The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

The Olympic cauldron here was unlike any other, a hot-air balloon that rose nightly above Jardin des Tuileries. That garden, the largest in this gorgeous city, is bordered by the Louvre on one side, the Seine on another, the Rue de Rivoli to the north, and is a short walk to the Champs-Élysées. What a picture. What a place.

The Olympics needed a reset. Paris provided it. In competition, sure, but the competition always has a way of burying whatever controversy du jour precedes it, regardless of where the Games are held or how the Chablis-sipping bureaucrats from the International Olympic Committee profit from it all.

Leon Marchand and Stephen Curry. Simone Biles and Summer McIntosh. Gabby Thomas and Katie Ledecky. Stars, all.

But the showstopping star here was the city of Paris, a stage without peer. It would be one thing to have a beach volleyball court that sits in the shadow of an iconic monument, another to stage fencing in a breathtaking palace, yet another to put the equestrian competition in the gardens of a 17th century chateau. Paris did them all, and more. [snip]

Staging the Olympics is fraught. The Games, for most, are a television program that largely revolves around what their American broadcast partner, NBC, needs and wants. That can be a direct contrast to the needs and wants of the citizens of the city and country that hosts them. The IOC doesn’t care.

But for future Olympics, there is now a modern model, and a renewed spirit, that were embodied here. After the drudgery that dates back more a decade, both are welcome.

The competition almost always elevates the Olympics beyond whatever issues — self-inflicted or otherwise — threaten to hamper them. What played out in Paris were parallel tracks: athletes who deserve to be lifted up and admired, and a city that inherently elevates and inspires. We may not see such a perfect marriage again...

While we didn't watch most of the games, there's no doubt the athletes, Paris, and France acquitted themselves very, very well.

The bad:

... The senator [Junior Demagogue Vance] brought up the ongoing migrant crisis and again blamed Harris and the Biden administration's policies, such as ending "Remain in Mexico."

When asked how he and Trump would accomplish their stated goal of mass deporting as many as 20 million immigrants – a proposal experts previously told ABC News would be a "nightmare" -- Vance said they would take a "sequential approach."

"I mean do you go knock on doors and ask people for their papers? What do you do," Karl asked.

"You start with what's achievable," Vance said. "I think that if you deport a lot of violent criminals and frankly if you make it harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers, I think you go a lot of the way to solving the illegal immigration problem."

"I think it's interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let's start with 1 million. That's where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there," Vance said... (our emphasis)

He's an ambitious, reckless little sociopath, smaller bore than the large caliber sociopath Malignant Loser.  But a dangerous one nonetheless.

The ugly:

Former president Donald Trump is trying to downplay his presidential opponents’ rally crowd sizes, falsely claiming that “nobody was there” at a Detroit event hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz.

Trump, who is obsessed with the size of his own crowds and frequently exaggerates attendance numbers, is “unhappy” with the number of people who have been attending Harris and Walz’s campaign events, as Rolling Stone reported last week.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Trump ranted Sunday on Truth Social. “There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane,” Trump wrote. “She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING.”

In a subsequent post, Trump included an image showing a crowd looking at the vice president’s plane and claimed without evidence, “Look, we caught her with a fake ‘crowd.’ There was nobody there!”

Trump is lying. Multiple news channels broadcast the event via live stream, where the crowd is clearly visible. Photographers from the Associated Press and many other national and international outlets captured the attendees. Local news reported that “about 15,000 people filled the hangar” and the crowd was “spilling out onto the tarmac and cheering as Air Force Two arrived.”

In response to Trump’s claim, the Harris campaign posted a screenshot of Trump’s post and wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “1) This is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan 2) Trump has still not campaigned in a swing state in over a week… Low energy?  (our emphasis)

 

 

The Malignant Loser's "public nervous breakdown" continues apace.  He must be defeated. He will be defeated.  But it won't be because the Republican- wired corporate media focused on his mental illness.  Imagine if President Biden or any other Democratic official had posted delusional nonsense like this, and how many weeks of breathless, feeding frenzy coverage it would get!