Cartoons Thursday!

Plus more Dolly, “Social Network” sequel, and etd.

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. His latest film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad Today” is now streaming via PBS.

I’ll call this “David and Ghoul Lyeth,” via Barry Blitt:

Paul Krugman:

Assuming that he loses much, if not all, of his power to shape events this November, and of course we’re all worried about how he may try to disrupt or overturn the election, but assuming he doesn’t manage to do that, he will find himself much diminished. How much damage will he do basically taking revenge on America?

Because always you want to bear in mind that Trump hates America. He hates the values on which America was built. He hates democracy. He hates rule of law. He hates all of the things that are what we’re supposed to be about as a nation.

But increasingly it looks as if he just plain hates this country because it doesn’t love him. How much damage will he do? How much damage can he do? I don’t want to make a specific prediction, but I’m worried.

And don’t say that he won’t do that or he can’t do that. Those have been famous last words again and again over the past decade. So this is going to be even worse, even uglier, I think than most people imagin

Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker online:

Violent attacks by Israeli settlers have accelerated across the West Bank in recent weeks, adding to what has already been a horrifying year for Palestinian communities in the territory. (The United Nations found that, as of early August, Palestinians in the West Bank had faced more than fourteen hundred attacks from Israeli settlers that resulted in casualties or property damage in 2026.) And now, in the lead-up to October’s elections, the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, has suggested that the country’s police forces take control of the area. The police are overseen by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister of national security, who is himself a settler and is famous for celebrating and encouraging deadly attacks on Palestinians.

Some Israeli organizations have tried to prevent violence against Palestinian communities. Doron Meinert, a retired colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, was arrested earlier this month while trying to protect a Palestinian community in the West Bank that was under attack from settlers.

Story this week in The New Yorker accompanied by this video (h/t Barbara Bedway):

D. Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for his research on kuru, a fatal brain disease in Papua New Guinea. Over three decades, he brought dozens of boys from the South Pacific to live with him in the United States—an arrangement he framed in philanthropic and anthropological terms. Years later, Gajdusek pleaded guilty to child abuse. Rachel Aviv follows the complicated afterlives of the boys he brought home, whose stories have never before been fully reported.

Trailer for Aaron Sorkin’s sequel to “Social Network” just released, with Jeremy Strong as Zuck this time….

Music Picks

Jon Batiste tribute to Dolly yesterday:

Dolly’s “Peace Train” with Ladysmith Black Mambazo:

…and more social commentary with the great Mavis Staples, “Why””

From Tunes to Toons

de Adder:

Ohman:

Bagley:

Photo Finish

From my camera to you: Peregrine Falcon, Stateline Lookout, NY/NJ