Totally understandable.  Oh wait, CNN photos show that Merkel and Modi both attended the climate session.  Trump did not.

Trump is angling to have the next G-7 meeting at his Doral Club in Miami.  He promoted the Club during the meeting in France, including being a hop, skip and an emolument away from the Miami Airport.

It was just 40 years ago, late summer of 1979.

For a couple of months Gary Fisher had been riding a custom balloon tire bicycle he had built on a frame made by Tom Ritchey. I had a similar bike built by Joe Breeze a year earlier. Gary and I had been roommates for about four years, but Gary had recently rented a small cottage where he lived alone. During the time we had shared a house, we had evolved a hybrid off-road bike built on an old Schwinn frame, which we used for downhill racing on a steep section of fire road we called "Repack." More recently we had taken the next step, which was to create bicycles built for the purpose using modern bicycle materials and components, along with the big tires.

When Tom built Gary's bike, in addition to Gary's input he took advantage of what Joe had learned by building ten bikes like mine. The idea of building such bikes and selling them was far from our minds. The world's supply of such bikes was thirteen, ten built by Joe Breeze, and three built on Tom Ritchey's frames. To us, that seemed like all the world could possibly want.

Almost unique among American frame builders of the `70s, Tom worked "lugless," using bronze welding to join tubes instead of the cast sleeves commonly used on steel road frames. That meant he was not limited in the diameter of the tubing he used, or the angles he chose to join them. He immediately used larger diameter tubing than he used on road bikes, and geometry nothing like that of a road bike.

When Tom built a bike for Gary, one for Gary's friend James and one for himself, he had a revelation. Building off-road bikes was simpler than building custom road bikes, and the materials cost far less.

First, he didn't need to use an expensive double-butted tube set with tapered stays. He could buy straight-gauge chrome-moly tubing in 20-foot lengths straight from the foundry, in the larger diameters he preferred. Second, he didn't have to build each bike as a unique one-off, like all the custom road frames he was building. He could make two sizes, and even paint them all the same color. By standardizing the frame design, he could cut a dozen tube sets in an afternoon and build bikes the next day.

For the time and money invested in building one custom road frame, he could build five or size balloon-tire frames. They were so easy to build that he built nine more frames after Gary collected the two he had ordered, in hopes of selling them to his own friends. Tom rode regularly with a group who hit the trails south of San Francisco on what would now be called "gravel bikes," drop bar, skinny tire bikes built to take abuse.

But because their passion was exploring, not downhill racing, they didn't care for bikes with heavy wheels and big tires, built to take a downhill pounding. Tom couldn't unload any of his nine new frames.

Finally Tom called Gary, who had been his only customer when he bought two of Tom's frames and sold one to a friend. Maybe Gary could find a few more buyers for hand made balloon tire bike frames that were as beautiful as anything made for the Tour de France.

Gary drove the fifty miles to Tom's place in Palo Alto and picked up the frames. Later that day he tracked me down in Fairfax. He opened the trunk of his battered BMW, and showed me nine beautiful bicycle frames. He explained where they had come from.

"Hey man, you want to sell bikes?"

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had said no, but I didn't, and it set me off on the greatest bicycle adventure of the 20th Century.

We pooled the money we had in our pockets at that moment, about $200, and rode a few blocks to the bank where we opened a commercial account to handle the profits soon to come flooding in. The bank executive filled out the form and asked what we would call the company. Gary and I agreed that "MountainBikes" was a catchy title, for both the name of our company and the product we intended to sell.

Later on several bicycle companies bought some of our hand made bikes and mass produced them. Within six years the name of our company had become the generic name for all similar bicycles, and mountain bikes dominated the bicycle market. In 1996 mountain biking became an Olympic sport.

Ric Ocasek, lead singer of the new wave rock band The Cars, died Sunday in New York City, police said. He was 75.

More from the link...

