The Morning Briefing - July 19, 2016
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL - Gov. Chris Christie has dreamed of making this Thursday night's acceptance speech at the GOP convention. Maybe he's even rehearsed it, envisioning himself taking his rightful place as his party's nominee amid a cascade of red, white and blue balloons. Alas, speaking tonight will just have to do. Christie, by all accounts, will be far more subdued than during his 2012 self-promoting convention keynote, relegated to hyping all the amazing things about Donald Trump. On a night when the theme is economics, Christie gets stuck talking about Trump, although he would love to spend 20 minutes on prime time TV detailing all his alleged successes in New Jersey, as he battled a Democratic Legislature thirsting for wild and crazy tax increases. That Christie "success" can be brought to Washington, where a guy like Trump would apparently ensure any Beltway insiders get smacked down for even whispering about tax increases. Because a Trump Administration, with that glorious wall lining Mexico, will create a windfall of cash. Just you wait; it is going to be great. Just like Jersey.
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL - It appears that the Trump campaign really loves a speech that Michelle Obama delivered Aug. 25, 2008, as Melania Trump gave a speech last night that seems freakishly familiar. (Melania would like to thank her two favorite speechwriters, "Cut" and "Paste.") The Trump campaign vehemently denies it all, of course, saying different people are allowed to use the same words in whatever order they want. This is America, after all, dammit. Meanwhile Obama speech writers find it all downright hilarious. Enjoy this.
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL - A well-designed logo is a crucial marketing tool in politics, just as in business. So you'd think a micromanaging mogul like Donald Trump would know better than to let his staff hastily unveil a Trump-Pence logo that got his fledgling partnership with Gov. Mike Pence mercilessly mocked on social media. The campaign's first logo featured a blue "T" penetrating a "P," and got panned as as "amateurish" and "sexually suggestive," projecting Trump as (what a shocker) the dominant partner in that political pairing. Former Michigan Rep. John Dingell even jokingly tweeted: "What is that T doing to that P?" The Republican campaign quickly erased the offensive capital letters and leaving just the name "TRUMP" atop "PENCE." Um, better yet, says, Trump. How about just TRUMP and Pence?
LEONIA - An outpouring of generosity for a 14-year-old with Cerebral Palsy whose motorized wheelchair got stolen last week certainly eclipses the arrest of its thief. News of the despicable theft prompted the manager of a Pennsylvania medical-supplier to offer to replace the $12,000 wheelchair for free. And, an online crowd-funding campaign has raised more than $17,000 for the teen and his family. Meanwhile, an observant borough patrolman arrested an 18-year-old Palisades Park man on Saturday for stealing the wheelchair after the cop noticed the chair sitting amid garbage cans and bicycles outside a home near where Thursday's theft occurred. The suspect is now held on $25,000 bail.
SECAUCUS - State wildlife officials are crying fowl after some birdbrain abandoned 92 domesticated ducks in a grassy near Mill Creek Mall. Using their hands and nets, state Fish and Wildlife experts rounded up the 42 male and 50 female "khaki Campbell ducks" from the mall's grounds, a nearby condo complex and the Mill Creek, NJ.com reports. Barnyard Sanctuary in Warren County is now caring for the ducks, most about 4-months-old, and has already found families to adopt about a third of them. Meanwhile, state wildlife officials remind us all it is illegal to release domesticated animals into the wild and whatever bastard abandoned the raft of ducks can be criminally charged. Damn you, Trump.
HILLSDALE - All we can say is: It must have been one helluva a music festival. A 20-year-old from Hillsdale was reported missing on Sunday at the Camp Bisco Music Festival on Montage Mountain in Scranton. He was eventually found, alive, in a swamp, buried up to his waist in muck and water. Rescuers pulled him out and took him to a hospital for evaluation, with zero clue how he got there. His friends are now saying, "Dude, we said the red pill, not the orange one!"
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
PHILADELPHIA - We spend a lot of time trying to describe Donald Trump's indescribable hair. But, how does the coif stand up against some real Presidential hair? We're talking the colonial locks of Washington, of Adams, of Jefferson. We don't have that answer, but you can find out at the new Presidential hair museum, at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. There, you can check out the new exhibit, "Presidential Archives: Letters, Hair and Fossils," running through the Democratic National Convention. A local attorney with a bit of a Presidential hair fetish collected the specimens in the 1800s and donated them to the museum before the Civil War. So, check it out, and see if Trump's hair has already crawled over.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Expect that next pack of unfiltered Camels to cost you $30 or so, as it was this day in 2014 that R.J. Reynolds was ordered to pay $23 billion to a widow of a smoker who died of lung cancer at age 36. The crux of the lawsuit: The company hid the health and habit-forming risks.
WORD OF THE DAY
Blimpish [blim-pish] - adjective
Definition: Pompously ultra-conservative and nationalistic
Example: Is Donald Trump conservative enough to satisfy a blimpish America lovin' Republican base?
WEATHER IN A WORD
Beach.