SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:45 P.M. ET: 

MY HEART BREAKS – From The New York Times:  "Rachel Maddow, the biggest star on the MSNBC cable network, just posted her lowest quarterly ratings results ever.  'Morning Joe,' MSNBC’s signature morning program, scored its second-lowest quarterly ratings, reaching an average of just 87,000 viewers in the key news demographic group.  And 'Ronan Farrow Daily,' the network’s heavily promoted new afternoon show, which stars a 26-year-old Rhodes Scholar with a high-profile Hollywood lineage, has been largely a dud.  Though it has mostly happened quietly, which may be a comment on the cable network’s larger status in the media landscape, MSNBC has seen its ratings hit one of the deepest skids in its history, with the recently completed third quarter of 2014 generating some record lows."  I weep and wail.  This is a nutty, left-wing "network." awash in angst and feeling the pain of the allegedly downtrodden.  A little adult reporting might help.

IS HE STILL AROUND? – From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:  "Albany – Democrat Jason Carter’s campaign for governor has unleashed a weapon that’s long been waiting in the wings: Former President Jimmy Carter.  The 90-year-old former president has helped his grandson raise millions of dollars and provided him behind-the-scenes counsel. But the Georgia native’s appearance Sunday morning at a black church in Albany marked his official debut on the campaign trail for his grandson’s bid to oust Gov. Nathan Deal.  The elder Carter urged congregants to cast their ballots – early voting starts Monday – to help his grandson 'make Martin Luther King’s dream come true.' And he accused Republicans of seeking to deny them voting rights.  'Twelve years ago in Georgia, we had a change in governmental attitude toward the Voting Rights Act, and the right of all people to vote,' said Carter, who said when he was Georgia governor in the 1970s he signed a law that designated all high school principals as voter registrars."   Some people stay too long.  Jimmy Carter was an embarrassing president, and his Carter Center is financed largely by funds from Arab dictators.  Any appeal he still has is to low-information voters.

A DELIGHTFUL CONSPIRACY THEORY – From The Hill:  "Political strategist Dick Morris accused Hillary Clinton of conspiring with former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in his stinging critique of President Obama's foreign policy. 'I think Hillary put him up to it,' Morris said during an interview on John Catsimatidis's radio show to air Sunday on New York's 970 AM. 'What Panetta is doing is a hit – a contract killing – for Hillary. Panetta at core is a Clinton person, not an Obama person. By accurately and truthfully describing the deliberations in the [Obama] cabinet, he makes Hillary look better, and he makes Obama look worse … And I think he’ll get his reward in heaven.'"  I have no idea whether this is true.  Morris, after all, has a track record that is less than stellar.  But it's such a juicy conspiracy theory that I just had to report it.  Fun is important in life.

October 12, 2014