A few thoughts and comments as summer begins its transition into that soft, sentimental time I used to know as “late summer”:

This must be sweet news to the likes of Pastor Darrell Scott, Kanye West, and Candace Owens. Me? I don’t trust anything the pollsters toss out there. But I know the Democratic Party does, and were I them I’d be (to put it more politely) shaking in my shoes. But I think you know what I mean.

B52 Stratofortresses over the big blue.

Tiger vs. Phil, Thanksgiving weekend. Mano a mano for a cool $10 mil. Should be a lot of fun to watch. Were I Goodboys Exec-Comm (which, gladly, I’m not) I would try to set up a viewing party somewhere nice with food and big-screen TVs. Just a thought.

“Morning Joe Mika” is right: someone’s becoming unhinged. (Hint: it isn’t Donald Trump.) As Buskirk writes:

Mueller has been reduced to pursuing indictments for crimes wholly unrelated to President Trump. Paul Manafort, who briefly managed the president’s campaign, is being tried for some decade-old business deals. The 12 Russian nationals Mueller indicted in July are charged with hacking attacks against both the DNC and RNC email systems. And, by the way, since they are in Russia they will never come to trial. He also indicted 13 Russians earlier this year for their involvement in a Russian troll farm that produced some shockingly amateurish Facebook ads that at different times seemed to support every candidate running including Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, and Trump. Why? Because the goal of the Russian operation wasn’t a Trump victory; it was to sow social and political discord. Score one for the Russians and their accomplices in American media.

Later in his article, Buskirk provides a Trump video from twenty years ago. Trump’s message and his way of communicating is remarkably consistent with everything he has been saying since he and Melania came down the Trump Tower escalator more than three years ago. To quote Instapundit‘s Glenn Reynolds trademark phrase, “Read the whole thing.”

And speaking of unhinged, Carl Bernstein has got it all wrong – well, almost. And he (of all people) should know it and be able to recognize the differences. This whole Russia thing is worse than Watergate, he’s right about that. But it’s exactly the mirror image of Watergate, which is why it’s worse. In the case of Watergate, you had the party in power – the Nixon White House – using the nation’s intelligence community to sabotage an opposing political party and its candidates. Alternatively, in the case of Russia, you have the nation’s intelligence community attempting to sabotage a political opponent who later becomes a sitting president by weaponizing and using as an excuse a phony dossier developed for his opponent’s political campaign. If Bernstein can’t see the difference in that he’s delusional.

The MLB Network’s Friday night iteration of “MLB Tonight” has become a must-watch. They’ve consciously strived to make it a little looser than the other nights, and with the divisional races all heating up the show has become even more so. I’ve always liked Harold Reynold, and when they bring in the likes of Pedro Martinez, Mike Lowell, and Joe Girardi, it becomes for a baseball junkie the equivalent of an extra double- shot of espresso to a coffee drinker.

Forget about Russia, shouldn’t this item regarding China garner a little more of the press’s attention?