But, Then, Apples and Oranges are Both Fruit

In a letter to the Washington Post ("Comparing Trump documents to Clinton emails is apples to oranges") Rich O'Bryant complains about the comparison between the search of disgraced former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal:

Marc A. Thiessen’s Aug. 10 op-ed, “The FBI goes after Trump, again,” equated former president Donald Trump’s taking a bunch of documents illegally from the White House to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s sloppy handling of docs on her private server.

Well, no.

Hillary Clinton did not engage in "sloppy handling" of documents.

Upon her confirmation as Secretary of State, she received a briefing on the law regarding the handling of classified information, signed acknowledgements that she had been so briefed, and then proceeded to knowingly and flagrantly violate that law.

FBI director James Comey, in his press briefing on the FBI's investigation, made it absolutely crystal clear that that's what happened, and just as clear that the only reason she wouldn't be prosecuted was because she was Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump is apparently (the DOJ has asked a court to release the search warrant, but it hasn't yet, so I can't really know for sure) suspected of violating those same laws and/or another one specific to presidential records. And maybe he did.

If so, I don't think he should skate just because Clinton skated. But if they're going to go after him for it, and if the statute of limitations hasn't expired on Clinton's crimes, the two of them should share a cell.

Michael Badnarik, 1954-2022

Scott Horton reports at The Libertarian Institute that Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Party's 2004 presidential candidate, died overnight.

I was proud to work on his presidential campaign, and flattered just to know him. He was a good and kind man.

How good and kind? One time  -- in the middle of his presidential nomination campaign, when I was working for one of his opponents and when he was campaign-broke enough that he was using the money he raised at one state convention to get to the next state convention -- he donated all the cash he had on hand to a fund to bail my dumb ass out of jail. I got him paid back before he had to roll on out of town, but he couldn't have known for sure that would be the case.

He was also the hardest-working candidate I ever saw.

Example: He came to get arrested in St. Louis for crossing the police line at the Bush/Kerry debate to try to serve the Presidential Debate Commission with a lawsuit. He bailed out of jail that evening, got on a small plane, flew to Kansas City to give a speech the next morning, got back on the small plane, flew to Carbondale, Illinois to give a speech that evening, then Tamara and the kids and I picked him up in our van and drove him back to St. Louis. He did two radio interviews from the van, then hopped out and ran for his hotel room to be sitting down in time for a third, and flew out early the next morning to God knows where.

He worked like that for, basically, two years including his time seeking the nomination. Between the nomination and the election, he took a grand total of one day -- his birthday -- off. IIRC, he used that day to go skydiving with his girlfriend.

Oh, and as for Scott Horton, I met him (and Angela Keaton) for the first time at Badnarik's election night party in Austin. So thanks for that, too, Michael.

Inflation: Eye of the Beholder

About a year and a half ago, I paid $139.99 for a refurbished Shark Ion RV725N Robot Vacuum (via Groupon).

I like the thing. We're lazy around here and hate vacuuming. We also have pets, which means that we need to vacuum, often. I wasn't willing to spend $500+ on the Best New Thing, but $140 seemed reasonable compared to what I'd spend on a high quality vacuum cleaner that I'd have to, you know, manually push around the house.

But yesterday it shit the bed. It started its cleaning excursion, went about two feet, halted, and blinked two red lights ("clean" and "!").

According to various sources, that could mean either a "boundary sensory failure" (so I cleaned all the sensors) or a "suction motor failure" (so I checked to make sure there wasn't e.g. a wad of paper stuck in the orifice leading to said motor).

No joy.

I tried other things, including giving the whole device a thorough brushing down to make sure no sensors were blocked, the brush was rotating freely, the bumper wasn't binding up, etc. All without success.

So, time to buy another robo vac. Dammit. How much is this going to set me back?

The answer:  $84.99 plus tax at Amazon for a newer model (also refurbished -- not an affiliate link, btw) with more features (including being able to just tell Alexa to start the vacuum instead of undertaking the onerous physical chore of walking to it, leaning down, and pressing a button).

Yep, 40% less, not just for the same thing, but for a better version of the thing.

Not that I wanted to blow $90 (including tax) on a new one. But it's better than $140-$150.

No, it's not a sign of deflation, or "not inflation." While I don't keep close track of the robo vac milieu, my impression is that the technology has advanced significantly in the last year and a half, so the "new to me" vac may well be, relatively more obsolete now than the "it's dead, Jim" vac was when I bought it. The price of a new, state of the art robo vac has probably gone up.

On the other hand, the old, probably obsolete when I bought it, vac served my needs just fine. And I expect that the new one will serve those needs even better. I'm even hopeful that it will be less prone to e.g. getting stuck in corners or running itself up onto low edges and then beeping pitifully until I hear it and rescue it.