Greeting! Happy birthday Erie Canal. Sunday marks the 200^th birthday of the famed upstate New York waterway.  It helped make America great by connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River.  And that significantly reduced the cost of transporting goods to New York harbor putting the country on the road to becoming an economic powerhouse. (NYS Canals)…Right-wing headline of the day: An article in The Dispatch earlier this week threw plenty of shade on Graham Platner, the Maine oysterman chasing the Democratic nomination for senator of the Pine Tree State. Here’s the priceless headline on the story: “Blue Oyster Cult”… Must read: Check out the Stop the Presses newsletter to read Mark Jacob’s grades he’s given to almost two dozen major mainstream news organizations for their coverage of the Trump administration. Here’s just a small sample of the grades: Associated Press (B+), USA Today (C), NBC (C-) and ABC (D-)…Weekend Watches: Lots to see this weekend. The much-anticipated nuclear war movie A House of Dynamite bows on Netflix today, but it’s probably not recommended for those with nerves that are frayed. A missile with a nuclear warhead has been launched by an unidentified enemy and POTUS has 18 minutes to decide how to respond before it lands on American soil. Nail-biter! And just in time for Halloween, on Sunday HBO Max offers the “It” prequel series Welcome to Derry, inspired by Stephen King’s 1986 novel. For a less nerve-jangling, more foot-stomping choice, the Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere lands in theaters today. Hollywood in Toto predicts the film bombs because of The Boss’s anti-Trump tirades…If you keep reading, I’ll keep Righting. Howard