He used to seem so formidable, a very real threat to American democracy, the pal of dictators around the world. Now even Putin is dissing him, cutting the very prisoner deal with President Biden that Trump said a few weeks ago the Russian dictator would only do with him.
He’s gone, in the minds of many Americans, from being a danger to being merely weird. What happened?
The simple reality is that Trump has entered the Fat Elvis phase of his career.
He hasn’t grown or developed new routines; he’s just reliving his old hits every day, playing to a nostalgic and mostly elderly audience who fondly remember his glory days.
Presley’s fluctuating weight goes back to the ’60s and can be attributed to diet and his increasing use of prescription drugs. To put it another way: “Deep-fried foods made Elvis sick, and too many drugs from Doctor Nick.”
Here’s one thing that’s been in the back of my mind for some time and with a greater focus since Joe handed the football off to Kamala. Donald Trump is old. If you look, he’s much older than in 2016 and 2020. People say these kinds of things as part of the rather dismal “who’s older?” scuffling that’s been going back and forth all year between the two candidates. Here though I mean it in a basic descriptive sense. The difference between being 70 and close to 80 is a big one. It happens to everyone.
What’s not clear to me is whether Trump has the fight and fluidity left to battle from behind, to run a campaign as an underdog. This obviously assumes some key hypotheticals not yet in evidence. At the moment, poll averages show Kamala Harris with a very small popular vote lead. That likely makes the Electoral College as of this moment if not a tie, per se, than something like a jump ball. Of course, her momentum could dissipate as fast as it built up. Or she could continue on the same trajectory. My gut tells me we’re in a fundamentally changed race. But we don’t have enough evidence yet to operate beyond impressions and hunches.
Netanyahu Goes Rogue. Well, he already went rogue, but now he’s gone more rogue in order to stay in power:
As the Biden administration and its allies try to secure an elusive cease-fire in Gaza, Israel appears to have gone rogue.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, came to Washington last week to give a defiant speech. Despite international condemnation, he vowed to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel is killing and imprisoning scores of Palestinians each week, without any clear idea of its endgame.
The assassinations of senior Hezbollah and Hamas figures abroad have now sharply raised the risks of a larger regional war as Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah prepare retaliation, analysts say.
Absent a clear goal in the war, however, Mr. Netanyahu’s defiance is dividing Israel from its allies and the country itself. It has further shaken trust in his leadership. It is fueling suspicions that he is keeping the country at war to keep himself in power. It is intensifying a deep rift inside the society — about the fate of Israeli hostages, the conduct of the war and the rule of law — that is challenging the institutional bonds that hold Israel together.
To form a government and stay in power, Mr. Netanyahu has empowered deeply religious, pro-settlement far-right politicians who oppose a Palestinian state of any kind. He has given powerful roles to Itamar Ben-Gvir, a convicted criminal, who now heads the police and is influential in how the West Bank is run, and to Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister.
They represent a populist revolt against the country’s traditional democratic ethos and institutions, including the army and the judiciary. Much like former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu, despite his long period in power, rides that anti-elitist wave, arguing that he is the only politician who can stand up to the United States and the United Nations and prevent a sovereign Palestine dominated by Hamas.
That methods like cleanses, juice fasts, supplements, and sauna sessions can detoxify the body is among the most misleading wellness claims. “Detox” practices might feel good, have a place in someone’s personal routine, lead to weight loss or create a placebo effect, but experts have repeatedly debunked claims that they meaningfully remove toxins from our bodies. In fact, in some cases, they may do the opposite by harming our built-in detoxification systems; nutritional supplements account for 20 percent of toxic liver damage in the US.
Aside from medical interventions prescribed for specific conditions, there’s almost nothing we can do to help our bodies detox more effectively. Instead, it’s good practice to stay hydrated, get adequate rest, exercise, and maintain good nutrition with a balanced diet high in vitamin-rich plants, all of which support the function of our kidneys, liver, and other organs.
Yet the idea of clearing out our bodies has captivated the public imagination for millennia. “We’ve been doing some version of detoxing since antiquity,” says Dr Christopher Labos, a cardiologist, epidemiologist and the author of 2023’s Does Coffee Cause Cancer? And 8 More Myths about the Food We Eat. Only with the development of modern medicine and germ theory have we realized “that much of that rationale of detoxing doesn’t actually hold true,” he says.
For years, scientists and environmental leaders have been raising alarm that the Great Salt Lake is headed toward a catastrophic decline.
Now, new research points to the lake’s desiccating shores also becoming an increasingly significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have calculated that dried out portions of the lakebed released about 4.1m tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in 2020, based on samples collected over seven months that year.
Last year, environmental and community groups sued Utah officials over failures to save the famous lake from irreversible collapse. In recent decades, as more and more water has been diverted away from the lake to irrigate farmland, feed industry and water lawns, a report last year estimated that the lake had lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area. Its decline was accelerated by global heating and a mega-drought in the US south-west.
The declining lake has exposed a dusty lakebed laced with arsenic, mercury, lead and other toxic substances that threaten to increase rates of respiratory conditions, heart and lung disease and cancers. As its volume shrinks, the lake is also becoming saltier and uninhabitable to native flies and brine shrimp. Eventually, scientists have warned that it may be unable to support the 10 million migratory birds and wildlife that frequent it.
OK, so if it doesn’t work as a lake any more, why not do a Brownfields clean-up and build a bunch of Amazon warehouses there? (Just trying to be helpful.)
Might as well close with this headline from Delaware Bay To Bay. Just because:
Pickleball group protests erupt at School Board special meeting
