This will be a short one today because my time is short, and I have to keep my iron man status – this is approximately my 680th consecutive blog post. How many games did Cal Ripken play without missing one? 2600 or so? When I get to 2500, I will tell you and we can all work together to see if I can best him. It will mean about seven and a half years without missing a day. Then Art will be about 89. What do you think?

I listened last night to Stephanie Ruhle’s interview of Kamala Harris, and heard Harris’ very logical explanation of how she will handle the economy. For those who have criticized her as not being specific enough, this interveiw provides a good response. If I had a chance to ask her questions on this topic, I would ask her several very broad ones, starting with : (1) How did you determine that the positions she is taking (on taxes, housing, tariffs, etc.) are the best ones? and (2) What have you done to determine the effect of these various positions on the economic status of the country, including the national debt? I would do this to make sure that she has a basis for her positions, other than what she believes to be politically the right positions to take as part of her campaign. I would then ask her about Congress. How does she expect Congress to react to her proposals? What happens to these proposals if the Republicans continue to hold the House? What if the Republicans take control of the Senate? What if the Democrats control the House and/or the Senate, but don’t have the 60 votes needed in the Senate (which they undoubtedly won’t) to overcome a filibuster? And how do you prioryour proposals?

At any rate, her proposals make much more sense that the Trump proposals to cut everyone’s taxes and put tariffs on everything coming from overseas. This means that the tax cuts will be at least somewhat offset by the inflation caused by the tariffs, that there will be retribution affecting American exports, and that the national debt will continue to rise. And the idea that John Deere will have a 200% tariff on tractors built in Mexico, when that would violate the Trump revised NAFTA agreement is of course absurd.

At any event, I thought Harris gave an excellent speech on her economic policy yesterday in Pittsburgh before the Ruhle interview, and while I am sure that parts of her program can be, and will be, picked apart by critics, I think she is on track.

She is also on track, of course, on Ukraine, as opposed to the unbelievable speech by Trump who basically stated “elect me, and Ukraine gets no more money”, Ukraune is totally ruined and wonrecover for hundreds of years, and who has refused to meet with Zelenskyy while he is in New York for the UN General Assembly assembly.

I continue to expect that every time Trump and/or Vance open their mouth(s), they will lose a few more supporters, and the election will continue to favor the Democrats. But we can’t be sure. As I have always said, the one thing that Trump says that I agree with is that American voters can be very stupid. At least for now, we have to live with that.

OK, I am going to stop here. It’s just a busy Thursday.