NATIONAL PATIO UMBRELLA DAY UPDATES

Here’s To Those Things With the Alcohol Logos That Let Us Sorta Stay Out of the Sun While Sipping Beer and Waiting for our Wings at the Local Outdoor Sports Bar! YAY PATIO UMBRELLAS!

-The fight against Trump 2.0 is now in a different phase thanks to the signing of the Big Bill O’Crap – fulfilling Dear Leader’s prime directive of having something to do on the 4^th of July that also allowed for Melania Trump (or at least ‘a’ ‘Melania’) to appear and avoid an awkward kiss from the fading orange gross lump. Two primary areas have emerged, and we now know what they are: the savage Medicare cuts, which will first appear in potential closures of rural hospitals and Planned Parenthood clinics; and the dangerous steroids-like growth of ICE and its power, likely wielded by Trump’s right cloven hoof Stephen Miller.

-The shifts will need (in this Substacker’s opinion) to shift to action to stop and/or protect those that will be hurt, while simultaneously figuring out how to leverage what will be growing discontent into political action in every election and every other place we can. But the power will need to come as we also work to help those that need to and place blame on what happens squarely on Trump and the MAGAGOP party who all fell in line, bending their hips while trying to think how they can get theirs through the carnage.

-As we do, the first post-BBOC crisis has appeared in central Texas. There, a series of torrential rainstorms has created flash flooding that has, as of this writing, killed 69 people, including at least 15 children (so far) who were attending a summer camp that got swept away by the storms. While rescues are underway and fears of the storm staying in the area for at least another 48 hours, Federal and state officials – including Homeland Security chief ghoul Kristi Noem – have spent many of their public appearances pointing fingers of blame at each other as to how the floods could turn so deadly.

-Much of the focus was on the undermanned weather agencies in the area – undermanned because of the DOGE cuts earlier in the year, under-informationed because of decisions by the Department of Defense to limit and end sharing satellite data to those who were working, and allegedly under-warninged by the storms.

-Those accounts are under some dispute by others who point out the total lack of state controls over everything from flood mitigation along the Guadeloupe River to whether Camp Mystic, the Christian-run camp, should have been able to build a camp where it did. And even a few have noted how FEMA money that could have been used for some of these tasks were instead diverted to ICE (despite Texas being exempted from many of the raids, what with being a red state and all).

-The malpractice is widespread but listing hard right (did we mention the state of TX has been in a Republican-controlled hammerlock for nearly 30 years?) and in a non-Fox-news world without a gelded Legacy Media, Inc., the facts would speak for themselves. So instead expect spins on how everything that happened in Texas can be blamed on immigrants and the age of Joe Biden. And expect this to be but the first of these items to happen.

-Indeed, one of those places could be on the ICE-built detention centers like the already-notorious Florida center. The first detainees arrived there a day after a simple rain storm flooded the entire center, which will be a problem since this is rainy season and will be followed by hurricane season. It is also a bit of a problem when it comes to something as quaint as spending tax dollars, and reports show the center – nothing more than a series of semi-enclosed tents - was built for $450 MILLION dollars.

-To contrast, the construction of Target Field, the home stadium of the Minnesota Twins, cost $550 million in 2010, and does not flood even though it is an outdoor park. If that is what can be expected – and should we expect anything less? – ICE will also be a cess pool of corruption, graft, and terrible construction. Just like their President.

-A President whose real victory lap of the Big Bill O’Crap took place on July 3 in Iowa in an attempt to create one of his rallies. But aside from his wee tiny fists pumping to disguise self-defecations – ALLEGEDLY – Trump instead continued to show why the buzz about his emotional, mental, and physical condition is now constant despite Legacy Media not touching it blatantly.

-At the event, Trump poutyapped about how he hated Democrats (nice considering the assassination of MN Democratic officials and two Idaho firefighters in an ambush both happened at the hands of self-avowed MAGAts), stumblegarbled mistaking both the home state and job of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, openly talked about “shyster” lawyers (claiming asininely later he never heard that term used disparagingly – JFC), and dreamblabbed his wish to celebrate America’s 250^th birthday next year with a UFC fight on the White House lawn.

