Cartoons Thursday!

I am only a little more than 24 hours in Tulsa, one day away from my home, with Woody and Bob.

Yes, it’s 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.

Now in Tulsa on the soon-to-be-ending tour around my Woody Guthrie film. That’s the view from my hotel room above. Tonight a premiere for the Guthrie Center almost at the same hour the film gets its TV debut over the big PBS station in L.A. (once KCET, now SoCal), at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. You might even be able to watch it streaming tonight.

I will get a tour today of the Guthrie Center and will also visit the Dylan Center which is, aptly, almost next door—and across from the city’s main gathering place, The Guthrie Green, scene of regular outdoor concerts.

Earlier this week outside the Woody-soaked “This Land….” exhibit at the Huntington, with Woody’s guitar and the Declaration of Independence (and with spouse/producer Barbara Bedway):

Heather Cox Richardson:

Testifying at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing today, Postmaster General David Steiner told senators that under a new rule proposed by the Trump administration, the United States Postal Service will not deliver election mail in states that refuse to turn over their voting lists to the federal government.

Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) clarified: “So the proposed rule basically coerces states to conform to these new requirements and hand over their absentee voter rolls or face the consequences of not being able to vote by mail.”

Lucian Truscott IV on Trump, late-June, 2026:

He has been reduced to a stumbling, babbling display of what he was all along, beneath the pancake and red ties and “YMCA” and bluster – a very stupid man who can’t hide it any more….You could call what has been happening to Donald Trump a perfect storm, but that is not what it is. It’s a stupid man finally hitting a wall. He couldn’t find his way around at the G-7. He let out one of his epic farts when everyone was sitting around the meeting table, and it wasn’t the Oval Office, with all the trained lickspittles knowing how to keep a straight face. It was presidents and prime ministers, and they couldn’t keep their faces from showing how bad it smelled.

He’s old, and his orange makeup is absurd, and he smells, and he can’t walk straight, and they can’t hide his physical ailments, and whether his mental decline is age related or not, the simple fact that he is a stupid, stupid man has come to the fore, and it’s not going away.

Paul Krugman this morning:

Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

It’s the fear, the enshittification, datacenter hostility, and the tech broligarchy

Music Picks

Dusty Springfield’s live cover of the Gene Pitney hit “24 Hours from Tulsa,” which I bought as a kid.

There’s yet another new version this week of Song of the Year “Deportee,” here by Lucinda Williams and Mason Via.

From Tunes to Toons

Bramhall:

Ohman:

Zyglis:

Davies:

de Adder:

Day:

Steve Brodner:

Was there ever enough money AIPAC could spend to convince you there was no genocide in Gaza? Can Trump spend enough in November to convince you that the cost of living is down, that the war was a smart idea, that there was nothing to see in the Esptein files or that the pool looks great etc? I don’t think so. So what would we call this inflection point where voters, thinking for themselves, will effectively neuter the PACS? Whatever we call it, maybe “participatory democracy”, it will enable us to end dark money and keep democracy for even when we’re are not in constant trauma.

Anderson:

Photo Finish

On the wall of the Dylan Center: Life on some rolling stones.