The Republicans have an agenda, which differs, somehow, from a platform.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are currently riding a wave of good feelings and elation over having an energized ticket and a resonating vision for the country. I’m not convinced their joy is sustainable or genuine, but it’s still preferable to the gloom and doom Republicans insist on peddling.

Initially, Tim Walz seems like a good choice. He’s personable, practical, plain-speaking, and he exudes a certain confidence. We’ll see what the coming days bring. The contrasts can’t be lost on too many, though—the differences between the candidates themselves, and their plans for America are night and day.

They (the differences) are so stark that it sometimes amazes me that Trump supporters don’t stop to ask themselves what they’re doing. The current iteration of Republicans brings nothing to the table except an ugly, inept candidate, oppressive and regressive policies—literally a retracing of steps, following a trail of breadcrumbs that lead deeper into the woods, with an insistence on biblically inspired nonsense and a tearing down of the institutions that have sustained us since our founding.

They refuse to honor trends and the writing on the wall: America is changing. It is bursting at the seams with people of all different colors and cultures and sexual orientations who wish to make a go of it here, and have every right to do so. Republican strategy can single out Kamala the Border Czar, but that would be a fabrication precipitated by Trump himself, when he somehow put the kibosh on the bipartisan bill that was being worked on—solely so he could have the immigration issue to run on and use as ammunition! They don’t get to have it both ways.

Anyway, the next 90 days are going to be hectic: attacks, counter-attacks, balls-to-the-wall campaigning and breathless coverage we can choose to watch or take a break from. The tickets are set. The differences are stark.

From where I stand, it is no contest. The Republican party has nothing to offer. It has been co-opted. They’ve chosen poorly. They deserve to be crushed in November—if only to ensure that Trump loses again (once and for all?), and their nefarious and cowardly infiltration of election boards cannot succeed. But beyond that, they cannot win because their “vision” for America, such as it is, is evidence that they’ve given up, and they sadly believe that going the route of Mussolini and Hitler and Orban and Putin and the rest is somehow preferable to the messiness of movement toward that more perfect union.  

Imagine a political party so deprived of imagination and hope that it decides it needs to play by different rules, gives up on developing a platform, and goes directly to trying to ensure that election results are delayed or uncertified.

This, apparently, is the Republican strategy for 2024.

Trumpists feel that elections are not in their best interest, so how better to circumvent this than mess with the results at the local level, which in turn can jeopardize county returns and statewide results. This is what they’ve spent time refining after 2020.

They needed to be proactive, so local election boards in the battleground states have been populated with Trump sympathizers and election deniers who, I guess, have been tasked with throwing a wrench in the works. This is why Trump is telling people at his rallies that it doesn’t matter if they vote in November. He’s making it sound like he’s already confident of certain outcomes. He’s saying it out loud. In a rally in Atlanta over the weekend, he mentioned three of these people by name and pointed out at least one of them. And congratulated and thanked her effusively.

So, it turns out we don’t have to imagine this—it’s already happening. They’ve had some practice in the last two election cycles. And it’s like Trump is daring us to do something about it.

He’s such a cocky bastard.

Noah Lyles rips off his racing bib and holds it up for all to see. Some might be cheering him on for doing this. I choose to see it differently.

I don’t know how fine the line is between confidence and bluster, between a positive attitude and sheer over-the-top boastfulness. Lyles, to me, crossed it when he raised his bib with his name on it for all to see. Just another haughty American saying, ”Look at me. I am the greatest!”

He won in a photo finish, by tiny fractions of a second, over a group of runners who for all intents and purposes are as fast as he is. He should just be grateful that on this particular day, he emerged the victor. The gold medal says all that needs to be said.

I probably shouldn’t have looked at the Business section of the newsfeed. It doesn’t get much more depressing. I guess if Warren Buffet is selling off half his Apple stock, he must know something the rest of us should be getting up to speed on.

It’s difficult to shake the thought that this current market downturn is somehow connected to Kamala Harris’ ascendancy, that there’s no coincidence in her rise having precipitated the need by Trump sympathizers to offer up hints and numbers that foment severe skittishness on the part of investors. It’s rippling throughout world markets, though, and it’s gonna be another rough one today.

