Ups and Downs of TV This Morning

When I turned on my TV this morning, while running a few minutes in place in my living room and waiting for my coffee to finish brewing, I first caught sight of Donald Trump...on the morning following his supposedly watershed nomination speech...going back to what he does best: flinging mud at others.  His target today was one of his favorites: Ted Cruz.  I switched the channel, but all of the news stations seem to think that any time this guy wants to rant about anything or anyone, they are somehow obligated to give him all the free publicity he wants.  Then I remembered that the Tour de France was still going on, and I changed the channel to watch it.  Today it was in the 19th of its 21 stages, and the course was severe, going up and down mountains with steep slopes and tight curves.  On top of that, it was raining heavily, and cyclists were skidding and falling everywhere...including Tour leader Chris Froome.  Fortunately for him, immediately after his fall and loss of his own bike, a teammate who was right there gave him his own...Froome did not suffer much in the end in terms of his lead.  But his yellow jersey had gaping holes where he had hit the pavement, and you could see a lot of bruising over his body.  What a game, courageous performance this competitor gave today!

Later on, after the Donald was safely off the air, President Obama and Mexican President Nieto gave a joint press conference after their meeting with each other.  The calm, assured demeanor of Obama contrasted sharply with the often maniacal rantings of Trump.  Later on, I've heard, Hillary Clinton is supposed to announce her VP running mate, with the news pundits leaning toward Virginia senator Tim Kaine as the pick.  We'll see if they were right...

No, television wasn't all that great this morning unless you happen to be into bicycle racing or political mudslinging, but then again I didn't spend a lot of time going up and down the dial.  I did try out the Andy Griffith Show on TVLand, but alas, they were showing one of those inferior later color episodes without Don Knotts playing his famous role of Barney Fife.  And without ol' Barney to muddle things up, it just wasn't the same series anymore...