Forget debates.

What American TV needs is a showdown between Harris and Trump,  in the following form.

A SPELLING BEE

Winner’s party takes over the White House,

(Shh, don’t tell.  Im sure Trump supporters don’t watch the national spelling bees on PBS. Hence, they are in the dark (as they are pertaining to most everything) that East Indian-American students dominate the competitions year in and year out.

Kamala will crush!

I woke up yesterday, Aug. 10, and turned on my radio as usual. Then I wanted to wake up “for real,” because the radio hosts were talking about looting, rioting, and raised bridges closing most access to the Loop. Surely that was a nightmare.

No, that was waking up yesterday morning.

Then the light started getting lower and more yellow and the radio started talking about severe weather and high winds coming in. One wall of my apartment is almost covered by a window, so I picked up the radio, my battery-powered DVD player and some favorite discs, and some pillows and made camp in the bathroom, with a wall between me and that window.

The storm passed. I had my phone with me, and a friend who lives nearby sent an all-clear text before the radio news confirmed it.

So that was yesterday. Sorry, Sir Paul McCartney, but that’s not the sort of yesterday I’ll long for.

Today has been much more ordinary — apart from reading the newspaper coverage of the two miseries and hearing the radio mention that curfew wasn’t quite over when I woke up.

The light is still very normal in the afternoon. I’m getting a few things done — few, thanks to the effects of nervously waking up before 4 a.m. today. But it’s a calm, plain old day.

I love a good story. I’ve been through some big ones myself, including putting out the first edition of a weekly paper on Sept. 11 — THAT Sept. 11.

But compared to what I had to record in my diary last night, I’m glad tonight’s going to be ordinary and short: laundry; figuring out how to keep my hair under control without resorting to a haircut just yet; mailing a couple of actual letters; trying to figure out whether I can take a selfie in my mirrored closet door to be an updated, masked profile photo.

Oh, that and listening to the Blackhawks’ playoff game on the radio as I drift off to the kind of dozing I used to do in the back seat of my parents’ car.

I love hockey. Hockey in August ordinarily means listening to or watching a game I recorded during the winter, whether I was away and missing the game or just aware that this could be a game I’d like to see twice. But “live” and meaningful games are far from ordinary for August. Training camp for a new year usually starts in the second week of September — I can remember it as a consolation in 2001. But this year, the Stanley Cup playoffs will be far from finished by then. The timing doesn’t feel ordinary — but the fact of getting distracted by enjoying a game is one of my favorite ordinary things.

So it’s a game night tonight — just an ordinary playoff game. I think I’ll take it. I know I’ll enjoy it, just for being here. No storms, no looting, just a good game.

Margaret Serious has a page on Facebook.

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If you think Donald Trump is the only TV game show host running for president, you’re wrong.  Joe Biden should be in the running for an emmy this year for his version of The Bachelor:  VP Girls edition.

As millions of people were waiting to see which girl would become Biden’s VP-wife, they wondered if she’d be black, white, Asian or hispanic (and if hispanic, what sort of hispanic would she be?  Because apparently Biden finds hispanics very diverse, unlike African Americans.)

Every day the girls were handicapped.  As they came around the bend–in this case the news cycle–every time there was a different gal in the lead. Las Vegas odds kept changing.  Their pros and cons kept fluctuating.  And the Washington elites of all stripes had a day at the races every day.

And they were off:

–Bass had something nice to say about Castro out of the gate (so she fell behind).

–Elizabeth Warren, while she brought a constituency of progressives along with her, which put her ahead, still had two strikes against her at post time: She’s white, for one.  And the governor of Massachusetts is a republican. He would have replaced her with a republican.  Which would have made the dem quest to flip the senate in November that much harder in the long run.  If they’re sincere about wanting to, that is, because it makes their job easier to do nothing and blame it on McConnell.

–All of a sudden, delivery of a state seemed to be back under consideration with a last minute interview of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer; but she’s white so she really wasn’t suitable because Biden boxed himself in and people like P. Diddy wouldn’t have liked it.

–As the gals came round the track, the equation changed; with an Asian like Tammy Duckworth, who brought military experience and loss of limbs to the table, and with the added ability to bring Asians (in her case Thais) to the polls and money from their pocketbooks, which left Kamala Harris’ ability to bring Indians out to vote and money from them, too, nullified.  Or so I thought.

–And Susan Rice just sold tons of her Netflix stock (she’s on the board) and VP watchers wanted to know, does she know she’s the one and wanted to take that issue off the table in advance?  In the final stretch, she was the favorite with bettors, overcoming Harris, the favorite, to be the odds on favorite in Las Vegas.  And Harris’ mentor and ex-boyfriend Willie Brown, in a recent op-ed could have been helping her save face by suggesting she turn down the VP spot in favor of holding out for AG.  But apparently he wasn’t doing that, except to throw people off for a few days, intentionally or not.

