Wednesday, August 28, 2024
The stock market hit another all time high the other day and the reason is pretty obvious to anyone who pays attention to such things. Donald Trump is looking more and more likely to lose the presidency this fall and that’s good news for investors.
On the day the market hit that record an evaluation came out about the costs to the economy of the two campaigns. Trump’s would cost $6,800,000,000,000.00 to the deficit and his plan to put tariffs on all imported goods would cost a household between $2,600.00 and $3,900.00, which was the way he was going to pay for his plans. However, at best it would only come up with $2T versus his cost of $6.8T. To add insult to this he would let the super rich off the hook and impoverish the working people with his sales tax.
Harris said in her acceptance speech that Trump was an unserious man, and he demonstrated that this week by making a campaign ad where he was selling trading cards with his face on them. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is talking about the high cost of housing and what she will do to change that.
Harris went on to say that the consequences of another Trump presidency are serious. This is not only noted in the economic plan he put forward but in the other facets of his campaign. Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist – some would say ass kisser but that let’s Patel off the hook because his nose and perhaps his whole head is in and beyond Trump’s sphincter, has said that as soon as Trump is sworn in he will be going after Trump’s enemies. Who are they? Well, anyone who ha spoken up against him, for sure, but also anyone else he thinks, feels, dreams is not totally loyal to him. Let’s not forget how petty and mean Donald can be. Remember how he fired Comey while he was on the west coast and then was upset when Comey flew back on the plane that got him there? Donnie wanted to not only fire Jim Comey, but to humiliate him as well. Then he had the IRS go after him and his successor McCabe by having the most detailed audit of their tax returns. Who believes it was just random chance that both FBI Directors got that treatment? And don’t forget Trump fired McCabe one day before his pension took effect.
There are other consequences of another Trump presidency. He wants to turn the government into an autocratic machine to serve himself and his rich and authoritarian friends. It’s all written down i their playbook named Project 2025. it’s scary. It makes Mein Kampf seem like a child’s primer. Nationwide abortion ban, including banning medicines that help a fetus abort. The use of the military to round up people, put them in camps and deport them or who knows what. The plan specifies ways to bend, twist, and cheat to gain their objectives.
There is little real policy in anything Trump says and what there is is based on fundamental misunderstandings of reality. I mean fundamental misunderstanding of science, economics, diplomacy, our system of government – you name it and there are multiple examples of this.
This is a man who thinks you take the flu vaccine after you get the flu.
Who doesn’t understand how or why you want to be in a pact like NATO.
Who didn’t understand the Iran nuclear deal.
Who thought you could take bleach to kill Covid. Okay, he only thought our scientists “should look into it.”
As Neil deGrasse Tyson has pointed out you can’t ignore basic facts and truths about how the world works under the guise of saying you want to be fair and let all sides have a voice. If what someone is espousing is factually wrong it doesn’t and shouldn’t be part of the conversation. And yet that is what Trump and many of his flunkies are trying to do.
It gets worse. There is this idea on the right that there are conspiracies. That these conspiracies are so interwoven into our fabric of government and life that the only thing to do is to destroy most of our institutions. Now, that’s not exactly how they put it. Steve Bannon say, “Destroy the administrative state.” Others say the left or someone or something is being “too woke.” But then it gets worse because there is no way to refute a claim of conspiracy, because if you do you are accused of being part of the conspiracy.
What happens when a conspiracy runs into the real world? We’ve seen it happen. Russia propaganda fueled by far-right websites and then FOX said that there was a server in Ukraine that was flipping votes and the Democrats controlled it. Trump when he was President asked President Zelensky to look into it. What was Zelensky supposed to do? Trump went further. He said that he wouldn’t give Ukraine the weapons they needed until Zelensky brought him dirt on Joe Biden. Grudgingly, and at the last minute and far too late he started giving weapons to Ukraine. The result of this inaction and the unwillingness of Republicans in Congress to step up led directly to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Then there was the incident in Italy. You have to ask yourself what was the Attorney General of the United States doing traveling to Italy with a Special Counsel? The whole point of a special counsel is to be arm’s length from the Department of Justice. This had been turned on its head during the Whitewater Investigation where it was a tool used to try and discredit President Clinton. So the two go to Italy and don’t find any dirt on Joe like they were led to believe by the right-wing disinformation sources. But what they were given was evidence of Trump’s criminality. What did the Attorney General do with that? He issued a statement saying he found wrongdoing and said it in such a way that it seemed to imply Biden when in fact it was Trump. Then he dropped the whole thing.
Speaking of not dropping the whole thing – Mr. Trump has broken new ground by being criminally indicted for the fifth time by a grand jury. Five times! Conspiracy? I think not.
In Jack’s Smith refiling of the case he has excluded any involvement of government officials. This after the Supreme Court ruled that a president could preside over fake election schemes as long as he did it in an official capacity. So Jack only named “private” individuals. There is also the taking to task of Judge Cannon’s ruling that the special counsel was not properly appointed. A tried and true tactic of anyone who has been accused by a special counsel. Cannon is the first one to buy the argument. The filing has phrases in it never before seen in such a filing, which made Neil Katyal wonder what the rough draft must have looked like.
So far the posts from my right wing friends have been, well underwhelming. Harris was accused in one post of using a long sentence. Wow, that’s all you’ve got? To be clear, she speaks in sentences. Trump says words – not sentences. His speeches are described as ramblings, not speeches.
Then there’s the AI stuff. Someone wiped a crowd meeting Harris on the tarmac off the picture and then put them back in and claimed it was fake.
Besides the trading cards, I was offered a gold medallion of the Trump shooting. Trump raised fist on one side, American Eagle on the other. Limited supply. Get them before they are gone.
And in other news Clarence Thomas has been found to have not filed his taxes properly. Well, he probably didn’t understand that when a billionaire gives you stuff, like money, jet rides, vacations that it’s income. Who would have known? OMG! Gag me with a hay fork.
