Alan Zweibel

According to your formulation here, US inflation was 100% and European was 100% energy related. Supply disruption in goods was a huge contributer everywhere for obvious reason. Well, everywhere except China which had deflation.

Yes it was demand driven. But it was also due to supply disruption. As you may recall, ships were backed up at US docks because of the covid epidemic. Also, demand was driven towards goods and away from services because of covid. So it was a combination of those 2 factors that led to high inflation. Finally you somehow managed to ignore that quote about the booming US economy also being responsible for the rise in prices. How lucky those Europeans were to not have a booming economy. Finally, how did workers fare? Did their wages decline? Didn't they not in fact rise? What was special about that period was the the lower paid workers' wages rose faster than the highest paid workers.

On the other hand: Unlike the ECB’s preferred gauge, both the PCE and the CPI include owner-occupiers’ housing costs — essentially a measure of how much money you could earn from renting out your home and hence forego if you live in it. The measure is designed to track inflation in the real estate market while accounting for the fact that most Americans own their homes. But people don’t actually feel these hypothetical housing costs, said Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management. The weight given to owner-occupiers’ housing costs is much bigger in the US CPI than in the PCE — 32% versus 13%, according to consultancy Capital Economics — but both weights are still much larger than the 0% afforded to these costs in the eurozone’s key measure of consumer prices. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/26/economy/us-europe-inflation-differences This difference is especially exaggerated when housing costs are rising rapidly

I thought who pardoned whom. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Actually, a key point was noted out by someone other than me. Namely that Trump watched the rioters for hours as the insurrectionists roamed the Capitol on the day that the constitutionally prescribed ratification of the vote was to take place . People who had chanted hang Mike Pence were roaming the Capitol while the Vice-President was on the premises. He was there to preside over the ratification. That was his constitutionally prescribed role.

I think the word "accidentally" in the headline nullifies the validity of your objection.

And it's already out-of-date: Zelensky agrees to negotiate on Trump’s peace plan https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/france-brands-us-russia-peace-111650792.html And as the article you linked to states: "The plan has apparently been worked out between U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev (together reportedly with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner) but a great deal about it is highly unclear. The Trump administration reportedly believes that a deal is imminent, but the Russian government has been at pains to stress that no agreement has yet been reached. We do not know if Moscow will try to exact further concessions; the details of several key points have not been revealed; and above all, it may be impossible to get the Ukrainian government to agree to essential elements, unless the Trump administration is prepared to bring extremely heavy pressure to bear on both Ukraine and America’s European allies."

He used the word fight 20 times in his speech to the crowd that ultimately invaded the capitol. He urged them to demonstrate peacefully once. How else could these people interpret his call given that the only way to fight to stop the transfer of power was to invade the Capitol building? Legal avenues had already been exhausted.

Of all the moronic ways to raise questions about safety on public transport, citing isolated incidents has got to take the cake. If I were to adopt your methods, I would use your post to prove that the math education in the US was just about a complete failure.

Really? Are you claiming that there weren't a substantial number of insurrectionists involved in Jan 6. Weren't some oath keepers convicted on the charge of seditious conspiracy?

Department of Defense “contractors” landed on a Mexican beach and accidentally declared it United States territory in a bizarre incident on Monday. A group of unidentified men hammered in six signs on Nov. 17, declaring that a beach near Playa Bagdad in Northeast Mexico was “Department of Defense property” and had been classified as a “restricted area” by “the commander.” ... The accidental annexers were later identified by the Pentagon as “contractors” hired by the Department of Defense to plant the signs on the Texas side of the border to mark “National Defense Area III.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-petes-war-goons-accidentally-invade-mexico/

Trump Accuses Democrats of Sedition, ‘Punishable by Death,’ Over Message to the Military President Trump accused a group of Democratic lawmakers of sedition in an outburst on social media Thursday morning and said their behavior was “punishable by death.” Their crime? Recording a video that reminded members of the military that they are not supposed to obey illegal orders. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Mr. Trump wrote in one post. He shared a different post, written by another person, that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” https://archive.ph/FgARb#selection-717.0-729.176 He can't really besmirch his own name any more than he's already done, but now he has to do the same to George Washington? His spokewoman later denied that Trump was calling for their execution. Later he called them seditious traitors, but in a bow to moderation he followed that with "Lock them up?"

