"It makes a weird kind of sense that 'The Apprentice' is arriving in theaters Friday, a week after 'Joker: Folie à Deux.'"

"Both movies are set in New York in the 1970s and/or ’80s. Both are about larger-than-life antiheroes perceived as monsters by many and lionized by others. And both seem perversely designed to disappoint audiences on either side of the aisle...."

Wrote Ty Burr, in "Trump biopic ‘The Apprentice’ avoids taking sides. Good luck with that. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong star as the young Don and his soulless mentor, Roy Cohn" (WaPo)(published last Tuesday).

Sunrise — 7:14.

"And thus, on this tooth and claw planet, you need a very strong military - so I’m going to stick with the idea that ['Full Metal Jacket'] footage was used primarily because of its powerful, realistic portrayal of boot camp..."

"... juxtaposed with the entirely demoralizing and inappropriate injection of WOKE ideology into the USA military. Which I agree with myself and which I’m certain my father would have agreed with. Truthfully, I believe my father (who supported Reagan), would very much approve of saving America, indeed the world, from the highly destructive Globalist forces threatening to take over this planet...."

TO THOSE WHO THINK MY FATHER WOULDN’T HAVE WANTED #TRUMP TO USE FMJ FOOTAGE

Here are my thoughts: I agree in principle that an anti-war movie is incongruous with promoting the idea of a tough non-woke US military and thus war itself - however - these are very dangerous and… https://t.co/0bSXz8nL3V

— Vivian Kubrick (@ViKu1111) October 13, 2024

Reading the rabbit's mind.

I'm reading "We take our dogs everywhere. Maybe we shouldn’t," by the Portland, Oregon writer Tove Danovich:

After pausing to take a photo of a flower along the trail, I looked up to see a doe standing directly in the path in front of me.... Later on, while sitting to take in a quiet moment, I watched as a rabbit popped out of the bush onto the trail, ears twitching. The two of us stayed there together for a minute, maybe two. Then she ran off a second before I heard the dog coming toward us. It wasn’t safe for a rabbit with a potential predator close by....

I see rabbits all the time, in our yard and along the nearby woodland trails, and the rabbits are always the same. They freeze at first, and then they suddenly bolt. It doesn't take a dog to trigger the shift from frozen to hopping the hell out of there. The rabbit has 2 modes. The column writer interprets it her way, flattering herself by imagining the rabbit is communing with her, followed by fear of the dog. But I think I've seen far more rabbits than the author. That doesn't make my reading of the rabbit's mind perfect. But I'm thinking that the rabbit isn't thinking anything at all, but is programmed by evolution to alternate between 2 strategies: 1. Look invisible, 2. Become invisible. That is: 1. Freeze, 2. Run. The rabbit does the same thing every time.

And, by the way, no matter how gently you may move through the woods and how fondly you may regard bunnies, when you, the human being, are around, for the rabbit, there is "a potential predator close by."

I don't like this random worker being embarrassed. She didn't ask to be exploited as scenery.

Just a pro-tip for Kamala campaign staffers...

When you film Bill Clinton going to a McDonalds for a campaign stop... you might want to edit out the part where the cashier thinks he's Joe Biden.

What a complete mess. pic.twitter.com/NEKdBVWjs9

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) October 14, 2024

ADDED: "Oh, my God! It's Bill Clinton!"

"The relationship between Kamala Harris' team and Joe Biden's White House has been increasingly fraught in the final weeks before Election Day..."

"... 10 people familiar with the situation tell Axios," Axios reports.

[M]any senior Biden aides remain wounded by the president being pushed out of his re-election bid and are still adjusting to being in a supporting role on the campaign trail.

"They're too much in their feelings," one close Harris ally said of the president's team — a sentiment shared even by some White House aides....

Go to the link for a list a specific clashes.

Do you think the Democrats would have been better off sticking with Biden? They knew Harris's weaknesses, and they knew the switcheroo would be difficult to pull off and to sell to the people, and they knew Biden was still alive, still in power, and would be powerfully emotional. When I see Biden on camera, speaking, these days, I think he comes across better than Harris... and I feel his pain:

"She's my boss here," he says, gripping Jennifer Granholm's arm. How tightly?

ADDED: Think they could pull off a reverse switcheroo in the last 3 weeks?

"When Joe Biden called Kamala Harris on the morning of Sunday, July 21st, she was... wearing sweatpants and a hoodie..."

