Stump

Now that tree-stump stools and reclaimed-wood tables have filled furniture stores with an earnest, "organic modern" look, can we please have a little fun? Some clever designers have riffed on the trend. A sampling. . . . -- Home staff

Former President Bill Clinton, stumping for Wendy Greuel in Los Angeles on Saturday, castigated the voter turnout in the mayoral primary as "ridiculous. " "We can't tolerate … the kind of low turnout you all have in these mayors' races," Clinton said of the 20.8% of registered voters who cast ballots in the March primary. "It's ridiculous. There are too many people in Los Angeles, of all ages, that have a big stake in the future. " The former president, who endorsed Greuel in March, lauded her resume as he spoke to scores of her supporters at Langer's Deli.

ZANESVILLE, Ohio -- When Ohio Sen. Rob Portman stood up at a rally here Tuesday and lauded Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, he was doing more than just walking the party line. He was joining a list of people whom Romney passed over for the job who have spoken out in the hours and the days since in support of his choice. Romney had a deep bench of GOP politicians that he considered before ultimately picking Ryan early this month and announcing his selection Saturday.

Los Angeles' mayoral candidates halted their public campaign activities on Tuesday and expressed sorrow over the explosions that killed three people and injured more than 170 the prior day at the Boston Marathon.  City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilman Eric Garcetti were buffeted by criticism during the primary of failing to offer specifics on how they would fix Los Angeles' budget woes. On Monday, Greuel said she would seek an extra $175 million in savings from the city's budget by using strategies such as cutting the council's discretionary funds and changing the investment practices of employee retirement systems.

  Donald Trump filled several roles Saturday: self promoter, crowd pleaser, economic analyst, and slashing critic of President Barack Obama. He didn’t do what many of the 2,500 to 3,000 people gathered to hear him at a tea party rally wanted, declare himself a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. But he drew cheers by dropping tantalizing hints. The crowd roared approval when he said he wasn’t quite ready to apply the signature line, “You’re fired,” from his reality TV show to Obama.

With a day of large rallies and the unveiling of his stump speech, President Obama on Saturday will acknowledge what has been obvious for months: He is in official campaign mode. In appearances at college campuses in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Va., Obama will outline his case for reelection and explain the new “Forward” campaign theme his team announced in recent days. People close to the plans say Obama isn't going for the vibe of his 2008 campaign, which he kicked off on a frigid day at the old state capitol in Springfield, Ill., more than five years ago. That event focused on the historic nature of Obama's candidacy and on soaring ambitions for the country.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- The soapbox at the Iowa State Fair has long been a tough place for politicians to talk to voters - it's where Mitt Romney famously told a protester that corporations are people as he was heckled by the crowd - but it's probably an even tougher place for a young congressman to speak on his first day solo as a vice presidential candidate. But that was the situation that Paul Ryan walked into Monday, as the newly minted candidate got his first taste of the ins and outs of participating in a national presidential campaign.

Want to know how to tick off a funnyman quickly? Tell people not to take him seriously. Richard "Kinky" Friedman has staked out a career generating chuckles, guffaws and belly laughs. He started out singing often-outrageous songs in the 1970s fronting one of the few Jewish country music bands, Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys, then for the last two decades he's kept readers smiling with his one-liner-filled mystery novels starring himself as a wisecracking but reluctant hero.

Stump A Novel Niall Griffiths Graywolf Press: 228 pp., $15 paper * If Wales looms in your imagination it is probably because of Dylan Thomas' charming "A Child's Christmas in Wales," the best known work by a Welsh writer. There is also the faint possibility that David Jones' two masterpieces, "In Parenthesis" and "The Anathemata," introduced you to, among other things, the historical and linguistic complexity of Wales and the Welsh.

We've been hearing a lot of depressing news in recent years about the dire financial prospects for big daily newspapers, including the one you're now holding. Or watching. Or, in the argot of the digital age, "experiencing. " But at the risk of sounding like I'm whistling past the graveyard, I'd like to point out that there are thousands of newspapers that are not just surviving but thriving. Some 8,000 weekly papers still hit the front porches and mailboxes in small towns across America every week and, for some reason, they've been left out of the conversation.

Cabaret fanatics - and you know who you are - invariably suffer a persistent worry: What if there is some amazing live gig out there I don't know about? Well, Monday night your worst nightmare came and went -- unless you were one of some 200 people in Pasadena for an Audra McDonald set. Admittedly, this was a cloistered event, arranged for TV critics and press members in town to preview PBS shows for the network's spring lineup. McDonald is hosting “Live From Lincoln Center” this season.

