The New Narrative Normal

The year is 1964, 23 years since Pearl Harbor. If you get it, you get it. Otherwise no, we're not doing the thing anymore. 

Uh oh. There's your narrative. Polls will be manufactured to show Kamala springing to a lead. Not good. Not good at all for Trump. As we've said about the major shifts in this campaign, polls can and will shift. Expect the polls to shift again. Gee imagine if the GOP nominated a sharp, aggressive, disciplined candidate with a conservative governing record.   Trump's people are probably glad the election is 7 weeks away. Maybe the media bias angle will help Trump. It's possible, but this seems like conservative wish casting to us. 

Our strategy, when thinking about the state of political races, is to check in with pundits whom we trust, center right guys who are honest, hard-bitten, cynical. These are the skeptics. Here's what Hot Air says. Here's Powerline. It's all kind of a big meh. Steyn doesn't think the debate will matter at all. As we noted yesterday, wait a few days for things to play out. 

The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel offered Sinwar safe passage from Gaza in exchange for all 101 hostages. Stroock's Books endorses this one for one-hundred-one deal. 

On Tuesday we failed once more to think of any new stories for War Night. We're waiting around for the flash of inspiration, the lightning across the sky, and it's just not coming. We'll read another story or two today.

We spent yesterday reading through Voodoo Genie and then the Irish Taoiseach story. We're defining and tidying things up. The biggest problem at the moment is the half dozen paragraph breaks we encountered labelled 'something needs to happen'. We literally need only to fill in time before the next plot point. So what would make for an interesting paragraph?

Voodoo Genie (maybe Voodoo Ace) is really coming together. Right now, aside from the two main characters, we have side characters known only by their call signs, Alouette-2, and so forth. Do these guys really need to be defined? Adding character is always good. Also, a reader may wonder only one of 425 Squadron's ships is armed with AIR-2 Genie rockets? Why not send the rest of the boys up with AIR-2 Genies? Easy, our fellow North American said, because Pierre Trudeau is PM. He does factor into the plot.

We wrote about the Irish Taoiseach in 1975, Liam Cosgrave, but know nothing about his staff. At the moment we're using a stand in CoS and will probably keep him. Does it really matter who Liam Cosgrave's chief of staff was in 1975? [20 years ago, Will was posting questions at the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment's alumni page wanting to know how much a cab ride into town cost and getting detailed descriptions of the trooper's favorite bar, the Green Goose. What happened to that Will?-Ed]. Of course, the result was A Lin through the Desert.