What Was The "Little Secret" Trump Had With Mike Johnson?

With so many families getting together over Thanksgiving weekend, there will undoubtedly be a lot of discussion about politics.

And a lot of arguing, I expect.

Not like anyone really needs more fodder for discussion, but here's a really juicy tidbit of a question that families with that in-your-face-about-Trump uncle (and let's face it, there aren't many families who don't have at least one of those) will appreciate:

Back on October 27, during the now infamous rally at Madison Square Garden, Trump said that he and Mike Johnson had a "little secret." He promised to tell what it was after the election.

Well, the election is over. So what the hell was it?

Only two days afterward (which is, you know, before the election was over), Mike Johnson tried saying that it was a tactic being used to "get out the vote." Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested something very similar, saying that it referred to the "countless telerallies reaching millions of Americans across the country in key regions that also helps bolster Republicans in congressional races."

Well, maybe.

Certainly it's no secret that the Trump campaign had a program to target disaffected male voters, ask them what specifically they didn't like about the Biden administration, and then target that. It apparently was a very effective tactic. But was this the real secret?

We may never know what it was, because after Mike Johnson broke Trump's promise on his behalf and gave an explanation well before the election, Trump has refused to comment on it after the election, breaking his promise directly.

What was that "little secret?"

I don't have a good answer for you. It could range anywhere from Musk's takeover of Twitter, to cyber-fraud, to undermining the certification of the vote at the State level.

But the speculation about it should make the potatoes and gravy go down a little easier as that crazy uncle struggles to come up with an explanation.

Eric

**

Biden Can End Ukraine's War Now (And Should!)

Ukraine seems headed to defeat. At the very least, it faces a Trump-sponsored settlement that gives Russia complete control over much of the eastern territories, if not all of them. At the worst, Trump backs Putin as Russia drives their forces straight into Kyiv and takes over the whole country.

I'm sure that's part of why Biden finally allowed Ukraine to use long-range missiles built in the U.S. To be sure, Russia sending North Korean troops into Ukraine certainly didn't help matters, either.

But here's the thing: I think Biden should use these last two months to really get tough with Russia and force a complete withdrawal from Ukraine altogether - before Trump even gets sworn in. If Biden acts now, it's very possible. Once done, we fast-track Ukraine into NATO, and then there's nothing Trump can do about it.

Well, except maybe back out of NATO altogether, but that's a travesty for another day.

"But wait!" you might ask, "If Biden gives Putin an ultimatum, won't that risk sparking a nuclear war?"

I don't think so. Here's why:

When we were about to send financial aid to Ukraine, Putin threatened the possibility of nuclear retaliation. We sent aid anyway, and nothing happened.

When we were about to send ordinance to Ukraine, Putin threatened the possibility of nuclear retaliation. We sent ordinance anyway, and nothing happened.

When we were about to send tanks to Ukraine, Putin threatened the possibility of nuclear retaliation. We sent tanks anyway, and nothing happened.

When we were about to send jet planes to Ukraine, Putin threatened the possibility of nuclear retaliation. We sent planes anyway, and nothing happened.

Putin again threatened the possibility of nuclear retaliation if Ukraine ever fired U.S.-made long-range missiles into Russia. Well, Ukraine just did.

And again, nothing happened.

At this point, calling Putin's bluff is almost a given. He knows damned well that when the first nuke hits Kyiv, the second nuke will hit Moscow.

He won't escalate. Because he can't.

It's time for Biden to move the 5th Fleet into the Black Sea, and say to Putin, "All right, jackass, you've had your fun, now get your goddamned troops back over onto your side of the border - NOW! INCLUDING Crimea!"

After all, Putin can't even defeat Ukraine. What on earth would make him think he could defeat Ukraine AND us?

The poetic tragedy of it all is that Biden has the will to do this, but probably not the guts.

Trump has the guts to do this, but definitely not the will.

Who knows? Maybe Biden will decide to leave it all on the field on the way out.

Then again, my optimism has taken a hit since November 5th.

Eric

**

Twitter Derangement Syndrome

Here's a thought shared by many:

Social media is driving us all insane.

And by "insane," I don't mean a little neurotic. I mean foaming at the mouth, bat-shit, nucking futz!

According to Tristan Harris, the man behind the landmark documentary, "The Social Dilemma," there are entire programs of study, at Stanford, at Harvard, at many other prestigious universities, wholly devoted to the study of what grabs human attention, and keeps it.

Not classes. Programs.