Actually, this kind of zeal characterized Christianity for most of it's history. The Enlightenment changed that. And it was upon philosophers of the Enlightenment that the Constitution was based. That claim about it being derived from Judeo-Christian principles is actually the opposite of the truth.

One of the most transparent ploys of right wingers is to invoke the Declaration of Independence when it comes to basing policies on the Gaseous Vertebrate. But the fact is that the Declaration was a statement meant to represent 13 colonies that were declaring independence from the UK. Despite attempts by right wing religious fanatics to claim otherwise, its invocation of the Declarations mention of a Creator offers no legal support to policies based on God's will.

Sometimes for reasons of space allowed for headlines by the forum, it's necessary to abridge a headline But in this case 6 Dem Senators urge Military to refuse illegal orders, News, would have fit in the allotted space with no problem. So why the omission of illegal?

As I recall, you had a problem with using the GDP rate as a measure of the economy. I assumed that jobs might be more important to you as an indicator.

That report from The Economist was dated May 11, 2025. Here's some info that offers a better historical perspective Here's the US inflation rate: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi Here's the eurozone inflation rate: https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/gdp-growth Was the eurozone inflation's rate Biden's fault too? And here's a link to a graph comparing US GDP to Eurozone GDP: https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-economy.php As you will note the US GDP growth for that time period greatly outpaced that of the Eurozone.

For which he was harshly criticized by progressives.

The Trump administration is overhauling the State Department’s annual reports on global human rights, emphasizing entitlements “given to us by God, our creator” and issuing new guidance for U.S. diplomats to scrutinize the prevalence of abortion and gender-transition surgery among children. The new instructions, issued Thursday, instructed all U.S. embassies and consulates to begin preparing the annual country reports under these and numerous other guidelines that stand in sharp contrast to their historical focus on torture, politically motivated killings and persecution of minority groups. The first documents to incorporate the Trump administration’s requirements will be published next year. https://archive.ph/Gl5Im I wonder who is going to be God's liaison for this campaign.

But all means, produce one of the alternative models that the Pentagon created. Until then, their existence is just hypothetical.

Here are the unemployment figures for Obama's second term and for Trumps up until covid makes its effects felt. Again, if you see some marked change in the slope, it's time for a vision check. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

The question you should be asking is "If very little change, why give credit to Trump/"

Clearly, you don't understand the difference between calling people nasty names and giving people commands.

U.S. Ran a War Game on Ousting Maduro. Venezuela Fell Into Chaos. As President Trump pressed during his first term to oust President Nicolás Maduro, U.S. officials ran a war game to assess what the Venezuelan strongman’s fall might unleash. The results showed that chaos and violence were likely to erupt within Venezuela, as military units, rival political factions and even jungle-based guerrilla groups jockeyed for control of the oil-rich country. Those unclassified findings, supported by other expert analysis, underscore the risk associated with Mr. Trump’s second-term push against Mr. Maduro. https://archive.ph/6xjAp

In fact the judge did not assert that Halligan was a puppet. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff asked Comey’s defense lawyer if he thought Halligan, the prosecutor who brought the indictment against the former FBI boss, was acting as a “puppet” or “stalking horse” of the commander in chief, during a hearing in an Alexandria, Va., courtroom... In response to Nachmanoff, Comey’s attorney, Michael Dreeben, declined to call Halligan a “puppet” but argued the prosecutor “did what she was told,” according to the New York Times. https://nypost.com/2025/11/19/us-news/lindsey-halligan-fires-back-at-james-comey-judge-who-claimed-shes-a-puppet/