Sunrise — 7:04, 7:07, 7:12.

The desperation begins to show.

Why are the headline and subheadline nearly identical?

That's Politico, where they seem to have lost their mind. 

Democratic operatives, including some of Kamala Harris’ own staffers, are growing increasingly concerned about her relatively light campaign schedule, which has her holding fewer events than Donald Trump and avoiding unscripted interactions with voters and the press almost entirely....

Speaking of unscripted, today, everyone seems to be talking about her incredibly awkward inability to ad lib when her teleprompter malfunctioned yesterday: 

Kamala's teleprompter briefly went out at the beginning of her speech — you can tell the exact moment it happened.

She had absolutely no idea what to do or say.

Humiliating. pic.twitter.com/287bSswwgS

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 4, 2024

At 0:13, she looks as though she's having a vision of losing the election for this — this.

How political is hurricane coverage?

5 days after Hurricane Katrina The New York Times front page was wall-to-wall Hurricane coverage.

5 days after Hurricane Helene The New York Times has moved on to January 6th. pic.twitter.com/Mh7Sdv4jl7

— Alberto E. Martinez (@albertemartinez) October 4, 2024

Sunrise — at 7 — with the UW Marching Band.

It's "On, Wisconsin!" and then random music provided by the silhouetted couple's boombox:

Then the band was playing what to me sounds like random notes, and when I played the video on my desktop just now, Meade says "Send me that one," and I was puzzled....

I'm told it's "Hail Purdue," and I get it. Meade grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana. Purdue is his original home team, and he wants to send the video to someone in West Lafayette. Don't you think it's nice that the band plays the enemy's fight song? It's a tradition, a welcome, played pre-game.

"Trump, during Fayetteville town hall, says he'd change Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg."

The Fayetteville Observer observes.

The proposal was extremely popular with the crowd, to the point where they booed a man who said he was "an active-duty soldier here at Fort Liberty."

Later, Trump said "I think I just learned the secret to winning absolutely and by massive margins. I'm gonna promise you, as I said at the beginning, that we're gonna change the name back to Fort Bragg, because... I just see this great-looking soldier just accidentally said Fort Liberty and he got almost booed the hell out of the place."

"Once I thought Trump would be an aberration for Republicans. But on Tuesday night, I saw the future of the party and it was lies piled on lies, and darkness swallowing darkness."

Maureen Dowd watched the VP debate and describes how she felt about it, in "JD Smirks His Way Into the Future" (NYT).

Vance seemed like a replicant. There was no sign of the smarmy right-wing troll who said Harris “can go to hell”....

When did Vance say Harris "can go to hell"? I don't remember, and we're not given a link. Earlier in the column Dowd goes on about a Trump ad and fails to give a link. I found that frustrating but I figured she (and the NYT) did not want to boost a Trump ad. But why can't we get the context for that "can go to hell"? It makes me assume that the context would make Vance look better. (I looked it up — here — and it does.)

Back to Dowd:

He has a bizarre, degrading view of the role of women in American society.

Again, no context. 

But on Tuesday night, he put on a mask of likability and empathy.

"In a chilling tale of revenge, a 30-year-old man mowed down his father's murderer in Ahmedabad's Bodakdev locality after waiting 22 years for an opportune moment."

"The accused, who was eight years old when his father was crushed to death in a similar manner, grew up hearing stories about the killers, and nursed a deep grudge and an intense desire to avenge the murder. On Tuesday afternoon, Nakhat Singh Bhati (50)... was riding his bicycle when he was run over by a pickup truck...."

From "After 22-year wait, 30-year-old mows down father's murderer" (Times of India).

Oliver Willis. Remember him? Remember Daily Kos! I did a search and clicked on my favorite headline.

My search was barack obama with kamala harris today and elon musk with trump.

I wanted something to link to for a post about how both presidential candidates are suddenly appearing with their most prominent supporter. Today's a big day and their pulling out their biggest... celebrity.

Here's the headline at Daily Kos that made me laugh: "Obama hits the trail for Harris as Trump teams up with notorious troll."

Obama’s first event for Harris will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Thursday....

Why is he only appearing now? My hypothesis would be that it was thought that he would overshadow Harris, but now there's a new desperation. Something is needed. Will Obama say we should elect her as a way to have continuity with the Obama Administration? But she's said many times "We're not going back." You're supposed to understand that we're not going back to the Trump Administration, but lately it seems to have meant we're not going back to the Biden Administration, which seems incoherent, give that her performance as Vice President is her primary credential. But how can we believe we could go back — without going back — to the Obama Administration? Oh! It's easy, with Obama speaking. He can make these ideas fit together, with his fine rhetoric and mellifluous voice.

