Vee

He's a good guy, but I don't think Walz is photogenic or young enough. I think Kelly is solid enough, but I'd prefer Shapiro or Beshear.

SDCC Trek stuff. Carol Kane remains a delight: I'm glad Lower Decks is back in October, but I wish it wasn't ending - I can't tell if it's down to Paramount's money woes or the higher-ups being petty bc it's been more popular than Discovery and S31, or both. (Which is another reason I'm convinced they're dragging their feet on the Picard spinoff - neither LD nor Picard Season 3 came from the main creative heads, and both have been far more popular than the other seasons of Picard or DSC - but I may just be being a tinhat conspiracist on this, as money at Paramount is super tight and the streamer will likely collapse soon and sell everything Trek off to another outlet.) At least Tawny Newsome is jumping to another Trek show (and also writing for Starfleet Academy) - but I'm not super into either premise, though I love Justin Simien. The Section 31 film looks deeply tryhard but also looks like it will at least be reasonably diverting dumb fun. I am at least interested in it taking place in the time gap between the Kirk movie era and TNG, and I'm happy for more Michelle Yeoh. I'm glad this edgelord pet project of Alex Kurtzman has been relegated to just a streaming movie (though it clearly seems to be a pilot film to me for the originally planned series fans were not enthused by). I don't have high hopes for Netflix picking up Prodigy for more, but I hear it's doing well over there. I'm in the middle of Season 2.

Not sure what week McKay just lived in.

IIRC the daily or weekly recaps for Lemay's first days were on here some time ago and yes, the Caroline story allegedly ended totally off-camera - she got arrested offscreen or something. He was that keen to dump what he felt was a dog story. Looking at the state of some soaps today I can't blame him.

This is the tone.

Keep talking, old man.

I'm just here because I'm so happy for poor Celine.

According to the Fox polls, the blue wall states are now almost entirely tied again in a head to head, with Kamala within 1-2 points in Wisconsin.

Yeah, I do not believe Michael can handle Erica Kane.

I don't think Kamala is campaigning in Minnesota. That's just her numbers there this week, which are up from Joe. I haven't seen a single poll where she is not closing on Trump fast.

This race and any of these states could certainly change, but right now? Kamala is hunting him. Meanwhile, Joe is putting in the work: Politico has taken to paywalling their stuff, so as always use archive.is as needed. This feels like an endpoint for ol' JD:

Heads up: It's true: Fox's polling outlet has always been good.

The Vance couch memes are glorious, albeit entirely an Internet invention. This is not.

I'll be expecting a bit more than this, but good: I better see more from Barack this weekend than a one minute video dropped at 6 AM EST. There is apparently an email blast out from Obama as well with an extended statement, which I am trying to find.

In play meaning at risk, to be clear.

I do think the Obama 2008 vibe shift comparison some have used for this week has some real accuracy for this moment. But I hesitate to use it myself. I refuse to be too confident about such a pivotal moment. We knew then that McCain was on the wrong track for America and that we couldn't continue Bush II policies, but McCain was not a deranged autocrat with a history of insurrection who'd packed a corrupt Supreme Court. The stakes are much higher today, the situation is far more dangerous and this entire cycle is far more unstable. We can be happy and excited but we can't let our guard down for an instant. That said... yes, I do think there is a real similarity to '08 at the immediate moment.

I think we have a very strong start and I do think we can do this, but Trump's team has barely been able to get their bearings yet. It looks and feels good but I think it's important to stay vigilant. I will say it's a much better start for an unprecedented, insane switch like this than I'd ever expected.