HUMOR AND HOPE: Former President Barack Obama came on stage in Chicago last night and said, “I am the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.” The former President was good, but his wife had the crowd in her hands.

 Michelle Obama ripped Donald Trump as the beneficiary of “the affirmative action of generational wealth” while constantly complaining that he’s a victim. She described him as a racist and woman hater who exploits fears and lies, playing “the same old con game” on America.

  “If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance,” she said. “If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. No. We don’t get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top.”

  Addressing Trump’s thinly veiled racial attacks on Kamala Harris, Mrs. Obama said, “My husband and I sadly know a little something about this. For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happened to be Black.”

  And she said, “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” 

  Following his wife, Barack Obama pressed the attack on Trump saying, “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago, it has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala.”

  Warning against a second Trump Presidency, Obama said, “We have seen the movie before,” and “The sequel is usually worse.”

THE WAR ROOM: Israel and Hezbollah militants traded fire today in cross-border strikes, killing at least one person inside eastern Lebanon amid concerns about a growing war. Israel said that it hit a Hezbollah weapons storage facility and Hezbollah struck back at an Israeli military base in the Golan heights.

UNDER WATER: Divers are still trying to enter a sunken yacht that went down with a British tech mogul and American financial executive on board.

  The body of the chef was found.

  Still missing are six people including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah; Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy; and attorney Chris Morvillo, a partner at Clifford Chance in New York who represented Lynch in a recently concluded legal battle, and his wife, Neda.

  The trip aboard the 183-foot sailing yacht Bayesian was supposed to be a celebration of Lynch’s June acquittal on fraud charges in the US. The anchored yacht was sunk by a waterspout about a half mile off the coast of Sicily early Monday morning when people were likely to be in their bunks. Fifteen people including a woman with a one-year-old survived in the water. 

GONE GIRL: After months of leading separate lives, singer Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from her actor husband Ben Affleck after just two years of marriage. Lopez and Affleck had a romance 20 years ago but did not marry at the time.

  Lopez filed without a lawyer and asked for no spousal support from either side. This is the fourth divorce for Lopez, 55, and the second for Affleck, 52, who was married to actress Jennifer Garner. 

THE SPIN RACK:  The Walt Disney Company has back off its legal strategy to block a wrongful death lawsuit by a man whose wife died of a food allergy at Disney World in Florida.  Disney planned to argue that the husband could not sue because he had agreed to arbitration when he signed up for Disney streaming services. Evidently Disney executives heard the hoots and howls. — In other Democratic convention news, delegates to the party of liberals at Chicago’s United Center have been greeted with a giant inflatable intrauterine device, trucks offering free vasectomies, and condoms condemning the Republican Project 2025 

BELOW THE FOLD: The Washington Post reports that a blue and silver statue of Priscilla Chan, the wife of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, “joins bad art of the rich and famous.”

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