yardwork
yardwork's JournalIt's the economy, stupid.
As much as it pains me to quote James Carville, his advice to the Clinton campaign in 1992 was on target. It won the election out from under an incumbent.
Most voters aren't paying attention to Trump's antics. They're paying attention to their pocketbooks. The cost of groceries, housing, insurance, cars, etc. is skyrocketing. Wages are not keeping up. Trump's tariffs are causing real harm to small businesses. The impact of DOGE is felt keenly by people who've lost their jobs and people who depended on government services.
This is a great opportunity for Democrats but in order to win our politicians MUST focus on how the economy is affecting middle and lower income people.
The Republicans know this and will seek to paint us as out of touch, caring only for "fringe groups," etc.
The way to campaign is to laser focus on economic issues that affect most voters and brush aside traps and distractions.
I want to talk about Andrew Cuomo for a minute.
Then we can put him in the dustbin of history and forget him.
First, he had to resign as governor of NY due to multiple plausible accusations of sexual harassment - which he responded to by attacking the women who came forward. Not content to quietly retire and be thankful that he wasn't charged and prosecuted, he decided to run for mayor of NYC. He lost the primary for NYC mayor. Again not content to retire and be thankful etc., he decides to run as an independent, tapping into MAGAT money, courting endorsements from Donald Trump and Elon Musk, running disgracefully racist and xenophobic ads (in one of the most diverse cities in the world) in a pathetically craven and increasingly desperate attempt to (checks notes) "save" NYC from promises of free childcare and bus fare.
Jaw dropping. No words. Hope to never hear of him again.
Vascular dementia and Trump
If something interferes with blood flow to the brain it doesn't get enough oxygen and brain cells die. That leads to vascular dementia.
If you look up the symptoms of vascular dementia they may sound familiar because Trump appears to be exhibiting them.
This is different from the normal slowing down and memory issues associated with aging.
My mom had vascular dementia. It began 25 years before her death with a stroke. Later in her life her dementia accelerated. When she finally passed away - which I considered a blessing as it ended her suffering - she could not walk, was incontinent, and could barely talk or eat.
I'm not a health care professional but I know that Trump is not right in the head. He's had personality disorders all his adult life but this is new. If you listen to him talk he makes no sense. He makes things up. He mixes words together in bizarre ways.
My mom had phases where she was stable for months or years, then she'd have another decline. She could fool people until close to the very end. But the poor judgment and messed up memory started decades earlier.
The media is choosing to ignore this but if Trump has vascular dementia he's going to continue to decline. I think that Vance and the billionaires know this and are just biding their time. Vance will be worse.
Risk factors for vascular dementia per the NIH. Count how many Trump has:
high blood pressure (hypertension)
smoking
an unhealthy diet
high blood cholesterol
lack of exercise
being overweight or obese
diabetes
drinking too much alcohol
atrial fibrillation – a type of irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia) – and other types of heart disease
These problems increase the risk of damage to the blood vessels in and around your brain, or cause blood clots to develop inside them.
Everyone on DU is expert at something.
Some DUers are engineers, others are scientists, lawyers, medical and mental health experts, financial wizards, hunters, chefs, artists, etc.
I learn a lot from DUers and I try to listen when the experts in certain areas speak up.
I am an editor and an expert at listening to people's exact words to understand them. I have decades of experience doing this.
And in my opinion...
There is something very unusual about the supposed texts or Discord messages sent between Tyler Robinson and his roommate.
The language and syntax are stilted and internally inconsistent. They are not just unusual for a 22 year old's texts. They would be unusual for anyone at any age to be writing. As others have said, they sound like poorly executed AI trained on bad romance novels.
That's it. That's the extent of my expertise. I'll leave it to others to draw conclusions. I can think of a few possibilities:
1. Tyler and his roommate wrote the texts and deliberately wrote in this bizarre way, either as a joke or to cover up something. For instance, maybe the messages are a code. Or maybe they just thought it was funny. Maybe it's part of their gamer subculture.
2. Somebody else wrote the messages, perhaps to reinforce the FBI narrative.
I don't have a problem believing that Tyler shot Kirk because Kirk promoted hateful beliefs. I don't have a problem believing that Tyler was in a relationship with a trans woman. Any of this and more is possible.
