IT’S POLITICAL:  Georgia reported record turnout in the first hours of early voting yesterday proving at the least that it’s an impassioned election that has the state’s voters motivated.

  In a radio town hall with Charlamagne Tha God, Vice President Kamala Harris gave answers that sounded scripted then denied that she gave scripted answers. Harris tends to stick to set answers rather than answer the question that’s asked. Pushing back at accusations that she sounds scripted, she said, “That’s called discipline.”

  As an example, Harris went into a canned speech rather than answer a caller’s question about why the US sends so much money overseas instead of spending it to solve all the problems at home. The answer is easy; the problems of other countries become our problems if we don’t help, but Harris didn’t say that.

  Charlamagne has a significant Black audience. Speaking a little more off the cuff, Harris agreed with him that Trump is a fascist. “Yes, we can say that,” she said.

ORANGE ALERT !!: Donald Trump is attacking Kamala Harris on the very ground for which he should be questioned himself; mental acuity and even possible early dementia. 

  The man who describes his own rambling and disjointed speeches as a brilliant “weave” of interconnected ideas posted the following about Harris:

   “I believe it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility. Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her. Even 60 Minutes and CBS, in order to protect Lyin’ Kamala, illegally and unscrupulously replaced an answer she had given, which was totally ‘bonkers,’ with another answer that had nothing to do with the question asked. Also, she is slow and lethargic in answering even the easiest of questions. We just went through almost four years of that, we shouldn’t have to do it again!”

  In an interview Trump dodged on the question of whether he has stayed in touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office as reported by Bob Woodward in his new book, “War.”

  John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, asked Trump, “Can you say, yes or no, whether you have talked to Vladimir Putin since you stopped being president?”

  Trump, who has previously said some out-of-office American politicians should be sent to prison for contacting foreign leaders replied: “Well, I don’t comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing in terms of a country. He’s got 2,000 nuclear weapons and so do we.”

THE DISASTER ZONE: Nearly 100 people remain missing in North Carolina following Hurricane Helene as search and rescue teams keep looking. North Carolina already has 95 confirmed deaths, the most of any state, in the hurricane that first hit the Florida Gulf Coast.

  Gov. Roy Cooper During a news conference said that the numbers could change “as more reports come in and others are resolved.” The number of missing and feared dead in situations like this are sometimes less than originally reported as things get sorted out and communications are restored. That’s what happened after the fire that destroyed the town of Lahaina on Maui.

  But thousands of people are still without power and local economies have been destroyed in several states. It will not be an instant recovery.

THE OBIT PAGE: Megan Marshack, the woman who became a national punchline because she was with former Republican vice president and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller at the moment he died in 1979, died earlier this month in Sacramento at age 70.

  Rockefeller’s death in the presence of Marshack inspired immediate jokes that he had been “shot out of the saddle.”  He was 71 at the time and Marshack was 26.

  The cause of Rockefeller’s death was listed as a heart attack but the location and in whose company he died has always had numerous versions. Marshack never spoke about it.

  Following her employment with Rockefeller, Marshack had worked in the news syndication department of CBS and was involved in the coverage of events including the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo and was the producer of “Memories of Vietnam” with the late CBS correspondent Ed Bradley.

  She always declined to speak about her relationship with Rockefeller and even turned down a fortune to write a tell-all book. In an obituary she wrote for herself she quoted lyrics from the Broadway show “A Chorus Line”, “Wish me luck, the same to you… (But I) won’t forget, can’t regret what I did for love.”

THE SPIN RACK: A Georgia judge rejected the argument by Trump allies that local election officials have the power to refuse to certify election results. Another judge blocked a new rule requiring a hand count of election ballots saying it was “too much, too late.” — The Small Business Administration’s disaster loan fund has run out of money and will be broke until Congress approves a new appropriation. — The Transportation Department fined Lufthansa $4 million after finding that the airline had prevented 128 Jewish passengers traveling from New York to Hungary in 2022 from making a connecting flight in Germany. Most of the affected passengers were Jewish men in traditional Orthodox attire. The Transportation Department said Lufthansa did not allow the passengers to embark on their connecting flight because of the misbehavior of a small number of individuals on the first leg, improperly penalizing the group for the actions of a few.

BELOW THE FOLD: In line with debate about diversity, equity, and immigration in the US, a new documentary in Spain posits that Christopher Columbus, the European who first came to North America, was not Italian but was actually a Sephardic Jew from the eastern Iberian Peninsula in what is now Spain.  

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