I’m glad to hear that Kamala Harris is wooing big donors and getting important endorsements from organizations like the UAW. There are many jumping on board, and I guess that’s preferable to abandoning ship.

In my mind, though, there’s always room for decorum or some sense of restraint when it comes to expressing excitement. The temptation is to run fast and loose with emotions, get cocky, and turn things into more of a show than they need to be.

For example, the bold talk surrounding the debate makes we wince a bit. Trump may not be the best debater, but there’s always the chance he could be so embarrassed and pissed off by the current rhetoric that he actually does prepare and accounts for himself in a way that would surprise many, including Harris. I guess what I’m saying is she and her supporters can take the chiding and the dares too far and she could end up being the one with egg on her face.

I’m revealing my own disdain for over-confidence and trash talk here. There’s little use for it, especially in the midst of such a consequential race. Stick to facts and the givens when talking about the GOP ticket—there’s the incompetent felon alongside the billionaire-sponsored MAGA disciple who speaks in cliches, berates “cat women,” and uses words and phrases that betray his affinity for misguided scriptural interpretation and a philosophy of oppressive governance.

I’d think twice about giving Trump the satisfaction that I’m borrowing a page from his playbook. There’s a fine line between confidence and plain tired, annoying cockiness.

I wonder if the Trump playbook taps into Nicolas Maduro’s expertise. He seems to have somehow prevailed in Venezuela’s recent election, despite having been substantially behind in the polls only the day before.

Imagine the subterfuge involved in rigging an entire national election! What kind of machine is Maduro operating? How could he get that far with the sabotage?

I’m beginning to see why Maduro and Trump and the rest scratch and claw at holding onto power—they’ve made a lot of enemies along the way, and they dread returning to life on the outside. It’s not about caring or having a vision for making life better for the citizenry. It’s just about maintaining a lifestyle, and personal survival.

How rotten is that?

So has Bibi taken the bait? It seems he can always can be counted on to be in a hawkish mood.

Will the attack in the Golan Heights be the catalyst for yet more insanity? Netanyahu has, tragically, responded. The Israeli people must be exhausted.

It’s not just Hezbollah in Lebanon that’ll be in on this flare-up. This sounds like a war no one wants—not that the one in the south was on everyone’s calendar before it broke out.

To this outside observer, it all serves to reinforce the feeling that peace in the Middle East is just a cheap cliché, like a beauty pageant contestant who says she just wants to “help people,” an obligatory bucket list item that makes for a nice sound bite but will always remain unchecked, because the warring sides appear intent on fighting until no one is left.

And the instigators who thrive on creating instability will always be around.

What purpose does it serve—to know who the VP candidate will be before Kamala decides on one?

For the press it’s all about getting the scoop, hounding people on the chance they’ll wear someone down and get the answer they’re looking for. The potential picks themselves are cagey and astute enough to not reveal anything, but this doesn’t keep the intrepid reporters from prying and trying.

We’ll know soon enough. Harris has some pretty decent options.

It’s a sad commentary that Pete Buttigieg is viewed as too much of a risk as VP, apparently because he’s gay and the country still isn’t ready for that (really weak excuse), and because he’s too smart, too cerebral, too wonky.

Have these naysayers been listening to him at all? Yes, he does try to fit a lot into the byte-sized time frame he’s often given, but if one listens closely, Buttigieg is not speaking over most peoples’ heads. He’s reasoning things out on the fly in a way that makes it easy to believe he’s done his homework.

He’s a Rhodes scholar who speaks 8 languages. He’s a smart man who pours himself into his work. Maybe he’s the consummate politician, but that’s a moniker which, in his case, we should be able to live with comfortably. We should consider his cognitive abilities to be an asset, a reason to dare trust him.

Imagine—a level-headed, worldly brainiac who hasn’t lived under a rock or in his parents’ basement playing video games. Instead, we have someone who welcomes the opportunity to appear on Fox News and more than hold his own against anchor after anchor who dreams about being the one to bring him down, to expose weaknesses and flaws in his arguments and persona.

If he can work with Kamala, and Kamala can work with him without being intimidated by him, then we have the ticket. If we– and they– dare.

Well, at least intentions aren’t a mystery.

If she is to be believed—and I trust Maddow—the reason Trump has been telling supporters that he doesn’t need their votes is because, already at this point, Republicans have been able to fill at least 70 polling positions with sympathizers who apparently have said they’d refuse to submit results on election day.

In certain states, as I understand it, any doubts about or non-submission of results can jeopardize the results for the entire state.