Back to Willis:

On the same day Obama’s plans were revealed, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk announced that he will attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Musk is worth an estimated $261 billion, and has a history of anti-union views.... On social media, Musk has frequently promoted conspiracy theories and racist memes in support of Trump and other conservative causes. The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which Musk owns, has seen a resurgence of pro-Nazi accounts since Musk took over the business.

That's the view from Daily Kos. 

I'll watch both rallies. I'm interested in seeing how the 2 great men share the stage with their presidential candidate, and I'll judge them by what they do today. 

It's October 5th, so that means 1 month until Election Day.

And maybe you think the race is really tight, almost exactly tied. But I'm looking at this...

Biden was up 6.0 points in Wisconsin in 2020 on October 5th, but he won the state with only a 0.63 margin. Clinton was up 5.5 in Wisconsin in 2016 on October 5th, but Trump won, with a 0.77 margin. How can Harris be looking at a win, when she's only up by 0.8? To believe the candidates are truly tied, you ought to see Harris up by something closer to 5 points.

Note that Harris needs Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump only needs to pick off one of those states. In all 3, Harris is far behind where Biden and Clinton were on October 5th. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 with a 0.72 margin. In 2020, Biden won it, but he had only a 1.17 margin, when the polling on October 5th showed him with a 6.6 point lead. As for Michigan, Biden won by 2.78 points, after showing a 5.8 lead on October 5th. And in 2016, Trump won Michigan — by 0.23 — after Clinton was up by 5.7 on October 5th.

Imagine if Harris were up by 5.7 in Michigan right now, 5.5 in Wisconsin, and 7.5 in Pennsylvania. The media would portray her as absolutely crushing Trump. That's what Clinton had on October 5th. Her supporters were very confident, calling those 3 states the "blue wall." And then Trump won them all.

Of course, Harris's advisers must see this. I presume that behind the scenes, there is panic, if not despair.

ADDED: Here's the headline at The Washington Post for you to read between the lines: "Harris is running a much bigger campaign than Trump. Will it matter? She spends three times as much, employs hundreds more staff and dominates the ad war. But the race is effectively tied."

Sunrise — 6:46.

"Well, she’s — I’m in constant contact with her. She’s aware of where — we all — we’re singing from the same song sheet."

"We — she helped pass the l- — all the laws that are being employed now. She was a major player in everything we’ve done, including passage of legislation, which we were told we could never pass. And so, she’s been — and her — her staff is interlocked with mine in terms of all the things we’re doing."

Said President Biden, at the end of his press conference today, when he was asked what role Kamala Harris has played working on the "crises" of the last few days.

It almost seems designed to hurt her, but perhaps we can credit him with being so out of touch that he thought this was helpful. Has he not noticed that she's been trying to appear unattached to the Biden administration?

Fungus of the Day.

That's a photo by Meade. And here's a photo I took not far from there:

I thought the "Vance" brand for marijuana was amusing. I looked up the company and found this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, from 2020: "This Milwaukee company rolls thousands of CBD joints every day and is bringing in millions":

At Knuckleheads Tobacco stores, Vance Global's product is the top CBD cigarette, said Madison store general manager Landon Meske. It's the No. 1 staff recommendation for a CBD smoking product, Meske said.

Oh! Knuckleheads. Funny to see "knuckleheads" so soon after the VP candidate who is not Vance called himself a sometime knucklehead. But I know Knuckleheads. I've done photography there:

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"So why [did Melania] come forward with purported support for abortion rights one month ahead of the election?"

"The issue remains one of Donald Trump’s biggest weaknesses in November, no matter how much he tries to flip-flop on his position. His most recent attempt was to say he would veto a national abortion ban.... A cynical read would be that the Trump campaign hopes these Melania excerpts will help them with moderate voters who are angry about Dobbs and fear the former president will go even further to roll back our rights if he’s reelected. The women in his orbit have always been useful in softening his image: In a similar fashion to Ivanka Trump being painted as a 'moderating force' during the first Trump administration, the former First Lady’s memoir helps portray her as someone who will advocate for women’s rights from inside the White House...."