These schools of thought have been training the corporate leaders which drive our social media algorithms to gear them solely toward increasing engagement. The algorithms behind Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and many others, don't give a damn about what drives the engagement. They only care that the user is engaged, and that such engagement increases. If it increases due to right-wing extremism, or conspiracy mongering, or religious zealotry, or anger, or fear, or outright lies, all of that in ancillary to the machine that drives the increased engagement. The user is interacting more - fuck everything else.

Your commitment to the social media is all that matters.

Nowhere is the impact of this more evident than the cesspool that Twitter/X has become. Elon Musk bought it up, lost a crap-ton of money on it, but gained an outsized influence upon one of the biggest social media platforms. It paid off, in as much as Musk was (arguably) able to influence the 2024 election more than anyone realized. It goes without saying that his opinions, forced upon all users whether they liked it or not, were not of the pre-Trump quality that we came to expect from Elon Musk before.

(I mean, let's be honest: Electric cars, space exploration... these are not the sorts of things pursued by retrograde Christian-nationalist dipshits marching people back towards the Middle Ages. Elon Musk once had clout among those who enjoyed watching TED and the Big Bang Theory. How the mighty have fallen...)

But this happened because first Elon Musk himself was sucked in by Twitter algorithms. They radicalized him. And when the Babylon Bee had its account suspended on Twitter, he hauled off and bought the entire platform.

In other words, Elon himself so loved the thing which poisoned his mind, he took over the whole thing. Just so that his favorite radicalization memes wouldn't get blocked from his eyes.

Or yours.

Social media has been very effective at spreading a particularly pernicious idea, that "Trump Derangement Syndrome," (a.k.a. "TDS") is actually the derangement caused by the rejection of Trump, rather than the purely sane reaction to someone so dastardly. Such a purely upside-down mindset could only have been promulgated by the unholy alliance between the Right-Wing Media Machine, and the increasingly powerful forces of social media.

But I have a radical proposal regarding "TDS." Given that right-wing radicalization is so often brought about by social media, "TDS" should be re-branded as "Twitter Derangement Syndrome."

(Yeah, yeah, I know, it's actually "X." But no. Just.... no.)

We may not be able to fully undo all the damage that social media has done to the conscience of the general public. But we can do one small thing to reclaim what we've lost down that hellhole. We can at least re-designate "TDS" as "Twitter Derangement Syndrome."

It seems the least we can do.

And it's a lot closer to the truth.

Eric

**

Stop Saying "Mandate!"

I said this back in 2004 when George W. Bush won reelection (and I wish I'd had a blog back then so I could cite it):

51% is not a mandate!

Like in 2004, Republicans won consistently, but by the skin of their teeth. Ohio, not Pennsylvania, was the all-important swing state back then, and Bush took it by a narrow margin - narrow enough that John Kerry didn't concede until a few days after the election, when it finally became clear that Bush's narrow margin wasn't going to shrink appreciably.

Back then, just like now, Republican advocates on all the talking-heads shows were saying "mandate!" "mandate!" as if they'd somehow won by a huge margin.

Except they didn't. They squeaked by. They just did so homogenously.

The most recent example of someone who actually had a mandate is Barack Obama in 2008. He won many states no Democrat had in decades, and was handed commanding majorities in both the House and Senate. But on balance, despite the huge Electoral College margin and Congressional margin, Obama only had 53% of the vote in 2008. He couldn't truthfully claim a mandate, though some did.

Ronald Reagan certainly had a mandate in 1984. When he defeated Walter Mondale, he won most U.S. states and had nearly 59% of the popular vote, with 97.6% of the Electoral College.

Now THAT, my friends, is what a mandate truly looks like. Nowhere near, and nothing like, what Trump eeked by on.

Richard Nixon had a mandate in 1972, with 60% of the popular vote and 96.7% of the Electoral College.

Are you paying attention, class?

But not long before, the Democrats were handed a mandate in 1964 as Lyndon Johnson won 61.1% of the popular vote, and 96.7% of the Electoral College. Dwight Eisenhower had a mandate in 1956 with 57.4% of the popular vote. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a mandate in 1936 when he won 60.8% of the vote.

As of this writing, Donald Trump only won 49.98% of the vote. Not even cracking 50%! Kamala Harris got 48.4% of the vote. The rest voted for someone else.

So don't give me this "mandate" bullshit! More than half of all voters chose someone else! If the American people wanted to give Trump a mandate, he would have gotten at least 55% or higher.

Eric

**

It Was Never Biden's Inflation

What causes inflation?

It's been abundantly clear, even before the debacle which was this past election, that voters really don't know the answer to this question. Instead, they blame whoever happens to be in the Oval Office at the time the inflation happens, which is neither fair nor informed. So, as a recap, let me just remind everybody out there what exactly happened to drive prices up in 2021.