-The whole thing is still sticking in the craw of ex-acting-President Elon Musk, who failed to flip a vote with a threat to run against GOPMAGAts who voted for the BBOC, then went through on his threat to officially create a new political party. The America Party, an odd choice for a South African immigrant, has filed paperwork and is now A Thing, and debate over which Party will be hurt more (will moderate Democrats now buy Ketamine Man’s absurd bothsiderism about the BBOC to vote for his candidates or will MAGAts who care about the deficit and Elon finally break away?) has begun, along with (presumably) potential candidates who will take the America Party’s cash.

-Meanwhile, the dipwaddery continues unabated in Team Trump. Ukraine has been under some of the most intense drone attacks of the Russian invasion, and Russia unleased some of the biggest waves after Vladimir Putin ignored another call from Trump about stopping the attacks, which have all been in cities throughout Ukraine. Worse, antiaircraft and other previously-committed armaments from the U.S. stopped shipping midweek – a decision that was found to have come from Defense Secretary Pete “HIC!” Hegseth, and which has yet to be reversed despite a call from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Trump and Defense Department talking heads saying it was a ‘hold’ and not a cancellation.

-With Russia’s expected offensive already petering out and an announcement of more North Korean soldiers gleefully discovering pornography headed to the Ukrainan front lines, the lack of support to Ukraine will likely only add more months to the invasion – but not, at best, a Russia-hollowing draw.

-SLAVA UKRAINI!

-In addition, there was and still is an unexplained hold on the release of $7 billion in previously-approved funding for a large swath of public school programs earmarked for what MAGA believes is undeserved wasteful spending like after-school programs, teacher training, support for students learning English, and mental health services in schools. Why need that when, in MAGAville, it is much more important Jeff Bezos throw another foam rave for his genetically-fine-tuned trophy wife? It is unclear when this money will be released, as courts have constantly told the White House they have to allow previously-funded programs to get the money they were earmarked before.

-GAH!

-We need a little levity, so for that we shift to New York City, where the New York Times beclowns itself again at the horror – the HORROR! – of a potential Zohran Mamdani Mayorship. Still scrambling over how to slow down the populist’s momentum, a story appeared there with the kind of nitpicking often seen by the Left and now used with racist gusto by the anti-woke Right: a charge that Mamdani lied on a college application by claiming he was both Asian … aanndd … AFRICAN! BOM BOM BAAAAA

-Two major problems with the story … first, Mamdani did not lie. He was, in fact, born Uganda, and his father Mohammad is Ugandan. Second, the primary author of the Times story with the non-bombshell was a man named Jordan Lasker, a self-described researcher who argues in a discredited area of “study” called “race science” that Black people are mentally inferior to other races – not to mention that Mamdani’s application form appeared thanks to a hack of Columbia University records.

-The worry over Mamdani is only intensifying because the attempts by The Powers That Be are not working. The first poll released since Mamdani was officially declared the winner of the Democratic Primary on Tuesday shows he has a wide lead over potential ‘independent’ Andrew Cuomo, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, and current Mayor Eric Adams, the quasi-Trump candidate as he dropped out of the primary due to allowing ICE agents into New York City in exchange for Trump not prosecuting Adams for being corrupt. The numbers are 41% Mamdani, 26% Cuomo, and 16% Adams. The kicker: the poll was taken by the Adams campaign.

-All of which is part of why Trump continues to discuss the possibility of denaturalizing Mamdani for the purpose of deporting him – something reports say he (and by “he” we mean Stephen Miller, again) are considering doing at a wide scale, using an obscure World War II-era statute as the fig leaf to do so. Another celebrity that Trump and company would likely love to try to use it on is the aforementioned Musk – but not, oddly enough (SARCASM), the real Melania Trump, who if you recall got her ‘work permit’ by obtaining a so-called ‘Einstein Visa’ that claimed she was a super-special genius, apparently of being part of Ghislaine Maxwell’s concubine when Maxwell introduced Melania to Trump at a party by Maxwell and Trump’s BFF, Jeffrey Epstein.

-Or are you all buying the claim that the reason Pam Bondi and Ka$h Patel or Dan Bongholio Bongino can’t release the Epstein files because of paper jam in the Department of Justice’s lone printer?

