Month: August 2024

Pick your order for the highlight of the Democratic National Convention:

1) Michelle Obama’s speech
2) Tim Walz’s speech (including the reaction of his son)
3) Kamala Harris’s speech

If it’s hard to choose it’s because these were three incredible speeches delivered on three different nights. They weren’t by any means the only excellent examples of talented oratory at the convention, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton also stood out, but they were each spectacular in their own right. And they were each highly likely to have measurably helped defeat Donald Trump. Michelle focused the mind of Democrats on the hard work ahead and ramped up volunteerism. Walz charmed a country that hardly knew him and expanded the appeal of the ticket. And Harris met the eye test for a president and gave people confidence that she’s up to the job.

This was the highest stakes convention in modern history, and the party hit a grand slam.

On a personal level, one of the things that has upset me in recent years is that my spouse and son have come to associate the American flag with Trumpism rather than love of country. I’ve argued that MAGA doesn’t own the flag and they don’t get to define its meaning. The thing is, I don’t feel like I’ve been very convincing. But at the convention, the Democrats did exactly what I wanted, which was to reclaim the flag, the U-S-A chant, and basic American pride. And they did it the right way, not with chauvinism or condescension towards others, but with a message of inclusion and global responsibility.

And maybe best of all, it didn’t come off as contrived or unconvincing, as if they were half-heartedly trying to compensate for a political weakness. It came off as the perfect expression of the moment and of a movement that is laser focused on protecting democracy and preserving America’s reputation and role in the world. It was an expression of love of country and of our neighbors, as Walz so ably framed it in his speech. This is a movement based in confidence and optimism rather than doom and gloom. The left has burst out of its defensive shell.

Meanwhile, the other side is reeling. It has won the popular vote once since 1988, which is kind of amazing when you consider their 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. And it no longer stands for anything besides Donald Trump’s wounded ego. The Democrats spent some time each night of the convention talking about Project 2025, which is Trump’s roadmap for a second term in office, but Trump keeps disavowing the document. He’s even sending out mailers in Michigan and probably elsewhere explicitly disavowing Project 2025. But it’s the only policy he has. When he debates Harris in a few weeks, he won’t have anything to offer but distraction and bullshit, and once he leaves the stage, the Republican Party will be bereft of even that.

Which means we’re coming to the end of an era that began with Ronald Reagan passed off his conservative revolution to a reluctant Poppy Bush in 1988. Outside of the post-9/11 blip, that was the last time conservatives could win the hearts and minds of a majority of the electorate in a national election. Since that time, as was pointed out by Bill Clinton during his speech at the convention, the country has created 50 million jobs under Democratic administrations and one million jobs under the Bushes and Trump. Which is probably why the effort to keep the Reagan coalition of defense, economic and religious conservatives going finally cracked up on the shoals. Trump is an isolationist who favors tariffs and has never seen the inside of a church on a Sunday. His greatest accomplishment, taking away women’s half-century of reproductive rights, clearly troubles him because he sees it as a giant political vulnerability. He’s backing away from banning the abortion pill or any effort to ban abortion nationally, and desperately suggesting that having the states legalize abortion was his plan all along, which is both unconvincing and unsustainable in holding together his strongest base of support.

If Trump loses, and it’s still an if, the GOP will be nothing more than a smoking husk. There is no telling what will happen then.

There are 75 days left, and if we all “do something,” as Michelle Obama exhorted us to do, we will see that smoking husk soon.

Hi everyone! I am busy trying to balance my workload with watching the DNC convention. I am loving the energy. So, let’s have some convention related humor, courtesy Seth Meyers:

You can use this as your virtual water cooler if you wish. Do you have a favorite moment from this convention?

Cheers!

 

If I had my druthers, Michelle Obama would be the nominee for president of the Democratic Party. That’s not a knock on Kamala Harris, but an expression of my unbounded admiration and trust in Michelle’s political talent, experience, worldview and character. I’ve often said that the two best orators in America are married to each other and Barack is in second place. That proved true again last night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as the former president delivered what would ordinarily be considered a great speech, except that it was completely overshadowed by the speech by his wife which preceded it.

