HE’S FASCIST: Vice President Kamala Harris last night said at the opening of a live CNN town that she believes Donald Trump is a fascist. “Yes I do, yes I do,” she told host Anderson Cooper when asked whether she agrees with the assessment of former Trump chief of staff John Kelly.

  “I do believe Donald Trump is unstable and increasingly unstable and not fit to serve,” she said. She said Kelly in his remarks to the NY Times “is putting out a 911 call to the American people.”

  Kelly had told the Times that Trump meets the definition of a fascist and while he was president bemoaned the lack of generals in the military whose primary loyalty was to him. Kelly told the Times that Trump once said, “Hitler did some good things too.”

  The CNN town hall in Pennsylvania was scheduled after Trump declined a second debate.  The most stunning thing about it was that the audience of professionals, college students, and even a Swarthmore professor were still so uninformed that they have not decided who to vote for.

  Donald Trump was in Georgia yesterday for a faith-focused town hall in Zebulon and a rally later in Duluth staged by the conservative group Turning Point.

  At the “Believers and Ballots” town hall in Zebulon Trump, who has embraced religion to get elected, said that his closing message to Christian voters is “there’s persecution going on.”

  Carrying the anti-immigrant torch for Trump in Nevada, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said that children of undocumented immigrants are hindering the education of citizen children because they can’t speak English. “Nevadan children are getting the short end of the stick and are not getting the education they deserve,” Vance said.

  The Justice Department is reported to have warned Tesla billionaire Elon Musk about paying $1 million to randomly selected registered voters who sign a pledge to support the First and Second amendments in possible violation of federal law forbidding payment of voters.

STRONG OPINION: The head of the Los Angeles Times editorial board resigned after the paper’s owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, decided not to make an endorsement in the presidential race. Mariel Garza told The Columbia Journalism Review that, “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

  The billionaire Dr. Soon-Shiong, who bought The LA Times in 2018, said in a tweet that he had ordered the editorial board to “draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.”

  “With this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years,” he said. 

  “It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist,” Garza wrote in her resignation published by the CJR. “How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country, and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger — who we previously endorsed for the U.S. Senate?”

THE WAR ROOM: With Russian troops suffering extreme casualties in its war against Ukraine, North Korea has sent as many as 3,000 troops to possibly to join the fight, the US Defense Department says.Biden administration officials told reporters that this is a development that could have global implications and make those North Koreans “legitimate military targets” if they enter Ukraine. 

  Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, “It will have impacts, not only in Europe. It will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific as well.”

  Austin also said of Russian President Vladimir Putin that “This is an indication that he may be even in more trouble than most people realize.” 

THE OBIT PAGE: Movie producer Lynda Obst, a champion for women in the boys’ club of Hollywood who was behind a string of hits including Sleepless in Seattle, Contact, Flashdance, and The Fisher King, has died at age 74. The cause was COPD brought on by a lifetime of smoking. Power agent Bryan Lourd once said, “She was very savvy and smart about how things worked and how movies got put together. Her special sauce is this crazy intuitive intelligence and taste.” Obst was rueful about her smoking after her 2018 diagnosis. “It’s not the way you want to spend your retirement or your last 10, 20 or 30 years,” she said. – Fernando Valenzuela, the Mexican-born left-handed pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers who broke into Major League Baseball in 1981 as a 20-year-old with a quirky windup and a signature screwball, died Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 63. His arrival in Los Angeles set off the fan phenomenon known as “Fernandomania.” Valenzuela won the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young Awards in 1981.

THE SPIN RACK:  Striking Boeing workers rejected a contract offer with an immediate 12 percent pay raise. The union members were particularly unhappy that they were not offered a pension plan which they had given up back in 2014.  — The Biden administration is toughening requirements for homes and child-care facilities to remove lead-based paint dust in a move that could protect more than 300,000 children. Any detectable level of lead dust in a building would be considered a “lead hazard,” and property owners would be required to pay for cleanup.  — The Los Angeles home of “Friends” actor Matthew Perry where he died last year has sold for $8.55 million.

BELOW THE FOLD: Veteran Democratic political operative James Carville writes in The NY times that Kamala Harris will win the election. “Ms. Harris will be elected the next president of the United States. Of this, I am certain,” Carville says.

  Political polling and statistical analyst Nate Silver says that with the numbers basically 50-50, “My gut says Donald Trump.”

  Sit back. Have a drink. Then have another.

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