It had nothing to do with Biden.

It had everything to do with Trump, and his mismanagement of the Covid crisis, compounded by Vladimir Putin's war with Ukraine, and a whole host of other mishaps Biden had no control over.

People generally don't know this, but a president has very little control over an economy. The Federal Reserve has more direct control through use of interest rates, and that's rather like trying to steer a barge with a single oar.

To give you a good sense of how the Trump/Putin inflation happened we need to review economics 101 to see how exactly inflation works. Then we will go over a timeline of how the events transpired to drive up prices.

Causes of inflation:

Supply shock - When something disrupts supply, such as a natural disaster, or foreign government intervention (war, embargo, etc.).

Demand shock - Something triggers high demand, such as when a central bank lowers interest rates too much, or a government raises spending too high.

Cost-push - When the cost of producing goods and services rises, forcing businesses to raise their prices.

Demand-pull - When the demand for goods and services in the economy exceeds the economy's ability to produce them.

There are others, of course, but those are the main ones.

Now let's see these in action. You can follow along with the following graph showing how inflation transpired during this time period. (Source, Statista. Click here to see.)

Stimulus Round 1 (Trump), March, 2020 - The CARES Act is passed in Washington. Millions of Americans received stimulus checks, $1,200 per taxpayer and $500 per child. That, and/or PPP loans. But due to the Covid shutdown, this money was either used for the sustaining of businesses or personal finances, or saved for later. Since those who saved it couldn't really go out and spend it anyway, that happened for many Americans. Inflation wasn't affected - yet.

Stimulus Round 2 (Trump), December 2020 - The Consolidated Appropriations Act is passed. $600 per taxpayer plus $600 per child. Again, this money is used either for basic upkeep or saved.

Also, December 2020, Pfizer and Moderna receive FDA approval for their Covid-19 vaccines. Emergency vaccinations begin in earnest for first-responders.

January/February 2021, vaccine approval is granted for anyone in a food-related industry. (Here's where I got mine, as I was employed at a manufacturer of spices and supplements at the time.)

February 19, 2021 - Sudden cold snap reaches as far south as Texas. Food and fuel shortages result. Gas prices begin to rise.

March 2021 - More and more people get vaccinated. The pandemic feels like it's ending.

**Note: Here's where people stop hunkering down and start spending some of their saved money. Demand pressure goes way up.

Stimulus Round 3 (Biden), March 2021 - The American Rescue Act is passed. $1,400 per taxpayer, $1,400 per child.

Demand increases, but supply is short due to the lockdown causing businesses to pare back. They begin to respond, but it's too little, too late. Inflation rises to 4%.

**Note: This is both Demand-Shock and Demand-Pull. Admittedly, on this part, Biden has a portion of blame, since Trump did the first two stimulus bills, and Biden did this third one. The extra stimulus was probably too steep and too late in light of the Covid crisis beginning to ebb. But the dollar amounts weren't really significant for long-term inflation. That came later.

April, 2021 - With many Americans now vaccinated, people are hopeful for a return to normal. They begin going out more, and spending more. But supply chains are still limited. China's zero-Covid policy is still in place, and businesses are still trying to ramp back up to normal.

More buyers, less goods to buy. So naturally, right around here, inflation rises to 5.4%. It hovers there for several months. And there it would have stayed or come down, except for what happened next.

May, 2021 - A Coronavirus surge tears through India, causing manufacturing delays across a wide spectrum of industries.

June, 2021 - West Coast wildfires rage so widely that smoke changes the color of the sky in Chicago and Cleveland. This further complicates supply chains and prices.

July 29, 2021 - The Ever Given container ship becomes wedged in the Suez Canal, causing huge supply chain disruptions globally.

August 2021 - Hurricane Ida hits the southern coast, closing ports and further disrupting fuel and supply chains.

August, 2021 - the Meishan terminal in Ninbo, China, a major shipping center, shuts down for two weeks. The Shanghai Airport terminal also shuts down, further causing shipping delays and price increases.

** And all of these things add up to Supply-Shock and Cost-Push. With supply chains being disrupted right before stores began prepping for the peak seasons of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, prices really start to climb.

September, 2021 - As China's shipping re-opens, and American ports struggle to find workers, a huge backlog of container ships crowds up the Pacific along the west coast.

October 1, 2021 - Vietnam ends it's weeks-long shutdown. Goods long delayed begin to flood out of port, further complicating the backlog in the U.S.

February, 2022 **The BIG One** - Vladimir Putin sends troops into Ukraine, kicking off a war which hasn't concluded yet. Because Ukraine is one of the largest suppliers of grain, this significantly impacts grocery prices.

March, 2022 - In response to Putin's war in Ukraine, huge sanctions are levied against Russia. Gas pipelines from Russia to Europe are shut down, leading to a massive energy crisis, especially for Germany, which was heavily dependent upon Russian gas. The economic impact on global prices is huge.

** More Supply-Shock and Cost-Push. By July of 2022, inflation has soared to 9%. I call this the "Putin Peak," because that inflation ties directly to Putin's stupid war. But honestly, given how severe the other supply chain shocks were, I'm surprised inflation wasn't much, much worse. It's a credit to Biden to have contained it so well.

From February to June of 2023 - inflation comes way down, eventually settling at around 3.5%. After that, it gradually ticked downward until it reached today's low of 2.1%.

WITH Putin's war in Ukraine still raging on! WITH Israel retaliating against the attacks on October 6, 2023, with an all-out war on Gaza!

Biden gets zero credit.

So, there's your instant replay. The two biggest factors in this are 1) Trump's mismanagement of the Coronavirus pandemic, and 2) Putin's war in Ukraine. Together with a bevvy of mishaps that were out of Biden's control, they are what was responsible for the inflation of 2021 & 2022. The fact that inflation remained low throughout 2023 and even lower in 2024 doesn't seem to have gotten anyone's attention at all.

Nearly two whole years of inflationary control. WITH two wars on!

In spite of this, Biden got all the blame. Trump, for all his clusterfucking, got the credit.

Because people didn't remember the clusterfucking. They remembered the stimulus checks.

That, and the Right-Wing Media Machine kept blasting falsehoods about everything from trans athletes to fake crime numbers for immigrants.

So don't ever let anyone tell you it was Biden's inflation. Biden did an incredible job in the face of some pretty damned steep obstacles.

History will record this, even if what passes for our current "news" media does not.

Eric

**

Right-Wing Media IS "Mainstream" Now

The Right-Wing Media Machine regularly rails against mainstream media, often calling it "lame-stream media," or even "the real fake news," as Sean Hannity often calls it.

Trouble is, that form of news is no longer "mainstream." Not even close.

Fox News currently occupies nearly 50% of all cable news viewership, according to Nielsen ratings. Which means everything else, CNN, MSNBC, Newsmax, OAN, all fits into that remaining half, and only one of those is ostensibly progressive-leaning. Newsmax and OAN carry roughly 9% of cable news viewership, meaning the right-wing side of biased news is only just shy of 60%. With CNN twisting in the wind like a weather vane, it's fair to say that two-thirds of cable news is now right-wing.

Newspapers are dead, with most of them having been bought up by oligarchs and hedge funds, stripped down to their barest essentials, and most of their reporters shown the door. We famously saw the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post refuse to endorse Kamala Harris, not because the staff felt this was right, but because of owners' edict. Both publications suffered backlash, but the owners are rich enough not to care.

Radio? According to the Center for American Progress, a startling 91% of political talk radio is conservative-leaning.

Television? Forget it. Roughly 40% of all local television networks are owned by Sinclair, a right-leaning broadcast company. True, they've been looking to sell off about 30% of what they currently own, but they're still dominant. Right behind them is Nextstar Media Group, which owns nearly all the rest, and dominates all television media in general with roughly 70% of all television stations, local or otherwise.

And then came recently this report from CNN, showing how 40% of young voters, particularly young men, get their news from social media sources, most of which lean to the right. In particular, X.com and Joe Rogan were frequently cited as news sources.

In fact, I think we can safely say that when Elon Musk blew millions on buying Twitter, which seemed to be a horribly stupid waste of money, he was wasting all that cash to have an outsized effect on the 2024 election.

And it worked!

And yes, everybody of sound mind is currently leaving X.com. An "X-odus," if you will (I wish I'd been the one to come up with that). But, as frequently is the case among us liberals, it's too little, too late. And what's left of X.com will continue as an even more depraved right-wing conspiracy-theory-ridden hellhole than ever before.

And that's before factoring in all the other social and digital media outlets which are right-wing. Or, for that matter, factoring all the foreign propaganda (looking at you, Russia & China) which poisons the social media of even balanced platforms.

Let's face it, Kamala lost for precisely the reasons I outlined in my earlier blog post.

Two words: Institutionalized disinformation.