This is what we’re dealing with. This is the only way Republicans feel they can win.

Imagine having a platform, or lack thereof, that is so weak, so bereft of desirable content that a political party has to resort to bald-faced desperation and cheating.

The thing that gets me is that we’ve spent the last months and years watching this plan hatch. Before our eyes. Who knows how much Putin and others have been involved, and there are still 98 days to go. It’s not like everyone isn’t aware of this underhandedness, or will be. Whether or not they choose to believe it’s happening is another thing.

We’re talking about Donald Trump here, along with the solid and upstanding folks who would love to bring us Project 2025. We best believe it’s happening. 

Style over substance. Bluster over restrained silence, boasting over humility. These are what move people, impress people? Speaking before thinking. Audible stupidity.

Of course I’m talking about Donald Trump. He has always been the unwelcome outlier, the pretender, the one who somehow elbows his way into a conversation and then doesn’t say anything, except all the quiet parts outloud.

If he is what makes for excitement and “something different,” then for all who still think this, who still think he’s funny and just trying to yank our chain, there’s still time to reassess. Because his antics and rhetoric are far from harmless. He’s just the tip of a jagged iceberg, the bulk of which is below the surface, out of sight, in the shadows. Trump is a mere talking head, in love with notoriety and power, reading someone else’s poison off a teleprompter.

Get him off-script and he just wanders aimlessly, because that’s all he’s capable of.

I’ve reached the point where I am no longer moved by motivational speeches and the plethora of opinions flying around. I am tired of anyone who feels the need to always pontificate, or to always be accomplishing something, always moving in a “forward” direction. Keeping busy.

Ugh.

I’m glad that not everyone thinks this way, because how would we ever make progress? How would we ever have developed technology that allows us to live in a shell and never look up? How would we ever have developed weaponry that kills people with more speed and efficiency and in larger quantities?

We can argue that we’ve needed the Newtons and Jobses and Edisons and the host of others who saw and see things not as they are but as they could be. It’s just that I have no inclination to be busy for the sake of being busy. I guess I’m just not that ambitious.

Don’t get me wrong—I notice things. My curiosity can be piqued. I have a sense of wonder. I am moved by beauty in its many manifestations. I am entranced by a starry night and a glance into the heavens. I could sit and talk until I’m blue in the face about God and whether or not God even exists. I am endlessly fascinated by color and composition and the power of natural forces. And I feel most engaged when I’m trying to do what I’m doing right now: write down my thoughts and attempt some sort of breakthrough that opens a window on insight and understanding.

I’d say that, so far, these ventures have been largely fruitless. I’m just spinning my wheels, putting words on a page to pass the time. I figure if I stay at this long enough, maybe there will be a breakthrough at some point. The right words will come and I will say something meaningful and significant, if only to me.  

The low road. Trump’s insistence on taking it will hopefully do him in. Between developing an updated arsenal of insults to fling Kamala’s way, and painting such an inaccurate and unnecessarily dark picture of America’s current circumstances, one might think that voters are going to tire of the dissonance and the laziness and the endless dog whistling.

If this is the best the Republicans can do, one could rightly wonder what chance they have of prevailing in November—across the board, from the top on down the ballot. Seems like it would take a heart transplant, at this point, for their prospects to improve. And what are the chances of that happening?

The brain drain behind Project 2025 will do their best to see that it doesn’t.

He’s a self-involved felon, a habitual liar. He banks on his supporters being narrow-minded lemmings. He yells a lot, and he’s coarse, loud, and lazy. He might have some chops in the “savvy” department, but so what? If that’s all he’s got, then one can figure he’s just another calculating SOB.

A fish out of water.

He’s never had any business running for POTUS, because he’s almost incapable of caring about anybody or anything beyond himself and his own little world. He doesn’t know anything. He’s not a student. He talks big and delivers little. His moral character is in the shitter. He has no backbone. He’s one of the worst people to ever run for public office, yet people seem to love him. There is something wrong and troubling about that, and the explanations for it have never made sense.

What is really troubling is that if he loses in November, we won’t be done with him– again! We have to wonder what’s in store for Election Day and the lead-up to it. Will the USPS, still headed by a questionably competent Trump appointee, be able to handle the influx of mail-in ballots? Will votes get counted properly, will poll workers be threatened? Will the Supreme Court be called upon at some point to make some critical decision after Trump claims yet another election was stolen from him?

Does this end? Or is this what circling the drain looks like?