One measure of how badly Donald Trump did in the debate last Tuesday night is how desperate his backers are to cry that it was rigged, fixed, crooked, whatever. They're complaining that Kamala Harris somehow got the questions in advance and I'll tell you why that's ridiculous. Here's the first question she was asked…

I want to begin tonight with the issue voters repeatedly say is their number one issue, and that is the economy and the cost of living in this country. Vice President Harris, you and President Trump [SIC] were elected four years ago and your opponent on the stage here tonight often asks his supporters, are you better off than you were four years ago? When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?

It didn't take collusion or espionage or any dirty-dealing to know that a question like that would probably be asked. It's probably been asked in every Presidential Debate since Reagan. And just about any answer about the state of the American economy would fit that question. If you don't have an answer for that one, you have no business setting foot on the stage of a debate like that. The next one was directed to Trump…

Mr. President, I do want to drill down on something you both brought up. The vice president brought up your tariffs you responded and let's drill down on this because your plan is what she calls is a essentially a national sales tax. Your proposal calls for tariffs as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said that you might double your plan, imposing tariffs up to 20% on goods coming into this country. As you know many economists say that with tariffs at that level costs are then passed onto the consumer. Vice President Harris has argued it'll mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing medication arguing it costs the typical family nearly four thousand dollars a year. Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs.

Would anyone like to suggest that that was an unfair question? That it was one he couldn't answer? That it was one that he and his aides couldn't have anticipated? More to the point, isn't that a question he would have wanted to answer? Tariffs seem to be his answer to every question about the economy.

And it kind of went on like this. The next two questions were about immigration and abortion — two topics a nine-year-old child (or whoever prepped Trump for the debate) could have told you would be brought up. If the moderators hadn't asked about it, Trump would certainly have raised the topic of immigration. He even brought it up a couple times in response to questions about other matters. And Harris would surely have raised the issue of abortion.

Read the transcript. There were no questions the candidates' handlers couldn't have expected and I don't think Trump was caught off-guard on any of them. I just think he gave bad answers and worse facial expressions.

If you like old cars, you're gonna love this. It's some restored footage of drivers in and around Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and Detroit from the thirties — and it shows that some people back then drove as poorly as some people today. The film is not only restored but it's been colorized and a "sound design" has been added to it, meaning that someone today invented colors and audio but it's still interesting. And I can't help watching this kind of thing without wondering which car has Stan and Ollie in it…

I'm on my backup computer because my main one went kablooey on me last Saturday and the Dell people tried to talk me through fixing it over the phone and now they're sending over one technician after another. I suspect it would be cheaper for them to just give me a new computer but they don't seem to want to do that.

Not much to say about the political situation other than that Donald Trump insists he won the debate the same way he insists he won the last election. Someone needs to explain to this man that drawing a crowd to come see you does not translate to votes. If it did, Neil Diamond would have been President of the United States for about eight terms.

I rarely plug GoFundMe causes here but I'll make an exception for this one. A group is attempting to erect a very silly statue of a very silly man. Here — I'll let another silly man tell you about it…

If you'd like to kick in, here's the page.

After a delay of a few weeks, we have a new episode of Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live. This time, it's Season 11 when Lorne Michaels returned as Executive Producer and it didn't look like he was succeeding. This may have been the last time the show teetered on the brink of cancellation — but teeter it did…

My favorite fact-checking website, fastcheck.org, has posted a pretty long piece of what was true or false in The Great Debate. As one might imagine, D. Trump said an awful lot of things that were just not true…but K. Harris had some, as well. Some of these are arguable…like Trump saying he wanted to be a dictator on Day One of his new administration. The fact-checkers seem to think that was not a fib because he says that was a joke. You can decide.

Those who think everything Kamala Harris said was true are wrong. And those who claim everything Donald Trump said was true are really, really, really wrong.

What we need right now is a good debate recap. And who better to moderate it than Joseph Gordon-Levitt? (Thanks to Carol Lay for recommending this.)

Eric Idle was recently interviewed in The New Yorker and you can read the interview here if you can get past their paywall, which sometimes you can. If not, this article summarizes and quotes some of what the interview says.

It's about where the various Pythons are now and why some of them don't get along well and/or need money more badly than you'd think they would. Idle has a one-man show touring soon and I sure hope that by the time it gets near me, my leg's healed enough to attend. He's a very funny, clever man — they all are, even the two dead ones. I don't like hearing that they're not all best buddies these days. And I always think that airing these kinds of problems in public makes it a lot less likely they'll be solved.

Isn't it interesting how the two campaigns have kinda come down to two simple competing messages? Trump's is "Make America Great Again," meaning "Let's go back to a time when you were happier with your country!" Kamala's is "We're not going back!"

We seem to be talking a lot about crowd sizes these days and Trump's insistence that his are the biggest ever and hers are tiny. The New York Times sent a crew to head-count and take photos and their conclusion is that both candidates are drawing massive audiences to their rallies. Trump will probably claim they're lying and the photos are fake but that's his usual "anything that shows I'm wrong is phony" excuse.

He may be getting a bit of a bum rap with all this emphasis on how many walkouts he has at his rallies. According to the Times piece, he usually speaks for 90+ minutes, she speaks for 25 or so. Hey, any performer can have walkouts when he or she goes on too long. It would be a mistake to infer that those who leave a Trump rally before he's done don't like his politics and won't vote for him. They just think he doesn't know when to end a speech..and they're right.

As for the debate: I've said this here in a couple of ways…

It's gonna be up and down, up and down, up and down…with many moments which will, at least at first, feel like game-changers. We've already had plenty of these. Trump getting shot at was one. Biden doing so poorly in the debate was one. Biden dropping out was a big one. Trump getting convicted of 34 felonies was one. The big Supreme Court ruling was one. There will be more.

