At the Center for European Policy Analysis Kurt Volker is outraged by what isn’t on the agenda of the NATO Summit:

One might think, therefore, that at the July 9-11 gathering of NATO heads of state and government — a meeting marking 75 years of the world’s most successful military alliance — the number one issue would be the plan for victory and the restoration of peace in Europe.

One would be wrong. There will be no talk of doing whatever it takes to win the war, of defeating Putinism, and of inviting Ukraine to join NATO as quickly as possible. Instead, the summit has already been pre-planned to take only modest, incremental steps to support Ukraine, while deliberately avoiding the most fundamental questions.

This low bar was set and rigorously enforced by the United States and Germany, despite pleas for a more robust posture by several NATO allies. Washington and Berlin have made it clear that the key goal is not to provoke Putin and to avoid escalation. His defeat is still not the objective.

Mr. Volker has his own proposals:

The remedy to all these fears would be for the NATO summit to send a clear and unambiguous message to Vladimir Putin that despite the uncertainties in American leadership, NATO has the strength, resolve, and resources organized behind a clear plan to ensure Ukrainian victory, Russian defeat, and the restoration of peace in Europe.

Ideally, NATO would make clear it will give Ukraine everything required to expel the Russian invader, with no restrictions on the types of weapons provided or their use, other than conforming to international law.

Allies should establish a massive fund for expanding defense industrial production and procuring supplies for Ukraine, based on established NATO cost-share formulae. Allies should provide direct assistance in extending air defenses over western and southwestern Ukraine. Allies should assist with demining and guaranteeing freedom of navigation in the Black Sea. And NATO should begin the process of admitting Ukraine as a member, just as the European Union has done by opening accession talks with Ukraine.

Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have all been roiled by political unrest recently. In which of those countries were the voters upset that their governments weren’t providing enough aid to Ukraine? If you guess “none”, you would be right.

Is the Republican Party dominated by idiots or does it have its finger on the pulse of today’s voters? Both? At the Washington Examiner Quin Hilyer laments the lightweight economic planks in the 2024 Republican platform:

The Republican National Convention policy committee’s draft platform, released July 8, is an anemic little thing compared to what once was expected from party conventions.

Maybe its thinness and vagueness will prove to be smart politics because it will give critics fewer targets to nitpick, and also because the public’s attention span these days has atrophied to embarrassing levels. Let it be noted, however, that lengthy, program-specific platforms in the past certainly were no hindrance, and quite arguably a real aid, for Republicans to win landslide elections.

This year’s platform runs just 16 pages, with lots of white space. Most of its promises amount to frothy wish-casting. By comparison, the 1980 convention platform, part of Ronald Reagan’s massive victory in which he carried 44 of 50 states, ran for 75 densely packed pages.

For example, the 1980 platform had a nearly 500-word section on “small business.” This year’s draft doesn’t even contain the words “small business.” In 1980, Republicans devoted more than 2,000 words to energy policy. This week’s platform handles energy in just 65 words.

Yesterday I touched on something that has been a recurring theme here, something I call “visualcy”, the transition from a literate society to one that relies on visual media, e.g. video, graphics, for information By “literate society” I don’t just mean one in which the people can read and write but one in which people rely primarily on the written word for information. The characteristics of literate societies (by comparison with pre-literate societies) include the inability to follow abstract logical arguments and agonistic modes of expression. My thesis has been that modern society resembles pre-literate ones more than it does a literate society. Add short attention span (which I blame on television) and you’re pretty much describing our modern society.

The “Sahm Rule”, pictured in a graph from the St. Louis Federal Reserve above, was designed as a real-time leading indicator of recession. Here’s the description of our present situation from the American Institute of Economic Research:

In this morning’s US Bureau of Labor Statistics data release, the U-3 unemployment rate increased 4.1 percent in June 2024, rising by one-tenth of a percentage point above the forecast rate. The U-3 rate measures the percentage of the civilian labor force that is jobless, actively seeking work, and available to work, excluding discouraged workers and the underemployed.

This uptick triggers the Sahm Rule, a real-time recession indicator, suggesting that the US economy is in, or is nearing, a recession. The Sahm Rule, developed by former Fed economist Claudia Sahm, is designed to identify the start of a recession using changes in the total unemployment rate. According to the rule, a recession is underway if the three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate rises by 0.50 percentage points or more, relative to its low during the previous 12 months. With the June 2024 U-3 rate of 4.1 percent, the average of the last three months being 4.0 and the lowest 12-month rate of 3.5 percent in July 2023, this criterion has been met.