"(T)he Cars were the ultimate New Wave dream machine: a hook-savvy super-charged quintet that fused 60s pop, 70s glam and avant-rock minimalism into a decade of dashboard-radio nirvana," the band's biography reads on the Hall of Fame website.
The band had 13 Top 40 singles and four Top 10 LPs, according to the biography.
Ocasek founded the group in 1976, the biography said.

The three candidates are bunched together, each receiving about the same amount of support (Sanders 20%, Warren 20% and Biden 19%) from registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters.

Monmouth

"Ronald Reagan wore tan suits during his presidency. So did Dwight Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But on August 28, 2014, when President Barack Obama showed up for a White House news conference dressed in beige, the light colored suite became a matter of national import."

Trump says, just "take the land," and assuaged worried subordinates by promising to pardon them for any wrongdoings that them may incur. Those Texas ranchers probably don't mind the seizure of private property. But, it does sound like socialism to me.

Given that his aides are "the best people" they may really believe that Trump would have their backs. And, of course, a Trump pardon would not cover violations of state laws.  And, too, there is that nettlesome issue of being involved in a criminal conspiracy --instruction to break law with promise of pardon.  Trump is not concerned, since dangling pardons is no big thing, apparently, not enough for an Article of Impeachment, at least yet.

I wonder if they might have partly decided that because of what a whole big trial thing might mean for everyone involved.

DOJ watchdog says James Comey broke FBI policy by keeping, leaking Trump meeting memos

Collider

The latest from Canadian filmmaker Danishka Esterhazy, Level 16 builds a compelling, complete little world in the halls of this institution that would feel right at home in a better-than-average YA novel, though here it's perfectly scaled down for the requirements of a 102-minute movie. Esterhazy tells us exactly as much as we need to know, keeping the mystery of Vistalis alive and threading along the mystery until the grotesque ultimate reveal. While Esterhazy's society of oppressed girls certainly has threads of The Handmaid's Tale in its analysis of how traditional feminine values can be used to silence and subdue women, it's teenage tale isn't focused on sex and motherhood, but other ways the female body is exploited and peddled in ways that help keep women down.

It's also about how women overcome those burdens, and more broadly, how we fight back against conformity and obedience to discover freedom. Esterhazy gives these girls an empowering fight for independence and self-discovery,

Scientists created miniature brains in the lab that formed intricate networks and produced brain waves similar to those fired by the developing brain of a preterm human baby, according to a new study.

"It really really helps in a disaster when the president and the governor are from the same party because they don't have to question each other's motives."

"Failure happens. None of us is perfect. But you must train yourself not to fear failure. Fear instead inaction when it is time to act. Failure to act is often the biggest failure of all."
- John Wooden, UCLA men's basketball coach (1910-2010)

As of Sept. 1, 2019, there have been 37,664 incidents of gun violence across the United States.

283 were mass shootings, which are defined as a gun violence incident with four or more victims not including the assailant, and which don't necessarily result in fatalities.

Gun violence this year has resulted in 9,933 deaths and 19,869 injuries. 2,521 of those victims have been children under the age of 18.

Responding to the recent spate of mass shootings, two of which were carried out at its stores, Walmart has announced that it will ban people from openly carrying guns at its locations and will also stop selling certain kinds of ammunition, Business Insider Reports

DarkHorizons

The story revolves around a lonely German boy (Roman Griffin Davis) whose only ally is his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler (Waititi). The kid's world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic.

Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi), Jojo must confront his blind nationalism. Sam Rockwell, Stephen Merchant, Alfie Allen and Rebel Wilson co-star

I'm liking Nancy a lot for the way she is handling them.  I'm amazed she hasn't grabbed one and shaken it as hard as she could.

They are doing exactly what they should be with impeachment.  Trump and the DC media have a wet dream.  It's called officially announced impeachment hearings.

Trump has been flailing because Mueller is gone and he requires an enemy.   If you think he could not turn it to his advantage ...... not sure how to finish that.