Just passing through here

Spinning wheels spin.

This is how I feel about the day: I have been spinning my wheels. That is pretty much what I did this afternoon. I went to the group therapy. I still need to do a post on that. I missed the bus and did my grocery shopping. With the rat in the kitchen, I have not been keen on going into the kitchen. There is another post needing done - death of a rat. I suspect my low energy this week is from a poor diet. I meant to go to the post office, but missing the bus put me into that time of day when the bus schedules get screwed up delivering school kids. But that turned out for the good since the contractor came over and fixed the bathroom ceiling. The back hurting, I did a lie-down. That lasted a little over an hour, and I started on this post.

Politics - Problems With Tariffs, What Gives With The Teamsters, Trump Bullies Jews, Zardoz

 Steven Greenhouse's The Gigantic Failure That Led to the Teamsters’ Decision Not to Endorse Harris or Trump asks what were the Teamsters thinking in not endorsing Kamala Harris? He concludes:

When Sean O’Brien ran to be president of the mighty Teamsters union, he promised to be a strong leader. But in the Teamsters’ messy handling of a presidential endorsement, O’Brien has appeared weak, short-sighted, and feckless. He has failed to provide strong leadership on one of his most important tests: to get his union’s rank-and-file and board to reject anti-union Trump and instead embrace Harris, who has year after year been a champion of America’s unions and workers. The Teamsters’ nonendorsement is widely seen as a blow to Harris, and that nonendorsement, together with O’Brien’s appearance at the Republican convention, could definitely help deliver victory to Trump in November—something that O’Brien and his union will end up regretting because a second Trump administration will probably be even more of a danger to unions (and democracy) than the first one.

All the whining about Trump being fact-checked at the debate overlooked several things, the most relevant for today is his hare-brained tariff ideas went unquestioned.

How Trump’s Tariffs Would Radically Redistribute Wealth Upward by David Cay Johnston lays out in plain language how tariffs will hurt the American economy - except for rich guys like Trump.

A tariff is, in effect, the equivalent of a national sales tax on imported goods, as any economics professor will tell you. Think of it: If we impose a 10 percent tariff on a dishwasher made in China, the manufacturer or importer just raises the U.S. price by 10 percent.

But it’s much worse than that because of how domestic manufacturers will react should the Trump national sales tax tariff be imposed. The Trump tariff will make people who own domestic manufacturing companies rich beyond their greediest dreams, aggressively redistributing wealth and income upward in the United States.

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Trump’s tariff means you can raise the price of your vehicles to $16,000 and not lose any market share. However, the Trump tariff doesn’t apply to you since you are a domestic carmaker. That means you will collect not $1,000 profit per car but $7,000, all paid by your customers.

But because profit maximization is your goal, you will likely undercut the Chinese car companies. To simplify the math, you would charge $15,000 for each car. That’s a large enough discount that some people who want a Chinese car will purchase your American-made car instead.

 How is it that everyone but Donald J. Trump will be blamed for Trump losing - except for Donald J. Trump?

Trump’s Blame Game Takes a Dark Turn Against Jewish People

The former president said that if he doesn’t win the election, “in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss. If I’m at 40 percent. Think of it. That means 60 percent are voting for Kamala who in particular is a bad Democrat. The Democrats are bad to Israel, very bad.”

In addition to positioning Jewish voters as a scapegoat for a potential loss, the former president used some of his stage time to scold Jewish voters for not supporting him in the past.

“With all I have done for Israel, I received only 24 percent of the vote,” Trump said. “But I understood that. That was in 2016. And you know, one of those things, I thought I’d do much better. I happen to have a Jewish daughter, I have a Jewish son-in-law. I have three Jewish grandchildren. I thought I’d do much better.”

One of the strangest movies I have ever seen was Zardoz. Not that I have seen it in over 40 years, but that might indicate the impact it had on me. The following video explains a little about the movie:

It is raining for the first time in weeks.

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