Good morning. It is October 10th. It is a crisp fall morning in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Hurricane Milton veered just a little bit south on its way to landfall last night, which spared Tampa Bay and the built up areas beyond it from getting the worst of the storm surge. Even so, the area was shredded by the hurricane. The winds tore most of the roof off Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, which has no interior drainage system, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The Tampa Bay Times also reports that a construction crane blew over and crashed into the roof of the Tampa Bay Times building. Millions of people are without power. And the Atlantic coast from the bottom of South Carolina through Georgia and halfway down Florida is still under a tropical storm warning as the storm, having crossed Florida, gradually moves out to sea, where its predicted track over the next few days is supposed to carry it straight out into the middle of the Atlantic, although possibly clipping Bermuda along the way. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead story, two columns wide, is “Battling for Pennsylvania, which could tip election, prize where campaigns splurge the most.” The article has absolutely nothing to say beyond the well-established fact in the headline.

It's impossible to imagine somebody who subscribes to the New York Times and has not already figured out that Pennsylvania's electoral votes are considered likely to decide the election. If you feel the need to read a quote from Donald Trump saying, “if we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” or a quote from an expert saying that Pennsylvania is almost “a microcosm of America,” then I guess this is the story for you. Otherwise, it's just the campaign desk vamping to fill space, hoping to give the readers something to not really read while they fret about the election. 

The jump on this story takes up more than half a page with quotes like, “it's a margins game.” And then on the facing page, there's an inside story. “Walz prefers popular vote for selecting a president.” The lead of the story is “Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota on Tuesday called for abolishing the electoral college as a means of electing American presidents, reiterating a position he has articulated in the past while he and Vice President Kamala Harris are in the heat of a campaign for the White House.” If Walz was reiterating a position that he has articulated in the past at a couple of West Coast fundraising events, what's the news angle? After the Times allows that abolishing the electoral college is in fact a widely popular position, it goes on to say, “Mr. Walz has supported the position in deep blue West Coast states no less, with less than a month before election day risks rocking the boat for the Harris campaign as it tries to deliver a message focused on economic concerns, abortion rights, and the threat of former president Donald J. Trump.” This is the paper that's been beating up the Harris-Walz campaign for supposedly sticking too tightly to its messaging script. So now that Walz ventured a little bit afield to say something that people like to hear, that must be a problem too. Again, this story about the potential problems with the optics of advocating for the popular vote in middle of the presidential campaign sits opposite the giant concluding swath of the front page story about how the lone state of Pennsylvania is the paramount focus of the entire campaign to elect the president of the entire United States. 

Next to that on page one, the big photo is of two people trying to evacuate a crate full of dogs in the rain in advance of Hurricane Milton. The Milton story below it was written before landfall. Next to that, in followup from Hurricane Helene, “hospitals ration storm-hit supply of IV fluids because of Helene,” a plant in Marion, North Carolina that makes, the Times writes, “about 60 % of the United States' supply of fluids used in IVs.” On Tuesday, meanwhile, a plant in Daytona Beach, Florida that makes another quarter of the nation's IV fluid supply was evacuating its inventory and shutting down until Friday at least to prepare for being hit by Hurricane Milton. That's 85 % of the national supply of IV fluid between the two. 

Down at the bottom of the page, the caption on a photograph of someone preparing meals in Beirut, refers the reader to the news that nearly a million Lebanese civilians have now been displaced by Israel's attacks on Lebanon. Also this morning in Lebanon, an Israeli tank crew opened fire on a UN watchtower, knocking two Irish peacekeepers out of the tower. We'll see where that lands in tomorrow's paper.

Today, down on the bottom left, “Airline posed questions to Boeing before a crash. Ethiopian safety query was turned aside.” The question apparently was, “is there anything we should know about these 737 MAX planes we're flying, given that one of them had just apparently nosedived itself into the Java Sea, killing all souls aboard?” At the time, the Times writes, “Boeing was providing detailed briefings to pilots in the United States who were asking the same types of questions about how to respond, but it answered the inquiry from Ethiopian Airlines by telling them to go look at a document. Three months later, an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crashed itself into the ground shortly after takeoff.” 

And down at the bottom of page one, a little referral sends you to page 11 to read a story under the headline, “Minimalist Art Has Its Perils. A work of art consisting of two empty beer cans was displayed at a museum.” Quick quiz, what happened next? No prize at all if you guessed the obvious, it got thrown out by accident. The artwork was a pair of empty beer cans with painted-on labels and details, titled All the Good Times We Spent Together. An elevator mechanic saw them sitting on top of a glass elevator and threw them away when he was cleaning up after work. After a search, the Times writes, “a curator found the cans in a garbage bag, which had not yet been taken away. The cans needed some cleaning but were otherwise undamaged.” Everybody got what they wanted. The art, which seems more conceptual than minimalist, achieved its purpose the museum lamb a museum dedicated to food and eating by the Times description, in the Netherlands, got its name in the New York Times. The New York Times got a little change of pace story and we got an item for the podcast. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho, please subscribe to indignity to keep us going and if all goes well, we'll talk again tomorrow.