Writes Andrea González-Ramírez, in "Melania Trump Suddenly Wants to Talk About Abortion Rights" (NY Magazine).

Yes, I would presume that Melania's seemingly independent voice is coordinated with the Trump campaign. Those who are imagining that she's antagonistic to Trump and intentionally undermining him are — I suspect, reading their mind while they read hers — projecting.

"When states began legalizing marijuana nearly three decades ago, initially for medical use, they set in motion something of an unintended public health experiment...."

"But cannabis remains illegal under federal law and classified as a tightly controlled substance, which has stymied oversight and scientific study.... [Few states] require warnings about cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome or psychosis. None are monitoring — or are even equipped to assess — the full scope of health outcomes. 'There is no other quote-unquote medicine in the history of our country where your doctor will say, "Go experiment and tell me what happens,"' said Carrie Bearden, a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.....  The commercial industry that followed [legalization] touted its products as beneficial, while focusing not on developing marijuana’s medical uses but on engineering a quicker, more intense high.... The commercial market expanded further in 2018 when Congress legalized hemp, a cannabis plant used in industrial products, and inadvertently legalized highly intoxicating hemp-derived compounds like Delta-8 THC...."

From "As America’s Marijuana Use Grows, So Do the Harms/The drug, legal in much of the country, is widely seen as nonaddictive and safe. For some users, these assumptions are dangerously wrong" (NYT).

"[Jack] Smith has essentially abandoned any pretense; he’ll bend any rule, switch up on any practice — so long as he gets to chip away at Trump’s electoral prospects."

"At this point, there’s simply no defending Smith’s conduct on any sort of principled or institutional basis. 'But we need to know this stuff before we vote!' is a nice bumper sticker, but it’s neither a response to nor an excuse for Smith’s unprincipled, norm-breaking practice. (It also overlooks the fact that the Justice Department bears responsibility for taking over two and a half years to indict in the first place.)..."

Writes former federal and state prosecutor Elie Honig, in "Jack Smith’s October Cheap Shot" (in New York Magazine).

The way motions work... is that the prosecutor files an indictment; the defense makes motions (to dismiss charges, to suppress evidence, or what have you); and then the prosecution responds to those motions.... [Smith] asked Judge Chutkan for permission to file first.... Trump’s team objected, and the judge acknowledged that Smith’s request to file first was “procedurally irregular” — moments before she ruled in Smith’s favor, as she’s done at virtually every consequential turn.

Smith has complained throughout the case that Trump’s words might taint the jury pool.... Yet Smith now uses grand-jury testimony (which ordinarily remains secret at this stage) and drafts up a tidy 165-page document that contains all manner of damaging statements about a criminal defendant, made outside of a trial setting and without being subjected to the rules of evidence or cross-examination, and files it publicly, generating national headlines. You know who’ll see those allegations? The voters, sure — and also members of the jury pool....

The Justice Manual — DOJ’s internal bible, essentially — contains a section titled “Actions That May Have an Impact on the Election.” Now: Does Smith’s filing qualify? May it have an impact on the election? Of course. So what does the rule tell us? “Federal prosecutors … may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election.”

Remember, Smith begged the judge to flip the rules on their head so he could file this document first, and quickly — “any action,” by any reasonable definition — with the election right around the corner.....

"Biden hasn't scheduled public events in 43 of the 75 days since he dropped his re-election bid, a reflection of the 81-year-old president's unpopularity and age limitations...."

"Vice President Kamala Harris — who has praised Biden but doesn't routinely talk about him in her speeches — has had just one campaign event with him along with a few official events in Washington. First Lady Jill Biden also has largely withdrawn from campaign events, and Harris' team hasn't pushed for her to do them, people familiar with the matter told Axios.... Some Biden aides and close allies believe he's been aging more rapidly in recent months under the stress of the job and the legal troubles of his son, Hunter (the White House disputes this). Biden has sat for just two interviews since July 21, despite lingering questions about his mental fitness.... Behind closed doors, Biden has acknowledged to aides that he is unpopular and will do whatever Harris' team thinks will help her win — including not campaigning in certain states."

From "The disappearing Bidens: A quiet end to a presidency" (Axios).

That piece is larded with statements that a President's work is mostly done behind closed doors, but that means that the President's work could be done without the President's conscious, competent participation. Aren't we Americans entitled to know if we have a President? This idea that he's fading out quietly is a distraction from the real question: Do we have a real President right now and for the next 4 1/2 months? It's a dangerous world.