This was true even on the moral plane. Barack had his moments, particularly when he talked about people siloing themselves behind their phones, looking for approval from strangers, and then wondering why they’re so lonely. But Michelle spoke with total moral clarity and complete confidence in her authority and credibility. She was the clear leader of the convention and the party in ways that Barack and Hillary Clinton sometimes approached but never matched.

It’s astonishing that she has never run for office nor had a full-time public speaking job and that she can just walk up to a microphone in a sold-out arena in front of tens of  millions of worldwide television viewers, and speak flawlessly and with unmatched timing and skill. And that doesn’t even get into the brilliant content of her speeches, which shows her collaborative skill with the writers.

Alas, she wants no part of running for public office, and I can’t blame her. And, yet, her aversion to the whole process just makes her effortless mastery of it all the more spectacular. By the time she was done, Democrats were ready to run through walls for Kamala Harris, and no doubt volunteerism will go through the roof over the 76 days remaining in the campaign.

A lot of the coverage will understandably focus on her digs at Donald Trump and her shift in tone from her previous “They go low, we go high” message, but the real heart of her theme asked us to be good to each other and not follow those who seek to divide us for their own cynical and selfish reasons. And it was a call to arms for people to “do something” rather than just observe and complain. She asked us not to seek or expect perfection in our leaders. We should have high standards, but we can’t get distracted or sidetracked by minor disagreements.

In the end, she spoke to the dread so many of us have felt about the future ever since Trump took power in 2017 and began setting us against each other and destroying everything he touched. We’re on the cusp of ending the era, and “If we start feeling tired, if we start feeling that dread creeping back in, we’ve got to pick ourselves up, throw water on our faces, and do something,”

It was a home run of a speech, and I’m so grateful that our country has a moral leader like Michelle.

At Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, they’ve moved North Carolina from a lean-Trump state to a toss-up. And then they bring up something I’ve been wondering about: “Kamala Harris is actually polling slightly better in North Carolina than Georgia, but there are reasons to think she’ll still perform a little better in the latter.” The primary factors leading them to say that are Georgia’s larger black population and slightly more populous metro areas, which makes perfect sense.

But there are two other factors to consider. People are understandably focused on the most recent election in which Joe Biden narrowly beat Donald Trump in Georgia and narrowly lost to him in North Carolina. But 2008 was flipped. In that election, Barack Obama lost Georgia rather badly, 52 percent to 47 percent. But he won North Carolina 49.7 percent to 49.4 percent. So, 16 years ago we saw a black candidate do exactly what the polls are indicating now, which is do better in the Tarheel than the Peach State.

The second factor is education. The U.S. News & World Report ranks North Carolina 18th in educational attainment, meaning the share of a state’s population with a college degree. Georgia ranks thirtieth.

So, if you’re twisting the demographic gears, a lot depends on how big the margins are for the Democrat with people who have college degrees. The relative racial makeup of these states is unlikely to fluctuate or move much in at all, even if they both have growing minority populations. Likewise, given two attractive and charismatic black candidates, the margins and enthusiasm of the black vote isn’t likely to differ too much. But the support of people (particularly white people) with college degrees can shift quite a bit. This probably explains why Obama won North Carolina in 2008 and lost it in 2012.

So, my theory is that if the polls are correct, the reason Harris is polling better in North Carolina than in Georgia is because North Carolina has more college educated white persuadables than Georgia does, and Harris is doing very well with this group.

Something similar may be afoot in Nevada and Arizona. Polling suggests that Harris is doing worse in Nevada than in Arizona, which is a break with all precedent. But Nevada ranks 46th in educational attainment, ahead of only Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia and Arkansas. Meanwhile, Arizona ranks thirty-second.

In February 2016, when Trump won the Republican Party’s proportional caucus in Nevada, he famously said, “We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.” I don’t think anything has really changed in that respect. Racial demographics are important for predicting outcomes, but so is educational attainment.