It’s somehow infuriating that something that has become so integral is also so fragile and susceptible to whims and feelings. It makes one wonder about the integrity of the whole foundation. And so many of us are caught up in it.

What more can be said about the Middle East? Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have lost it, intent on lashing out, delivering blows to somebody, seemingly oblivious to finally stepping over a line and into a space where no Iron Dome will save him or his country from the anticipated Iranian/Hezbollah onslaught. His actions are drawing us into a bigger fight than anyone should be willing to settle for.

The world is tired. The world is on fire. People are starving, and dying in the heat. Children are born into a world that looks more hellish every day. And it seems there’s a never-ending supply of heartless thugs more than willing to line their own pockets and capitalize on somebody’s misfortune. This includes Donald Trump, the mental midget, the epitome of sleaze, the icing on a moldy cake full of spiders and snakes.

Holy shit. Got up on the wrong side of the floor this morning, I guess.

Haven’t been watching the Olympics, other than catching a highlight every now and then. I guess I’ve grown tired of the coverage and the penchant for filling air time with breathless commentary and back stories, and the never-ending advertising.

Glad to see Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky doing well, and the Women’s 7 rugby team pulled off quite the upset. The USMNT of course sucked, the marksman from Turkey generated a meme or two, and Sha’Carri Richardson was unpleasantly bested in the 100 meters.

I’d like to say that I don’t care about medal counts, but that would be a lie. I check that every now and then but then move on to something else. I guess the days when I’d be glued to coverage are over—the Olympics just don’t hold the same lofty place they once did.

Whatever innocence once existed is, anymore, overshadowed by astronomical expense and dreams of lucrative endorsement deals. Just another big business.

So now the past comes back to haunt, and the baggage, such as it is, gets exposed.

Josh Shapiro has emerged as a frontrunner for VP, and stuff from his past is coming to the surface. He’s Jewish (cue the vapors), and apparently he said, 30 years ago, that there would never be peace in the Middle East. He is of course far from alone in offering such an opinion—all one has to do is look at the track record of Israel and its neighbors—but since he’s the one being vetted, everything becomes fair game and gets put under the microscope and treated in a Defcon 5 manner.

What a ruthless enterprise. We’ll see if he survives, or if he’s treated as damaged goods.

So Trump agrees to a debate with Kamala that will be moderated by Fox News.

Of course. A home game of sorts for Trump, with what he considers allies in the Moderator roles. It’s the only way that this could unfold with Trump feeling good about his chances. Maybe he’ll even get to submit the topics and questions for discussion. Maybe he’ll get his ass kicked, anyway.

Harris best prepare for all kinds of shenanigans.

A rough end of the week for the stock market. I hate to go there, but it would be a great disappointment to learn that Jerome Powell and company don’t like the idea of a Harris presidency and decide to release info and numbers that have investors running scared and skittish.

Probably a bit of conspiracy theorist coming through, but I have trouble trusting pretty much everyone anymore. The economy is supposedly percolating along and all of a sudden the wheels look like they’re coming off– at the same time Harris’ campaign appears to be gathering steam?

I really hope it’s just me and my cynical take on things. Which would leave us with an economy that’s apparently not as solid as the Dems have been claiming.

The Russians arrest and imprison American journalists and others, charge them with espionage or just being American, and sentence them, on occasion, to years of hard labor.

What we hear in the American press is the fabricated charges and outlandish prison sentences and, meanwhile, we arrest Russan spies for actual offenses and end up having to hand them back as trade bait.

So, Russia gets actual offenders back, in return for releasing Americans who did nothing wrong except be American. Oh, the occasional detainee may have said a few relatively harmless but true things about Putin or the Russian penchant for being paranoid and oppressive, or might have been in possession of a small amount of marijuana. Who knows?

It’s a high stakes game of strategy and leverage and politics, where it’s made to sound like Russia gets their hardened criminals back while we welcome home the ones who are pure as the driven snow. And the concessions we and other countries end up having to make are cause for swallowing real hard and holding our noses.  

Books will likely be written. Maybe we’ll learn more.