AMERICA IS DOING WELL TODAY....BUT

Yes, America is doing well today, if you are wealthy and Republican. President Donald Trump continues to reign supreme over the Republican Party. His 887-page Big Beautiful Bill sailed through the House of Representatives. The minor hangup was not pulling back on the tax breaks to the rich nor easing up on the cuts to liberal interests. The Freedom Caucus wanted much bigger reductions to medicaid and liberal interests and was worried about the national debt. Trump will make a big deal of signing the measure tomorrow. Read the details.

About the national debt, this bill will add $3.4 trillion to the already $29 trillion the country owes. Interest on this debt will top a trillion dollars/year and will equal our Gross National Product. From the New York Times:

Further, two-thirds of the federal budget goes to mandatory programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The Freedom Caucus wanted to lower this percentage.

Why not, though mostly meaningless, but House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries delivered the longest speech in House history today, 8 hours and 45 minutes as a symbolic opposition gesture. The previous record holders were Republican Kevin McCarthy in 2021 and Nancy Pelosi in2018 when they were then the minority leader. Should be useful for campaign commercials to taint Republicans for assisting the rich and at the expense of the working class. Oh, the House has a long way to go to beat Senator Cory Booker's Congressional record, for he spoke on April Fool's Day this year for 25 hours and 5 minutes.

With all now being quiet in the Middle East, next on Trump's plate will be that July 9 tariffs deadline. As you must know, there has been a 90-day freeze. Looks like Vietnam is settled, but there remains the rest of the world, like China and the European Union, which represents 27 countries and accounts for 25% of all U.S. export trades. All the while, the American stock market has been breaking record highs.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at record highs. Dow went up 0.77% and is only 0.41% from it's own record. If you were worried about your Nvidia shares crashing three months ago when it dropped to 102, it rose today to 159.34, putting its market cap at $3.89 trillion.

If you're keeping up with this 20th season of America's Got Talent, you were disappointed this week, for they tossed in a rerun. To recap:

Last year there were 8 auditions, followed by the quarterfinals, semifinals and finale. 21 weeks of shows.
For 2025, the next audition, #6, will be this coming Tuesday, July 8.
Here are all the week #5 auditions.

The first Golden Buzzer of the season went to Jourdan Blue, chosen by Howie Mandel. Lightwire received Simon Cowell's Golden Buzzer. Mel B. chose the Messoudi Brothers, and Terry Crews chose Funkateer Dancers.

There will be 12 of them this year, 8 during auditions and 4 in the early live shows. Frankly, I'm getting tired of those mass dancers, hanging in the air types, dog acts, people jugglers and so forth. However, Howie's and Simon's selections were outstanding.
If you've got two hours to spare, watch this 20 most unexpected singing auditions that shocked. Or at least view Simon singing, the first one.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that Oktoberfest in Germany is mostly in September? The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3. Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September? The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich? These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11. Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town. It was drizzling a bit. We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served. We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall. So no one came to serve us beer. After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine. Thus, we might have been the ...

THE FIRST 84 YEARS OF MY LIFE

The first half of my life was spent preparing myself for my final 42 years. This was a mostly trying and stressful period involving a less than ideal youth, then struggles to get through school, my first few jobs and accompanying life, ending two months later on a Sunday with Part 15E , so it was a spiritual conclusion to my final transition. I never did count the number of actual postings, but I suspect it was around 25 parts. The ending had to do with golf, the disappearance and re-appearance of an 8-iron cover. That was the final clue to whether the beyond after death would be eternal gloom or Heaven. Today, I provide only one transition, but hint about a final one, for this, after all, is Sunday. I'm 84 years old, so let me summarize what happened during the first phase, from 0-42, and follow with the years 42-84. As this is 2024, that key transition year was 1982. I can't seem to find this photo, but as a one-year old baby, I was fat....

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