Cartoons Friday!

Plus new music from Steve Earle and latest rightwing film by Ben Shapiro.

Still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is 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.

After the Supreme Court rejected a previous try, Trump has signed two executive orders seeking to narrow birthright citizenship and intensify the federal crackdown on commercial "birth tourism." Expect the orders to be challenged in court, Axios' Marc Caputo writes.

Also from Axios:

Republicans plan to use their first-ever midterm convention in Dallas next month to mount a sweeping, made-for-prime-time case that Democrats have become captive to their activist left. Republicans will make progressive politicians and activists recurring characters throughout the Sept. 9-10 convention at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

• GOP operatives spent months compiling footage of Democratic figures — including left-wing commentator Hasan Piker and Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico — that they’ll use throughout the convention to paint Democrats as outside the mainstream.

• Organizers will focus on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, who backs Medicare for All and criticizes Israel.

Paul Krugman:

It’s liars all the way down. The fact is that it isn’t possible for an administration to be completely dishonest with the courts and the general public while being honest with itself. Do you believe that when Trump boasts about $18 trillion in foreign investment, Kevin Hassett, the administration’s top economist, quietly tells him, “Just between you and me, Mr. President, that number comes out of nowhere, and even the investment promises we have received are vaporware”?

Of course not. This is an administration in which to serve is to abase yourself constantly, rendering fealty to Dear Leader, lying to your colleagues and lying to the American people. And if this administration doesn’t like the official government reports that are detailing the many disasters it has caused, it just quashes them .

So the Iran War is just the most visible of many ongoing, self-inflicted disasters perpetrated by this administration. Furthermore, Americans should be prepared for more chaos and mendacity, because we are governed by people who, just like Trump, are unwilling to acknowledge the truth. Unfortunately, things can get worse – and they probably will.

Sunday marks the 81st anniversary of our atomic attack on the city of Nagasaki, which that day or over time killed more than 90,000, very few of them not civilians. As the author of four books and director of two PBS films on the subject, I have been charting the final days leading up to that over at my “other” newsletter, which you can visit here. There will be another post there later today and leading up to the Nagasaki tragedy.

Right-wing writer and goofy filmmaker Ben Shapiro is coming out with another unintentional laff riot, you won’t want to miss the “Infidels” trailer:

Music Pick

A new topical song just released by Steve Earle, recorded with Los Lobos.

In the swing of a hammer, a lifetime flew by
I raised a family, but now I’m alone
A voy a volver a Celaya
I’m goin’ back home

From Tunes to Toons

McKee:

Blitt:

Davies:

KAL:

Telnaes:

Wuerker:

Photo Finish

From my camera you: You had to bee there.