nwashing — rich people, the media, etc. — they brainwash the citizens to make them think that their vote counts. But really it was the brainwashing that counted. The voting was just the final way to know that the brainwashing worked. That's how I'd explain it. That's my literal honest, completely honest opinion of our system. It's just a brainwashing operation. Whoever does it the best wins.

Why did Trump win in 2016? The brainwashing didn't work. He broke through. He was an iconic, unique character in history who could penetrate the brainwashing just long enough to get in office. And then the brainwashing got stronger and drove him out of office basically.

All right, interestingly The Washington Post is not backing Kamala Harris on her price control idea. Huh, let's see if I can understand this. The Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos who also owns Whole Foods, a major food grocery store. Kamala Harris wants to put price controls on food which would be presumably terrible for Whole Foods. And then for the first time ever — I don't remember seeing it — The Washington Post came out strong against the candidate. Now not against the candidate but against her economic plan. And an opinion piece in The Washington Post called it a misguided idea and a gimmick. And even over on CNN they're saying it creates more problems than it solves.

Do you remember when I told you that there would never be an economist on CNN or MSNBC unless they were planning to kill the plan? No economist has come forward, none, to say that Kamala's ideas are a good idea. Think about that. How many economists are Democrats? 50,000? I don't know, 20,000? How many professional economists are also Democrat? It's a lot, right? If CNN can find one that says Kamala Harris has a good economic plan, just one, anyone. My prediction is nope. Unless they find somebody who's clearly batshit crazy. And when you listen to them you go, okay that barely sounds like an economist to me, maybe. But I don't think so. I think they're just going to have the pundits talk about it because the pundits are not experts. So they can just say well it sounds like a good idea to me. But I don't even think any of the pundits say it's a good idea. Just people on the campaign.

So I would say that the price controls on food idea might be the worst idea I've ever heard in American politics.

Well the DNC, Democratic National Committee, will be in Chicago starting Monday for four days. And stores are already closing down and boarding up their windows. Well they're not closed but they're boarding up their windows and they're planning to be closed because they expect so many protests and violence from Democrats, by the way, or at least people who are left leaning. It looks like the pro-Palestinian protesters are likely to show up in big numbers. Now what's that going to do to America? I think the more the Democrats are seen by regular Americans as being part of this Palestinian anti-Israel push, it just looks all bad to me. So it could be that this might be the first DNC convention that did a negative bump to the candidate.

So what you usually expect is the convention gives an automatic bump to every candidate. Doesn't last but an automatic bump. Maybe it'll be different this time. I'm not going to make that prediction because it's so consistent that you get a bump from the convention. But this one could be different if what we watch is every day things catching on fire in the streets of Chicago. And we say to ourselves but aren't they Democrats? If your brain says those are Democrats destroying Chicago during the DNC, I don't know that Kamala Harris is going to get a bump. So this one will be fun. Fun in a bad way. I mean I wouldn't want to be a shop owner in Chicago. I feel sorry for them. But we'll see. This might be a surprise.

Meanwhile Corey Lewandowski is back on the Trump campaign team. There is some confusion about what his role would be. Some said he'd be the boss of it and he would be the boss of Wiles and LaCivita who were getting a lot of criticism from Republicans. But apparently his formal title is senior adviser. So that would be not so obvious that he's in charge. So it could be that he's just added to the group. It doesn't mean he's necessarily in charge of them. But he's coming in with a lot of clout so maybe in effect he will be. I don't know. Maybe somebody will be leaving soon but doesn't want to say it yet. So I would say this is still fog of war. So anything could come out of this.

Biden is saying — and Axios is reporting that Biden thinks he might get a Gaza deal by the end of next week. Really? Really? This is in the news somewhat uncritically in the news that he's expecting there's a good chance of getting some kind of a hostage deal and maybe a ceasefire in Gaza. You all know that's not going to happen, right? Do I have to tell you that's not going to happen? You all know that's not going to happen. But why is the news treating it like it might? What is up with that?

Now here's why it's not going to happen. There's been news that apparently — and who knows how much you can believe from a war zone — but something like more than half of the Hamas fighters have been killed. But if you've only killed a little more than half that leaves a lot of Hamas fighters. Why in the world would Israel agree to any deal about anything until they knew they could get all the rest of them? Remember their slogan is total victory. Is that ambiguous? There's nothing ambiguous about that. Israel said we're going to change the situation forever in Gaza and that we're going for total victory. If you interpret that as we're going to stop when we're halfway done and let them reconstitute, well you're crazy. You're crazy.

Now here by the way, just in case you're new to me, I'm not giving you my opinion of right or wrong or who's at fault or what should be done. I'm just observing it. I'm just looking at it. And when I look at it, total victory is not anywhere near where they are. And they have the ability to drive much closer to total victory if they keep grinding. Why would they stop? I mean I don't even see the logic of the story much less agree with it. So I'm going to give you my prediction. No, there will not be any deal in Gaza next week. I doubt you'll see anything before the election. I mean I'd be amazed. So don't get too excited about that.

Weirdly retail sales were good in July. Although you should be warned that they're more often revised down than up. So it could be that retail sales were not as great as the original numbers. They might be revised down. But they're really solid. So even if they're revised down they're sort of directionally pretty good. But here's the question I ask. How much of that is inflation? If the only thing you know is that the dollars that people spent for stuff was a little bit up and inflation was let's say 1 percent up on average, wouldn't that account for all of your increase in retail sales? I'm not even sure it's good news because you know inflation doesn't usually show up within one month or so much like that. But maybe. I mean if it was summer and energy went up, people used a lot of gas. You could imagine a situation where — well is gas retail sales? Does gasoline count as retail sales? Food would, right? Food and gasoline would both be retail sales. I'm not sure.

But the question you should ask is does it get revised? Is there something about the summer that's special? But they controlled for the summer effect so it shouldn't be just the fact that it's summer. That shouldn't be, you shouldn't have to worry about that. But how much of it is just inflation? You can't really tell.

Washington state was ranked the most dangerous state to live in for 2024 according to a study from WalletHub. That's where I go to get my studies, WalletHub. Who knows how accurate that study is. You know I always say that all data is fake. But Washington state was ranked the most dangerous state. And the other states that didn't rank well would be Oregon, Colorado, California, and what they call other Democrat-controlled states. That might be a little too political to just say it's Democrat-controlled states. But clearly there are some Democrat-controlled states that are higher in crime.

Now did I say this or did I post it? I'm having one of these moments where I can't remember if I already said that this morning or I planned to