I am on the road to attend a wedding. I was going to bring my laptop but realized at the last minute it waz too much to carry. I will be home late Sunday. I am posting this with great difficulty from my Kindle. In the meantime, consider this an open thread to discuss whatever.
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
Happy travels, congrats to the married-to-be, and huge props for managing a post via Kindle!
Safe travels. Just a random thought after looking at this morning's headlines; Bozos seems inclined to do for WaPo what Leon has done for Twitter (WaPo declines to endorse a candidate). Any editors spending the weekend cleaning out their desks?
How bad is it? If Trump was your grandfather, you would hide the keys to the car and avoid taking him out in public without his medication. He is still on his windmill rant, and thinks windmills drive whales crazy so they beach themselves. At least he is off the flush toilet rant, or we hope he is anyway. His love of tariffs is another more serious matter. The bottom line on that is most will pay more for everyday items. No one needs that. The Chancellor of Germany has already signaled retaliation if tariffs are put on them. That sounds like trade war talk, another thing we do not want or need.
The Wall Street Journal did a survey of economists who forecast great economic risk and potential peril if Trump's economic plans were enacted. The WSJ is not considered liberal with views generally biased toward business. Center to their assessment is the tariff issue. Still Trump show no heed to their warnings and has called tariff one of his favorite words in the dictionary. Most writers report he lacks the ability to even come close to an acceptable definition of the word. Does he like it because it ends in two fs?
I had to hear quite a bit when growing up about the dirty thirties and the Great Depression. It was quite the life event for my parents and their families. Almost everyone had less and most endured considerable hardship that went on and on. No one needs or wants that either. A working economy is breakable. It has been done before.
The big reason I am writing this is so I can say I tried to tell them, but they did not listen. I don't want to have to say I told you so. I don't need it. I don't want it. So, hide the keys and send grandfather to the facility that he needs for his "golden years". It is for your good and the good of your country. Not fit to lead is not that hard to understand. Trump would understand it if it was anyone but him. It is that simple.
A few thoughts: One – The polls do not agree with my gut, but of course my instincts are colored by my bias. But one thought reassures me. Polls reflect the answers of "likely" voters. The definition of "likely" is (I think) someone who has voted in at least one of the last two national elections. Which means all new registrations are culled out. All occasional voters who only vote when a candidate excites them or there's an issue of crucial inportance to the voter.
The only poll that matters is in November. By excluding less reliable voters, we're tied in most of the swing states. But are the democrats going to do a better job with "unlikely" voters than MAGA is. If so, by how much.
My gut says the polls are not counting a significant portion of Harris voters. But I can't put a numerical value to the skew.
Two. The Washington Post and the LA Times are not endorsing a candidate for POTUS – ONLY because of the intervention of the owner of each. In my mind, this settles the question of whether or not there is an anti-liberal bias in all major publications. The editor(s) and writers must be aware that the truth has to be couched in bothsiderism to avoid retaliation from on high. For decades, the drection of all publications has been to cut staff. The sword of Damocles hands over everyone in the business and invoking the wratth from on high is likely a career-ender.
The whole Tariff thing from TruVanThiel is a scam. The top 1% have long coveted replacing the progressive income tax with a flat (and therefore regressive) sales tax.
A tariff is a tax. TFG started by implying that foreign countries pay tariffs, and that is total BS. Yet his followers now think it will be great to have huge tariffs so that other countries can pay down our national debt. Bullpucky. US Tariffs are paid by US consumers (indirectly, but nonetheless). Put that together with another huge income tax cut for billionaires and it's easy to see what's going on.
This combination is a stealth way to implement a massive transfer of the cost of our government from the wealthy to the working class. Period. Total Scam.