After yesterday’s demonstrations, I was thinking about what makes this country great. I thought of a few of the great patriotic songs that have been passed down but none seemed to fit my mood. Then I remembered today’s selection, Rhapsody In Blue by George Gershwin. Jazz, music born of African American struggles in the Mississippi delta, composed by a child of Russian working class immigrants, European style, for a large orchestra.
That is the country I have lived in all my life. Not any single group but all adding their influence to our music, food, art and so much more. It is what makes us a great nation. As I put on our neighborhood web site in Kansas City.
“Some view diversity as a challenge, for us it is our life and our strength.”
I was my belief then and it still is.
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
Enjoy, Jack
wonderful selection, Jack. Thanks.
Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week’s biggest news, like Trump telling reporters he’s not getting into heaven.
Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week’s biggest news, like a Chinese man getting an organ transplant from a Pig.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/in-d-c-the-arc-de-trump-goes-up-as-the-local-workforce-shuts-down/
Attribution: Cutting Government While Building an Arch by Monte Wolverton, Battle Ground, WA
another day and another book about another day that portends another crash
https://bbc.com/reel/video/p0m9b37d/is-wall-street-s-optimism-setting-up-another-crash-
Is Wall Street’s optimism setting up another crash?
Katty Kay speaks to the writer and journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin about the ways that unchecked optimism can affect an economy — and why he’s spent the last eight years researching the lead up to the 1929 economic crash that led to the Great Depression.
I just listened to Jack’s Rhapsody selection while scrolling through this Associated Press Gallery of photos from yesterday. Very uplifting.
As is often the case Reuters did a nice even-handed job of summarizing the story:
Photos of the Constitution my Dupont Circle neighbors made and carried yesterday
The day after the day before Meme
Thank you, Jack
Great choice for the day.
Gershwin loved drawing on cultural heritage. He wrote Porgy and Bess to create a folk opera based on DuBose Heyward’s novel, aiming to compose a distinctly American opera using folk-like music inspired by African American life in Charleston, South Carolina
Happy day after No Kings day. I spotted a twet that raised the question of the total attendees as a percentage of some population number. I know it is the infamous/famous 3.5% rule rising up. “The 3.5% rule is a concept in political science that states that when 3.5% of the population of a country protest nonviolently against a government, that government is likely to fall from power. The rule was formulated by Erica Chenoweth in 2013. It arose out of insights originally published by political scientist Mark Lichbach in 1995 in his book The Rebel’s Dilemma: Economics, Cognition, and Society.[1][2]” . The concept is if 3.5% of the population publicly rallies against the sitting government, that government ends up failing. Or something like that.
FOX got schooled. Jessica Tarlov just explained what No Kings Day was *actually* about —
Constitution > Coronation.
📺 Watch our new playlist WHY WE PROTEST:
well maybe
DHS Story about Mexican Drug cartels offering bounties on ICE agents is proved to be DHS lies and bullshit.
Story is on Meidas Touch podcast which can be found where the podcasts hang out.
Good ones out there
Here are some pictures of the local event
Looking at the pictures, I can tell you, this is representative of Springfield. They obviously get their clothes from Walmart and will be getting up Monday and going to work. This gathering is as middle class as Springfield gets. It doesn’t matter who the speakers were in Washington, who thinks they are the leaders of this movement, this has become a middle class movement of true grass roots origin. When that happens change happens.
I’m inspired by my neighbors.
Jack
Jack, that is a through line I see in coverage all over the country — a lot of “civilians” showed, many interviews of people who say they’d never done anything like this
I enjoy the homemade signs
The variety is inspiring.
In one picture on the link I posted above
Signs that said:
We Have Friends Everywhere, No Child Should be Ziptied, JD Vance Ate My Dog.
Those were just the ones that I could read.
Jack
Going through Bernie’s fine speech yesterday to edit a YouTube Short of his bill of “particulars” (reminds me of Jefferson’s citations of the King’s misdeeds in the Declaration).
How old is he? Is the Democratic bench so sparse it took him to do the heavy lifting on the Mall yesterday???
He pretty much gets the job done in this one passage:
BB, guess we fell short of the 3.5% with the currently estimated 7 million given that according to nokings.org’s calculations for the earlier protests
we would have had to more than double that number. Altho if the ideal percentage is based on only the adult/voters population instead of the whole, we made it.
Craig given that the local protest was a few blocks South of the Missouri State University, I expected the crowd to be a combination of college kids and retired professor types with a scattering of 30 and 40 something folks. But it looks like a lot of ordinary working folks showed up so every generation was well represented.
Jack
today’s meme from our favorite Governor… Gavin Newsom…
one of my favorite signs…
Bernie Sanders just rewrote Jefferson’s playbook — listing Trump’s power grabs like a modern Declaration of Independence.