PITTSBURGH - Stumping in a state considered safe for the Democrats until recently, Bill Clinton rallied a midday crowd in western Pennsylvania for Barack Obama, calling the president a unifier who will continue an economic recovery across the country. “Who's more likely to restore the middle class?” he asked the crowd in Pittsburgh's Market Square. “I think it's the candidate that got off the campaign trail and went to work on Hurricane Sandy with Republicans and Democrats.”  “If you saw President Obama working with Democratic governors of New York and Connecticut, the Republican governor of New Jersey, the independent mayor of New York City - who just endorsed him by the way - you saw the guy who left the door open for the Republicans for four years, and they wouldn't walk through,” he said.

CINCINNATI  -- You wouldn't think a guy like Jack Nicklaus, arguably the most successful professional golfer of all time, would have many regrets in life. But it was regret that drove Nicklaus to take a stand in the 2012 presidential election. On Sunday, Nicklaus stood in a parking lot at Paul Brown Stadium, home of the Cincinnati Bengals, and asked Ohioans to vote for Mitt Romney. As Bengals fans grilled hot dogs and sipped beer before the game against the Denver Broncos - yes, a swing-state face-off  - Nicklaus stepped off a Romney bus parked next to a gravel works in the corner of Parking Lot E. It's hard to describe the effect his presence had on some of the football fans, who at first were stunned to see who was standing in their midst.

ROANOKE, Va. - Mitt Romney criticized President Obama's proposal to create a Cabinet-level position to oversee business, saying Thursday that it reflects the president's lack of understanding of how to create jobs and spark the economy. “I don't think adding a new chair in his Cabinet will help add millions of jobs on main street,” he told supporters gathered in a window factory. "We don't need a secretary of Business to understand business -- we need a president who understands business, and I do.” Romney was referring to a comment Obama made Monday that he would like to create a secretary of Business to consolidate various federal government branches.

Just five days from election day, President Obama and Mitt Romney are rushing among the roughly half-dozen states that are likely to determine who will be the next president of the United States. Three political reporters - Jim Rainey and Robin Abcarian of the Los Angeles Times and Todd Wilson of the Daily Press in Virginia - will join host Sarah Hashim-Waris at 10:30 a.m. PDT on Thursday for a video discussion about the state of the race. With Abcarian reporting from Cincinnati and Wilson from Richmond, Va., we'll talk about whether Obama's advantage in Ohio can hold and whether Romney can get what is perceived as a must win in Virginia.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Mitt Romney offered sunny optimism about the nation's future -- and no direct criticism of President Obama -- as the GOP presidential nominee returned to the campaign trail Wednesday after a pause in stumping as Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast. Romney, Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, speaking at a morning airplane hangar rally here, prefaced their remarks with thoughts about the victims of the major storm that killed dozens and left parts of the Eastern Seaboard underwater.

The Three Fates A Novel Linda Lê Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti New Directions: 172 pp., $15.95 paper Linda Lê is an extraordinary writer of scintillating French prose. Born in South Vietnam in 1963, she came to Paris as an adolescent and is now Vietnamese in the same way that Nabokov was Russian, writing in her adopted language with a kind of desolate grace. Still largely unknown in America, she has published a dozen books in France, including the 1997 novel "The Three Fates," which has just come out in the U.S. in a translation precisely rendered by Mark Polizzotti.

Do Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny know each other? That logical question came, of course, from the mind of a child, specifically, Mary Katherine Joyce, the then-5-year-old daughter of writer and filmmaker William Joyce. Twenty years later, Mary Katherine's dad has answered that question, not just with the animated movie "Rise of the Guardians," but also a series of books that explores and expands the mythology behind some of the legendary figures of our childhoods. DreamWorks Animation held a special screening for the film Tuesday night at the ArcLight Hollywood as it positions "Guardians" as an animated feature Oscar contender.

PENSACOLA, Fla. - As Floridians headed to the polls on the first day of early voting, Mitt Romney appealed to the military vote in the Panhandle, criticizing President Obama for impending cuts that Romney said would imperil the nation's safety and harm the local economy. “His vision is not greatness in America's Navy or America's military. His vision is to cut our military spending by a trillion dollars,” Romney told thousands gathered in a concrete arena here. “And by the way, a trillion dollars in cuts would cost about 41,000 jobs here in Florida, and think of all the businesses that depend on all those jobs.” PHOTOS: Mitt Romney's past Part of the cuts Romney was referring to stem from a deal between the White House and Congress, which was supported by Romney's running mate, Paul D. Ryan.