Cartoons Friday!

Plus Jimmy and Stephen and new live music from Chrissie Hynde and Neil Young.

Greg Mitchell has authored more than a dozen books and directed four recent PBS films. His latest, “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero—and Nuclear Peril Today” has been airing over PBS stations and now streaming for free (key links to watch now and more here). A companion book is available, and you can read more or order here. And subscribing to this newsletter is still FREE.

Jimmy and Stephen still not backing off.

Then there’s this from Heather Cox Richardson this morning:

Today, Steady State, a group made up of more than 340 former U.S. intelligence officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the State Department, and other intelligence agencies, released a report assessing the state of American democracy. Applying the tools of their craft to the U.S., they assess that the nation is “on a trajectory toward competitive authoritarianism: a system in which elections, courts, and other democratic institutions persist in form but are systematically manipulated to entrench executive control.”

The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, finds that American democracy is weakening as the Executive Branch is consolidating power and “actively weaponizing state institutions to punish perceived opponents and shield allies,” and that Congress is refusing to check the president, “creating openings for authoritarian exploitation.”

“We judge that the primary driver of the U.S.’s increasing authoritarianism is the increased frequency of Executive Branch overreach,” the report says, noting that “President Donald J. Trump has leveraged emergency powers, executive orders, federalized military forces, and bureaucratic politicization to consolidate control and weaken checks and balances.”

But the Trump administration is increasingly unpopular. Trump loyalists are working overtime to portray those who oppose the administration as anti-American criminals and terrorists. Today White House press secretary Leavitt told the Fox News Channel that “[t]he Democrat Party’s main constituency are [sic] made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals,” and administration loyalists have spent the week claiming that the No Kings rally scheduled for Saturday, October 18, is a “hate America rally.”

BBC has just posted duet between Chrissie Hynde and Rufus Wainwright on classic “You Were Always on My Mind”

Also just posted, Montreux Jazz Festival with its guest artist this week, Neil Young and band, with “Cinnamon Girl” in the rain….

From Tunes to Toons

Photo Finish

Continuing new feature, from my camera to you, let me know what you think: Statue of greatest artist in Western world, Beethoven, in the Tiergarten, Berlin, pockmarked by bullets from World War II fighting.