Crunch Time  ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️

Outage and Outage:  If you are traveling today, check in with your airline before going to the airport. Major airlines have grounded all their planes because of a worldwide Microsoft cloud service outage.  Health systems and some banks and brokerage firms are affected as well so don’t have a coronary when you check your balances and see that they’ve been temporarily zeroed out because there will be no place to go for anywhere near the level of emergency care that Trump got for his injured ear last weekend.  Still donning a mini sanitary pad on that ear, not that any of his cult members would question him if he moved it to the other ear, Trump delivered his convention speech last night and despite its somewhat muted tone it was littered with the usual outrage.  He droned on for ninety minutes.  He milked the ear and his “heroic” survival for all its worth, starting off subdued, before launching into his usual lie ridden claims and insults.  He once again called Nancy Pelosi crazy, bemoaned the state of the country, trashed migrants and failed to stick to the “unite” the country scrip which shouldn’t surprise anyone because he is who he is and anyone who thinks otherwise has eaten too much of his Jello.

The Clock is Ticking:  Beating the twice impeached, multiply indicted adjudicated sex offender Trump in November should be possible but right now seems like a stretch because of the concerns about President Biden’s age and capability.  At this point it almost doesn’t matter if those concerns are valid, what matters is that the Democratic party is having a very public battle with an increasing number of prominent party members calling for him to bow out.  California Congressman/Senate candidate Adam Schiff has joined the chorus of Democrats calling publicly for Joe to step aside. Schiff matters because he is close to Nancy Pelosi and though she’s no longer the titular leader of House Democrats, she continues to call the shots behind the scenes and reportedly Senate leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries share her view. Their inside polls indicate that Biden is behind Trump and is dragging down a number of pivotal House and Senate races which also explains why Montana’s Senator Jon Tester who is facing a tough reelection fight in his home state joined the “Joe step aside” chorus last night.  It’s not just them, a number of high dollar donors are also holding back their contributions and with Trump’s donor base growing that’s a huge problem. The pundits report that Biden who is in COVID isolation in Delaware is seriously considering withdrawing though their reports may be based on their preferences so its hard to tell what’s really happening.  In any case, Biden needs to do something soon because time is running out.  There are many questions about what changing horses at this point in the election cycle will entail including, who will replace Biden;  will that person get the support of Biden loyalists including influential Black voters, especially high turnout Black women;  how does the “replacement” process even work; and, most importantly can a replacement, probably but not definitely VP Kamala Harris together with an unnamed VP partner rally Democrats to show up and vote in November?  It’s jumping the gun to predict a ticket, but one possible VP name floating on social media is Arizona Senator/Astronaut Mark Kelly because as a few have noted he really is an American hero, and Democrats need a hero right now. Thoughts?

Fog:  A tall building in Tel Aviv was struck by a drone overnight. Iran’s Houthi rebel surrogates have taken credit for the attack. Though it appears that only one person was killed, the drone did considerable damage and the fact that it made it all the way to Tel Aviv is, to put it mildly, not a good thing and is likely to further fuel an already out of control retaliatory cycle.  Adidas has gone ahead and shot themselves in one of their sneakered feet, not with a bullet or drone but with a tone-deaf advertising campaign.  The company that spent years overlooking Kanye West’s anti-Semitism because his Yeezy sneakers were profitable was, at least until yesterday, promoting a retro 1972 Olympic sneaker first launched during the infamous Munich Olympics where eleven Israeli athletes were abducted from the Olympic village and then killed by Palestinians terrorists.  And because celebrating the Munich Olympics on the anniversary of that horrifying massacre isn’t bad enough, their featured model is Bela Hadid, whose vocal support for Palestinian causes has been tainted by lots of anti-Israel rhetoric and whose father is known for his anti-Semitic rants and homophobic attacks of Congressman Richie Torres for his support for Israel.  Adidas says they are “rethinking” the campaign.  Rethinking seems an odd word to use since it doesn’t appear that they gave it any thought in the first place, either that or Adidas’ marketing people are woefully ignorant or all in on celebrating their Nazi roots. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow