Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the contrast between last week's Democratic Convention in Chicago, which

showed the best of America and the earlier Republican Convention, which displayed the worst

of America, and get an analysis of why anyone supports Trump's GOP.

Joining us is Dr. Alan Francis, a professor emeritus and former chair of psychiatry and

behavioral science at Duke University.

He's the author of the award-winning international bestseller, Saving Normal, and the

reference work essentials of psychiatric diagnosis.

And his latest book is Twilight of American Sanity. A psychiatrist analyzes the

age of Trump, now out in an updated paperback version. Then we get a wrap-up of the Democratic

National Convention and an assessment of how RFK Jr.'s withdrawal and endorsement of Trump

will impact the key swing states like Pennsylvania

and speak with Will Bunch, who is an award-winning national opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

He blogs at Attitude.com, that's A T-T-Y-T-O-D, and is the author of The Burned Identity,

a search for Bernie Sanders in the New

American Dream, and most recently, after the Ivory Tower Falls, how college broke the American

dream and blew up our politics and how to fix it. We will discuss his latest articles at the

Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago DNC, a pulsating rave where the ecstasy is a vision of

Magofi America, and in Chicago, Dems redefined what it is to be American, then claimed it.

Then finally we'll get a strategic analysis of Ukraine's incursion into Russia and discuss

what Ukraine appears poised to achieve

...