Recommended Reading
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Kids and Politics (Video)
The polls are in and the consensus says SpongeBob SquarePants will likely win the under-10 vote. Sorry, "Other Guy" and "Broccoli Almond." The best part is Wonder Woman's healthy endorsement from the "no cigaretting" girl.
Jon Welch: University graduate finds work as human scarecrow (BBC News)
It sounds like the ideal job - the chance to sit down, read a book and perhaps idly strum a ukulele.
Marc Dion: So What Do They Get? Notes From a Liquor Store Before the Debate (Creators Syndicate)
I drove home that night, and I could see the lights of the hospital where my 84-year-old mother was recovering from surgery, draining our country dry through the twin Ponzi schemes of Social Security and Medicare. During the Second World War, my mother worked the "Victory Shift" in a factory that made tires. The "Victory Shift" was the night shift, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. If she'd had better jobs in her life, she might not be a bum today. You'd think she would have tried harder.
Paul Krugman: Romney's Sick Joke (New York Times)
"No. 1," declared Mitt Romney in Wednesday's debate, "pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan." No, they aren't - as Mr. Romney's own advisers have conceded in the past, and did again after the debate.
IGOR BOBIC: U.S. Economy Added 114,000 Jobs In September, Unemployment Falls To 7.8% (Talking Points Memo)
The U.S. economy added 114,000 jobs in September, with the unemployment rate falling from 8.1% to 7.8%, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. The labor force rose by 418,000 jobs, while the labor force participation rate was little changed at 63.6 percent. The July jobs report was revised from +141,000 to +181,000, and the August jobs report was revised from +96,000 to +142,000.
Mark Shields: An American Original Leaves Voluntarily (Creators Syndicate)
War is hellish and hateful. But even more hateful is the "chicken-hawk" who cheerleads and champions war while ducking any personal risk of engagement for himself, his blood relatives or his social peers. These are the tough-talking, think-tank commandos in and out of Washington, including the press corps, who love to expropriate the language of the combat they have done everything to personally escape.
Mark Shields: The Relevance of President Ford in Campaign 2012 (Creators Syndicate)
Ford, according to eyewitnesses, grimaced, but then smiled. As House party leader, he had campaigned nationally for his colleagues, but he accepted the judgment of his team - and thus was born the Rose Garden strategy, where Jerry Ford by being president full-time would run for re-election.
Tim Smits: "Experience: I nearly died defending strangers" (Guardian; as told to Emily Cunningham)
'As the room went white, then black, I remember thinking: Is this it? Am I dead?'
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David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Ran out to the Valley - gas was $4.89 at the Chevron station at Magnolia & Laurel Canyon. Yikes.
Wellington, New Zealand Renamed For Hobbit Premiere
"The Middle of Middle-earth"
New Zealand's capital Wellington will rename itself "The Middle of Middle-earth" when it hosts the world premiere of The Hobbit movie trilogy next month.
Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown says the city will spend 1.1 million New Zealand dollars ($900,000) on a red-carpet celebration for the Nov. 28 premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at the downtown Embassy Theatre.
The movie is the first of three prequels to The Lord of the Rings movies. It's directed by Wellington resident Peter Jackson and is shot in New Zealand.
The city says the postal service and local newspaper will be among many agencies to use the unofficial Middle Earth moniker for three weeks.
"The Middle of Middle-earth"
Teach CPR
Zombies
Every once in a while a public service announcement (PSA) comes along that truly takes your breath away. In this new video, "The Undeading," a horde of zombies performs CPR on a hapless victim.
The PSA, directed by Vincenzo Natali for Canada's Heart & Stroke Foundation, is at times informative, hilarious and terrifying. Scariest of all is the first zombie in the video, whose appearance is so grim, he'd fit in perfectly on any given episode of "The Walking Dead."
In the clip, a lone woman finds herself in the middle of a dense urban landscape during the zombie apocalypse. While being surrounded by a mob of zombies, she suddenly experiences a heart attack and all hope seems lost. But in a fit of inspiration, one of the zombies, a former doctor, has a plan.
The PSA plays off the notion that zombies like only victims who are still alive and breathing. And as it cheekily notes, "CPR makes you undead."
Zombies
Wiedersehen
Oktoberfest
Munich's famed celebration of beer, the Oktoberfest, is drawing to a close after some 6.4 million visitors downed an estimated 6.9 million liter mugs of Bavarian brew - some 14.6 million pints.