–Getting back to hispanics, whatever happened to that 12th generation Mexican/New Mexican governor  Michelle Lujan Grisham?  Did too many gringos dilute her genes during the 12 generations?  The genes are important in any horse race of this nature–identity-politics and virtue-signaling.  As are mint juleps.  And Joe Bidens assessment of which kind of hispanic one is.

–Also dropping behind:  the black mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who not only navigated her way in and out of a police shooting at an Atlanta Wendy’s, which was then burned down during a post-shooting riot phase, but she also tested positive for Covid-19!  Now that’s a first!  No other woman running for VP has tested positive for Covid-19!  Not even fellow Atlanta resident Stacey Abrams, who checked a lot of boxes, one must admit.

–And don’t forget there was the black ex-police chief of Orlando Val Demings, who became a member of the US House.  And also garnered a spot as an impeachment manager.  And that should count for something in the veepstakes.  Black and an impeachment manager!  Not to mention she could have brought Florida home for Biden, probably the most sought after state in this election with 30 electoral votes right out of the gate.

Somehow, Biden and/or his campaign (or maybe an overanxious news media) had us believing that Biden would pick his veep mate earlier than anyone in memory.  And  citing that fact, I wrote this piece on April 13 that said his running mate could be chosen at any minute.  I was wrong, but I was misled.

Like a good game show host, Biden has kept us guessing.

Considering that his so-called “convention” was postponed, and we would have known for weeks at least by now who his choice is, the postponement made him even tardier.

But maybe it was a lifesaver for Biden, who knows very well that his pick will have more energy, more vigor and more sense than he’s able to must these days for himself.  And she will make him, the actual presidential candidate that people are really voting for, look foolish.

One of the most crappy things Trump did during his transition involved inviting a ton of would-be cabinet members and other appointees to Trump Tower for interviews.  He made a big splash, and gave the interviewees a lot of publicity, and the people came in their Sunday bests with their resumes in tow.  From Mitt Romney to Tulsi Gabbard, they came bearing good will and genuine interest, and were turned away like fools on a primetime-TV game show.  Trump’s specialty in the TV business, the only business that ever really garnered him real money, a real salary.

I see Biden was following in his footsteps.  Making fools out of many competent women for months, who have earnestly competed and shown genuine interest in the job.  He should have kept his many choices more quiet.  Instead of making a mockery of them in one way or another many times and in many ways.

This display of game show tactics by Biden who has kept his considerations and his last minute reconsiderations constantly in the news, like a TV show that’s trying to boost its ratings, parading them for visits or news bites or whatever is the same thing Trump did, once elected but before inauguration.

He should have kept those under consideration as close to the vest as possible.  And with dignity.  While the news may have picked up on his choices, Biden made it a personal showcase for months.  He didn’t look like a man who was deliberating seriously.  He looked like he was stalling for time and distracting people from his many shortcomings.

He let a lot of competent and serious women to be raked over the coals a few times while being “vetted” by the talk shows and the news shows, and the punsters and the know-it-alls.  All unnecessarily hurting their brands. And their feelings, I’m sure.

And so, like Trump, Biden is leaving a stream of rejects out there with bruised egos.  Because he was very tardy in making his decision, by his own reckoning.

But that’s how the game show hosts do it.  They like to raise their ratings, charge more for ads on their shows (in Biden’s case, get some dough out of the people who thought their gal was going to be the choice-or if in doubt maybe a little cash that might help get them their choice.   He let the pundits have a field day handicapping the girls right along with Las Vegas.

And so, the winner for best game show host in the 2020 presidential race so far is……  Joe Biden.  Only he probably doesn’t understand what he’s done any better than he understands anything else he does.  But this time what he did was he picked a complete phony, Kamala Harris, as his running mate.  And he did it like a game show host.

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BY SANDRA GUY

With anxiety, depression, and alcohol and marijuana use soaring amid the coronavirus pandemic, September’s designation as “Healthy Aging® Month” seems appropriate for everyone.

Besides focusing on improving one’s physical well-being, the theme also applies to the start of a school year, rejuvenating one’s mind and meeting new people — even if it’s virtual.

The observation’s creator, Carolyn Worthington, publisher of Healthy Aging magazine, has described the initiative as aiming to help everyone “move forward mentally, socially, physically and financially.”

Besides the wealth of self-help resources online, natural remedies may be worth a try, too. One is Gotu Kola, a staple in traditional Chinese, Indonesian and Ayurvedic medicine known as a “herb of longevity.” It’s also known as Centella asiatica.

One study, though not scientifically proven, showed a water extract of Gotu kola improved learning and memory in old and young mice, but the older mice had greater cognitive enhancements.

For people, experts recommend taking Gotu kola no more than six weeks because of its potential for liver damage, and to check with your doctor before using it more extensively.

It comes in dried leaf for tea, in capsules as a powdered herb and as a tincture that can be taken as 30 to 60 drops, three times daily.