Watch the clip and the rest of our NO KINGS DAY coverage:
“Getting wind” of some fecal matter that Dodo has emitted in response to No Kings, but I will try to avoid the stinky details for my peace of mind. It’s enough to know he confirms my low opinion of him.
There are many versions of Libertango; I like it for accordion.
The protests were on a Saturday, during football season. The need for normalcy may have prohibited some from protesting.
Some POC have stayed away from protests so as not to incite any yt supremacists in the mix just looking to start something.
There were also floods in AK, CO & AZ.
It looked like Chicago PD was hassling protestors yesterday.
*Similar vibe, but I like the flute for Bordel 1900. The middle break sounds a bit like Chicago’s “Wishing You Were Here.”
meme #2…
What a weird way to troll protesters, with an AI of tRUMP unloading his poopy diaper on America, both admitting he has bowel incontinence and that he hates and disrespects America and Americans so much. It did distract from the EPSTEIN files for a minute, though.
Just got back from my dad’s place & he was confused by junk mail for a Medicare Advantage plan, because it said he had to respond by December 7th.
they purposefully made December 7th the deadline so that the world war II generation could remember it
Love Smokey Bear in Denver
*ELP cover/riff on Aaron Copeland.
Sustained pressure is needed, but one day of enormous, peaceful protests lets others know they are not alone & that maybe it’s safe for them to participate the next time: NOVEMBER 5TH A new system also needs to be built.
• Build Community: Systems for food, medical aid, and legal support for strikers & protesters.
• Secure Communication: To bypass state propaganda and coordinate protests and boycotts. (Signal?)
• General Strikes: <-Halting transport, energy, and finance – and orchestrate non-cooperation to break the regime’s systems. (Even rolling strikes and slowdowns would help.)
• Boycotts: Targeted economic pressure on regime cronies. <- Target, Disney, Paramount Plus have felt economic pain. Spotify is up next, advertising for ICE thugs.
• Appeal to Conscience: Urge security forces to protect the nation/uphold oath to US Constitution, not to Orange Adolf nor the MAGAt-Republican party.
• Win the Narrative: Be for something (income equality) – Dems in Congress need help with this.
• Counter Propaganda: So many lies to combat, but it must be done.
• Document Everything: Record atrocities to undermine regime legitimacy and build international pressure. (Forge connections with foreign governments and media to apply diplomatic and economic pressure on the regime.) Apple has discontinued the Clips app this month, probably because “Tim Apple” likes the taste of boot leather.
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/10/18/18880764.php
On No Kings Day in Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson called for a national general strike against the fascist attacks on immigrants workers and the destruction of workers, public education, healthcare and public services.
Trump and Johnson Are Melting Down Over The Success of “No Kings”
*If it didn’t bother them, they wouldn’t have been discouraging and threatening folks from participating, nor trying to troll the VERY SUCCESSFUL protest after the fact. MAGAts are super-inept at trolling.
Bowel incontinence is only funny when it pertains to a N&zi like tRUMP, but I hope the media will start talking about how smelly tRUMP reportedly is and that bowel incontinence is a thing, and maybe about OG Adolf’s flatulence. Release the RPSTEIN files & restore ACA and SNAP, info the tariffs, and maybe we’ll stop telling about Smelly Donny.
Clean up on Aisle 3
Another funny
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/16/its-too-late-to-extend-aca-subsidies-without-major-disruptions-some-states-and-lawmakers-say-00612001
State insurance officials are warning that the longer Congress waits to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which help low- and middle-income people afford premiums, the more difficult it will be to update rates before consumers start shopping for 2026 coverage on Nov. 1.
“The ship has sailed,” said Ingrid Ulrey, CEO of the Washington State Health Benefit Exchange. “Congress missed the opportunity to make this decision early enough for us to reset our markets for open enrollment, and to make it clean and easy for people to come in and see premiums that include the savings from the enhanced level of premium tax credits.”
Consumers are likely to see, on average, double-digit premium increases in 2026 plan offerings, according to an analysis from health policy research firm KFF. The hikes reflect rates insurers have filed under the assumption that the subsidies will expire at the end of the year and other factors such as increasing health costs.
If a deal comes later in November or December, states might opt to not update rates because of the hassle it would create. Or it could take them weeks to update their systems with the new rates and communicate to enrollees about the change.
“Every single day that passes, the risk is higher [that] we will not be able to update the information in time,” said Devon Trolley, executive director of Pennsylvania’s insurance exchange. “Typically, we try to have the rates locked in [by] September.”
By the end of the year, state marketplace directors worry millions of enrollees will have decided to forego health insurance coverage altogether after seeing the initial steep price hikes.
“People will have dropped coverage, and we will work very hard to get them back, but they will not all come back,” said Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, the state exchange.
