Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray): This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Akroyd): What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis): Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson): The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Mayor: All right, all right! I get the point!
Do you? Get the point, I mean.
It might have something to do with the heat and humidity of July. It is more likely that I've watched more hockey and soccer in the past four weeks than in the entire previous 71 years of my life and each of the two World Cup matches on Sunday ended up tied 1-1 after not 90 minutes of play, but after 120 minutes of play.
Don't give me that oh-so-sophisticated business about soccer being the "beautiful game." Humans have arms and hands. Why would you invent a sport where using the very things that separates us from other primates - opposable thumbs - are expressly forbidden?
It's probably more than watching rich soccer players flopping around on the turf like they've been hit by a meteorite every time an opponent brushes by them.
Certainly, it is the continuing - if not hardening divide between pro- and anti-Trumpsters. This past weekend hundreds of thousands of people marched, demonstrated, and rallied against the Trump program to separate children from their parents at the border.
Some of them are demanding that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) which is responsible for doing Trump's bidding, be dismantled.
ICE is not the same as the Customs and Border Protection Service (CBP). Those of the people who, when you show your passport at the immigration line at the airport, say "Welcome home."
ICE agents are more likely to say "where were your grandparents born?"
Two things about all this: Notwithstanding the zero tolerance program, we need some organization to keep an eye on our borders no matter what its initials are; and, Trump was playing golf at his private club in New Jersey over the weekend.
Meanwhile Democrats are crumbling right before our eyes. Last week a previously unknown woman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from one of the "outer boroughs" - that is, not Manhattan - beat Rep. Joe Crowley, the number four House Democrat in a primary.
Ocasio-Cortez, because she is (a) in New York, (b) Hispanic, and (c) a woman, was immediately labeled "the face of the Democratic Party" which irritated Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) because (a) No one can remember her name, (b) she ran as a "Democratic Socialist," and (c) Nancy Pelosi - notwithstanding the work - is and has been the "face of the Democratic Party."
Seriously, Pelosi quickly made it clear that Ocasio-Cortez' victory was a one-off because she knows Republicans will be happy to push all Democrats into wearing the "Democratic Socialist" label joining her and Bernie Sanders.
Trump said he wanted to withdraw from the World Trade Organization as well as examining the withdrawal of 35,000 U.S. troops from Germany as part of the NATO forces there, and stop doing trade deals with the European Union thus further isolating us from the rest of the world.
SIDEBAR
I don't understand why, while two of the leaders Trump most admires: Xi of China and Putin of Russia are hell-bent on expanding their spheres of influence Trump keeps introducing policies that shrink ours.
What am I missing. What is Trump missing?
END SIDEBAR
The shootings at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis happened only last Thursday. Last Thursday.
You know how I feel about Donald Trump, but in spite of his Tweets and his ridiculous off-the-cuff remarks, it appears Republicans and Democrats, Tea Partiers and Socialists; all have a vested interest in encouraging Zuul to continue bringing tension and discord to our nation.
No one wants to assume the mantle of optimism and cooperation.
Who ya' gonna call?
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the IMDB page for "Ghostbusters," to last Tuesday's primary elections, to the Capital Gazette shootings, and to Zuul.
The Mullfoto is an image of my seatmate on a recent flight.
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