Also on today’s menu:
Police Arrest Alleged Bank Robber In Campton
Attempted Bolivian Coup Fails
President Joe Biden Jr. and former president Donald Trump are scheduled to appear tonight at a debate before either candidate has become the formal nominee of his party. It also is the earliest debate in modern US history, and it will take place in a cable television studio without a live audience, with muted microphones so each candidates can use his allotted time without the chaotic interruptions that have been a feature of recent debates.
Biden will have to counter a public perception — created in large part by doctored video footage by Trump supporters — that he is senile, and that he is presiding over a failed economy when, in fact, the US economy is in the best shape it has been in decades and leads the world’s economy. Americans tend to focus on the still-high grocery prices rather than on the overall economic outlook that has led to pay increases that exceed inflation and has led to record-high stock performance.
Trump will have to counter the perception — downplayed by major media — that he is unable to put together an intelligible sentence. He comes to the debate as a convicted felon. He will have to address the Project 2025 agenda that would calls for quickly establishing deportation camps for as many as seven million immigrants, using the Department of Justice to enact vengeance on anyone not loyal enough to Trump, and would eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the Commission on Civil Rights, and protections for consumers and marginalized groups.
Discussion: Many Americans dislike both candidates but have little choice when the major political parties turn the primaries into inaugurations rather than allowing voters to choose from a wide selection of suitable candidates. With their thumbs on the scale, those party leaders have given us a choice — again — of choosing the least bad candidate. With Trump having created distrust in everything, from factual reporting to the country’s institutions that protect freedom, those who listen to him no longer give credence to what they see, instead accepting every lie Trump utters, but ignoring his threat of creating a “unified Reich” where is dictator.
Police Arrest Alleged Bank Robber In Campton
New Hampshire State Police apprehended Barry A. English Jr., 38, of Nashua, a suspect in a bank robbery at the Passumpsic Bank in Newport, Vermont, in Campton on June 24, after a 20-mile pursuit.
Troop F and members of the State Police Mobile Enforcement Team took up pursuit of a blue 2013 BMW 550i that had been reported stolen from Nashua on June 23, and saw the vehicle traveling south on Interstate 93 in Lincoln. The driver failed to stop for police, and continued to Campton, just north of the Plymouth town line.
Southbound travel lanes were briefly closed while police took English into custody.
Discussion: During the robbery, English allegedly threatened that he had a gun.
Attempted Bolivian Coup Fails
An attempted coup in which armored vehicles rammed into the doors of Bolivia’s presidential palace in La Paz on June 26 failed to unseat President Luis Arce, and even his rivals “closed ranks to defend democracy and repudiate the uprising”, according to the Associated Press.
Tensions have been brewing in Bolivia amid a severe economic crisis. Juan José Zúñiga, general commander of the army, said “our country, our state cannot go on like this.”
Zúñiga, who was appointed commander of the Bolivian Army in 2022, had been removed from his role on June 25 after he made inflammatory comments about the country's former president, Evo Morales. After the coup attempt, he was arrested as the instigator of the rebellion.
Discussion: Despite the pressures Bolivians face, they value democracy.
We will definitely be watching.
I do wish that there was someone younger on the ballot that I could support. However, this is who we have and I choose the person who believes in our country and democracy. I do not need and I do not want a tyrant. I could never vote for a person who keeps telling us how awful America is. And, how great and brilliant people like Putin is. The very discussion about internment camps should concern everyone. It hasn’t been that long since we did this to our own citizens of Japanese descent.