Today is Tuesday, July 30, 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to a packed crowd of 10,000 people at a rally she held in Atlanta this evening and jeered the former president for reneging on his promise to debate her in September. She really laid on the “weird” adjective that her party is now relying on to deride Dump and his lackeys in the Trumpican party. This rally is discussed in Raw Story by Matthew Chapman in an article entitled ‘If you got something to say, say it to my face!’ Rally-goers erupt as Harris goads Trump.”

To a packed auditorium, Harris said, “So, the momentum in this race is shifting. And there are signs that Donald Trump is feeling it. You may have noticed. So last week, you may have seen he pulled out of the debate in September he had previously agreed to.” Here the crowd booed.

Continuing her frame of thought, Harris added, “So here’s the thing. Here’s the funny thing about that. So he won’t debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me. And by the way, don’t you find some of their stuff to be just plain weird? Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. Because as the saying goes, if you got something to say, say it to my face.” Here Harris throws down the gauntlet at her cowardly opponent who is afraid to debate a strong woman.

The crowd erupted into a lengthy applause and cheers as Harris finished her sentence.

As you might know, Trump originally agreed to two debates with President Joe Biden, the first taking place in June. We all know how that debate went, which has led us to this moment with Kamala Harris taking over the reins of her much older colleague.

Now the Dump team has backed out of his agreement to participate in the originally scheduled debate in September, claiming that they will debate the Democratic nominee, but that it is “inappropriate” to honor the original commitment while they could still theoretically change their mind about nominating Harris. It’s so unlikely that this will ever happen, given how many delegates have boarded the Harris bandwagon since she announced her candidacy last week.

Now Harris, for her part, has vowed she will attend the debate whether or not Drumpf attends, raising the possibility she could debate an empty podium, just as then-Senate candidate Jon Ossoff deployed to great effect in 2020 when Senator David Perdue (R-GA) declined to show up for a showdown. This would only tank the former president’s chances of ever winning the presidency again.

As for the momentum of Harris’s candidacy going all hog, the “White Dudes for Harris” held a Zoom meeting to rally support and money for Vice President Kamala Harris’s groundbreaking presidential run. This historic event is featured in the article “MN Gov. Tim Walz Will Tell Trump Exactly Which Black Woman Kicked His Ass” Wonkette by Evan Hurst.

According to an email from the organizers, there were over 193,000 people on the call. They raised a stunning $4.2 million and got 150,000 email signups.

This event came on the heels of a similar “White Women: Answer the Call” call last Thursday, which organizer Shannon Watts says raised over $11 million for the campaign (including $8.5 million in 90 minutes). That followed the “Win With Black Women” Zoom call that started the whole thing off, with more than 40,000 Black women showing everybody else how to do the thing.

The White Dudes for Harris event boasted many celebrities and political figures, most especially an appearance by the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, star of cult classic The Big Lebowski, who said, “I qualify!” to be a “White Dude for Harris,” explaining “I am white. I am a dude. And I love Harris!”

Other names who attended the meeting were Bradley Whitford from The West Wing, Rep. Adam Schiff, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Transportation Secretary/Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Josh Groban, and Mark Hamill from Star Wars.

Of all the motivational speakers, it was Minnesota Governor Tim Walz who really brought the house down, so to speak. This is primarily what he said about the Harris campaign and what he said about the Orange Turd: “How often in 100 days do you get to change the trajectory of the world? How often in 100 days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come? And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road? And you know that’s something that guy’s gonna have to live with for the rest of his life.”

It is Governor Tim Walz who is responsible for suddenly elevating the word “weird” into the mainstream of Democratic messaging against weirdo, creepy MAGA world.

It’s getting late here, owing to my speaking to two friends, “Harold,” and “Gene,” who wanted to express well wishes for my trip to Australia. I must have mentioned how I was dreading the long jet ride to Australia with both friends. However, Gene stated that he and his late husband had a wonderful time in Australia 21 years ago, but that prices were high. I said that might be different now because of the varying exchange rate. We’ll find out soon enough if prices are indeed high Down Under.

Today Elliot and I saw this summer’s blockbuster hit Twisters and were not that impressed. The plot, such as it is, involves idealistic tornado chaser Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who suffers a tragic accident with three of her fellow tornado chasers early on in Oklahoma trying to prove her theory that she could “tame” a tornado in midstream. During an actual tornado, Cooper loses three of her young colleagues, except for one, Javi (Anthony Ramos) who stayed behind. Her efforts prove tragic and she ends her tornado chasing ways and flees to New York to work behind a computer screen.

Fast forward five years to when Cooper gets a visit from her one friend, Ravi, who convinces her that he has the technology to create a 3-D image of a tornado. Considering how she feels she might have led to the deaths of three friends, she has no pangs of conscience in this regard to accompany her friend back to Oklahoma to chase tornadoes again. This was not in any way believable, I thought.

Cooper agrees to help her friend for only one week, which puts her in Oklahoma’s tornado rally where the big winds come sweepin’ down the plain. She must face her anxiety while dealing with new competition in the form of hunky tornado wrangler, Tyler Owens (Glen Powell).

There is no question that a “warm front” is coming when the two lock eyes. This rivalry between the two appears quite shallow since anyone knows they will soon put aside their opposition to tame these nasty forces of nature, and they eventually do.

It’s the action sequences that impress as director Lee Isaac Chung gets the most out of these winds of death as they bear down a rodeo and other towns with utmost destruction as their one overriding goal. But we don’t get an airborne cow like we did in the first film, Twister. We do get cars, people, and debris all swirling away into the stratosphere.

Elliot and I enjoyed these scenes more than the obvious lack of chemistry between the two stars, Edgar-Jones and Powell, even though Powell was doing his best good ol’ boy impersonation with a cowboy hat. From one review of the film is this line, “What was needed were skyrockets but their chemistry barely gets past being a sparkler.”

Anyway, we do recommend this film as a good popcorn summer movie. It’s certainly not Gone With the Wind.

Tomorrow Elliot and I will be seeing a performance of Pilobolus at the Joyce Theater at 7:30 p.m., so I doubt I write my blog then.

Have a good Wednesday, everyone.

Stay safe and be well.