The television set, a cheap 19-inch flat screen, lives in my closet. It was last mated with 110 volts and a coaxial cable in January when it seemed a good idea to watch the State of the Union address, just to fact-check my opinion that  he is still in over his head; still nothing more than the almost accidental by-product of Chicago machine politics; still wedded to the narcissistic notion that the unicorns speak wisdom and speak only through himself? (Yes.)

And tonight the debate.  Should a citizen drag out his electric teevee, plug it in, and blow the dust off in order to witness our latest shitstorm of demagogy as it happens?

In a way it seems a waste. The winners are predetermined. Trump for those citizens wedded to the  Fox News school of journalism; Clinton for the special snowflakes suckled by MSNBC.

I believe nothing tonight will change the poll trends unless one of the stooges does an amazingly obvious pratfall. The she-thing, under pressure, might well slip into another foot-stomping door slam (what difference yada yada) The he (with a rolled up sock in his shorts?) is not beyond demanding an immediate declaration of war against China or South Ossetia or something because they're rapists.

N.B -- I think any disaster is more likely to happen to Trump.  His mouth still seems free of any restraint. Hillary's tongue lately is tightly leashed to her handlers and their focus groups.

Right now, my propensity is to leave the teevee where it is. If I feel the need for a cleanout, I think there's a partial pack of Ex-Lax still in the medicine cabinet. But maybe not. We'll see.

Toy Guns

A 13-year-old kid with an airsoft gun takes a police bullet and your heart breaks. Then your head takes over and wonders what the Hell is up with the adults in this boy's life.

Is it all that hard to plant the simple message  in a young skull that if you start waving a toy gun around,  some people are quite reasonably going to think it's a real one. And get scared. And shoot you.  Did anyone ever tell him so?

I put myself in the cop's place. While I like to think I'd have been been quicker to analyze and decide nothing lethal was needed, I am not all sure I could have.

It's getting getting dark. The dispatcher sent me to check out an armed robbery. The neighborhood isn't exactly a Norman Rockwell scene. My suspect ran into an alley and I saw his gun, a dead ringer for a Glock. And I wanted to go home under my own power at shift's end. Wife.  Kids.

The finer points can and will be debated in and out of the media, the courts, the demonstrations to the tune of millions of words, and eventually we may have some vague idea of what actually happened.

Now, the first police reports suggest the lad and an older chum did use the fake pistol to rob somebody. Maybe he was on the fast track to violent adult thuggery. Maybe not. None of that is the point, which is, dammit, don't waggle guns at cops. Real ones. Fake ones.  If you do, you're very likely to die.

Why don't you have a little talk with your kids tonight?

Hillary says she can't remember whether she might have lied,  or, possibly,  told the truth to federal cops about what she did or did or didnt do  with classified material. She was suffering from this concussion, you see.

In other words, "Not tonight Dear. I have a headache."