Good morning. It's May 15th. It is a rainy morning in New York City. Good luck to the teens taking their AP tests. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Someone shot the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, today. The Guardian reports that he's being treated for gunshot wounds to the abdomen in the hospital and describes his condition as life -threatening, although he was conscious on arrival.

The former communist turned right -wing populist is in his third term as prime minister after leaving office in 2018 and returning to office in October of last year. On the front of the morning New York Times, the lead story is Israeli officers chafe over lack of post -war plan, which seems to be synonymous with the lack of a war plan. Current and former senior military officers, the Times writes,

have begun to argue more openly that because the government has failed to roll out a plan for what follows the fighting in Gaza, Israeli troops are being forced in the eighth month of the war to battle again for areas of the territory where Hamas fighters have reappeared. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described in the story as not seeming to have a plan to stabilize Gaza, but the story notes there was little expectation among officials or experts that a new government would be formed while combat raged.

the person who won't lose his job as long as the war is going on doesn't have a plan to stabilize things and end the war. What an interesting and suggestive state of affairs that is. On the jump page for that story, there's a story about how the UN cut its official death toll for women and children in Gaza, despite some really vile crowing from Israel's foreign minister Israel Katz, who the Times writes called the new numbers the miraculous resurrection of the dead in Gaza. The number of the dead is the same as it ever was. It's just that

10 ,000 dead people who the Gazan government media office had broken out to include women and children are unidentified and not yet classified by the Gazan Ministry of Health. The overall death toll remains more or less what it was. And for more information on civilian casualties, at the top of the page the headline is, Israeli airstrike hits a United Nations school building in central Gaza.

The Israeli Air Force, the Times writes, on Tuesday struck a United Nations school in central Gaza that it said was being used as a war room to plan attacks on Israeli soldiers. The Reuters and Associated Press news agencies reported that the building was being used as a shelter for displaced civilians. Elsewhere on page one, the second lead story is Russia's gains in war were US officials. More on the faltering performance of Ukraine against the latest round of Russian advances. Next to that.

Kennedy is emerging as an unpredictable force. The lead of the story says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is polling stronger than any third party candidate has in decades, polling in roughly 10 % of registered voters across the battleground states as he saps support from both President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, a new series of polls has found. It's sort of amazing to see this featured on page one because when the story went up online, people quickly noted that it's just plain false.

New York Times, September 4th, 2016. That's September, not May, of the election year. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, may be on track to win more votes than any third party candidate in 20 years if current polling holds up. Citing a mid -August poll by the Pew Research Center, the Times wrote, overall, Mr. Johnson, who will be on the ballot in all 50 states, has the backing of 10 % of registered voters. The Pew poll found...

The Times notes that so far, Kennedy is only on the ballot in one of the battleground states. An upbeat political story from two days ago about what a swell organizing job the Kennedy forces are doing said Kennedy and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, are now on the ballot in four states. They finished signature gathering in nine more and are circulating petitions for 29 others. That is, the unprecedentedly strong Kennedy campaign is not even trying to compete in all 50 states at the moment.

It's just legitimately bizarre how wrong the time story is. And for reference, in 2016, when it came time for people to stop talking about who they said they were going to vote for and go vote for somebody, Gary Johnson's 10 % polling translated into 3 .27 % of the vote. That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.