A Trip to the Doctor

16 thoughts on “A Trip to the Doctor”

1. So it looks like the party of country club conservatives is now being lead by a carnival barker.

   If he gets beat, it’ll be very interesting to see how your party responds. Even with another loss at the Presidential level, the Republicans are doing very well in the House, about even in the Senate and way ahead in state houses. On the other hand, neither Kansas nor Louisiana are turning out the way that was promised and the California disaster that was supposed to come with Democratic supermajorities is nowhere in sight.

   My guess is that nothing much will change. Trump will be called out as an aberration and the major party donors will continue to candidates who promise to deliver the low-tax, low-regulation, imperialist policies that the donors want.Report

2. What is the point of this post other than Trump bashing? Politicians usually promise the easy way out.Report

   1. It’s specifically in reference to his “negotiate with our creditors” posture, per the link in the text, which is the equivalent of killing the patient. Politicians usually promise the easy way out, but not usually in a way that is so obviously destructive.Report

      1. I think a better metaphor might be high cholesterol -> instant bypass, rather than hypertension -> lethal morphine dose, to be a-little-but-not-very fair to Trump’s argument.Report

      2. Pff.

         Just have the fed but a few more trillion on their balance sheet.Report

         1. Which is fine and the magic of debt financing – use inflation to reduce the real value of the money you are paying back.

            What is not fine is saying you’re going to reduce the nominal value of what you’re going to pay back.Report

            1. Proper pricing of debt includes inflation, so you’re not paying down debt with cheaper money, unless your interest rate is below cost, like when the car manufacturer offers 0% financing for 4 years and the Fed rate is 1%.

               You devalue the currency by creating more of it.Report

               1. And that devaluation manifests itself as inflation.

                  Proper pricing of debt includes inflation *projections*. (That’s why there’s a yield curve for different debt time horizons). But when you’re issuing debt *and* the money to pay it back, you have your fingers in both pies.

                  Plus, at their most fundamental, federal Reserve notes are debt instruments. That they are also money is the key sign of confidence in that debt.

                  Now, all that said, you should also be circumspect about your inflation plans – as the Fed has been, for most of the lifetimes of everyone here. One quirky feature of the last few years is that the Fed has been utterly unable to get inflation to *beat* the Feds target. (Though it’s possible that it’s not only lower zero bound interest rates but also basket miscalculation)Report

      3. Dan:

         It’s good to know that Trump isn’t promising anything other politicians don’t promise either. I’d hate to think he was any worse than the others.Report

3. “I recommend starting by taking walks around your neighborhood. It’s very safe, because it’s an extremely mild form of exercise, and you’re not a black teenager.”Report

   1. It’s not unsafe for black teenagers either. Don’t beat up the neighborhood watch captain to amuse yourself and do not wave replicas at the police like you’re going to shoot them, and your chances of being injured fall from minimal to nil.Report

      1. Oh! Also, don’t cross the street in front of a cop car. Or play rap music on your car. Or follow police directions. Or drive. At all. Oh, wait — also, don’t sit at home and do nothing.Report

         1. Jordan Davis was shot dead in the sort of interpersonal dispute which occasionally ends in homicide (“another Bronx piece of shit” as the Tom Wolfe character put it). There are a two digit population of such disputes every year in any city of ordinary size. Usually, the disputants are peers; the oddity in the Davis case was that the hothead in question was a middle-aged bourgeois.

            As for Michael Brown, the whole sequence of events has been delineated through security cam footage, the autopsy, and eyewitness testimony. You’ve got your fingers in your ears. Get back to us when you can handle the truth.Report

4. Are you still laboring under the myth that Brown was shot for crossing the street in front of a cop car? What is more amusing is that if you had bothered to read you own link, the one about sitting at home and doing nothing, you would have seen this interesting quote form the family. It said, “Family members did not consider race a factor…”

   There is a difference between a black person being shot and being shot b/c you are black, sadly liberals can’t always tell the difference between the two.Report

5. Political correctness has come to West Point.

   http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/2016/05/10/west-point-cadet-photo-inappropriate-but-not-political/84196326/Report

   1. Just because they consider beating an old war horse after he’s gone and died to be a tad abusive…!Report

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