It Looks Like Time-Warner and AT&T are Merging

The lead story has to be this proposed merger  between A T & T and Time-Warner, which sounds completely insane because they are each other's chief rivals in this area.  Then there would be no competition at all.  But there is a little twist on the thing.  The Trump administration I guess is the one who proposed the merger but he's also saying there are strings on the merger.  It depends on how CNN treats President Trump in the news and I guess CNN will be a part of this merger.  I didn't know CNN was also owned by Time Warner but maybe they are.  Trump definitely wants to shut down competition in the news media.

The big news around here is this heat wave.  For the past week and a half weather forecasters have been understating the high of the day by about five degrees.   One day when they said it was only 77 in the news it definitely was in the eighties.   Monday was a warmer day than Sunday and every successive day this week has been warmer than the previous day.  Yesterday they said it was ninety and I say it was 95.  Humidity is up and will increase along with the temperature today to a predicted 98 in Anaheim as monsoonal action comes into play when the High pressure off to the east moves in closer and sucks in moist air from the Gulf of California.  Personally we haven't had air conditioning in here for two weeks except maybe briefly during the evenings.  Strangely it feels cool in here right now returning from breakfast.  So maybe something is working.  My appetite is down.  But after all it is summer time so expect heat.

As to Vladimir Putin, it's still an open question whether President Trump has met him face to face before.  Apparently several years ago Trump said he had met him and now he says he's never met him until today.  The President has given indications that he's not going to be confrontational about whether Putin has sabotaged the Presidential campaign of last year, except perhaps to say "Good job; well done".  There will be a lot more news on the whole Europe trip to announce after today.

Stocks today are down in response to a lack-luster unemployment report where fewer jobs were added last month than expected.  The president is at this economic summit in Germany and the event has been punctuated by widespread protests and police intervention.  Yesterday the President spoke with the leader in Poland and apparently Trump criticized US media to foreigners.  He also touted the values of conservatism which aren’t necessarily universal American values.  This is what the left wing media is claiming anyhow.  The only thing I heard personally is that he spoke a lot about ISIS terrorism.  Apparently Poland installed the “Law and Justice” party in 2015, two years ago.  If they were advancing Black civil rights ‘Law and Justice’ wouldn’t be a bad thing but somehow I get the feeling they mean something different by it.   Trump also repeated his claim that maybe Russia contributed the last year’s democratic campaign woes but he insists on saying that “Others were involved” without the slightest glimmer who these “others” are. 

Governor Christie made the news on Sunday when he and his family occupied a deserted beach with his family.  It so happens the Governor himself had closed all of the State beaches because there was no state budget.  But then Monday night the day was saved when Christie signed the new state budget into law so that people in NJ can start going to the beach again.  The optics were horrible on this one and Christie’s brash attitude only made things worse. 

North Korea launched off an ICBM, intercontinental ballistic missile on the Fourth of July.  It sent seventeen hundred feet up into the air but only traveled five hundred miles laterally and landed in the Sea of Japan.  North Korea said they didn’t want to over-fly Japan.  That was nice of them.  Clearly is the missile had been aimed more horizontally it could have reached Alaska, so they have a missile now with almost the capacity to hit the American mainland.  The President can’t be very happy about this considering even minor things upset him.  

This is Thursday July 6, 2017.   Let’s start with mid morning.  Thom Hartman cane on at nine.  I made preparation to be picked up by Tim at nine thirty.  I was smoking out back at almost nine thirty and Tim was looking for me.  Bill and I and Carol left just after nine thirty.  Carol had to go for physical therapy and she was dropped off in Westminster after Tim dropped us off.  For technical reasons he had to sign us in.  The waiting room was moderately crowded with some arrivals before and some after us.  We made good time getting there.  I didn’t know AD wasn’t a religious magazine any more but stood for Architectural Digest.   Our appointment was for 10:15 and Bill was called in at twn twenty.  I was called in not long after that.  Dr Nichols didn’t give me the purple treatment on my butt today but he did shine the UV light on me and remarked about how improved things were on my butt.  Then his son came in to give me the usual shot.  I was done by a quarter to eleven and I don’t have to see Dr Nichols again.  He said I could call him with any new skin problems.  I went outside to smoke.  The AC was working good when we first got there but the office seemed to warm up the longer we were there.  I was still smoking my cigarette when Tim showed up.  He had to go inside to do some paper work.  We didn’t make as good of time on the return trip.  We went the usual way going and coming.  We arrived here at 11:15 but I went to use the restroom and see if anyone had gone through my things while I was gone.  (That’s a different story)  We had good pizza for lunch with cheese and pepperoni and we had two big slices.  We had a green salad with that and peaches for dessert.  I missed the first round of Augustine and the coffee but my first cup was everybody else’s second.  People seemed to clear out early and I actually felt rushed.  I had the Shannon and Neil Savedra show on.  Ncil is tricky when defending Donald Trump values.  He suggested that “All you socialists wouldn’t be a problem if you lived among yourselves in your own community, but don’t sponge off the rest of us.”   Somehow this is a remark I couldn’t picture Jesus Christ making.  But we haven’t read the gospel of Savedra.  He employs this trick of calling all left of center people “socialists”, which is the farthest thing from the truth.  He also said something about “It’s only the socialists who complain about the government”.  After this was Days of our Lives.  Today Dr Marlena Evans is doing hypno therapy on everybody.

It was a real sweat box in here and basically still is.  So I went and bought a two liter bottle of Coke for $2.25 and also a pack of cigarettes.  I had a little and then went down to the courtyard for a graham cracker and a lemonade.  Then I went and talked to Augustine, who was talking with Tess by her car.  The first thing Tess said when she saw me was to remark about how much weight I’d lost.  She asked me if I”d seen a doctor about it.  I then mentioned that the air conditioning hasn’t worked in this room for over two weeks.  Augustine said it was the first time I or anybody has told him about it.  He said he’d look right into it.  So far nothing has happened.  Then I returned here.  Then I called Mom.  I mentioned that my cough has been getting worse and that  I intended to talk to Dr Saran about it as well as my strange weight loss.  I mentioned Judy’s letter about how Mom is sleeping a lot more than she thinks she is at night.  Mom says she’s had stomach flu for the past week.  That’s a long time.  She and a bunch of the other residents have been quarantined.  Mom asked me about Tim’s trip and I told her everything I could remember from two conversations a week apart in early June.  I told her that Paul finds it hard to truly mentally unwind because Judy’s health is taking a toll on him, we well as work.  I covered a lot of stuff.  After this I went out to smoke and then had the Norman Goldman program on from three to four.  For dinner we had a good pork roast and we were even given butter for our mashed potatoes.  The green beans already had butter on them.  We had orange sherbet for dessert, or at least three of us did.  Marcia’s sherbet was mostly line.  Ricardo announced that he was supposed to have worked last night but the med trainee showed up and wanted to work and so he obliged her.  I have been dousing my head in cold water as a way of cooling off.  Eye Witness news is on now.  We are on page six and we’ll go to page seven.