Omarosa: “They continue to deceive this nation by how mentally declined he is. How difficult it is for him to process complex information. How he is not engaged in some of the most important decisions that impacts our country. I was complicit, and for that I regret.”

Is she trolling or is she for real? Also, is the whole book written in this manner?

What’s really great about rural living is the farm life. Now that the heat wave is relenting a bit (meaning that the temperatures are staying under 100°F), we are starting to take Klara to visit local farms. The one we visited today had a beautiful white pony, donkeys, Guinea fowl, a baby cow, and a bunch of goats. Klara was over the moon about the goats.

There are also beautiful hiking trails on the farm but they are of no use for us with a toddler.

We are planning to go to a farm with llamas next, and then to an apple farm.

I thought I’d hate living in a rural area, but now I totally love it. I’ll have six or seven trips this academic year, and that’s quite enough for me in terms of seeing crowds and hanging out in more populated areas. I actually loved it that there were few people on the farm today. Ten years ago, I really missed big-city crowds. And now I’m all about empty spaces.

Whether Putin helped Trump or not, Trump clearly hasn’t helped Putin:

At the same time, Mr. Putin’s approval rating, still elevated by Western standards, has been sinking. In July it dropped 15 percentage points, to 64 percent from 79 percent, according to a Levada poll.

The Levada Center belongs to the Russian government (although they claim to be independent, which is a joke), so things must be even worse. If you are wondering what happened in July to create such a turn, Putin tried to raise the retirement age for above male life expectancy, meaning that most men (especially those living outside of Moscow) will die before they get to retire. The reason why Putin had to do it is that he’d spent the pension reserve on annexing the Crimea and couldn’t replenish it because of the low oil prices (resulting from the fracking revolution in the US), US sanctions, US pressure on Merkel to stop aiding Putin financially, and US tariffs. On every one of these issues, Trump has been unwaveringly anti-Russian.

Now a question. If Bernie Sanders (whom Russians supported on the par with Trump) had won the election – and this is something I would have obviously preferred – which of these things (fracking, pressure on Merkel, more sanctions, tariffs, etc) would he have promoted?

I understand nobody cares as much about Russia as they do about their lives right here at home. Neither do I, which is why I’m sad Bernie lost. But I wish people who don’t care and don’t understand stopped evoking Russia at every turn.

Ocasio-Cortez gets so much media attention because she, and people like her, are Republicans’ only hope of not losing the election in November.

Republicans have absolutely no message of their own. None. Voters very clearly don’t want more Reagan, more austerity, and more handouts to big business. So Republicans roll out the tired old bugbear of “the other guys are too scary and radical.” And they might just be successful because instead of kindly discouraging the eager young woman from becoming the Left’s Sarah Palin, the Democratic leadership is trotting her out for the world to see. What stands behind it – a sexist desire to see a young woman get publicly mocked and destroyed, a manifestation of the Democrats’ tendency to self-sabotage, or an honest delusion that AOC’s slogans stand a chance of going mainstream – is unclear. What is clear is that Democrats have rarely been better positioned going into midterms and they will have to fight very hard to lose them.