So we need to re-define our terms. "Mainstream media" must now be regarded as the media of the political right. "The liberal media" simply no longer exists. Frankly, it hasn't existed for a very long time. Everything else which has heretofore been regarded as "mainstream," must now assume a different name. Legacy media seems to be the term which is winning out. And most of it isn't even left-leaning. The bulk of it is just the balanced media; the responsible media.

There is no counterweight.

So we're basically fucked as far as media is concerned. The oligarchs came in, and took away freedom of speech by buying up all the free speech outlets they could, then filling our ears with outrage porn aimed at defaming the Left. There's no way we can fix this easily. And we can't re-balance the airwaves by simply re-launching Air America Radio (remember that one?), or somehow bolstering NPR, or turning to the quixotic podcasts done by Keith Olbermann and Thom Hartmann.

We need to pass some laws requiring balance!

I'm not advocating censorship, any more than it is censorship to require a food product to faithfully report a package's contents on its label. The law recognizes that if a food company mislabels its contents, the consumer who buys it could get seriously sick. We need a similar set of laws governing our news outlets, and for precisely the same reason.

No one should be able to mislabel propaganda as "news" anymore! That's simply fraud!

I look forward to the possibility that Fox News might get forced to change its name to "Fox Infotainment" or some such. Certainly, the likes of Hannity, Gutfeld, and others will continue to spew their liberal-hatred as much as they are able.

But at least they might do so with a little less legitimacy. With reduced artificial authority.

No more institutionalized disinformation! It is our #1 enemy and, assuming we ever get another shot, stopping it must be our #1 priority.

Eric

**

Don't Call RFK Jr A "Vaccine Skeptic"

I am a Skeptic.

I say this using a capital "S," because it is not just a self-description, it is a creed. I've been part of the Skeptic movement for over almost 30 years now, having joined it in 1997 shortly after the untimely death of my hero (and hopefully yours, too) Dr. Carl Sagan. I was a member of the Center for Scientific Inquiry (CSI) way back when it was still called "CSICOP" (the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal).

So it absolutely frosts me when everyone in the media keeps describing RFK Jr. as a "vaccine skeptic."

He is no such thing.

A Skeptic (capital "S") doesn't dismiss claims outright. A Skeptic investigates. A Skeptic confirms. Even if the claim is absurd, the Skeptic investigates anyway. If someone claims to have seen a UFO, the Skeptic will not simply dismiss it outright. He will look into it. He will likely find a much more rational explanation than our humble planet being visited by extraterrestrials, but he will at least take a look. Or at least count on the appointment of someone else (usually from Skeptical Inquirer magazine) to go take a look.

The classic example of this is Joe Nickell, who regularly made cable TV paranormal shows as the guy who looked into claims of haunted houses (back when cable TV was still a thing) and debunked them. Like the gang from Scooby Doo, he always found a human explanation rather than an actual ghost, but he never guffawed or ridiculed people for their beliefs. Instead he looked at the evidence, and found a natural rather than a supernatural reason for a seemingly ghostly encounter. In nearly all cases, the ghost-claimant acknowledged that Nickell was probably right.

Rejecting a claim outright with no investigation is not skepticism. It is cynicism.

In RFKJ's case, it is even worse than cynicism. RFKJ has taken a position of faith regarding vaccines. He ignores the mountains of evidence showing how vaccines are effective at preventing disease and instead embraces wild conspiracy theories which were debunked long ago. Such as claiming thimerosal, used in tiny amounts as a vaccine preservative, causes autism in children. He ignores that no vaccines administered to children under the age of 6 ever contains thimerosal, and hasn't done so for generations. He also ignores that thimerosal uses ethyl mercury, which the human body can expel in waste. Methyl mercury, an entirely different molecule, cannot be expelled from the body. RFKJ regularly confuses or conflates the two. What's more, any vaccine which contains thimerosal has it in only about 50 micrograms. For scale, that's roughly the equivalent of eating 2 cans of tuna.

I don't eat a lot of tuna, but I've certainly eaten a lot more than 2 cans' worth in my lifetime. I suspect you have, too.

RFKJ is no more a skeptic than a creationist is a "skeptic" regarding evolution, or a flat earther is a "skeptic" regarding our spherical planet. He is no more a "skeptic" than someone who denies we landed on the Moon in 1969, or that the Holocaust ever happened in Nazi Germany. These are conspiracy theories -- cults of the fantastical which prey upon those who are prone to jumping to conclusions.

In taking a position of faith regarding vaccine denialism, and founding an organization to promote and bolster his mad claims, he has literally made himself a cult leader.

So call him a denier. Call him a crackpot. Call him a fool for misusing his worm-eaten brain.

But please, stop calling him a "skeptic."

You soil the word each time you make that mistake.

Eric

**