Maybe Israel shouldn’t have been allowed to participate in the games. How’s that for a lousy suggestion and uninformed opinion?

Day after day we hear of another bombing, another two dozen or more civilian deaths, and there’s hardly a peep from the rest of the world. We’ve moved way beyond “Israel has a right to defend itself.” What’s happening in Gaza are crimes against humanity, and Israel’s scorched earth response, besides hobbling Hamas, will most likely only have provided fertile ground for the next resistance movement.

Granted, the Palestinians need to provide assurances that they are willing to coexist. And any remnant of Hamas or its evolutionary descendant must also change its stance on Israel’s existence as a sovereign nation. It can’t continue to hold that Israel must be driven from the land and destroyed. That obviously will serve as a non-starter and will not be helpful or acceptable.

All sides need to chill, but what are the chances of that ever happening? This insane cycle of retribution is itself hard to kill.

What would happen if they set aside their holy books and dared to talk to each other, as people who are dreaming of living in peace in a place they call home?

An identity crisis would probably ensue.

I suppose one could put an asterisk beside everyone’s medal totals, since Russia wasn’t participating. Then again, why wasn’t Russia participating, except for a small contingent of athletes who couldn’t compete under the Russian flag?

I thought it must have been because they couldn’t swear off the juice, the illicit HGH and such, but it was actually because they invaded Ukraine in February of 2022.

Kind of surprising they honored the prohibition. One might think Putin and the rest would get heavy-handed, demand to participate, find a way around the ban, invade IOC headquarters or something. In any event, rules are rules, and the IOC said no to Russian participation. Good for them.

And way to go, Vladimir. You ruined a perfectly good opportunity for your athletes to showcase their skills, all because you’re on some ill-advised quest and refuse to read the room.

The Wall Street Journal has published an article entitled, “Will Donald Trump Blow Another Election?”

Such a question betrays the assumption that the election was/is Trump’s to win in the first place. In the months and years since the 2020 election and January 6, Trump has somehow remained a viable candidate despite everything he’s said and done that might give most reasonable people cause to wonder how he’s still standing.

One could argue that the upcoming election in November includes a Republican candidate who shouldn’t have been eligible to run this time around—for legal reasons and because he is such a flagrantly flawed, incompetent, and unpleasant human being.

Blow another election? This would seem to imply that his loss in 2020 somehow came out of left field, rather than being an indication that the public was tired of him, leery of him, and finally on to his shtick—that he was, in reality, the furthest thing from an “everyman” candidate. If Trump blew his chances in 2020, it was because the curtain was pulled back on who he really was. Well, that and he’s got the fatal flaw of opening his mouth and speaking.

The fact that, despite a new ticket and new life on the Democratic side, the election is apparently still close at this point simply boggles the mind. A candidate with highly suspect motives, with no platform except Project 2025, and a plan to infiltrate election boards in swing states with election deniers should be all anyone needs to know about Trump and the party that props him up.

Trump is a straw man, and the GOP– or whatever this iteration of the Republican Party is– is a party tilting at windmills, suffering from a dearth of good ideas, and too eager to pay homage to the dark side.

I saw a meme the other day with a bit of geriatric wisdom: At 70, your body tells your brain about things it’s not gonna do anymore. Or something like that.

I have to say that there’s truth in this, though it’s also true what people say about still feeling little different than when you were twenty, even as your body is trying to tell you otherwise.

It’s an interesting dynamic. The joints are a bit creaky, the knees don’t bend as readily as they once did, and I do run like an old man now. I have a bit of brain fog on occasion but still have the same sense of wonder and curiosity about certain things, the same sense of humor and manner of speaking. I‘m reading more than I ever have, though I have to reread the occasional passage because I start daydreaming or am distracted by something.

I have reached a point where there is less that impresses me, and it doesn’t take much for the bullshit meter to peg anymore. I’ve never been a driven person, so any vestige of ambition is directed at buying the next tool for the shop, or keeping the yard looking trimmed and presentable.

Such lofty and altruistic aspirations.

In contrast to those days when I might have been considered community-minded and sociable, I am more intent on and selective in picking my interactions. I prefer to be more of a hermit now, am comfortable in that skin, which, I believe, is probably who I’ve been all along. The twenty-six years in the ministry were an aberration of sorts, a thousand miles from the nearest comfort zone. They were a real stretch for me, to put it mildly.

I can’t follow the political developments on a regular basis. It’s too loud, people talk too fast and try to cram everything into confined time frames because they have to work around the myriad breaks for words from their sponsors. Commercial television is hard to watch. Even PBS has conceded somewhat to advertisers and modified the way they handle their financial supporters, but at least they get everything out of the way up front.

Anyway, the news often feels like a cascading waterfall that just keeps dumping on us who stand underneath. It’s hard to talk, hard to breathe, hard to digest because we keep getting pummeled. There are too many contrived questions from panels of experts and pundits in the pursuit of filling airtime with… something, anything, hopefully a decent query that engenders a thoughtful, enlightening response, but often enough just boilerplate stuff that we’ve already heard somewhere else.

And now we get to endure the endless back and forth and analysis of the two tickets, likely complete with the latest low blows and dumb comments from Trump, along with the inevitable dramatic developments and dug-up dirt that always seem to materialize.

Hey, it’s still better than a lone anchor sitting at a desk being fed the official party line handed down from the Ministry of Propaganda, or whoever.

More frequently, we’re hearing it said out loud: the sheer number of natural disasters is taking a toll on peoples’ capacity to cope.

Floods, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat—it’s all starting to tear at infrastructure and the fabric of normalcy and sustainability, and the limits of human endurance. The damage from storms and such is so widespread that there is dwindling hope of recovery and rebuilding for many, and of insurance companies being willing and able to cover losses.

The simple yet totally unsurprising fact is that global warming and human-induced climate change is not only real, but is awakening people to the realization that life as they’ve known it is likely being permanently interrupted. The new normal looks to be having to deal with a steadier stream of dangerous and destructive weather, and the accompanying realization that the planet we live on and have taken for granted is slowly reclaiming itself and dispatching the source of its discomfort—which is us.

1500

 

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.