NATIONAL COUSCOUS DAY UPDATES

Here's To the Wheat that Kind of Wishes It Was Rice

-Kamala Harris will officially become the Democratic Presidential nominee today, and with the first rally of the full ticket scheduled for Philadelphia on Wednesday, the country (well, at least the political nerderati) awaits who her choice is for running mate…

-…and THIS JUST IN: Harris will release the pick tomorrow (Tuesday) in a video. This Substack has not dove into the ins and outs and positives and negatives of each of the six apparent finalists, because this Substack has given Harris the benefit of the doubt given how rapidly and savagely she secured the nomination and has sustained the momentum to the point where said political nerds are referring to the polling shift and Harris lead over MAGAGOP nominee Old Weird Convicted Felon Ex-President Trump (R-apist) as a 'trend' and not a 'bounce' - but coverage of who the choice is will be here on Wednesday!

-This allows Trump to continue to caterwaul and flail away as the race - which Team Trump apparently genuinely thought was over at the end of the Republican National Convention - begins to slip away and the team desperately tries to find a line of attack to stop Harris' surge. The Harris-is-not-really-Black line is one that is apparently sticking somewhat, though whether that could backfire and begin to make Trump bleed more support is in question. Trump's foibles continue to be exposed as well, as an unreported part of his GA half-filled hall rally featured Trump again praising Vladimir Putin for the prisoner exchange orchestrated by President Biden and Harris. And rumblings about whether Trump can afford to keep the icky J.D.Vance as Vice President have not stopped. The MAGA-in-Disarray stories are actually being written!

-So there is another tack that Trump can also take - an unplanned national disaster that would allow his elderly verbal wanderings to appear "strong" next to Harris looking "weak" (which was the entirety of his Biden strategy). The news of overseas stock markets leading to a sell-off on the American exchanges has already triggered Trump to declare imminent economic implosion - never mind that one month of not-quite-as-hot-as-it-was job increases and a market correction in the superheated AMEX and NASDAQ will not come close to making a recession in the months before Election Day. Trump has also been insisting that a terrorist attack on American soil is "IMMINENT!" (and has been helped with this hype by Sean Hannity), and while Trump continues to hawk the assassination attempt (you can now get an image of Trump pumping his wee tiny fistie post-attempt on a set of water tumblers with proceeds going into Trump's pockets!) despite no such evidence. (Let's keep that as is, PLEASE.)

-One pivot that will soon happen is to focus a tiny bit less on fund raising and instead on volunteers and actual voters. The Harris campaign reports a pronounced uptick in voter registrations, particularly in battleground states - and with that, concerns about voter manipulations and suppressions by MAGAGOP officials. To that end, attention has been drawn to a supposed online voter registration 'effort' being underwritten by billionaire weirdo and Trump supporter Elon Musk. Musk has posted a link through a Trump SuperPAC web site claiming to route voters to appropriate states - but the fear is that the effort is both a way to divert potential voters from actually registering and a data-mining scam designed to help Trump. The state of Michigan has opened an investigation into the site, and other critics have used this and other partisan Musk efforts to ask the White House to begin exploring cutting off Musk's numerous federal contracts in response.

-And then there's the Supreme Court. Already now one of the most reviled parts of the Federal Government for its rabid partisanship and Trump-fueled disregard for the Constitution and Federal precedent, over the weekend Justice Neil Gorsuch apparently felt neglected at the press attention colleagues Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have been getting. So, on Fox News (where else?), Gorsuch commented on President Biden's SCOTUS reform proposal (involving 18-year term limits and an enforceable code of ethics as well as a law preventing Trump-munity from becoming legal) by telling Biden and Democrats to "Be careful!" Be careful of what is unclear, but it invokes Andrew Jackson once taunting the Supreme Court over imposing the Trail of Tears genocide by saying "Let (the Supreme Court) enforce it!" (though in a FAR different context HERE).

-This brings us, whether we want to be here or not, at Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is still in the race and still enough of a concern that John Oliver dedicated yesterday's LAST WEEK TONIGHT to go after RFK Jr's former career and current status as a former progressive activist turned kook. That kook turn was solidified over the weekend when RFK Jr. got in front of a bonkers story published this morning in The New Yorker in which Kennedy claims he 'found' a dead bear cub in ... New York and ... was going to take the carcass home for bear meat and the pelt ... but was late to an event ... so instead he took the bear body ... and dumped it in Central Park - but not after staging a photo of him being "bit" by the dead bear cub.

-... like we said, this is kooky and weird and bizarre even for Mr. Brain Worms over there ...

-In overseas news ... the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, has fled to India after a series of protests over jobs escalated into countrywide demands for Hasina's removal. The protests have left over 100 dead and has led the military to announce the formation of an interim government pending new elections ... protests in Venezuela over the apparent theft of the election by current 'President' Nicolas Maduro. Maduro has promised punishment to anyone who protests, but the streets of Caracas continue to be filled by protestors as most countries of the world refuse to accept Maduro's claim he won the election ... a second set of protests and riots have erupted in Great Britian that are targeting areas where immigrants have been staying, and evidence points to hard-right elements in British society as being the central irritants ... and the world continues to be on edge as Iran, Hezbollah, and Israel warily eye each other amid fears an attempt to retaliate over attacks on HAMAS leadership may spark a wider war in the already-tense area.

-The Paris Olympics continue, and yesterday an all-timer took place in the Men's 100 Meter race. American Noah Lyles won the closest race in Olympic history when a photo finish (which he at first thought he had lost) showed Lyles got his torso over the finish line just before Jamaican Kishane Thompson by a calculated 0.005 of a second. The margin was so tight, and the race so fast (the winning and second place time was officially 9.79 seconds), that the time for the seventh-place finish of American Kenny Bednarek would have been enough to win a medal in Tokyo (2000) or London (2012). It was one of the most exciting races in Olympic history, and well worth the watch - particularly as it took several seconds for officials to figure out who won and for Lyles to congratulate Thompson believing Lyles lost. Go find it and watch!

-Now stop hitting refresh on your browser. We'll have a Veep TOMORROW!

-On this date in 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was presented before Congress as the excuse to escalate American military involvement in Vietnam. On this date in 1981, Ronald Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers who had gone on strike over wages and working conditions. And on this date in 2010, a mine collapsed in Chile trapping 33 workers - all of whom were rescued by mid-October.

-Debuts on this date: Federal income tax (1861),  transatlantic telegraph communication (1858), the traffic light (1914), FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953), AMERICAN BANDSTAND (1957), "Yellow Submarine"/"Eleanor Rigby" (1966), The Runaways (1974), RISKY BUISNESS (1983).

-Happy Birthday to Joseph Merrick, Jacob Rupert Jr., John Huston, Selma Diamond, Billie Hayes, Neil Armstrong, John Saxon, Herb Brooks, Roman Gabriel, Ja'net Dubois, Rick Derringer, Hun Sen, Maureen McCormick, Pete Burns, Pat Smear, Tawny Kitaen, Patrick Ewing, Adam Yauch, Reid Hoffman, Funkmaster Flex, James Gunn, Rachel Scott, LoLo Jones, and Anthony Edwards.

-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Friedrich Engels, Carmen Miranda, Richard Burton, Paul Brown, Jeff Porcaro, Sir Alec Guinness, Chick Hearn, Budd Schulberg, George Duke, Charlotte Rae, Toni Morrison, Eric Bentley, Pete Hamill, and Clu Gulager.

-Feed the Worms: French Fascist three-time loser Marine LePen entered Earth on this date.