The debate was another. And none of those predictions we were hearing back in March or April anticipated any of them. Or those yet to come…

In 1963, Hanna-Barbera entered into a deal with Ideal Toys that resulted in two programs — The Magilla Gorilla Show and The Peter Potamus Show — being produced for syndication. Both were initially loaded with plugs for Ideal's line and both were decent shows, not as good (in my opinion) as what H-B had done before but better than much of what would follow. As a fan of the studio's work at that age — I was 11 — I was excited about the new shows…

…and what really got me excited was a little documentary that aired the day before the first of these shows (Magilla's) debuted. It featured clips of the upcoming series and also from the feature the studio was then working on, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear. Best of all though, it had a little tour of the then-new Hanna-Barbera studio with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera and their staff re-creating a creative meeting in which they came up with the idea for the Magilla Gorilla cartoons. I kinda doubt it actually happened that way.

The voice recording sequence is also pretty fake. They had two artists (or two someones) play the voice actors without showing their faces. Then they dubbed in the actual voice tracks for the cartoon in question. The voices were actually by Allan Melvin and Doug Young but that wasn't Allan or Doug in the mini-doc — a deception I think I even figured out at that age.

Still, now that I'd had a peek inside that magical place, I spent no small amount of time imagining what it might be like to work there…and around thirteen years later, I did for several years. In fact, I worked with Bill and Joe and some of the other folks seen in this video. Here's a shot of three artists who were very important in the look of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and the design of key characters…

Other folks in this who I knew and/or worked with are Jayne Barbera, Tony Benedict, Alex Lovy and Lew Marshall. There's also a moment with Joe Barbera's secretary Guyla, who I knew later when she was still Mr. B's secretary and was also married to artist Alex Toth.

The special was called Here Comes a Star and it aired, at least in some cities, on January 14, 1964. The next day — again, in some cities — the first episode of The Magilla Gorilla Show debuted on the same stations. The host for Here Comes a Star was TV personality George Fenneman, best known as Groucho Marx's announcer/foil on You Bet Your Life. He had recently hosted a game show for CBS called Your Surprise Package and a prime-time show for ABC called Your Funny, Funny Films.

This is not the entire show. A couple of musical scenes have been edited out, presumably because someone didn't want to pay someone else for music rights. But there's enough here you should find fascinating. I miss those days, those people and that building. The reception area when Mr. Fenneman enters looks exactly as it did the first time I set foot in that building around 1974…

Nicole Karlis explains where this nonsense about aborting babies after they're born comes from. Actually, I think it comes from the kind of politicians and political operatives who'll say anything if it prods some person into pledging donations and/or support.

Fred Kaplan on how easy it is to manipulate Donald Trump.

Jonathan Chait on how JD Vance and the right-wing conspiracy nuts sabotaged Trump's debate performance.

Steve Benen on how Trump avoided answering the pretty simple question, "Do you want Ukraine to win this war?" The former prez also declined to give an answer to "Would you sign a National Abortion Ban?" I think we all know where Kamala Harris stands on those matters.

Tim Miller on his adventures last night in the post-debate "Spin Room."

And speaking of the Spin Room: I was talking earlier today with a friend who's well-versed in politics but had somehow never heard that term. I thought the best explanation would be to show this video from after the third Kerry-Bush debate in 2004. Here's Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and I don't know how he got a press pass either…

One measure of how poorly Trump did in last night's debate is how fervently he and his backers are blaming the moderators today.  With Trump, any time he doesn't get exactly what he wants, it's unfair, the game was rigged, somebody cheated, there was sabotage, everything he did was perfect.  But if you look at what the moderators did, what they did was to ask questions that anybody could have anticipated.  There was sure to be a question or two about abortion, a question or two about Ukraine, about the Southern Border, etc.  Some of them were even challenging to Harris but she was wise and prepared.  He gave stupid answers.

A concept for a plan about health care?  This has been a major issue in this country for years.  When he was running against Hillary, Donald said he had a simple, wonderful plan and he was only weeks away from unveiling it.  That's what I would have asked him about.

Today is, of course, 9/11 — a date that will always cause folks over a certain age to remember where they were that day in 2001, how they saw what happened happen and how it was so sad and so numbing at the same time. I woke up to messages on my answering machine — remember answering machines? — from friends who were already up and in the greatest of despair. And then I watched TV in a state of horror for hours and hours.

I watched the whole TV news footage of that day again some years back, acting as a kind of tour guide for a friend who'd been too young when it occurred to really have a sense of the national state of shock. And I was shocked all over again. And saddened. And numbed.

I wouldn't blame anyone who didn't want to relive all or any part of that day. But if you do, there are a few hundred — maybe a few thousand videos online. This one runs an hour and forty minutes and like I said, I wouldn't blame anyone who didn't want to tumble into all that darkness and woe again…

I finally knocked off work on a script with a pressing deadline and made time to watch the debate. I thought Kamala Harris did great — a judgment I see all over the Internet and saw on Donald Trump's face on screen, starting around 30 minutes in. The man did not look happy.

Of course, he'll claim it was all rigged…just as he would if you beat him in a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors. I thought he did himself a lot of damage by not having a better defense on the Abortion issue — one he and his advisors had to know would come up. Harris was pretty impressive talking about that and also about Ukraine. She also did a lot of pretty powerful rebutting just via facial reactions.

Heading for bed now. I may have more to say about this tomorrow.

And this time, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra favors us with a mini-symphony of tunes from old Tom & Jerry cartoons…