Cartoons Friday!

Plus newly revived music from John Prine and Bruce Springsteen, Trump sees Reds.

Still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. His latest film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad Today” is now streaming everywhere via PBS.

Trump’s new Red Scare (not just re: his face) mocked.

Paul Krugman:

Yesterday Donald Trump declared that the Iran war is going “better than anybody expected could be done.” He’s delusional, of course. And his delusions are the reason the price of oil is back at around $100 a barrel….Trump’s gratuitous war on Iran has turned into a remarkable quagmire — remarkable because the only thing keeping the war going is Trump’s vanity….

Still, things could be worse. And they may be about to get worse. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is in “revenge mode,” and the U.S. military is surging forces into the Middle East.

And if Trump doubles down on failure, drastically escalating his disastrous war, the economic, not to mention human, impacts will get much uglier.

Heather Cox Richardson:

While Hegseth told Congress the war has cost $37.5 billion so far, Gordon Lubold, Mosheh Gains, and Courtney Kube of NBC News reported on July 14 that the internal Pentagon estimate of the cost is about $100 billion. Walker notes that when economists at Moody’s added higher gas prices to the cost of the war, they estimated that it has cost U.S. households about $1,100 each.

Yesterday Steve Rattner of MS NOW reported that “[u]nder Trump, the debt held by the federal government has surpassed 100% of GDP. By 2030, it’ll shoot past its all-time record from WWII.” Also yesterday, Megan Messerly of Politico reported that just over a third of MAGA voters think the Iran war has been worth the economic cost, down from about half of them in May.

Axios:

We ask almost every AI architect and leader the same thing in private: What AI risk worries you most?

• Almost all of them fire back the same response: a killer pathogen, spreading too silently, widely and quickly to stop, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a “Behind the Curtain” column.

Why it matters: The rare agreement among AI experts flows from the belief these advanced models could help a bad actor create a deadly pathogen before the government and industry perfect detection and prevention systems.

Music Picks

Publicity release re: John Prine:

Five previously unreleased John Prine songs will see the light of day this fall on ‘Found Dogs,’ an expanded version of the late singer-songwriter’s 1995 album ‘Lost Dogs + Mixed Blessings’. Out October 9th on Prine’s Oh Boy Records, ‘Found Dogs’ will include alternate takes, acoustic solo performances, and the five previously unreleased originals.

To herald the album, Oh Boy Records has shared the first unearthed song, “World Without Love.” Set to Super 8 film footage from an early 1970s Prine family vacation, the song is light and upbeat as John sings about not wanting to live in a world without love. Alongside Prine’s lyrics, Heartbreaker Benmont Tench‘s organ is the star of the track, amplifying the tune’s gospel spirit as Prine calls and responds to himself.

The Springsteen folks released a new video for his olde classic “I’m on Fire” yesterday:

From Tunes to Toons

Bramhall:

Jennings:

Britt:

de Adder:

Wuerker:

Luckovich:

Horsey:

Photo Finish

Over the next week or so, I will be posting pictures of hummingbirds who come to our deck and backyard every summer, with selections by my wife, the writer Barbara Bedway. Today, an excerpt from Sy Montgomery, “The Hummingbird’s Gift.”

The Aztecs believed hummingbirds, who are furious fighters, are reincarnated warriors. They've returned to life with swords as beaks, continuing their battles forever in the sky. Early Spanish visitors to the New World, seeing hummingbirds for the first time called them "resurrection birds." They believed that anything that glitters so brightly had to have been made new each day.

My new film Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad Today” is now streaming everywhere via PBS and airing over many stations.