Organizers said they were satisfied with this year's event, which opened Sept. 22 and ends Sunday - although visitor numbers were lower than last year.
Festival director Dieter Reiter says that's because the festival grounds were reduced to accommodate an agricultural fair which takes place every four years, news agency dapd reported. In 2011, the Oktoberfest drew some 6.9 million visitors, who downed well over 7 million liters.
The Oktoberfest draws visitors from across the world - many of whom try out traditional Bavarian dress. Reiter says: "Purely from a visual point of view, there are only Bavarians."
Oktoberfest
Wedding News
Tamblyn - Cross
Amber Tamblyn and David Cross are now husband and wife.
The 29-year-old actress wed the "Arrested Development" star, 48, on Saturday, Us Weekly reports.
According to filmmaker Lance Bangs, who attended the festivities, alternative rock band Yo La Tengo performed during the couple's reception.
This is the first marriage for the couple, who got engaged in August 2011 after three years together.
Tamblyn - Cross
Pressure British PM
Hacking Victims
Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain would avoid "heavy-handed state intervention" of its national press after phone hacking victims urged him on Sunday to remain open-minded about the recommendations of an inquiry into media ethics.
Actor Hugh Grant, singer Charlotte Church and more than 50 other victims of press intrusion said in letter to Cameron they feared he had already decided to reject statutory regulation of the media before the inquiry's findings were published.
Cameron said he would not prejudge the inquiry and confirmed he had told Grant he would implement its recommendations providing they were "not bonkers".
Cameron ordered the wide-ranging investigation at the height of a scandal last year into illegal phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's now-closed News of the World tabloid when it emerged that reporters had hacked the phone of a murdered schoolgirl.
Cameron will have to navigate a difficult political path in responding to the recommendations to avoid being accused of trampling on press freedoms or being soft on tabloid excesses, especially given his close ties to two of those who have been charged with offences relating to phone hacking.
Hacking Victims
Political Operatives In Pulpits
"Pulpit Freedom Sunday"
Baptist Pastor Mark Harris stood before his flock in North Carolina on Sunday and joined hundreds of other religious leaders in deliberately breaking the law in an election-year campaign that tests the role of churches in politics.
By publicly backing candidates for political office from the pulpit, Harris and nearly 1,500 other preachers at services across the United States were flouting a law they see as an incursion on freedom of religion and speech.
Under the U.S. tax code, non-profit organizations such as churches may express views on any issue, but they jeopardize their favorable tax-exempt status if they speak for or against any political candidate.
"Pulpit Freedom Sunday" has been staged annually since 2008 by a group called the Alliance Defending Freedom. Its aim is to provoke a challenge from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in order to file a lawsuit and have its argument out in court.
The event has grown steadily in size, but the IRS has yet to respond - even though the pastors tape their sermons and mail them to the agency.
"Pulpit Freedom Sunday"
Research Chief Exits Under Cloud
Disney
The head of movie market research at Walt Disney Studios, Louise Chater, was dismissed from the studio in late September under cloudy circumstances that involve an anonymous letter about her sent to the studio, TheWrap has learned.
Chater joined Disney in March 2011 from First Movies International, a movie research company where she was founder and CEO. Under Chater, Disney moved a large portion of its research screenings and material testing to First Movies, three knowledgeable individuals told TheWrap.
At the heart of Chater's dismissal were unproven allegations raised in an anonymous letter to Disney earlier this year, suggesting First Movies benefited improperly from Chater's position as head of research, according to those individuals.
First Movies was acquired in April of this year by Penn Schoen Berland, a market research consultancy with roots in political research. The sum was not disclosed. The company did not return calls and emails asking for comment.
Disney
Names 2 Doctors
Benny The Rat
Pope Benedict XVI named two new "doctors" of the church Sunday, conferring one of the Catholic Church's highest honors on a 16th-century Spanish preacher and a 12th-century German mystic who wasn't even officially recognized as a saint until earlier this year.
St. John of Avila, Spain, and St. Hildegard of Bingen, Germany, join the ranks of only 33 other church doctors who have been singled out over the course of Christianity for their contributions to and influence on Catholic doctrine.
Benedict named them doctors at the start of a Mass in St. Peter's Square that kicked off a two-week meeting of the world's bishops to chart the church's new evangelization mission.
The synod coincides with the 50th anniversary of the start of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that modernized the church.
