ORANGE ALERT !!: Looking to put some juice back in his campaign and woo the vote of elders,Donald Trump is proposing to end income tax on Social Security benefits. Obviously it would be expensive for the federal government and throw the country further into debt unless taxes were raised on something else.

    Trump is reported to be frustrated about having to face Kamala Harris after being in position to beat Joe Biden. The Washington Post reports that he told an ally, “It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her, too.” 

  Trump has already called for an end to taxes on tips for hotel and restaurant workers and a cut to the corporate tax rate. When he says these things he doesn’t say where the government would take up the slack. He’s looking for votes.

  On the attack side of campaigning, Trump said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” that the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz “is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner.” Trump denounced Walz as “a very, very liberal man” and “a shocking pick.”

  Trump said, “He’s very heavy into transgender, anything transgender, he thinks is great, and he’s not where the country is on anything.” And he said of Harris taking Walz instead of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro that, “I think it’s very insulting to Jewish people.” 

  Trump says he thinks running against Harris and Walz will make it easier for him to win, but if he really thought that, would he be promising tax breaks he can’t deliver?

  On a note of commonality, both vice presidential candidates Walz and Republican JD Vance drink diet Mountain Dew

THE WAR ROOM: Heavy fighting is under way inside Russia after Ukrainian armor advanced as far as six miles into Russian territory and captured several small settlements.

  This is the third and possibly the largest Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory. Russia claims to be repelling the attack.

ECON 101:  Tuesday’s rally fizzled yesterday as the investment markets remain unsteady. The S&P closed lower than it did on Tuesday, although higher than Monday’s deep dive.

  One explanation is that Japan raised interest rates. Investors have been borrowing money in Japan where interest rates are low and investing it outside the country. The prospect of lower interest rates in the US makes that a riskier bet so investors are pulling out.

LOCS: A federal judge dismissed most of the claims brought by a Black Texas high school student put in detention because of his long locs but upheld the claim of sex discrimination.  District Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote: “What is the rationale for the dress code’s distinction between male and female students? Because the District does not provide any reason for the sex-based distinctions in its dress code, the claim survives this initial stage.”

  Darryl George and his family sued Barbers Hill High School outside of Houston as well as Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton for violation of the state’s law that bans race-based hair discrimination. His school said George’s hair fell below his eyebrows and ear lobes, against school policy for boys.

  Judge Brown dismissed claims that enforcement was primarily against Black students and that George’s First Amendment rights were violated by the school district hair policy. 

FIVE RINGS: American sprinter Quincy Hall was in 6^th place rounding the final curve in the 400 meters but made his move to edge out Great Britain’s Matthew Hudson-Smith by merely .04 seconds to win the gold medal at the Paris Olympics. Hall later said, “I was just thinking, ‘Get home, sir. Get home, sir.’” 

 In the department of “better late than never,” the 2022 US Olympic skating team was awarded gold medals in Paris because a member of the Russian team which finished first at the time was disqualified. Russian star Kamila Valieva, then 15, tested positive for a banned substance before the winter Games. Only last month did a court in Switzerland clear the American skaters to receive their medals.

THE OBIT PAGE: Billy Bean, who in 1999 was only the second Major League Baseball player to come out as gay before becoming the sport’s senior vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion, has died at age 60. He had leukemia.

  Glenn Burke formerly of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland Athletics came out in 1982 after he had retired.

  In 2003 Bean published a book about his life called, “Going the Other Way.” He became an advocate for gay players. “I have spoken many times with people who work in Major League Baseball,” he told the New York Daily News in 2011, “and they are afraid to come out, because they don’t know how their owners and superiors would respond.”

THE SPIN RACK: President Biden told CBS News he is not confident there will be a peaceful transfer of power if Donald Trump loses the November election. Organizers of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna called them off after arrests in an apparent plot to attack an unidentified public event in the area. — A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld Maryland’s decade-old ban on assault rifles passed after Connecticut’s Sandy Hook School massacre in which 20 children and six adults were killed. The majority opinion said that assault rifles fall outside Second Amendment rights to own guns because they are “designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.” — NASA said Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft may not be safe enough to return its crew to Earth and they might have to wait until February to be brought back by rival SpaceX.

BELOW THE FOLD: A Texas man has been accused of hiding explosives underneath toilet seats in the bathrooms at two local car washes that went off when someone sat down. Two women and a girl were injured by what The NY Post called “poopy traps.” 

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