It's Randy Rainbow's latest and it might give you the idea that he doesn't care for Trump's V.P. pick…

Regular followers of this site — I believe I have some — may notice that it is online well over 99% of the time and it loads pretty fast. This is because after misadventures with several other hosting companies, I finally sprung for one of the top grade ones which, of course, is not cheap. Every year about this time, I pay them thousands of dollars for another year of hosting this site. It's about the same amount that Johnny Carson got for hosting The Tonight Show…or at least, it feels like it.

Since I do next-to-nothing to "monetize" (hate that word) this site — no paid ads, no paywall, no Patreon account, no subscription fee — once a year, I ask my readers to chip in for the cost of keeping newsfromme online and totally available. The way it works is that I put up little banners like this one —

— and if you're so inclined, you click on one and use PayPal to send me whatever you can easily afford to send me. When I get enough to cover my annual expenses for this site, the banners will stop appearing.

And if you sent some bucks, you can continue to read this weblog with a clear conscience and the proud feeling that you did the right thing. If you don't donate, you can still read just as much of this site as the donors but you won't feel very good about it. As Felix Unger once said to Oscar Madison, "Let it be on your head!"

John Oliver's show is off until until September 8th but we are not without his presence on our screens…at least, our computer screens. When he goes on hiatus, they put an entire season of his past shows on YouTube…which I suspect means they've decided these shows will have little to no value as future reruns or home video releases. Here is a link to view Season One. Here is a link to view Season Two. Here is a link to view Season Three.

And some time today, they posted Season Four, which are the shows that aired from February 12, 2017 to November 12 of that year…so the first year of the Trump presidency. I watched parts of a few this evening and it's maddening how many of the outrages the show covered are still with us. This, by the way, was the season that the show went after Bob Murray, the coal baron.

Here's fifteen minutes of Ernie Kovacs as his character "Eugene" from a 1961 special. You may have heard how brilliant this guy was…and at times, he certainly lived up to that description. This was one of those times…

Not much to report today. Trump is claiming the polls show him ahead. You and I are both seeing ones that don't but I would imagine he will always claim that whether they do or don't.

Kevin Drum has a good piece up about why everything Trump and Vance are saying about tariffs is off. This is one of many instances where I genuinely wonder if Donald really thinks what he's saying is true or just thinks it's what his audience wants to hear.

I have decided to stop clicking on any link that has the word "meltdown" in it. In the words of the great swordsman and seeker-of-revenge Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." These days, if someone gets caught misstating even the tiniest fact, it is considered by some a "meltdown."

Here's an interesting column by Louis Errol on "The Politics of Joy." It's about how the Democrats are trying to sell two perhaps-conflicting concepts at the same time: That Democracy is in serious peril and that it's about time politics was more fun. I don't know how I feel about this but he may not be wrong.

I can't help it: Every time I hear the word "joy," I think of the ancient joke where someone says, "Let me show you a photo of my pride and joy" and then when you say yes — thinking it'll be a picture of their kid, wife or home — they whip out a picture of a bottle of Pride furniture polish and a bottle of Joy detergent. It's a gag so old that you could buy a packet of the cards in an old novelty catalog I had when I was twelve or so. It was right between the whoopee cushion and the fake rubber vomit.

In fact, it was so old that Henny Youngman carried around such cards (different photo, same joke) and he gave me one of them at the New York Friar's Club. I have it here somewhere.

I recently watched the documentary on Jim Henson called Jim Henson: Idea Man. I thought it was really good and the only way Ron Howard could have made it better would have been to make it about ninety hours long…and it still wouldn't have done its subject full justice.

It included snippets of the memorial service for Mr. Henson. Someone involved with the Muppets gave me a DVD of the whole lovely ceremony shortly after it happened in 1990 and told me not to share it with anyone. Since then, about 800 people have offered me copies of it and the Henson Company put it up on YouTube so I guess it's okay to link you to it. WARNING: Moments will make you cry, especially near the end when the main Muppeteers gather to sing some of Jim's favorite songs…

We're looking at three poll aggregators who take a lot of polls, analyze them and draw some conclusions. The Cook Political Report currently has Harris one percentage point ahead of Trump, Nate Silver's old site currently has her 3.6% ahead of him and Nate Silver's new site has her 4.3% ahead of him. The truth is probably somewhere in that range.

As I understand it, those numbers may jump a lot in the next week or two. A lot of these polls are averaging over several weeks so as the older polls drop out of the mix, the pace at which a given candidate may be gaining ground or losing can seem to be accelerating a lot. Also, we don't know how bouncy the Democratic National Convention will turn out to be.

What we do know — and this probably matters more to The Other Guy than it does to V.P. Harris — is how the TV ratings were. Kamala's acceptance speech was watched by 29 million viewers across 15 networks, a figure that's 14% higher than what D.J.T. got with his acceptance speech at the G.O.P. soirée. I wonder how much of that difference was because hers was 37 minutes and his ran over 90. If he'd omitted all the whining about how unfairly he's been treated and all the same didn't-happen apocalyptic predictions about the U.S. being doomed if Biden won, he could have wrapped it up in ten.

The T.V. ratings may not mean much. If they did, the finale of M*A*S*H would have been elected President at some point. But if it infuriates Trump more and gets him yelling around the ratings being rigged by The Liberal Media, that'll be good for Harris/Walz. People are catching on that his campaign is about his needs and nothing else; not the country's, not the world's, not even other Republicans up for office.

