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What Sanders people  have always suspected has been confirmed.  The lastest batch of e-mails released by Wikileaks (20,000 of the suckers) clearly shows that the DNC rigged the election  for the Democratic  nomination  from the beginning.  They coerced superdelegates, they used DNC funds for  Hillary’s campaign, they plotted to keep negative stories about  Hillary out  of the media, and plotted how to make Sanders look bad in the media.

This is the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, whose job it is to oversee the process and then support the winning Democrat.  They abandoned neutrality.

Now, I can  hear  my  Hillary apologist friends saying  “But that’s the way elections work,” and “It’s an internal party thing, she didn’t do anything  illegal.” I’m not so sure of that, because  they were seeking donations under false  pretenses, but that’s not my main point.

If this had happened on American Idol, the  judges  would all be fired.  If it  happened on Survivor, or in the Miss Universe pageant, or,God forbid,at the Academy Awards, there would be national outrage.  But, since it’s politics, and everybody just expects Hillary Clinton  to be crooked, it’s getting  almost  no press.

But one demographic  is paying attention. Club Sanders can’t help  but  see this is a slap in the face, a kick in the teeth, a “hahaha,  we  don’t care what you think” moment.

Even if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination, even if she wins  in  the  general election, she  will not get as high a percentage of Sanders supporters as she thinks.  And the Democrats won’t get us in future  elections, either.

Condolences to the families and friends of the dead in Munich.  It seems this is at least  a weekly event, now, though.

Just watched a film ‘Shout at the Devil’ with  Lee Marvin and Roger Moore, set in  Africa in WWI.  It was a pretty good  action/adventure  with  a bit  of comedy thrown  in, but that kind of clashed.  You can’t have comedy when a baby’s been killed.
Anyway, I was struck by the casual racism of  it.  I thought “Damn, how old is this film?” thinking really, even for the 60s, yukking it up when Roger Moore smears mud on his face to pass  for black, like the 101 Dalmations rolling in the coal to disguise themselves as Labradors, feels a little  bit tacky.  So, I looked it up: 1976.  I was surprised.

There’s a town in Colorado where  they’ve found THC in the public drinking  water, and authorities are freaking out, telling people to not drink  water  and  not take baths.  Chill,non-stoner people.  If you drink  some water out of the tap, it won’t kill you.  Not  even close.
I  guess it will work out O.K., though.  Some of  the more  inhibited  citizens will, indeed, stick to bottled water and take a day off personal hygiene, while all the hippies are filling their  bathtubs, and kicking back glass  after glass of the straight from the tap  stuff, trying to take advantage of the free  buzz.  As far as water usage  goes, it will even out.

On my own today, and I had some stravenky for  lunch ( a wonderful Czech invention,stravenky, restaurant coupons, a lot of companies give them out  to  employees as a perk, Helena gets them), and so I  took a walk in to the center.

I do not know if it is my imagination, but  it  seems to  me the streets  of Prague grow more crowded year on year, and certainly a lot of people were on the streets  of  Karlin today.  Is the population of the Earth increasing so fast that it is perceptible over a short period of time?  It has doubled  in my lifetime, that’s  a fact.  A scary  fact.

I was debating in my head whether to go to KFC or the golden arched behemoth, when I came to a Viet Namese place.  See, on my quest through life, I am always looking  for signs, and quite often they are literal signs.

So, I stepped through  the  door, out of the  stifling, still summer heat into a cool, dark interior.  Actually, it  was kind  of sweaty inside, too, but they had a big  fan  going.

I ordered the Pho, but I was watching  others meals as they arrived and realized I have got to expand  my  reportoire in Viet Namese restaurants.  It all looked good.

Now, one thing about  living in Prague is your tolerance for spicy food slips a bit.  When I was  living in L.A., I loved  the spicy food, mostly Mexican.  I held my own when I was living  in Thailand.  But it’s not a usual thing and you get out of the habit.

Well, today, I got  back in  the habit.  Before I finished my soup my eyes were watering, my sinuses  were clear, and I was sweating more like I was in a sauna than a restaurant.  I felt great.  I’d forgotten how much I like spicy food.

It was a good day.  Not that I did anything particularly productive.  That’s only half the equation.  Sometimes good things happen to you.  Today, my new book arrived, and it looks great!

So, I took one over  to  Shakespeare and Sons, and stopped at the library to return two of Isabel’s books.  A lovely day of walking across the river and back and then, in the park along the  river next to the Rudolfinum, I was walking  along and looking at all the  people doing different people things, there was a girl in a white summer dress and  wearing a white paper tiara and she looked like an elf and I thought,ah,the future, everybody playing fantasy roles, and  then I saw  a girl sitting on  the  grass wearing shorts and a T shirt and playing  with her dog, and was snapped  back to reality, but a good reality.  I was enjoying life in all its aspects and  congratulating  myself on living in a city which has  such beautiful parks along the river, where  it is cool to walk on a hot  day, and one woman saw me grinning like a fool, or maybe we made eye contact although I wasn’t  particularly trying, and  she smiled  back very sweetly, and that was my day.

Well, this is just  pure entertainment.  Melania Trump,  in her speech to the Republican convention, plagiarized the living shit out  of Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic convention in 2008.
At first, I  was kind of buying the  Republican defense (One of them, anyway.  There were several lines of defense, and some of them contradictory) that these were just general phrases about values, so it doesn’t really matter.  It’s all kind  of  Miss  Universe fluff, isn’t it? Then I watched  this video:  (video is from The Guardian)

So, the plagiarism is pretty clear.  That leaves me with two questions: how did it happen? and what happens now?

Bearing in mind that  I am not a political insider and am totally imagining this scenario, this is what I suspect  happened:  One of Trump’s semi-disgruntled speechwriters, feeling underpaid and knowing damned well that  this gig is not going to look as good on his resumé as he thought it would, gets a little bit lazy with his  speechwriting.  Who’s gonna  know and who’s gonna  care,  right?

And,  in the  end, he  might be right.  Trump probably doesn’t care.  Everybody  will forget about  this  in  a week.

And that’s my guess  as to what effect  Melania’s plagiarism is going to have on this election.  None at all.  Everybody  will  forget this in  a  week..