Counting your chickens...
“Our primary focus is not to get out the vote. It’s to make sure they don’t cheat. Because we have all the votes we need.”  Trump claims he already has the election in the bag and doesn’t need more votes. But we all know counting your chickens before they have hatched is not wise. 
The math-challenged Trump is, of course, not “counting” anything. He is laying the groundwork – as he did in 2016 and 2020 –  to deny losing the election. If he loses, we will suffer four more years of turmoil, lawsuits and probably more violence like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building. The false claim that only way he can lose is if the Democrats “cheat” is only Trump’s exaggerated ego speaking. 

We need honest leadership to heal the widespread anger, distrust and division in our country. We don’t need more selfish egotism. 

Justifying selfishness
“Claiming that making a billionaire pay taxes on their second billion will reduce innovation is as absurd as the rooster claiming the sun won’t rise without his crowing.” Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires (https://patrioticmillionaires.org ) and a former managing director at BlackRock, Inc (an investment company).

Mr. Pearl was reacting to a New York Times story that Democratic billionaire donors are pressuring VP Harris to abandon her campaign pledge to tax the wealthy. These billionaires claim increasing taxes and closing loopholes on investment wealth will stifle innovation and hurt the entire economy. 
But we have heard this stupidity before. Never in the history of the world have money-motivated, type-A personalities let taxes interfere with the quest for more. 
Mr. Morris tells us, “The arguments made by billionaires...are nothing more than an absurd tax dodging justification...The only thing at stake here is the remarkably fragile egos of billionaires who are on the verge of realizing they might not be saving civilization for anyone, including themselves.” 

Will VP Harris cave in to the billionaires?  Sadly. too often money talks. 
 
What is good for workers is good for business    
Republicans frequently claim minimum wages laws, and other regulation of business, kill jobs. But once again reality proves the stupidity of their false narratives. 
Last April 1st California raised its minimum wage for restaurant workers to $20 per hour. But this did not kill jobs or close fast food businesses. According to state and federal employment statistics, California’s fast-food industry has added new restaurant jobs every month this year for a total of 11,000 jobs since April.

In a consumer-based economy, every one does better when everyone does better.  

Cognitive decline?
For a supposedly “smart” businessman, Trump believes really stupid stuff about the economy and his campaign rants are also increasingly weird. 
During a campaign speech in La Crosse, Trump rambled incoherently about people not eating bacon anymore and wind power being unreliable. He seemed to be blaming the price of bacon on wind power. He said, “Some people don’t eat bacon anymore. And we are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down – you know, this was caused by their horrible energy – wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow, we have a little problem.”

To be charitable perhaps he just can’t organize his speeches well. He certainly doesn’t understand the economic value of diversification or of alternative energy sources. The more he babbles the more it becomes very apparent he doesn’t know what he is talking about. 
Less charitably, Trump is a natural-born idiot who is exhibiting signs of swift cognitive decline.

Greene disgusts yet again
The disgusting, conspiracy-loving Georiga congresswoman known as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who describes herself as “100% Pro-Life Pro-Gun Pro-Trump,” angered many when her response to the most recent school shooting in her home state was to pray.
She received many responses like this one: “Meanwhile, you are a gun loving cultist who has the power to address our children being murdered while attending school and choose not to. Save your fake prayers.”
The reprehensible Greene has in the past verbally attacked gun activists and called a Parkland shooting survivor many names, including “coward.” The woman is obviously mentally ill.