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.
Dennis Goris, after yesterday’s SCOTUS decision:
NY Times top story this morning:
Study’s Alarming Finding: At Least 1 in 4 N.F.L. Players Gets Brain Disease
The actual prevalence, researchers said, may be much higher.
The most notorious form of workplace illness in the United States might be black lung disease. Scientists say that 10 to 20 percent of coal miners who have worked 25 years or more have gotten it. It has long been considered an epidemic.
Imagine an American job that is less safe than that, where one in four workers (and maybe far more) ends up with an incurable, degenerative brain disease that withers the mind, sometimes after just a few years of exposure.
Imagine the outrage at the working conditions, the demands that something be done to protect the employees, the questions about whether the industry needed to be overhauled, if not abolished.
“I don’t think that this would be abided in any industry,” said Doug Parker, the head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Biden administration.
Fun fact from Jeffrey St. Clair: “The combined population of the three states (Idaho, West Virginia and Wyoming) where Trump has a positive approval rating: 4.4 million. Population of the 47 states where Trump has a negative approval rating: 338.2 million.”
Axios:
Ten weeks from Election Day, the Senate battlefield is sprawling, scattered — and stretching deep into Trump country.
Why it matters: In a normal year, Republicans wouldn’t think twice about Alaska, Kansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska or Texas. This isn’t a normal year.
Republicans expect all six states to revert to their MAGA mean. But they’re not betting on it.
The fact that they’re still in play has turned the midterms into a game of chess, giving Democrats more openings to attack — and leaving Republicans with more pieces to defend.
Music Picks
With (see above) the horrid Kansas incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall — pro-January 6 insurrection, lover of false COVID info and etc. etc. — facing a true challenge this year from a Democrat, it gives me an excuse to post my favorite Procol Harum rocker “The Devil Came from Kansas.”
If you’ve ever wondered about Sam Cooke’s roots (covered often here) and why his rise to the rock/pop pantheon was inevitable, here is contrast between classic Mahalia Jackson version of “The Last Mile of the Way” and young Sam’s take on same with his gospel group The Soul Stirrers:
From Tunes to Toons
The Wall St. Journal yesterday called it “the dumbest trade war ever.” Here Ann Telnaes:
Bramhall:
Dario Castillejos:
Brodner:
Anderson:
deAdder:
Horsey:
Great music, and a devastating selection of cartoons.
Super!