NATO Aggression July 14, 2024July 14, 2024 Trump’s son-in-law is going to build “a memorial dedicated to all the victims of NATO aggression.” General Wesley Clark calls it “a betrayal of the United States, its policies, and the brave diplomats and airmen who did what they could to stop Serb ethnic cleansing.” Putin loves Trump. Trump loves Putin — and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and strongmen across the board. He aspires to be the strongest of them all. Democracy is not his thing — authoritarianism is. And hey, he’s entitled to favor any form of government he wants. “It’s a free country.” At least for now. But we get a say, too, November 5. (Not, needless to say, by violence.) The GOP Platform Perfectly Reflects the Lunacy of Trump’s Party. “It’s an unconditional surrender to the cult of Trump, and its plan to reduce inflation* is laughable,” writes Timothy Noah in the New Republic: “Republicans,” the 2024 platform says, “will use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America.” If that rings a bell, it’s because this is slight reworking of what Trump said last Veteran’s Day in Claremont, New Hampshire: “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” It did not go unnoticed back then that “vermin” echoed Hitler (“Should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?”), so the offending word was scrubbed from the platform version. Maureen Dowd: For Biden, a Race Against Time. Chris Matthews: He’s Our Guy. David Frum: “Biden has been an astonishingly successful president“ . . . With a wafer-thin majority in the House and Senate in his first two years (and despite losing the House for his second), Biden enacted more major liberal legislation than any other president since Lyndon B. Johnson. He organized the successful defense of Ukraine against Russian invasion, expanded and invigorated NATO, and faced down internal opposition in his own party to stand by Israel in its hour of need. Over his four years in office, one social indicator after another has turned positive after trending the wrong way under even the pre-pandemic Donald Trump: Crime is down, marriages are up; opioid deaths are down, the number of American births is up. Not all of this was his personal work, but it happened on his watch—and the opposite happened on the previous watch. . . . but, Frum says, the President should pass the torch. If he doesn’t, we just have to hunker down and make sure he wins — and we will — because in his second term, he and Kamala and their team of 4,000 appointees will do a terrific job for average Americans and for the world at large. And because — more to the point — the alternative is the end of the American experiment. A Trump/Putin victory; monuments to NATO aggression, and all. All that matters is that we win. Which means all that matters is that we select whichever slate gives us the best chance. *Inflation, which Trump would have his followers believe is raging out of control, came in at one-tenth of one percent in June, or 1.2% annualized. So when they say inflation was 3%, it means prices are 3% higher than they were a year ago, which includes not just the most recent month’s rise, but the prior 11 as well. I’m not suggesting a month’s inflation can be measured with precision; or that next month might not be worse. But it seems pretty clear inflation is not raging; prices are rising slower than wages; and the current rate, whether 1.2% annualized or 3%, is not far from the Fed’s 2% target. (You might think the target should be zero — if inflation is bad, why have any of it? But, among other things, a little inflation greases the psychological wheels.)