already in a recession. It is not difficult to understand the “visceral” hatred people around the world feel toward rising prices. The effects of inflation are felt with every purchase, causing the average person to adjust their entire lifestyle.

The article concludes:

Real prices have far surpassed anything they calculate in CPI. Everyone understands that prices have risen far more than the arbitrary number the Fed provides us. Taxes are continually increasing for everyone in every tax bracket. The government not only adds to inflationary issues with their spending but then expects their citizens to foot a portion of the bill with taxes, which will simply never be enough.

Then we have Washington telling the masses to blame corporations for price gouging while raising their taxes and making it increasingly difficult to conduct business and maintain a large workforce. It is not that the people would prefer to be in a recession, the real issue is that countless people are entering survival mode. People everywhere want to hold onto whatever they may have out of fear for the future, but they are unable even to hoard as real prices now demand they hand over whatever they have to maintain their lives.

In a recession, consumer spending drops, and people lose their jobs. A service economy such as the one America currently has is more vulnerable to recession than a manufacturing economy. A recession creates hardship for working families.Inflation impacts both working families and retirees. Either one is a bad deal. The most practical way to deal with inflation in America would be to cut government spending and to resume domestic oil production. Both of those things would help revive a miserable economy.

If You Repeat A Lie Often Enough…

On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about something the Biden administration is claiming as a success.

The article reports:

Are you better off than you were one year ago?

That’s the message the White House is trying to convey in a year-end memo to Democratic lawmakers and other supporters, according to a new report from Axios.

The memo — titled “2021: POTUS Delivered for Working Families” — illustrates in words and graphics what the Biden administration describes as a year of accomplishments, according to the outlet.

The two-page document touts the COVID-19 vaccination program, the widespread reopening of schools, and a decline in the unemployment rate and jobless claims. It also hails the passage of two major spending bills this year: the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure framework last month.

“In spite of unprecedented crises and opposition from Congressional Republicans, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Congressional Democrats got an enormous amount done for the American people in 2021​,” the memo claims.

Well, let’s see. Unprecedented crises and opposition from Congressional Republicans are listed as the obstacles the Biden administration had to overcome. I may have missed something, but did the Republicans try to frame and impeach President Biden? Did the Republicans go behind his back to talk to China? The mess we are currently in has much more to do with the actions of the Biden administration than it does with any Republican opposition. President Biden unilaterally shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline and limited America’s development of its natural resources–ending our energy independence. That in turn caused the price of gasoline at the pump to double in a year, contributing to inflation. The runaway spending (of which the Republicans were a part) also contributed to inflation. The opening of the southern border was also done unilaterally. The crisis there is caused by the Biden administration. No one else is to be blamed.

The article notes:

Absent from the document is any mention of​ inflation, which is at a 39-year high. Nor is there any discussion of an increase in COVID-19 cases across the country as the Omicron variant becomes the dominant strain, the collapse of the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better plan after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) pulled his support, or the tragic aftermath of the botched US military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I am not sure too many Americans are currently convinced that they are better off now than they were a year ago. Their grocery and energy bills are an everyday reminder that making ends meet is becoming more difficult.