Posts by Alex Miller

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2024 US Election Preview

Perhaps no US election has been more fraught with consequences for the nation and the world than will be the 2024 presidential contest.  It’s true that 2020’s election was pivotal as well, but the depths to which Donald Trump was willing to sink to maintain power weren’t apparent until he sent an armed mob to the Capitol to challenge those results, two months later.  Now, with full knowledge of his depravity, abuse of power, and contempt for the Constitution, reinstalling this felon in the Oval Office is unthinkable.  And yet, here we are.

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Garden Glimpses: August Slump

It happens every year, and it’s always a letdown.  August.  If I could excise it from the calendar, I would.  After the floral exuberance of July, August comes as a wet blanket, if anything as drought-inclined as August can be termed “wet” in any sense.  Daylilies done, echinacea ended, bee balm bereaved.  Rudbeckia straggles on for a few weeks, declining daily, but still providing some pops of brilliant yellow color, until by month’s end it’s just a mass of desiccated brown.

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The 2024 Democratic National Convention

The 2024 DNC kicked off in Chicago on 19 August, under very different circumstances than those under which it was conceived and planned.  Originally intended as a re-up ceremony for incumbent US President Joe Biden, likely a fairly sedate affair (given his age and the flagging poll numbers in the race against Donald Trump), after the former withdrew from the race and passed the baton to VP Kamala Harris, things changed dramatically. 

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The 2024 Venezuela Election

On 28 July 2024, Venezuela held a national election, voting for a six-year term for president, beginning in January 2025.  Nicolas Maduro, the two-term authoritarian president, was running for a third term, and to stack the deck, the administration barred many in the opposition from even running for office, including leading candidate Maria Corina Machado.  Edmondo Gonzalez Urrutia ran in her stead, representing the Unitary Platform party, the main opposition political alliance.

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Debby Down(pour)er

Hurricane Debby made landfall as a Category 1 storm in the small town of Steinhatchee, in Florida’s Big Bend, at about 7 AM EDT on August 5, 2024.  Debby had been named as a Tropical Storm just two days before, an unusually short interval between naming and effect.  Winds began falling rapidly shortly after Debby went inland, and she was downgraded to Tropical Storm status again within a few hours, but Debby’s impact is expected to be felt in the arena of rain, with as much as 30” predicted in some regions.  Already as of this writing (August 6), Debby has dropped some 16” in Manatee County, Florida, and historic flooding is expected in Georgia and the Carolinas.

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Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Baneful Bulge

On August 3rd, 2024, aspiring Olympian Anthony Ammirati coined a whole new meaning for the term “cockblocked” after failing to qualify for a pole vault event when his penis collided with the bar on the way down, knocking it to the ground (the bar, not his penis).  The embarrassing footage of the phallic fail immediately went viral, and though Olympic authorities later confirmed that Ammirati would have been disqualified regardless, as other, less intimate portions of his anatomy had touched the bar prior to its dickish dislodgment, there was no stopping the cock-a-hoop hilarity that ensued.  The French athlete, with no apparent irony, later described the incident as “a big disappointment.”  Cheer up, Anthony – a manly manhood has its compensations! 

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