I still haven't gotten around to watching Ms. Harris address the convention but Fred Kaplan — who is my man on the topics of the military and foreign relations — thought the world of it and thinks the world will think the world of it.

From the 2000 American Comedy Awards Show, Nathan Lane and Martin Short sing a song about the glut of award shows…like, say, the American Comedy Awards Show. I don't know this for a fact but I'd bet cash money this song was written by Billy Barnes…

A couple of correspondents asked to hear more about this story Donald Trump made up about Kamala Harris visiting Vladimir Putin. Here's more about it. I suppose Trump might not have made it up himself. But he seems willing to repeat and spread anything he hears about anyone he considers an enemy and that's just as bad as making it up in the first place. Trump is also making up (or spreading) bogus stats on the impact of Climate Change.

Here's Jonathan V. Last explaining what the Democratic Convention was all about. I think a lot of it was about showing possibly-persuadable folks leaning towards the G.O.P. that the opponents being demonized are not at all demons. I have no idea how many of those possibly-persuadable were persuaded but the Dems sure gave it a try.

If I had to pick the Number One reason to oppose Donald Trump getting a second term…well, it would be tough to pick just one. The fact that he's insane and determined to be accountable to no one would be a strong contender. So would the hatred and divisiveness he loves to spread. But I think if I had to choose just one, it would be his continuing insistence that he is the only thing standing between America and total poverty, disease, annihilation and general doomsday. His campaign is built on creating false panics everywhere.

If you read no other article to which I send you, read Kevin Drum's latest summation of how just about nothing negative that Trump says about non-Trump governance and the state of this country is true. There is so much room to do better but things are nowhere near as bad as the Republican candidate for the most powerful job in the world claims.

And while you're over on Kevin's site, read this about how Trump claims Kamala Harris went to meet with Vladimir Putin, told him not to invade Ukraine and then he did. This part about her meeting with Putin is a completely made-up story.

Matthew Ohara sent me this link to an article with more on the effort to resurrect the Koo Koo Roo restaurant chain. I'm not getting my hopes up because this is still in the "too good to be true" category. I'll be a bit less skeptical if/when I hear they've actually made a deal for whatever real estate will hold their first new location.

Didn't see any of the Democratic National Convention today…though I was concerned that Kamala Harris might not accept the nomination. I had a lot of work to do and the first three days of this political Kaffeeklatsch may have left me conventioned-out.

Fortunately, we now live in a world where it you miss a TV show, it's on your DVR and if it isn't on your DVR, it's on some streaming service and if it isn't on some streaming service, it's on the broadcaster's website and if it isn't on the broadcaster's website, it's on YouTube and if it isn't on YouTube, your friend has it and he can upload it to Dropbox for you. So I'll get around to watching the highlights, probably not tomorrow but soon. Don't anyone tell me how it ends.

And here we go with a remembrance of Season 10 of Saturday Night Live. This edition of Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live tells of how producer Dick Ebersol transformed the program into (basically) The Martin Short and Billy Crystal Show. It was not a bad season but it led into a dead end and the only solution seemed to be to bring Lorne Michaels back to helm Season 11. Here's what went right and wrong in Season 10…

Okay, so Kamala seems to be three points ahead of That Other Guy and that's by polling that reflects little or none of any "bounce" she's going to get from the Democratic National Convention. Not bad. There are polls that say it's more or less than three but this ain't a bad place to be right now.

I didn't see a lot of Day Three of the D.N.C. I did watch Bill Clinton take half-an-hour to deliver what might have been a great fifteen minute speech. That man was so good at that kind of thing in his day. I saw Tim Walz deliver what seemed to me like the same speech he's been giving for a few weeks now but it still probably makes even some people who won't vote that ticket think, "Kamala made a great choice." I saw Coach Walz's old football team take the stage which was nice.

Some pundit-type people on CNN were discussing what it is that's hurting Trump. I think Trump is hurting Trump by babbling on about crowd sizes and windmills and The Great Hannibal Lecter and his micro-respect for the military and how unfair it is whenever things don't go his way…but in second place, I think it's this: The Abortion Issue. He wants to have it both ways, assuring the "pro-life" crowd he'll give them everything they want while assuring the "pro-choice" folks he won't give the "pro-life" mob everything they want. Mary Ziegler explains why that's not working.

And this last thing for now is not really political: I'm still rewatching that Roll Call segment from Tuesday's convention coverage and marveling at how ingenious it was and how well they pulled it off. I worked with variety show directors who, if you went to them and described what you wanted to do — and you wanted to do that — they'd say, "Are you outta your mind?" Technically to coordinate all those speakers and all those camera shots and all that music and computer graphics on a live telecast (!!!), they'd tell you it was — as one director I worked with would say about any idea more complicated than two people on stage standing still — "im-fucking-possible."

But they pulled it off with only one or two minor glitches. And somehow every shot of every group of delegates was expertly designed with happy, enthusiastic people perfectly positioned with (usually) the name of the state in the shot and a perfect mix of old and young, white and non-white, male and female, etc. It looked like My America, which is highly inclusive and very, very joyful. Even if you don't care for or about the messaging, they took what is usually the most boring part of one of these conventions and made it, for me, the highlight. So far.

Here's a Mel-dey — a medley of songs from all the musicals written by Mel Brooks — both of them…