Benedict is particularly fond of Hildegard, who was considered a saint in his native Germany but was never officially proclaimed one by the Vatican. Benedict, who himself referred to Hildegard as a saint, earlier this year passed the decree making her one officially, a requirement for her to be named a church doctor.
Benny The Rat
Mural Defaced
Mark Rothko
A vandal scrawled graffiti on a mural by modern American master Mark Rothko at London's Tate Modern on Sunday.
The mural, one of Rothko's Seagram series, was defaced when a visitor to the Tate applied "a small area of black paint with a brush to the painting," the gallery said.
A photograph posted on Twitter by a gallery visitor showed words, including the name Vladimir, scrawled in the corner of the painting. The gallery, which attracts 5 million visitors a year, was briefly closed Sunday after the incident.
The graffiti on the painting also appears to read "a potential piece of yellowism." According to an online manifesto, Yellowism is an artistic movement run by two people named Vladimir Umanets and Marcin Lodyga.
This is not the first time an artwork at Tate Modern has been interfered with. In 2000, two Chinese performance artists attempted to urinate on Marcel Duchamp's urinal sculpture "Fountain."
Mark Rothko
Museum Euthanized Mules For Exhibit
Texas
A Texas museum is under fire for purchasing and then euthanizing two elderly mules so that their preserved carcasses could be featured in an exhibit.
Animal welfare activists are angry about an exhibit at the American Museum of Agriculture, in Lubbock, that focuses on the McCormick Reaper, a 19th-century animal-drawn grain harvesting device that made large-scale farming possible in the Texas Panhandle.
The museum has said the only way the true use of the reaper could be presented was by including mules in full harness.
"The board did consider the use of fiberglass replicas, but were advised that the impact of the exhibit would be substantially diminished," the museum said in a statement in September.
Had the museum not purchased the mules, the trader planned to take them into Mexico for slaughter to make dog food, according to the museum.
Texas
Weekend Box Office
'Taken 2'
"Taken 2" led the box office with $50 million domestically over opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. That's double the haul for Liam Neeson's "Taken," which took in $24.7 million in its U.S. debut in early 2009.
The previous weekend's No. 1 movie at the U.S. box office, Adam Sandler's animated hit "Hotel Transylvania," dropped to second-place with $26.3 million. The Sony release raised its domestic total to $76 million, and it has taken in $29.3 million overseas for a worldwide haul of $105.3 million.
Expanding into nationwide release after a limited debut a week earlier, Universal's music tale "Pitch Perfect" moved up to third-place with $14.7 million. The movie stars Anna Kendrick as a college freshman spicing things up for her a cappella singing squad.
Sony's sci-fi thriller "Looper," starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, fell from second-place to fourth with $12.2 million, lifting its domestic haul to $40.3 million.
Tim Burton's animated monster tale "Frankenweenie" had a slow start, taking in $11.5 million to round out the top-five. The Disney release is an update of Burton's 1984 live-action short film, about a boy who brings his dead dog back to life.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Taken 2," $50 million ($55 million international).
2. "Hotel Transylvania," $26.3 million ($13.1 million international).
3. "Pitch Perfect," $14.7 million ($480,000 international).
4. "Looper," $12.2 million ($7.5 million international).
5. "Frankenweenie," $11.5 million.
6. "End of Watch," $4 million.
7. "Trouble with the Curve," $3.9 million.
8. "House at the End of the Street," $3.7 million.
9. "The Master," $1.8 million.
10. "Finding Nemo," $1.6 million ($600,000 international).
'Taken 2'
In Memory
'Sheriff' John Rovick
John Rovick, the beloved host of a children's cartoon show in Los Angeles throughout the 1950s and 60s, has died.
Rovick died Saturday in Boise, Idaho after a brief illness, his former station, KTTV-TV, told The Associated Press. He was 93.
For nearly two decades, Rovick appeared on the daily "Cartoon Time" show that earned him an Emmy award for outstanding children's program. It was so popular with young viewers that KTTV said it added another show to its midday schedule, "Sheriff John's Lunch Brigade," that stayed on the air until 1970.
Staples of the show included Rovick reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, singing "The Birthday Cake Polka" and leading viewers on a prayer before having lunch along with them. He opened the show with the song "Laugh and Be Happy."
Rovick created the sheriff persona because of his interest in law enforcement. He served in World War II as a radio gunner for the Army Air Forces.
The Dayton, Ohio native was survived by his wife and two daughters.
'Sheriff' John Rovick
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