SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET

WHAT IS THIS? – FROM CBS MIAMI:    MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) — Three men have been arrested after creating a security scare atop a Miami Beach penthouse.  Mohamed Azab Youssef, 39, Artur Schaback, 28, and Ivan Suhharev, 28, were apprehended by Miami Beach Police Friday, September 17th.  Police said Schaback and Suhharev were witnessed aiming an AR-15 rifle off the penthouse balcony at 1100 Collins Avenue, including Schaback wearing a mask over his face.  One caller told 911 they were pointing the firearm towards the busy street at citizens and tourists walking by.“I did see a handful of different officers with rifles, pistols, shotguns, the whole nine,” said witness Chris Clayborne. “It was the real deal.”  Imagine arriving to your vacation spot and that’s what you’re greeted with.  We'll try to get more on this.  I wonder if it was a dry run.  Things are getting creepy.

EMMY FLOP – FROM AP:   NEW YORK (AP) — Facing tough competition, the Emmy Awards telecast on ABC reached a record-low total of 11.3 million viewers.  The Nielsen company said Monday that the Jimmy Kimmel-hosted awards show had the smallest audience for any Emmy Awards since records have been kept. Last year's Fox telecast had 11.9 million viewers.  In a simpler age, rivals wouldn't compete aggressively, reasoning it didn't make sense to distract from a show that celebrated television. That's changed: NBC's Green Bay-Minnesota NFL game had 20.5 million viewers, Nielsen said. Also, CBS had 10.3 million viewers for a two-hour special on the JonBenet Ramsey murder mystery.  The 11.3 million figure represented how many people were watching the Emmys during average minute. Nielsen estimated that nearly 26 million people tuned in to at least some of ABC's telecast.  I guess many viewers just got tired of hearing attacks on Donald Trump and tributes to inclusion, as long as the inclusion didn't include conservatives.

SMILING ON TRUMP – FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES:    Donald Trump is enjoying his strongest position in the presidential race since immediately after his nominating convention and, for the first time, has started to significantly close the gap with Hillary Clinton on the question of which candidate voters expect will win — a shift that could boost turnout on both sides.  The nominees have moved up and down in polls over the summer and into the fall, but until now, large majorities of voters, regardless of whom they supported, expected to see Clinton win.  That’s now changed, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak tracking poll of the election. Although Clinton still holds an edge on that question, Trump has narrowed it to the point that the results are within the poll’s margin of error.  The voter expectations question is important because it often — although not always — has proved a more accurate way to forecast elections than asking which candidate a person plans to vote for. The expectations question has an especially good track record when an election remains a ways off — seven weeks in this case.  Things have changed, but Monday's debate will hold the key.

September 19, 2016