What is not possible, in my opinion, is that there isn't more to these text messages than they appear. That's all.
Family Friend Turned in Kirk Shooting Suspect, Governor Says
Source: Washington Post
Gift article - no paywall
This is interesting because Trump and other officials have been saying the father turned in the suspect. It shows how much misinformation is out there.
It's hard to know what to believe when the president and FBI head are spouting childish vindictive nonsense.
Read more: https://wapo.st/42uykt5
The self-owning begins.
It had to happen eventually,
MAGAT fans of Cracker Barrel turn on the company for changing its logo. The logo dropped the old man and the whip. Problem is - MAGATs are the Cracker Barrel consumer base. The rest of us are pointing and laughing.
Today the MAGATs are celebrating the resignation of the CEO of Target. "Woke means broke." The trouble is, the company turned its back on all its woke merchandise and HR policies a year ago, resulting in boycotts. But wait, the Fox News viewers kept boycotting it too. So everybody stopped going to Target, which, I hate to say this - MAGAT country depends on Target more than I do.
Meanwhile it's August and all the people who pick our food are being deported. And somehow those "34 million able-bodied people on Medicaid" just haven't shown up to work in the fields. Because - surprise! - it's actually skilled labor and very hard work and most people can't do it. (And most people on Medicaid aren't able-bodied either.)
At this point everything the MAGATs do hurts them much more than it hurts us.
When MAGA punches down they punch themselves in the face.
700,000 people live in D.C. They have no representative in Congress.
Most Americans don't know this.
700,000 American citizens, who pay federal taxes, are not allowed to elect senators or representatives to Congress.
A majority of the citizens of DC are not white.
Out of curiosity, I wonder what the population totals in Wyoming, whose people have two senators and (I don't know how many) representatives in the U.S. House.
Let's add up different sets of states whose combined population totals 700,000 or so, and see how many senators and Congressional representatives they have.
Do we call this a democracy?
I know why Trump won't release the Epstein list.
He's using it to blackmail people. The threat of releasing it with their names on it is probably securing Trump a lot of money, business deals, and votes in Congress.
It's the only thing that makes sense. And it makes perfect sense in light of what Trump does. He bullies and blackmails people. It's done to him and he does it to others. It's the mobster world he lives in.
Day 4 of COVID
Day two of Paxlovid. The drug is helping but "Paxlovid mouth" is a thing and it's nasty. I guess it's better than feeling as lousy as I did on Wednesday but honestly, this vile bitter metal taste in my mouth - reminds me of cold black coffee still sitting in the pot days later - is almost as bad.
I'm bored out of my mind. I spend hours looking at a snake ID page on Facebook.
Mamdani and Cuomo
Let's put our cards on the table.
The Democratic primary to select the Democrat who will run for mayor of NYC this fall happened, and a 32 year old Democratic Socialist pro-Palestinian Muslim whose family comes from India won. He won decisively. He won with a remarkably large turnout of young voters, a demographic the Democratic Party has been losing. By all accounts he ran a dynamic and smart campaign.
One of the other candidates who ran in the primary was Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York who was forced to resign due to numerous accusations of sexual harassment. Cuomo lost the Democratic primary for mayor of NYC. He lost decisively. He ran a lackluster campaign.
Cuomo is thinking about staying on the ballot this fall as an independent, along with NYC's current mayor, Adams, who would likely be in prison now for corruption if Trump hadn't intervened.
The Democratic voters in NYC have spoken, and they chose Mamdani. Now it's time for Democrats to get behind OUR candidate.
I don't vote in NY. If my city was important enough to make international news I'd be pissed as hell if outsiders were running down the Democratic candidate that we picked.
I'm shocked that Democratic politicians seem to be attempting to undermine Mamdani, apparently under the wishful impression that Cuomo could somehow win in the GE, emerging from a crowded field of independents and the usual horrible Republican. This is why we lose elections.
Many of us were appalled when Bernie Sanders' supporters did EXACTLY this in 2016. We think it contributed to Trump's win. Many of us were appalled when many Democratic voters turned their backs on Kamala Harris in 2024 because her position on I/P wasn't good enough. We see how that worked out.
Don't do what you deplore. Stop the circular firing squad.
"Thank you for your attention to this matter." (A little humor.)
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Gender: FemaleMember since: Wed Mar 3, 2004, 07:03 PM
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