In the spring of 2016, Donald Trump’s incessant name-dropping of “fellow Queens-born billionaire” Carl Icahn on the stump motivated the Washington Post to publish a lengthy feature exploring their relationship:

These days, the tension has given way to apparent harmony. As Trump runs for president, he often fawns over the elite investor 11 years his senior, saying Icahn is one of “the great businessmen of the world” and sharp enough to master U.S. negotiations with China or run the Treasury Department. Icahn has endorsed Trump, saying the country would be “lucky” to have him in the Oval Office.

When the Grab ‘Em By the Pussy tape came out in October, Ichan stood by his man.

“Over my years I’ve listened to a lot of salacious talk in locker rooms, bachelor parties, et cetera, by a lot of high-level people, some of whom are now supposedly so outraged,” Icahn told CNBC.com in a phone interview. “All I can do is refer to that great quote, ‘Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.’”

And he was rewarded, although not with a position as Treasury Secretary. Trump made him “a special advisor to the president on regulatory reform,” but to avoid scrutiny he wasn’t hired as a federal employee. In that roll, Icahn vetted candidates to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and Securities and Exchange Commission. His conflicts of interest were so glaring and the criticism so relentless, that he submitted his resignation in August 2017, having served less than seven months in the position.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn ended his role as a special adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday after facing criticism that policy recommendations he offered could help his own investments.

Some Democratic lawmakers and biofuels advocates argued that Icahn’s guidance to the Republican administration created a conflict of interest with his businesses, including oil refining company CVR Energy Inc.

This may be the only example of anyone resigning from Trump’s administration over a conflict of interest. But Icahn had bigger problems. In 2023, Hindenburg Research released a damaging examination of his market cap holding company, Icahn Enterprises (IEP). They discovered that Icahn’s investment portfolio had lost 53 percent of its value since 2014, compared to a 147 percent gain for the S&P 500. A deeper dive revealed other troubling facts, including that, by a wide margin, it traded at the highest premium relative to net asset value of any of the “526 U.S. based closed end funds (CEFs) in Bloomberg’s database.” And they publicized that Icahn had “pledged 181 million units, worth over $9 billion, to secure his own “personal indebtedness,” which put investors at “potential risk of a margin call and forced asset sale should IEP units eventually trade around or at a discount to NAV, like virtually all of its peers.”

In truth, Icahn only belatedly admitted that he had secured billions of dollars of personal margin loans by pledging outstanding stock in IEP. And that failure to report turned out to be criminal fraud.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Monday that it settled charges against billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn and his publicly traded company Icahn Enterprises L.P. IEP after regulators alleged that he failed to disclose billions worth of personal loans pledged against Icahn Enterprises’ securities.

The problem for Icahn is that Jay Clayton, the man he had approved to head the SEC, and who subsequently brought the fewest insider trading cases since the Reagan administration, is no longer on the job. He was replaced in the Biden administration by Gary Gensler. So, this happened:

Washington D.C., Aug. 19, 2024 —
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against Carl C. Icahn and his publicly traded company, Icahn Enterprises L.P. (IEP), for failing to disclose information relating to Icahn’s pledges of IEP securities as collateral to secure personal margin loans worth billions of dollars under agreements with various lenders. IEP and Icahn agreed to pay $1.5 million and $500,000 in civil penalties, respectively, to settle the SEC’s charges.

This may be couch change to Icahn, but on the other hand, he sounds kinda broke. IEP is trading 76 percent below its 2019 level, and 23 percent below its price one year ago. And he’s been breaking the law to secure his own personal finances.

He doesn’t seem, as Trump claimed, to be one of “the great businessmen of the world.” He seems like another “Queens-born billionaire” who has built a house of cards based on an unearned reputation.

He and Trump are birds of a feather, and their comeuppance is overdue.

I was reading Drew Harwell’s piece for the Washington Post on Donald Trump taking criticism from far right influencers and I began to have a serious feeling of disorientation. In Harwell’s telling, influencers like Nick Fuentes, Laura Loomer and Candace Owens are turning on Trump’s campaign because they feel it is trying to move their champion to the middle rather than feeding the MAGA movement their expected diet of red meat. I tried mostly in vain to find examples of this movement, but the article offers none other than Trump’s disingenuous disavowal of Project 2025.

In the real world, it seems that it was Trump himself, rather than his campaign advisers, who looked to soften the GOP platform on abortion. But the debate about Project 2025 is instructive. It’s a rather extensive expression of policy, ideology and governing philosophy which was created by Trump loyalists and is intended to serve as a playbook for his second term in office. If the campaign team thinks it’s bad politics to embrace these ideas publicly, that doesn’t mean the Project has been sidelined. And, in any case, there’s no evidence that it Trump disavowed it because he was advised to do so. It appears that it was his own political calculus.

What I’m seeing in seemingly scores of articles right now is Republican advisers, operatives and elected officials begging Trump to stop using his traditional insult-dog tactics and focus on “policy.” If he were to actually do this, he would be denying the MAGA movement what they crave most, which is disrespect, abuse and entertainment. Yet, the “policy” of the Trump campaign is Project 2025, which is what these influencers supposedly want Trump to embrace. So, in theory, they’d be pleased if Trump started talking about it.

I don’t believe Fuentes, Loomer and Owens actually want Trump to drop the insults and talk policy. I think they’re angry that the “Establishment” is trying to get him to soften his insults in an effort to attract independents. In Fuentes’s case, he’s almost explicit about this:

In an interview, Fuentes said he intends to push his followers to adopt “guerrilla” tactics and “escalate pressure in the real world,” including through mass appearances at Trump rallies in battleground states such as Michigan, until the campaign meets their demands to stop “pandering to independents.” He has urged followers to withhold their votes for Trump, saying it is the only way to awaken a campaign that has “no energy … [and] no enthusiasm.”

Fuentes is a neo-Nazi who wants a white ethnostate and a ban on even legal immigration, but he’s also been a guest of the disgraced ex-president at Mar-a-Lago. He’s never going to be satisfied with the GOP’s campaign rhetoric on immigration, but he doesn’t actually expect them to go full Nazi. He’s probably motivated most by the desire to get attention, but insofar as he might sincerely doubt the campaign’s strategy, it probably because he thinks Trump will do better by juicing his base than by targeting undecideds.

There’s a cult element to this, too. Everyone has noticed Trump’s fall in the polls, but he can’t be to blame. If he makes mistakes, it can only be because he’s following bad advice. That’s why these influencers are targeting campaign co-managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

I can kind of decode this stuff, but none of it adds up to anything logical. On the “Establishment” side of things, they keep asking Trump to talk policy as if that would help attract independents, but whenever their policies come up, independents go running away with their hair on fire. The policy guy is J.D. Vance whose worldview is that women are brood mares and the childless shouldn’t have a vote. Project 2025 is a non-starter with undecideds. So, what the party strategists really want is for Trump to speak in a policy-free way about inflation and immigration and the economy. They say they want Trump to focus on policy but that’s a lie. They want him to focus on issues without getting into solutions.

But the influencers see Trump slipping and think focusing on issues will bore people to tears and what they really want is more brutal and hateful rhetoric because that is way lies at the heart of the MAGA movement’s appeal.

As a strategic matter, both sides have some merit. What’s weird is that Trump seems to be following the influencers path and yet here they are throwing a hissy-fit.

It’s just a massive shitshow, and they deserve to be massacred in November.

The Hill really can publish some outright garbage from time to time. Take this column from former White House and Pentagon official Douglas MacKinnon, for example. Here he gives a perfect display of projection, in the sense of falsely attributing to others what you yourself are inclined to think or feel.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder what the [Democrats] reaction might be if Republican power brokers got together behind closed doors, decided they didn’t like the polling trend of former President Donald Trump; convinced him to drop out of the race; elevated Sen. JD Vance to the top spot; and brought in former Gov. Nikki Haley as his running mate? I can hear the screams now that it would be “illegal,” “unconstitutional” and “un-American.”

Actually, literally no one on the left would argue that unless it had some legal merit, like the move was made too late to satisfy state filing deadlines. If Trump were to drop out tomorrow, there would be worldwide relief and rejoicing. But even if the world were not desperate to be rid of Trump, there is nothing illegal about a candidate dropping out and being replaced by someone else, and the left wouldn’t argue otherwise.

Just because Republicans cry about the unfairness of President Joe Biden dropping out in favor of Kamala Harris doesn’t make it unfair. And it especially doesn’t make it illegal, unconstitutional or un-American. What it is, is smart and responsible. And if the Republicans somehow managed to convince Trump to drop out, that would be smart and responsible, too, because he’s manifestly unfit to be president in every way it’s possible to be unfit. As a Democrat, I’d applaud the Republicans for finally doing something patriotic.

Here’s some more of MacKinnon’s brilliant analysis:

Might the Democrats invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office before the election? There is an argument to be made that such a move should at least be considered for the welfare of the country.

Another growing possibility is that Biden simply walks away from the job. He must feel like he was hit by a freight train with all of his Democratic “friends” stabbing him in the back.

What happens if next week at the Democratic convention, Biden simply walks up to the podium, looks into the camera and declares: “I’ve had it. I’m done. I am resigning from my office and going back to Delaware.”

Here’s another example of projection. If Biden’s cabinet invokes the 25th Amendment, it surely means that they have good reason, and Democrats would not complain. If Biden were to resign on his own, it likewise would mean he feels incapable of serving out his term, and Democrats would applaud him for being responsible. But he would never do this in a fit of pique. I can see Trump doing that, and maybe that’s what MacKinnon would do, but Biden isn’t a petulant child.

Publishing garbage like this is a sign that there’s a serious talent deficit on the right, and that the editors of The Hill are too beholden to their right-wing publishers.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Springwood, FDR’s house. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I’ve addressed a number of small issues including the window and doorway to the far wing of the building.

The current and final state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have a new painting to show you next week. See you then.

As described in the Book of Leviticus, when Jahweh was conversing with Moses at Mt. Sinai, he instructed him to establish a jubilee (a year of liberty) every fifty years in which certain norms would be broken. Primary among these was the freeing of all indentured servants and the compulsory return of all property to its original owners or their heirs. The forgiveness of debts was already a common if less predictable practice in the Middle East, often happening upon the coronation of a new king. After all, what better way to start a new reign with good will from the masses than to restore everyone suffering from financial ruin?

President Joe Biden understands this even if he hasn’t received his deserved gratitude. He’s unburdened millions of Americans of college debt through providing more favorable repayment terms or outright debt cancellation. Biden has also prevented medical debt from inclusion in credit reports, thereby improving the borrowing terms for those who’ve suffered from lack of sufficient health insurance (which is most people who been seriously ill at some point).

And now, in a policy speech on Friday, Vice-President Kamala Harris has announced her desire to cancel medical debt outright.

Harris also pledged to work with states to cancel medical debt for millions of Americans, building on one of her signature policy issues as vice president. That effort could involve using federal funds to buy and forgive outstanding medical debt from health providers. Harris’s office also recently worked with the state of North Carolina on a first-of-its-kind initiative to forgive the medical debt of 2 million state residents by creating financial incentives for hospitals to relieve medical debt or prevent it from accumulating in the first place. That initiative received federal approval last month, and all 99 eligible hospitals in North Carolina have since committed to participate — a potential model for other states.

Ideally, no one would be billed more than they can pay for health care, but we live in America so crushing people with medical debt and then forgiving that debt is the best we can do. It’s kind of idiotic, but dumb solutions are fine if they’re actually solutions. The jubilee system was also jury-rigged, after all, although doing it only twice a century made it a little less sub-mental.

Of course, nothing infuriates conservatives more than other people getting something for nothing. Their furious resistance to universal health care was well-expressed by Donald Trump at his Bedminster Golf Course press conference on Thursday. He accused Harris of advocating for a universal system, which she has done in the past but is not doing now:

She wants to take away your private health care. There are many people in this country who spend a lot of money on private health care. It’s the best health care in the world, by the way. But they want to do it. They worked hard to make money and they want to do it. Under her, you’re not going to have private health care plans anymore. And you can be a wealthy person or middle income person and you want to spend on a really good plan, better than a government plan. And you’re not gonna be allowed.

You’re all going to be thrown into a communist system. It’s a communist system. You’re going to be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care.

The last part is the important part. No one loves paying for private health care plans even if they’re happy with them. What conservatives hate is the idea of a system “where everybody gets health care.” They’d rather continue paying top dollar for a private plan than have a plan provided for them for free if a free plan means everyone gets a free plan.

The wealthy conservatives resent debt forgiveness for the same reason. They want a permanent underclass burdened by crushing debts, and they want no escape route provided, even if comes only twice a century.

And they’re usually powerful enough to get their way. But Biden hasn’t been afraid to engage in jubilee politics, and Harris is doubling down. If she wins, we can call it four years of liberty.

Last week, David Dempsey was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for his actions on January 6, 2021, protesting the certification of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the winners of the 2020 presidential election over Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

According to prosecutors, Dempsey climbed over fellow rioters “like human scaffolding” and used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against police officers.

The Ronald Reagan-appointed judge who imposed the sentence noted “that Jan. 6 could have been even worse — ‘a bloodbath’ — had rioters succeeded in their goal of getting to members of Congress who were certifying the presidential election results.” Dempsey, a Californian construction and fast-food worker, was one of the most violent demonstrators that day but he was hardly alone in paying a legal consequence for his actions. Over 1,400 people have been arrested and over a thousand have been convicted. The vast majority of them undoubtedly believed that they were trying to stop a stolen election, because that’s what Trump told them.

Seen in the most sympathetic terms, it was a populist army of the gullible and deluded that believed it was doing its patriotic duty to “fight like hell” for the Constitution.

It’s somewhat tragic that they have paid the price while the demagogue who set them in motion remains free. And that’s really the lens through which anyone thinking about working in a hypothetical second Trump presidency should view things. For example, Joe Sullivan worked for the Council of Economic Advisers during Trump’s presidency and claims his motive was “to make America a better place through good economic policy.” He objects to the idea that any economist agreeing to serve in a second Trump presidency would discredit themselves.

On the merits, he should consider the many people who agreed to serve in the clearly unprepared Donald Trump’s cabinet or inner circle for patriotic reasons but lived to regret it and suffered permanent reputational and/or career damage as a result. I’m thinking of people like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretaries of Defense Jim Mattis and Mark Esper,  Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, Secretary of Homeland Security and chief of staff John Kelly and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

Even Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr regretted their time in Trump’s employ, though I wouldn’t give them much credit for patriotic motives. The worst of the bunch had to be pardoned to avoid prison: Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and Paul Manafort.

Serving Trump often comes with severe legal and financial consequences, which is nowhere better exemplified than in the example of Rudy Giuliani. So, if Mr. Sullivan were to consider the topic a well-meaning warning rather than some holier-then-thou preaching, he might concede the point. But there’s another angle to consider.

Even if we have a maniacal and criminal president, the country still needs to be kept on the rails to whatever degree possible, right? Why not agree to serve in an effort to keep our foreign relations intact or protect us from military attack or work to avoid catastrophic economic policies?

And I have two things on that. First, we have a career civil service and professional military that can take on that roll as far as possible while still obeying orders. It’s no accident that it’s precisely these institutions that come under direct attack by the Project 2025 crowd because they can limit the ambitions of the MAGA movement. But, second, when you join a gullible and deluded populist movement, you actually join it. You work for them. Your success is their success, and if you get in the way, you will be run over. This would be obvious if you stated your goal in becoming an accountant for the Gambino family was to prevent them from committing economic crimes. It should be obvious in the Trump family’s case, too.

If Trump wins, the responsible thing will be to remove him from power through impeachment and conviction. This is because the man is a walking high crime and misdemeanor who uses his power to avoid responsibility for his crimes. And his power is built on an army capable of violence against our own government and Constitution. This was amply demonstrated once, so there is no excuse for not knowing it.

So, the choice is simple. If Trump is elected in November, you can join his army or you can fight it. Only one choice is credible.