Welcome to the commentary magazine, Daily podcast.

today is Wednesday, August 10th, 2022. I am John Pudhord. The editor of Commentary magazine with me

as always executive editor, a Greenwald Hyade. A John media commentary columnist, Christine Rosen,

Hy Christine. Hi, John. And associate editor and author of the rise of the New Puritans,

Noah Rothman. Hi, Noah. Hi, John. So in this world in which grasping at straw seems to be the

general establishment bias or consensus in dealing with the news of the day, the grasping at straws

this morning involves an inflation report for the month of July that is not as catastrophic as the

inflation reports for June, May and April in that it shows that inflation did not accelerate

in the month of July, but rather remain flat at an annualized rate of 8.5%. You would think from

the way that the pundit class is talking about this, that happy days are here again. I do want to

remind you that happy days are here again was the theme song of the FDR campaign in 1932. And of

course, the depression lasted another nine years until we entered World War II. So they can play

happy days are here again all they like. It's really not the song you want to be playing, but Noah,

you noticed are a very representative figure in the world of writing about economics from a sort of

liberal perspective, but like a nice guy, good guy, one of the first people to sort of make his

reputation on Twitter as an as an economics writer, that's Joe Weasanthal aka the stalwart. What was

his take on this morning's report? I can't quote him directly, but because it was flat at 8.5%

with the slight decline in core CPI, it was 0% inflation, which is just bizarre, strikingly bizarre.

I mean, you take what you can get, right? And if you're a cheerleader for the idea that,

you know, inflation isn't really all that bad, and you know, we can spend our way out of it,

for example, which seems to generally be the line of thought among people who share his personal

his proclivities. I mean, you're you're going to be okay with this, in part because it's

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