The ACA’s original subsidies, which will remain in place if Congress lets the enhanced version expire, had an income limit of 400 percent above the poverty level, or about about $62,000 for an individual and $128,000 for a family of four, to get some form of subsidy. Under the enhanced credits, ACA premiums for people above that threshold have been capped at no more than 8.5 percent of annual income. If those subsidies expire, they will get no help.
The enhanced credits have been attractive to individuals who work for small businesses or are self employed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Heights
Trump Heights (Hebrew: רמת טראמפ, romanized: Ramat Trump [ʁaˈmat ˈtʁamp]) is a planned Israeli settlement in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights named after and in honour of Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States.[2][3][4][5] Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights are widely regarded as illegal under international law; however, the Israeli government disputes this.[6][7]
*ps – The grifters known as Witkoff & JarJar will be on 60 Minutes tonight.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/politics/artc-pm-netanyahu-confirms-he-will-run-in-israel-s-2026-election
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Saturday evening that he intends to run for re-election in the 2026 legislative elections, declaring confidently that he will “win.”
The announcement came during an extended interview on Channel 14’s program The Patriots, where Netanyahu discussed key moments of his current term, tensions with Washington, and his perspective on the ongoing war in Gaza.
On diplomatic tensions, Netanyahu admitted to frictions with the Biden administration, claiming that Washington had temporarily halted weapons deliveries. “I told [U.S. Secretary of State Antony] Blinken: if we run out of ammunition, we’ll fight with our bare hands,” he said.
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/world/renewed-fighting/6EKOARHJZMYG5DYMB7QMMEMRWU/
Gaza’s fragile ceasefire faced its first major test Sunday as Israeli forces launched a wave of deadly strikes, saying Hamas militants had killed two soldiers, and an Israeli security official said the transfer of aid into the territory was halted.
The military later said it resumed enforcing the ceasefire, and the official confirmed that aid deliveries would resume Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to discuss the issue with the media.
*So, it’s only a ceasefire while Israel isn’t actively bombing Palestinians. They control the levers. Also, no soul for you until Monday. BiBi is a bastard.
Looks like Nobel folks made the right call
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-recruitment-ads-spotify-streaming-b2846634.html
Dystopian ICE recruitment ads tell users to ‘fulfill your mission’ on Spotify, HBO Max and other streaming services
Similarly, Hulu, ESPN and Pandora music subscribers have also claimed to receive the ICE recruitment ads.
*More boycotts
Other than a shell exploding early and shrapnel hitting vehicles assigned to the secrertary of defence and state police, No Kings day went better than many expected.
Analysis of numbers has up to twelve thousand plus people active on the ground. Not counting those who could not attend but are supportive.
Something very important is that none of the right wing hate groups showed up in any number. I think this is what should shake the krasnov administration. I am sure their efforts to rile up the magats with massive efforts to label the No Kings protests as every group that is despised, spent a lot of money, effort and political capital. There was no magat protest, anywhere. That is the important scare thing to the mangomoron. His cult, his minions, did not act. They did not do a January 6 again.
When you think about that it becomes obvious that the WH and maybe stupid see a big problem. They tried to rally the troops and nothing happened. Yup, zip, nadda, and no thank you. That is something they no longer can rely on. No longer wave the bloody flag and have a response. No more.
pictures don’t lie…
The power of the messaging around “scarcity mentality” and the grip it has over the brains of my maggers was brought home to me today. There is no reaching them. I am powerless over the Faux News.
It rules everything and justifies any action taken against “an other” to preserve their grip on “their stuff.”
https://wpde.com/news/local/arrested-suspect-no-kings-protest-myrtle-beach-chapin-memorial-park-drive-by-police-department-400-14th-avenue-north-woman-location
Just before 2:15 p.m., officers from the MBPD observed an individual in a vehicle brandishing a firearm while traveling near the planned demonstration.
The woman was taken into custody without incident.
*I read somewhere that there were about two dozen arrests, all MAGAts.
The smug look on this woman’s face. She thought she was carrying water for her orange lord. No pardons for state offenses. Does she know?
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/camp-pendleton-marines-artillery-freeway/
The Marine Corps is investigating reports that one of its artillery shells fired in yesterday’s celebrations at Camp Pendleton prematurely detonated over Interstate 5, sending shrapnel down onto the freeway and highway patrol vehicles.
The New York Times first reported on the incident, citing a California Highway Patrol report. According to the report, officers reported pieces of shrapnel raining down and hitting a California Highway Patrol motorcycle and car, as well as the ground around them. Two officers reported that a two-inch piece of shrapnel left a dent in the patrol car.
The Marine Corps is aware of a “report of a possible airborne detonation of a 155mm artillery round outside the designated impact area,” Capt Gregory Dreibelbis, a spokesperson for I Marine Expeditionary Force, said in a statement to Task & Purpose. Firing was suspended shortly after, and the Marine Corps is investigating, he said.
NEW THREAD