What Happens to Fox News if Trump Loses ; Russian ‘Sausage King’ Killed in Sauna With a Crossbow ; and More Picks 11/3
Trump May Try to Steal the Election. Americans May Have to Take to the Streets. (Reader Steve)
From Vox: “What should Americans do if [Trump] loses the election and refuses to accept the results? Political analysts have already raised the prospect of mass protests erupting in the event of a contested election. But when to take the streets isn’t just a question for liberal activists. Even David Brooks, no radical, has suggested the US might need a ‘sustained campaign of civic action’ to ‘rally the majority that wants to preserve democracy.’ For better or worse, this is where we are as a country. And the possibility that we might need a wave of nonviolent civil resistance leads to another question: When would people actually know that it’s time to take to the streets?”
How Not to Interview a Toddler (Russ)
From FAIR: “The headline news from President Donald Trump’s 60 Minutes interview, taped on October 20, was that he walked out and ended the interview early, a fact CBS played up ahead of the October 25 airing of the show. It was on brand for both Trump and the network. For Trump, it supported the image of the tough businessman who doesn’t play by Washington’s rules. It enabled CBS, meanwhile, to look like hard-hitting journalists. The gulf between brand and reality, though, was significant in both cases.”
What I learned From Training to Be a Right-Wing Poll Watcher (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “Alan Vera, ballot security chairman for Texas’ Harris County GOP, wants prospective poll watchers to keep an eye on their coffee. … ‘Do not accept coffee from the election judge or any of the clerks,’ he warns early in a training video for volunteer poll watchers. ‘We’ve had too many instances in the past where laxatives have been hidden inside coffee and our poll watchers end up spending the day in the restroom instead of in the polls watching what’s going on.’ This first rule of poll watching speaks to the bigger lesson I learned from sitting through hours of conservative poll watching training videos over the past several weeks: These programs are more about instilling paranoia in the Republican Party faithful than about actually teaching them to successfully suppress votes.”
What Happens to Fox News if Trump Loses? (Reader Jim)
The author writes, “Spend a couple hours with Fox News on a typical weeknight, and you may come to see the potential election of Joe Biden as a cataclysm in the making. Prime-time host Laura Ingraham recently warned her viewers of the ‘Bolsheviks and billionaires’ she said were propelling his candidacy. … Sean Hannity sent a camera crew to stake out Biden’s house to demand answers about the alleged contents of his son’s laptop. Even the network’s senior political analyst, Brit Hume, has repeatedly called the Democratic presidential candidate ‘senile’ on air. But behind the scenes, a strange calm prevails. The man who helped create Fox News as the most influential platform for conservative politics in America fully expects that Biden will win — and frankly isn’t too bothered by that.”
A Common Plant Virus is an Unlikely Ally in the War on Cancer (Dana)
The author writes, “The new cancer therapy is based on the cowpea mosaic virus, or CPMV, a pathogen that takes its name from the mottled pattern it creates on the leaves of infected cowpea plants, which are perhaps best known as the source of black-eyed peas. The virus doesn’t replicate in mammals like it does in plants, but as the researchers behind the therapy discovered, it still triggers an immune response that could be the key to more effective treatments for a wide variety of cancers. The idea is to use the virus to overcome one of the gnarliest problems in oncology: a doctor’s best ally, their patient’s own immune system, doesn’t always recognize a cancerous cell when it sees one.”
Aerobic Exercise Effective at Reducing Depression Symptoms in Randomized Trial (Mili)
The author writes, “Aerobic exercise clearly benefits young adults with major depression, and a Rutgers-led study suggests it may be possible to predict those who would benefit from behavioral therapy with exercise. … Unique to this precision medicine study, published in the journal Psychological Medicine, is an assessment of cognitive control and reward-related brain activity, two facets of brain function that are impaired in people with depression. Like previous studies, this one showed that aerobic exercise helps young adults with major depression.”
Russian ‘Sausage King’ Killed in Sauna With a Crossbow (Dana)
The author writes, “A Russian oligarch, nicknamed The Sausage King, has been murdered with a crossbow, investigators say. Vladimir Marugov and his partner were in an outdoor sauna when they were attacked, reportedly by two masked assailants. The woman managed to escape through the window and call the police. Detectives found the body of Mr Marugov, who owned some of Russia’s largest meat-processing plants, in the sauna with a crossbow next to it.”
