On the roster: Ryan to make first campaign appearance with Trump - Emails contradict Kaine claim on Clinton foundation - Time Out: Your dog’s amazing nose - Audible: Fightin’ - **cough, cough** Great White **cough, cough**



RYAN TO MAKE FIRST CAMPAIGN APPEARANCE WITH TRUMP

WashEx: “House Speaker Paul Ryan will campaign with Donald Trump for the first time this year at an event in Wisconsin on Saturday. Trump and Ryan will appear together at Fall Fest at the Walworth County Fairgrounds in southeast Wisconsin. They will also be joined by Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Ron Johnson, who is facing a tough general election fight, at an event slated for 2:30 p.m. EST. The campaign stop will also come one day before Trump is set to take the stage in the second presidential debate. According to a source familiar with the plans, Trump expressed interest in holding an event with Ryan and ultimately accepted an invitation to Fall Fest, which is held in the state's first congressional district, which Ryan represents.



EMAILS CONTRADICT KAINE CLAIM ON CLINTON FOUNDATION

WashEx: “A new batch of emails from Hillary Clinton's time at the State Department offered fresh evidence Wednesday of the pains Clinton's staff took to accommodate her husband's paid speeches and her family's foundation — just hours after Sen. Tim Kaine dismissed the possibility that the Clinton Foundation had wielded influence over his running mate. Emails showed Clinton's aides teamed up with the foundation to perform donor maintenance, craft messaging on key policies and put together guest lists for both diplomatic and philanthropic events. State Department staffers were often asked to advise Clinton's husband on how to handle politically-fraught speaking engagements or foundation events, such as an effort to bring the new Libyan president to a Clinton Global Initiative meeting that was held less than two weeks after the 2012 Benghazi attacks.”



The Judge’s Ruling: Distinction without difference - Casting any eye on similarities in the core beliefs of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano asks, “What if neither talks about the government’s first duty, which is to keep us free? What if neither believes that the government works for us? What if they both really believe that we work for the government?” Read more here.



THE RULEBOOK: NOT TIME ENOUGH

“It may perhaps be asked, how the shortness of the duration in office can affect the independence of the Executive on the legislature, unless the one were possessed of the power of appointing or displacing the other. One answer to this inquiry may be drawn from the principle already remarked that is, from the slender interest a man is apt to take in a short-lived advantage, and the little inducement it affords him to expose himself, on account of it, to any considerable inconvenience or hazard.” – Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 71”



TIME OUT: YOUR DOG’S AMAZING NOSE

New York: “You were gone for minutes; your dog reacts as if you’ve been reunited after months away from each other. Who can explain the mind of a dog? Alexandra Horowitz can, actually, or at least she shares some fascinating insights into the canine mind by focusing on the way they primarily engage with the world — that is, their extraordinary senses of smell. Horowitz is the founder of Barnard College’s Dog Cognition Lab, and she’s also written a new book drawing from her research: Being a Dog, which is out this week. In that book, she states plainly her theory concerning dogs and chronology. ‘As each day wears a new smell, its hours mark changes in odors that your dog can notice,’ she writes. ‘Dogs smell time.’”



Flag on the play? - Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM with your tips, comments or questions



SCOREBOARD

Average of national head-to-head presidential polls: Clinton vs. Trump: Clinton +6 points

[Polls included: Fairleigh Dickinson University, CBS/NYT, CNN, Fox News and Monmouth University.]



Average of national four-way presidential polls: Clinton vs. Trump vs. Johnson vs. Stein: Clinton +5 points

[Polls included: Fairleigh Dickinson University, CBS/NYT, CNN, Fox News and Monmouth University.]



AUDIBLE: FIGHTIN’

“I’m Irish.” – Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., reacting to what he called a ‘feisty’ debate performance Tuesday night.



PLAY-BY-PLAY

Trump renames campaign book “Great Again” from “Crippled America” - Politico



Tuesday’s vice presidential debate had the lowest ratings since 2000 - Politico



Bubba dismisses ‘rapist’ claim from protester at rally - WaPo



Hillary goes all in for N.C. - WSJ



Trump: ‘I don’t love, I don’t hate” Putin - Politico



Weld says he’s running to take votes away from Trump - USA Today



Memo shows Clinton team helped script interview with Steve Harvey - Wash Free Beacon



How do you pronounce ‘Nevada’? - Fox News



Kaine says even his wife thought he interrupted too much - WashEx



FROM THE BLEACHERS

“Chris, in keeping with the author of the missive from the bleachers regarding the Romans script, ‘Worshipping the [creation] rather than the Creator,’ I would remind you that we live in One Nation Under God, key words under and God; it would be best for you to remember it is West By God Virginia and not the Kingdom of West Virginia, just saying!” – Mike Kinchen, San Antonio, Republic of Texas



[Ed. note: Hey, we don’t call it “almost heaven” for nothing! And we do also recall Augustine of Hippo (which I think is in Doddridge County) who warned us that the work of the church is in the City of God, not politics.]



“‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’ This quote by Thomas Jefferson sounds ominous in today’s highly charged political discourse, so I propose a new rendition: ‘The bad fruit from the tree of liberty must be gathered up by patriots, and from time to time, discarded on the refuse pile of history.’ This is, of course, referring to the electorate of this great nation as we sort the Constitutional idealist from the politically inept or, worse yet, the dishonest, from the halls of Congress and the Executive by our vote. May it be so…Enjoy Dana and you on Fox News and the Halftime Report is an absolute read for people who yearn to know the truth.” – J.R. Douglas, Wetumpka, Ala.



[Ed note: You are very kind to say so, Mr. Douglas! Jefferson’s objective, of course, was to create a nation of laws in which tyranny would be prevented by the restrictions imposed on the government. That is our inheritance as Americans.]



“It may have been true in Alexander Hamilton’s time that presidential candidates needed to have been more than ‘endowed with the requisite qualifications’ to win the country to their corner. But in this time of people often craving entertainment over reality it seems that the ‘yuuuuuge’ amount of time that the media gave Trump (for free) to display his antics during the primaries has changed the way many people voted. With all of the very well-publicized liabilities that Hillary is dragging along behind her Trump should be a shoo-in as our next president, but that is only IF he had the ‘requisite qualifications’ many people are looking for in their next president. But he doesn’t, and many are either dragging their feet or vowing to not vote for either of the two top runners.” – Eleanor Korf, Olympia, Wash.



[Ed. note: It may be that voters across the political spectrum have come to care less about qualifications in office seekers because they have ceased to believe that their choices matter. If you believe that the system is on auto-pilot or just plain rigged, you might believe that it doesn’t really matter who is at its helm. Politicians in both parties have worked hard to damage public confidence in our civic institutions over the past 40 years, so we ought not be surprised that people treat their choices differently about the people they pick to lead them.]



Share your color commentary: Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM and please make sure to include your name and hometown.



**COUGH, COUGH** GREAT WHITE **COUGH, COUGH**

Independent: “A documentary film crew hit upon a novel technique to attract great white sharks - blasting death metal through an underwater speaker. The Discovery Channel crew, filming for the Shark Week show Bride of Jaws, were on the hunt for a large great white, wonderfully nicknamed 'Joan of Shark'. Desperate to feature the 16-foot, 1.6 tonne shark in their documentary, they submerged a speaker to see if the shark would react. Unfortunately they didn't manage to attract Joan, but did catch the attention of two others, one of which was 12 feet long. Sharks 'hear' by picking up vibrations from receptors on their bodies, meaning they can be attracted to the low-frequency vibrations of heavy music, which apparently sounds like struggling fish.”



Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Sally Persons contributed to this report. Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here.