“In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.”

These are the words of Senator John McCain conceding the 2008 election to Barack Obama. They seem to come from another time. McCain was showing grace and eloquence on the most disappointing night of his political career. He realized the historic significance was more important than his own feelings.

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It’s supposed to be the time when summer slips into fall. The temperature cools down. The foliage makes us appreciate the world around us. There is good news for parents as their kids go back to school. Kids not so much. So, what the hell happened? The month started with a blast of record hot weather that felt like we were standing in front a pizza oven. It was ninety-five degrees on Labor Day. Seventy-four of Philadelphia’s school buildings don’t have air conditioning. Kids were let out by noon for the first week of school. Just when a parents thought they got rid of them for the day. The city opened cooling centers and gave out fans. Since 1888, there have only been thirty-one heat waves in September six of them since 2008.  That should tell us something. This is climate change on fast forward.

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It caught my eye as my wife and I walked through The Jenkintown Arts Festival. We were looking for new art for the house by a local artist. We actually came back to it twice before buying it. We wanted to check out as many artists as we could. There were dozens. But I was drawn to the sunset colors and mix of images. The slightly rising road disappearing into the glowing horizon. There are indistinguishable shapes at the crest of the road and a traffic sign. To the left is the darkened house with trees protecting it and a dim light in the upstairs window. You can imagine yourself  looking out the window enjoying a light show that only nature can provide.

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It’s day eleven. He’s still on the loose. He could be caught by the time you read this. But, so far he’s like trying to find a shadow in the night. This has a been the summer of extreme heat, wild fires, floods, and Trump indictments. But no story has shaken people  in Chester County, Pennsylvania like the search for an escaped killer. Every morning people wake up asking, “Have they caught him yet”? You probably know that five foot tall convicted killer Danelo Cavalcante escaped the Chester County jail by crab-walking up between two walls in front of a surveillance camera. He then got up to the roof of a jail building, despite razor wire, and managed to somehow jump to freedom. All in full view of a guard tower. The guard apparently wasn’t pay attention. He’s been fired. It took an hour for the jail to realize Cavalcante was missing.

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It keeps happening. This time it was a twenty-year old University of South Carolina student who banged on the wrong door at two-o’clock in the morning. Earlier this year, it was a Missouri teenager going to the wrong house to pick up his younger brothers. In rural New York, a car full of young people pulled into the wrong driveway looking for a friend’s house. The Missouri teenager survived. A young woman in the New  York incident was killed. In both those cases, old men with guns have been charged with crimes. Things in South Carolina have ended very differently. Nicholas Donofrio had moved into fraternity house on the same block just a week earlier to start his junior year. It’s still unclear if he was drunk or on drugs. Toxicology tests are pending. It was a fatal mistake.

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There is only one thing you need to know about last night’s Republican candidates’ debate. It doesn’t matter what they tried to sell as their policy positions or their shots at the other candidates. Whether it was Pence saying he was proud he followed the constitution and did his job when he certified Biden’s 2020 election victory, or Bully Boy Chris Christie calling out Vivek Ramaswamy for trying to ripoff Barack Obama in his description of himself. The biggest and only take away was the candidates’ answers to the question if they would support Donald Trump as the party’s nominee even if he was convicted in one of the four felony cases in which he is charged. Six hands went up. Christie sheepishly raised his hand half way to get attention. Only former Arkansas  Governor Asa Hutchinson kept his hand down. It was as if Trump was standing backstage peeking out the curtain to see who would standby him no matter what. The candidates were like members of a cult who didn’t want to show disobedience to the leader who has them all brainwashed.

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This week a judge in Montana, of all places, took a small step for clean, healthier air. It took a bunch of kids, with the help of some adults to make it happen. The case was called Held v. The State of Montana. It was brought by Our Children’s Trust on behalf of a group of young people ranging in age from five to twenty-two. It was the first of its kind to go to trial in the United States back in June. The suit claimed the state’s support of the fossil fuel industry was contributing to climate change violating their constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment. Yes, that right was written into the Montana state constitution in 1972. It says, “All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment.” The original document was written in 1889 and influenced by the powerful copper and coal industries. The state’s policy says it can’t consider climate change when issuing new permits for fossil fuel projects. Basically, letting these industries pollute all they want.

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We are on fire and it’s only getting worse. During this Fourth of July holiday week, we endured the four hottest days in modern Earth history, or at least since we started keeping records of such things in 1940. The planet experienced the hottest June ever recorded. Heat has ripped across the world from the south and southeastern US to India. The ice in Antarctica is at record low levels. The average world temperature on Tuesday was 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest ever. We keep burning oil, gas and coal and not listening to the climate scientists who keep telling us we have to change our behavior or make Earth an unlivable hell. And while we burned up celebrating our nation’s birthday, some of us didn’t make it to the end of the week because we continued to lead the world in mass shootings.

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Have you noticed there are more old people around? It’s not your imagination. A story in the New York Times this morning confirms our worst fears. The US Census Bureau says the median age in the country is 38.9 years. To put that in perspective, the median age in 2000 was 35 and in 1980 it was 30. Where has youthful, vibrant American gone?The guy who wants to stay president is 80 years old and the guy who wants to be president again is 77. Even people who like Biden, think he is too old to run again. Age doesn’t seem to affect Trump supporters even though he is also overweight and lives on McDonald’s cheeseburgers. Is it possible people on canes and walkers will outnumber people on bikes. How did we get here?

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It was the pictures that may be the most shocking part of the thirty-seven count indictment against Donald Trump. Boxes and boxes of classified and top secret documents piled up in a shower, bedroom, ballroom stage, storage rooms, and an office. One photograph shows the boxes spilled out on the floor after they fell off the pile. It looked like the home of your crazy uncle who hoarded books, newspapers, magazines and other junk and piled them floor to ceiling. It was a look into the madness of Donald Trump, a man who held the most powerful position in the world for four years. The indictments boil down to the charges that Trump knowingly took the hundreds and hundreds of documents out of the White House. Then when it was discovered he essentially stole the documents, he lied and refused to return them to the National Archives. When he finally did return some, his lawyers lied and said all the documents had been returned. When it turned out they weren’t, it led to the FBI search warrant and raid last summer of Mar-a-Lago.

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