Apparently, President Trump has (variously) called the term "affordability" a "hoax", a "con job", and a "scam’". Perpetrated by the Democrats and their allies in the media!
It seems I've been quoting my favorite Chico Marx line quite a bit these days. Here I go again: "Well, who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?"
A more trustworthy source, Kevin D. Williamson, provides A Closer Look at ‘Affordability’. (archive.today link)
If you want to know why Donald Trump and his three-legged psychedelic pinball machine of an administration are on the wrong side of Americans when it comes to economic performance, consider this interesting fact: Grocery inflation is more than twice as bad right now as it was in the closing days of Joe Biden’s presidency, when Americans turned on the incumbent president and his party before spurning his chosen successor while complaining—not without cause—that Democratic policies were making their grocery bills worse. Now it is Republican policies that are making grocery bills worse, in no small part because they are, at a fundamental economic level, nearly indistinguishable from the Democratic policies that had Americans so riled up in 2024.
Annualized inflation in what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls “food at home” (meaning groceries, a word our senescent president seems to believe he introduced into the political conversation) was at 2.7 percent in September of 2025, the most recent month for which there is public data—by comparison, the average annualized monthly measure of grocery inflation in 2024 was only 1.2 percent throughout 2024. (Because inflation is a compounding phenomenon, total grocery inflation in 2024 was 1.8 percent even though the average monthly increase was only 1.2 percent. If grocery inflation is found to have continued at its most recent rate through year-end, then total 2025 grocery inflation would amount to about 4.2 percent, keeping us well within more-than-twice-as-bad territory.) Total food inflation—meaning groceries plus food consumed outside the home—is even worse, running at 3.1 percent in the most recent survey, a little ahead of overall inflation.
This is a difficult thing to avoid noticing. I am sure that I am not the only one who has noted that my regular trips to Kroger (four hungry boys at home!) have jumped from around $140 per visit to around $200 per visit. My own household consumption puts us at a particularly unhappy point on the grocery-inflation distribution, inasmuch as we buy a considerable quantity of meat, milk, eggs, and the like—food items that have seen much more severe inflation than the overall model grocery cart.
As always, I encourage you to subscribe to the Dispatch. I'm a $100/year subscriber, but if you're unconcerned with "affordability", there's a $300/year "premium access" option.
Also of note:
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Sorry, Elvis, some days it's impossible to be amused. So I have to admit I'm disgusted. As TechDirt's Mike Masnick (and many others) report: Trump Suggests Rob Reiner Had It Coming For Criticizing Him. Trump's Truth Social post in it's entirety:
A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age
Mike comments:
Read that again. The President of the United States is claiming—with zero evidence—that Reiner’s murder happened “due to the anger he caused others” through his criticism of Trump. He’s framing political speech against Trump as something that drives people “crazy” and justifies violence.
This is the same administration that spent months after Charlie Kirk’s death insisting that even quoting Kirk’s own hateful rhetoric was unacceptable and deserving of cancellation. Pam Bondi threatened to prosecute those who criticized Kirk, claiming it incited violence. There was a flood of think pieces demanding we “turn down the rhetoric” even as MAGA immediately ramped up “the war on the left” in Kirk’s name.
The President is a loose-cannon, narcissistic asshole.
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"Which is why Rand Paul's bill does not stand a chance." That's what flitted into my mind after reading J.D. Tuccille's headline: Obamacare subsidies can’t fix a broken system. Rand Paul’s bill could.
Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected two health care bills intended to resolve the impasse over COVID-19–era Affordable Care Act (ACA), a.k.a. Obamacare, subsidies and, to one extent or another, concerns over the cost of medical coverage. Both were blocked by the near impossibility of advancing anything in that body without 60 votes in support. The Democrat-sponsored legislation would have kicked the can down the road on Obamacare plans' inherent flaws by extending "temporary" subsidies for another three years. The Republican bill was a more serious effort that would bring some reform to the system by expanding Americans' access to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). But neither is going anywhere right now.
Maybe that's for the best. Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) proposes better legislation that expands Americans' access to HSAs and to group health plans offered by all sorts of organizations across state lines.
I could be too pessimistic, though. See what you think.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
