The bank of TV screens at Planet Fitness early this morning:

Local News: Traffic and weather, solid blocs of political ads that have been run a billion times. Nice for the stations' bottom lines, a months-long root canal for viewers.

CNN: A panel of pollsters and communications people talking about the midterms, about trends and tossup races, a revolving slate of guests and pundits coming and going. Interviews with voters in Michigan, who all said the cost of living is their issue. Pollsters say that the two issues at the top of everyone's list are cost of living and corruption, and that voters feel that corruption is directly impacting their cost of living. Bad news for Trump-adjacent incumbents.

Weirdly, Trump is planning to finish the campaign at the Reflecting Pool. And expecting the media to be there. Puzzled conversation about what he thinks the coverage will be like—how can the media fail to mention that for months people in hip-waders have been in that pool trying to clean up the disaster? A clip of him saying it was vandalized, so vandalized, but now there are cameras everywhere for the vandals. People just shaking their heads until someone said, he doesn't care about the Republicans running in these races—he's just going to talk about himself again, cementing his own legacy (if you see what I did there!).

And then there's...

FOX News: Two big stories.

1. The Alaska Senate Race, with a chyron underneath reading something like, "People say Alaska Dems are trying to confuse voters." That one was on for a whiiiiiiiiiiiile. It was super confusing for this voter.

2. As I was leaving, I glanced up at Fox one last time. And I guess the old playbook is true.

If you don't want to talk about the economy because the economy for working Americans is stupendously awful...
If you don't want to talk about the war in Iran, because that's the greatest self-inflicted military disaster since George W. Bush got Iraq and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia all confused...
If you don't want to talk about rampant corruption in Washington, because your network has been pimping round-the-clock for the most corrupt administration in history...

What does that leave you to feed your dwindling flock of chickens?

"Protecting Girls Sports Is On The Ballot."

Jesus wept.