-We’ll wrap up with music news, much of it happening in Britain – a controversy, a return, and a farewell. The controversy was at the vaunted Glastonbury Festival, where the BBC and producers have announced a banning of punk-rap group Bob Vylan for starting chants calling for the death of members of the Israeli Defense Force – and the group losing gigs in England and France in the wake of their appearance.

-The return was of the dueling Gallagher brothers and their Britpop band Oasis, who began a worldwide reunion tour in Cardiff, Wales, playing their hits to a rapturous crowd with a guitar player in between the brothers, who are so volatile together there are bets as to when they will start throwing punches at each other and the tour ending as a result.

-And the farewell, in Birmingham, was a daylong celebration of what was billed as the final performance of the legendary Black Sabbath. There, bands from Tool and Gojira to Alice in Chains, from Slash to Billy Corgan to Tom Morello, from Sammy Hagar to Axl Rose to Steven Tyler (who sounded surprisingly great after retiring two years ago for reported damage to his vocal chords), and from Slayer to Lamb of God to Metallica, all played Sabbath tunes and set the stage for the four original members to appear at the show, billed as “Back to the Beginning.”

-And yes, the show wrapped with all four Sabbath members – Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, and in a throne decorated with bats, the frail Ozzy Osborne - playing one final 30-minute set, wrapping up with “Paranoid” as what may be their last show together. Rock on, Sabbath!

-On to today’s notes!

-NEWS ON THIS DATE: In 1885, an anti-rabies vaccine was tested successfully by Louis Pasteur. In 1942, Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in Amsterdam. In 1957, John Lennon met Paul McCartney. In 1957, Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to win Wimbledon. In 1995, a mass murder of over 7,000 Bosnians at the hands of Bosnian Serbian forces began in the city of Srebrenica.

-DEBUTS ON THIS DATE: The U.S. dollar (1785), the Soviet Union (1923), a full-length all-talking movie (not THE JAZZ SINGER, but LIGHTS OF NEW YORK, 1928), the Baseball All-Star Game (1933), The Three Stooges (1933), A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (1964), Jefferson Airplane (1965), no-fault divorce (1970), women in the U.S. Naval Academy (1976), Malawi (1984), FORREST GUMP (1994),

-HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Captain John Paul Jones, Frida Kahlo, Sebastian Cabot, William Schallert, Bill Haley, Merv Griffin, Janet Leigh, Pat Paulsen, Della Reese, the Dalai Lama, Gene Chandler, Ned Beatty, Burt Ward, Fred Dwyer, Sylvester Stallone, Michael Schrieve, Shelley Hack, John Byrne, Geoffrey Rush, Grant Goodeve, Nanci Griffith, Allyce Beasley, Willie Randolph, Matt Bahr, Jennifer Saunders, 50 Cent, Tamera Mowery, Tia Mowery, Kevin Hart, Pau Gasol, and Zion Williamson.

-REST IN PEACE/POWER: Sir Thomas More, John Marshall, George Ohm, Fats Navarro, William Faulkner, Louis Armstrong, Brandon De Wilde, Joe E. Brown, Otto Klemperer, Ruffian, Van McCoy, Cameron Mitchell, Roy Rogers, John Frankenheimer, Buddy Ebsen, Ed McBain, Ennio Morricone, Joe Porcaro, and James Caan.

-FEED THE WORMS: Harry Ford Sinclair, Nancy Reagan, and George W. Bush entered Earth on this date. Robert McNamara and Charlie Daniels bought it on this date.

-ON THIS DATE IN CULTURE: The Number One Nonfiction Book in the U.S. on this date … in 2025, BEHIND THE BADGE, by a Fox News contributor … in 2015, THE WRIGHT BROTHERS by David McCullough … in 2005, 1776 by David McCullough … in 1995, THE HOT ZONE by Richard Preston … in 1985, IACOCCA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Lee Iacocca with William Novak … and in 1975, BREACH OF FAITH by Theodore H. White.

-TODAY’S MUSIC INTERLUDE: The most iconic song from their first album, released on this date in 1979!