While not going so far as to predict a recession they conclude:

While more data will be required to confirm the Sahm Rule indication, the impact of accelerating prices, interest rates at their highest levels since 2007, and commercially suppressive pandemic policies have probably caught up with US producers and consumers.

Yesterday I pointed out that the relationship between full-time and part-time shops suggested recession. Here’s another leading indicator.

I honestly don’t know what is going to happen—we’re in unknown territory. The U. S. economy has never been exposed to such a large debt overhang in peacetime, particularly with the economy as deindustrialized as it is now. The political instinct will be to spend more, especially during an election year, which would push in the opposite direction as Fed policy.

I don’t follow the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Report as faithfully as I used to. My loss of interest started when I understood how unempirical the numbers they are reporting are. However, this month’s caught my interest when I read that the number of full-time jobs decreased by 1.6 million while the number of part-time jobs increased by 1.8 million so decided to dig into it a bit. The first thing I wanted to show you was this, the age-adjusted figures for full-time and part-time employment over time:

The numbers are noisy to be sure but the trend certainly looks more characteristic of the leading edge of a recession than of boom time. You might also be interested in the video version of Ms. Nash’s presentation:

This graphic also strikes me as interesting:

Find more statistics at Statista
I’m not exactly sure what to conclude from that bar chart but I’m more confident in something you cannot conclude from it. We don’t need more workers in Agriculture or Leisure and hospitality but we may in the highly subsidized Education and health services.

Here in Chicago the 4th of July weekend has historically been the one weekend of the year with the highest number of homicides. Based on the statistics produced at Hey,Jackass! 2024 has already exceeded the number of homicides in the two prior years and may well exceed the number in 2021 and 2022. 17 people have been killed and 81 wounded. And that doesn’t include the man who blew his own head off with fireworks.

With Sunday night left to go who knows how high the tally will climb?

Update

The final tally is 19 killed, 85 wounded. As awful as that is it’s actually a relief that the number killed does not exceed the number in the Fourth of July weekend of 2021 or the Fourth of July weekend of 2020.

I found this piece by Tim Hains at RealClearPolitics on historian Alan Lichtman’s method for predicting the outcomes of presidential elections thought-provoking:

President Biden is under mounting pressure to drop his bid for a second term. In this interview with the Wall Street Journal, American University Historian Allan Lichtman, who correctly predicted nine of the last ten presidential elections using his system of “13 keys to the White House,” breaks down why Biden still represents the best bet for Democrats.

“American presidential elections are essentially votes up or down on the strength or performance of the White House Party. In other words, it is governance, not campaigning that counts,” Lichtman said. “It is still the best bet for Democrats to have Biden stay in the race.”

“The 13 keys to the White House are 13 true/false questions pertaining primarily to the strength and performance of the White House party, that when answered true, always favor stability. If six or more of the keys are false, we have earthquakes. If fewer than six are false, we have stability.”

Here are the thirteen questions:

1. Incumbent seeking re-election
2. No primary contest
3. Party mandate
4. Strong short-term economy
5. Strong long-term economy
6. Major policy change
7. No scandal
8. Charismatic incumbent
9. Uncharismatic challenger
10. No significant third party
11. No social unrest
12. No major foreign/military failure
13. Major foreign/military success

Without going to the linked piece to confer with Dr. Lichtman’s answers to those question, I challenge my readers to answer them for themselves. I will be interested in seeing your answers.

My reaction was that some of those questions (e.g. 1, 2) are objective but many are subjective (e.g. 8, 9). Consequently, your answers may well be different from Dr. Lichtman’s and may suggest a different outcome. That would account for a lot of the comments to Mr. Hains’s post and Dr. Lichtman’s answers in particular which I found pretty shocking.

Update

Ray Fair continues to predict that based on his Fair Model President Biden will receive a majority of the popular vote and that if Biden does not run the Democratic candidate would receive a lower percentage of the popular vote. How that translates to being elected president is outside the scope of his model.

I wonder if there are a lot of Democrats thinking what David Axelrod actually says in his piece at CNN:

After the debate, the already robust number of Americans who deem the president too old to serve another term went up to 74%. Only 42% said the same about Trump, 78, whose own terrible debate performance was eclipsed by Biden’s meltdown.

Just as distressing was Biden’s stubborn denial of his public standing and position in a race that he has characterized as an existential battle for the survival of American democracy.

Three separate polls conducted by CNN, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal after the debate all showed Biden trailing Trump by six points nationwide. Previous polls have shown Biden trailing in nearly all the battleground states he narrowly won in 2020. And now a handful of other states he won — Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia — appear to be in play.

At this rate, Biden is likely headed for a landslide defeat to a lawless and unpopular former president.

But when Stephanopoulos confronted him with poll numbers showing him trailing and a job approval rating lower than any president who has ever won re-election, Biden would have none of it.

“I don’t … I don’t buy that. I don’t think anybody’s more qualified to be president or win this race than me,” he said.

Only “the Lord Almighty” could persuade him to give up the race, the president said, as a growing chorus of Democrats, fearful of an electoral disaster, call for him to step aside.

Denial. Delusion. Defiance.

My take is that if you’re going to base your campaign around your opponent’s being a narcissist, delusional, a liar, and anti-democratic, the strategy for making that most effective is to be focused on the effect your actions have on others, acknowledge reality, adhere strictly to the truth, and advocate democratic means in your political choices.

I’m still deciding whether I will watch George Stephanopoulos’s interview of President Biden this evening. I probably will. It’s being described as a “high stakes interview”. Is that true? He’s being interviewed by a friendly interviewer who’s unlikely to be a tough interrogator.

IMO the only contingency under which it would be “high stakes” is if President Biden was unable to rise to the occasion and I honestly do not think that will happen. I think he will look and sound a little older but pretty much like the Joe Biden who campaigned in 2020.

But what does that prove? That he can sound like his old self? I have no doubt of that. It doesn’t prove that he will. That was proven by the “debate”: he might; he might not.

I think that what should happen is that President Biden should withdraw his name from candidacy and resign, turning the presidency over to Kamala Harris for the next six months. As I’ve said before, I don’t think that will happen.

Update

President Biden’s performance was better than I thought it would be but I doubt if he’s helped himself much with this interview. And George S. was a bit tougher than I expected. I suspect that the more his Democratic colleagues think about the president’s answer to George S.’s question (“How will you feel, etc.?”) the worse it will sound to them.

BTW my Congressional representative just asked President Biden to withdraw his candidacy.

I don’t recognize the United States anymore. I don’t know whether it’s because things have changed or we’re just aware of more nowadays or both.

The change in the politics is obvious. Both major political parties are more authoritarian than they used to be. That is so obvious I hardly feel the need to explain it. The media continually draw attention to the breach of the Capitol on January 6, 2020 but it’s not limited to that.

It is quite obvious at this point that Joe Biden has been declining mentally for some time and his staff and associates have been running the show, denying any decline all along. That itself is authoritarian. So is the Congress passing opaque laws which the executive branch agencies ignore or interpret any way they care to and defending that process as practical necessity.

That isn’t the way our political system is supposed to work. Congress is supposed to write the laws, they are to be enacted by the Congress and the president, and anything that’s not in the law is not in the law. Unelected federal agencies don’t get to extrapolate and interpolate at will.

The smallest Congressional district is now larger than the largest state in 1790. If we doubled the number of Congressional districts, each member of Congress would still represent more than twice as many people as each member of the House of Commons in the UK, the French National Assembly, or the German Bundestag.

The party leadership in each party wields far too much power and the two parties collude in preventing upstart splinter parties from getting onto the ballot. Congressional district are not only too large but gerrymandered ferociously to benefit whichever political party controls each state. The prevailing is that Republicans benefit more from this arrangement but that’s not what FiveThirtyEight found. Their analysis found that Democrats actually benefit more from gerrymandering. For an egregious example consider the Illinois 4th Congressional District. What would our political landscape look like with smaller, non-gerrymandered, more compact districts? We have no idea.

When I started this blog the president of the United States was the son of a prior president, the governor of my state was the son-in-law of a powerful Chicago City Council member, and the City Council member who represented my ward was the daughter of her predecessor. To my eye the distinction between that and a hereditary aristocracy is notional at best.

It’s even worse now if anything. The president has held elective office for more than 50 years. He was an undistinguished member of the Senate for most of that time, then an undistinguished Vice President. His competitor in the coming election is 78 and a billionaire without prior experience in government or politics. The last two governors of Illinois have both been billionaires with zero prior experience in elective office or government.

The change in the society is notable as well. We have the largest percentage of foreign born in the country in a century, possibly the largest percentage in history. The non-marital birth rate is around 40%—roughly what it has been since 2008 and sharply higher than it was a generation ago. Among black Americans nearly 70% are born to unmarried mothers.

The virtues that made the United States stand out among countries including voluntarism and contributing to charities has declined sharply. The participation in organized religion has declined as well.

We have been at war now continually for more than 30 years. We don’t call it that but that’s the case. The evidence all of that warmaking has made us more secure is negligible.

Alone among developed countries the life expectancy here is actually declining. The number of deaths due to drug abuse is almost 10 times what it was 25 years ago. I could go on but it’s too depressing.