"By the time Biden announced his withdrawal, that Sunday afternoon, a scramble was already under way, largely out of public view. Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative who helped Harris secure the nomination, told me... 'We weren’t going to do this bullshit that other people were asking for,' he said. In his view, an open convention was a way to 'skip over Kamala.' After Biden’s call, Harris had summoned aides to her house, and a dozen or so people gathered around a table.... In the hours that followed, her team undertook an operation that was less an improvisation than a culmination of years spent cultivating allies.... Harris never had time to change out of her sweats. By the following morning... she had endorsements from a majority of Democrats in Congress, two large unions, and a growing number of state delegations.... David Axelrod, who was the chief strategist for both of Obama’s Presidential campaigns, told me, 'There was an argument that she would be strengthened by a competition, but she showed a mastery of the internal politics, which is one test of a potential candidate. People respond to competence, and that was a very competent operation.' He compared it to a rapid military strike. 'She didn’t get handed this nomination,' he said. 'She took it.'... By gaining the nomination so late, Harris spared herself the obligation of courting the orthodox wing of her party in primaries. But a short run has risks; it left her little time to explain what she believes and what she would do in office... "

Writes Evan Osnos, in "Kamala Harris’s Hundred-Day Campaign/Three months ago, the Vice-President was fighting for respect in Washington. Can she defy her doubters—and end the Trump era?" (The New Yorker).

Little time to explain what she believes? Little time to arrive at beliefs.

ADDED: I chose this article to blog first this morning, but it was one of the many headlines I saw that made me want to create a new tag, something like "pre-postmortem." Real Clear Politics cues up these headlines:

Sunrise — 7:09.

This morning's heavy fog was hard to capture:

I returned to the same vantage point at 3 p.m. and took a non-sunrise photograph:

"Maybe Musk’s time would be better spent doing concentrating on SpaceX and his other corporate interests instead of engaging in fascist politics and peddling trash through his social media platform at X!"

That's the top-rated comment at "SpaceX successfully catches returning Starship rocket/The uncrewed mission on Sunday was the company’s first successful attempt to 'catch' its Starship rocket as it lowered itself down to the launch pad" (WaPo)('A SpaceX Starship rocket successfully landed upright alongside a massive metal landing tower on Sunday as it was caught by two converging 'chopstick' arms — marking another historic engineering breakthrough for the company’s largest rocket").

Meanwhile, "peddling trash through his social media platform at X," Musks posts this:

Starship rocket booster caught by tower pic.twitter.com/aOQmSkt6YE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2024

And this:

"NYT reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro sits in silence as JD Vance educates her on the labor force participation rate relating to illegal immigration."

"Garcia-Navarro tried arguing that illegal immigrants can't be deported because America needs them for jobs," writes Collin Rugg, with this clip:

NYT reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro sits in silence as JD Vance educates her on the labor force participation rate relating to illegal immigration.

Garcia-Navarro tried arguing that illegal immigrants can't be deported because America needs them for jobs.

She pointed to the… pic.twitter.com/SiNwyldSwR

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 12, 2024

ADDED: I don't agree that Garcia-Navarro is silenced by Vance. She lets him have his say, but she also breaks in. She's challenging him with a practical point that I don't think Harris supporters like to be explicit about. From the NYT transcript (with Garcia-Navarro in boldface, interrupting Vance 5 times):

"Although Mr. Trump is not expected to be competitive in California, the rally showed that he could turn out a crowd."

"Throngs of people at Calhoun Ranch, where it was held, braved the desert sun and temperatures that hovered near 100 degrees.... It was Mr. Trump’s second foray into a blue state in two days. On Friday, he visited Aurora, Colo., where he made a series of nativist attacks and promoted falsehoods about crimes committed by migrants in a state where Ms. Harris is safely ahead in polls. And word surfaced this week that Mr. Trump was planning to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York City, on Oct. 27. That would be his third major campaign event in New York, a state that was once his home but is also solidly blue.... At his California rally, several speakers taunted Ms. Harris, who represented California in the Senate and served as its attorney general, for problems the state has faced. Mr. Trump called California a 'paradise lost.'"

Writes Neil Vigdor, in "Trump Hits Coachella, Campaigning Once Again in a Blue State/The former president took a detour from the battleground states to hold a rally in the California desert, where temperatures hovered near 100 degrees" (NYT).

Why is Trump rallying in blue states? Lots of experts are weighing in. The dominant mainstream view seems to be that Trump wants to use these places as a backdrop for arguing that Democrats govern badly. Also there's the idea of helping down ballot Republicans.

I think it makes him look as though he's confident that he will win, and maybe people like to vote for the winner or feel de-motivated to vote for someone who looks like the loser. That could help him in all of the states. I think that a lot of people pre-adjust to what they think is inevitable and that Trump may be looking ahead and thinking about smoothing the transition of power — mellowing the people who might otherwise be screaming at the sky.

Trump recently expressed concern for that iconic screaming woman:

"Super Dave was puffed up with misplaced confidence as he plunged himself into one death-defying stunt after another."

"Although modeled on the real-life daredevil Evel Knievel, Super Dave was more like the ill-fated Wile E. Coyote, who would snap back from being crushed by a boulder or falling off a cliff in the Road Runner cartoons. 'People loved the character getting mauled,' Mr. Blye told the Television Academy."

From "Allan Blye, 87, Dies; ‘Smothers Brothers’ Writer and ‘Super Dave’ Creator/In his wide-ranging career, he also helped write Elvis Presley’s comeback special and appeared on an early version of 'Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood'" (NYT).

And, re the Smothers Brothers show:  "Mr. Blye and his writing partner, Mason Williams — best known for writing and performing the hit guitar instrumental 'Classical Gas'— worked on the deadpan editorials delivered regularly by Pat Paulsen, a mournful-looking cast member who used the show as a platform to run for president in 1968 as the candidate of the S.T.A.G. (Straight Talking American Government) Party."

"In a few days, the voters will go to the polls and elect a man to ruin the country. I mean run the country. All the other candidates are making 11th hour appeals seeking a convincing mandate from the people and the people are making 11th hour appeals for a convincing candidate. Polls show Nixon leading both Humphrey and Wallace with 14 undecided and 36 percent disgusted."

James Carville watched a few minutes of the Biden/Trump debate, then turned it off, "ate two pot gummies and started listening to some Hank Williams."

"He said he realized at that moment that Mr. Biden would have to drop out. By every account, Mr. Carville’s decision to act against Mr. Biden came after extensive consultation with a network of friends he has been talking to daily for 30 years. 'I went into this with what you would call in the law malice and forethought,' he said.... 'I could have been embarrassed,' Mr. Carville said. 'He could have run and won. But it never occurred to me that I was wrong.' At this stage in Mr. Carville’s life, there was not much to lose and it is hard to imagine him remaining quiet. 'He can’t help it,' said Paul Begala, Mr. Carville’s partner on that 1992 campaign and one of his closest friends. 'It is who he is. His income does not depend on being hired by politicians. Nor has it been for 30 years. He can say whatever he wants.'"

Writes Adam Nagourney, in "James Carville on Aging, Edibles and His Anxieties About Harris/At 79, the Democratic commentator is the subject of a documentary that captures his musings — and his warning to President Biden — about the toils of age" (NYT).

What Hank Williams song did James Carville cue up?

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (because JC was sad)

Jambalaya (because JC is Cajun and the song begins "Goodbye, Joe")

Hey Good Lookin' (because no one ever said that to him)

Other (make your argument in the comments)

 

pollcode.com free polls

Does this NYT illustration intentionally evoke the classical image of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian?

I wouldn't think, in the aftermath of 2 assassination attempts on Donald Trump, that the NYT would want us to make the association, but here is the image:

And here is the Renaissance painting by Andrea Mantegna:

Like Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Sebastian did not die from this shooting (though he was soon killed):

"I want to flag one case that’s really funny to me, Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas. It’s sort of like the chickens coming home to roost..."

"... for the Supreme Court. A few years ago, the court made up the 'major questions doctrine,' the principle that when an agency makes a decision that involves a 'major question,' courts have a free-floating veto to block it. Well, the 5th Circuit used this doctrine to blow up the entire system of nuclear waste storage in this country, possibly forever.... The 5th Circuit sided with Texas in this case, declaring that the commission is actually powerless to grant licenses for the temporary storage of nuclear waste offsite from the plant... not because federal law says the commission can’t do that... [but because] temporary storage is a 'major question' because it involves nuclear material. And... Congress has to come in and authorize it even more clearly....Because the question 'has been hotly politically contested for over a half century.'"

Says Mark Joseph Stern, in "The Supreme Court Takes a Nuclear Waste Case Almost Too Wild to Believe" (Slate).

Another "SNL" cold open with Dana Carvey as Joe Biden...

... and lots of other worthy impersonations... in a "Family Feud" format:

The YouTube transcript generation has humor ideas of its own: