Joaquín Rodrigo Vidre; 22 November 1901 – 6 July 1999, was a Spanish composer and a virtuoso pianist. He is best known for composing the Concierto de Aranjuez, a cornerstone of the classical guitar repertoire. ( wiki link )
Enjoy, Jack
Sunday Serendipity
Jack, love the classic guitar stuff. thanks and as long as you’ve taken us across the pond, here’s UK’s open for their new season of SNL
Harry and Meghan Return Home | SNL UK Sep 12, 2026
Harry and Meghan return to the family home and not everyone is happy to see them.
from NYT How Trump Is Wielding Power to Stifle Speech
President Trump has harnessed agencies across the government to curtail press freedoms, a sweeping campaign that free speech advocates say will have lasting effects.
By Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman
The Justice Department has sent F.B.I. agents to reporters’ homes to serve subpoenas and, in at least one case, flashed a warrant to seize devices. The Pentagon has fired the editor and publisher of its traditionally independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and blocked access to other journalists who refused to sign pledges that would limit their reporting.
Regulatory agencies are using their powers to pressure media organizations over their content. The administration has stripped funding from public television and radio. Angry over stories he does not like, President Trump has sued major news organizations and the White House has taken control of the previously independent press pool that tracks the president, deciding which outlets can participate.
Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once.
Driven by personal pique, fury over leaks and a determination to shape the political narrative to his advantage, Mr. Trump is deploying the might of the federal government and filing personal lawsuits — targeting not just journalists and liberal critics, but also comedians and talk show hosts, and the corporate entities behind them.
To the president and his allies, he is simply demanding accountability for what he casts as biased, unfair and sometimes inaccurate coverage and criticism — an effort that has been welcomed by longtime conservative press critics like those at the Media Research Center.
Aides noted that the White House has this year expanded who gets invited to cover events, such as the off-the-record presidential lunch with network anchors that precedes the annual State of the Union address.
In a statement, the White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said that “biased reporting from the media is a disservice to the American people.” Pointing to Mr. Trump’s heavy rotation of question and answer sessions with reporters as evidence of “unprecedented access,’’ he added: “We utilize every tool available to ensure that accurate reporting is provided to the public and the stain of those who knowingly peddle false information is held accountable.”
Free speech advocates say the president’s intent is apparent: to punish, intimidate and silence dissenters.
“There’s not a week that goes by where they’re not taking a new step to curtail press freedom in the country,” said Clayton Weimers, the executive director of the North America division of Reporters Without Borders. “We have measured a substantial diminishment of press freedoms.”
When challenged in court, the president and the administration have frequently lost, confronted with strongly worded rulings from judges affirming First Amendment rights.
Still, even the path to legal victory can have severe financial and reputational costs for those he views as adversaries, which have included The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC. And each time the president assails what has long been considered protected speech, media analysts say, he is eroding norms and undercutting the role of an independent press.
Reporters Without Borders maintains an index that tracks press freedom in 180 countries, clocking governmental threats, subpoenas and the vindictive use of regulations against journalists. The United States now ranks at its lowest since the organization started the index in 2002 — 64th, just above Panama and just below Botswana. The trend is the same at similar indexes kept by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the V-Dem Institute of Sweden.
There is a long record of U.S. presidents taking steps to curtail speech. President Woodrow Wilson imposed strict censorship and forced dissenting publishers out of business during World War I. Richard M. Nixon kept an enemies list, and his aides threatened F.C.C. action against broadcasters. More recently, the George W. Bush White House expanded government secrecy and the Obama administration went after the sources of journalists through leak investigations.
Mr. Trump had inveighed against the Biden administration for what he and his supporters portrayed as draconian pressure on social media companies to censor disfavored content often at their expense, promising at his second inauguration to “stop all government censorship.”
Now his administration is breaking new ground in stifling dissent with personal lawsuits and novel uses of executive power, longtime First Amendment lawyers say, with implications that extend far beyond Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Sign up to get Maggie Haberman’s articles emailed to you. Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent reporting on President Trump. Get it sent to your inbox.
“We live in a different world under this administration because the threats are so grave,” said Floyd Abrams, who has worked on free speech cases for 60 years. “It’s one thing to say there’s an extraordinarily powerful First Amendment, but unless and until courts rule on these matters, the threat is very real.”
Harnessing Government Power
Long before he took office, Mr. Trump was well known for his media feuds. As a developer and reality TV star, he was quick to threaten defamation suits against those who challenged his assertions about his business successes and his wealth.
Mr. Trump has been candid about his aim: to inflict pain, even if it was fleeting. After bringing a failed libel suit against the former Times reporter Timothy L. O’Brien, whose book “TrumpNation” estimated Mr. Trump to be worth far less than he claimed, the president gloated about forcing the publisher to spend money. “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” he said.
In his first term, the president branded journalists as “fake news” and crudely attacked reporters, especially women.
In his second term, Mr. Trump is now imprinting his pugilistic approach across the machinery of the federal government. Those who once might have checked him have been replaced by loyalists who often use their power to fulfill Mr. Trump’s desire to punish perceived enemies.
Soon after his inauguration, the White House banned The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, ostensibly because the wire service would not call the Gulf of Mexico by Mr. Trump’s preferred name, the Gulf of America. Another reason for the ban: The A.P. would not give the Trump team rights to its photo of Mr. Trump, bloodied with a raised fist, after he was shot in Butler, Pa., in 2024. At a private lunch with Mr. Trump and network anchors last year, White House aides tied the A.P. ban to the denial of the rights to the photo, according to two people briefed on the event.
Mr. Trump’s team is unapologetic about its goal of achieving firmer control over the national information environment — what Mr. Cheung, the communications director, has dubbed in a social media post “Full Spectrum Dominance.”
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and one of the most aggressive supporters of Mr. Trump’s efforts, has said that the president is “reshaping the media landscape.”
Citing the big broadcast networks, Mr. Carr told an interviewer for CNBC last year that “for years government officials just allowed those entities, with executives sitting in Hollywood and New York, to dictate the political narrative.” Mr. Trump, he added, has “fundamentally changed the game.”
One of the Trump administration’s strategies appeared to take root in a dispute between Elon Musk and the liberal press watchdog group Media Matters for America.
In 2023, Mr. Musk was furious about a Media Matters article that showed pro-Nazi posts were running on his social media platform X alongside promotional posts from major consumer brands, contributing to an advertiser exodus from the site.
A longtime Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, took to X to pointedly note that Republican state attorneys general had the power to consider civil and criminal fraud charges against the group. In short order, Mr. Musk sued Media Matters for allegedly manipulating the X algorithm to produce its results, the Texas attorney general’s office opened an investigation into deceptive trade practices and the Missouri attorney general followed with its own inquiry.
Media Matters won court injunctions blocking the Texas and Missouri investigations. But soon after Mr. Trump took office again, the Federal Trade Commission, newly headed by the conservative lawyer Andrew Ferguson, began its own investigation, demanding internal documents related to Media Matters’ methodology for evaluating media sources and its finances.
The investigation was part of a broader F.T.C. inquiry into whether several groups that work to identify online disinformation were colluding with advertising firms to direct money away from disfavored outlets. Conservatives saw the issue as central to what some labeled a “censorship industrial complex.”
A federal judge in Washington ultimately determined that the F.T.C.’s investigation of Media Matters presented “a straightforward First Amendment violation.”
But the fight was costly for Media Matters. In addition to paying legal fees, the group said it had self-censored articles to avoid further scrutiny from the agency. (It is still defending itself against Mr. Musk’s suit.)
The F.T.C. also investigated NewsGuard, a site that rates the reliability of online information. It is avowedly nonpartisan in its approach; Fox News, for instance, rates above MS NOW.
In court papers, NewsGuard said it drew attention in part because it had given a low rating to the conservative site Newsmax, which is run by an ally of Mr. Trump’s, Chris Ruddy. Mr. Ruddy had complained that ad agencies were relying on NewsGuard ratings to withhold money from right-leaning outlets like his.
The F.T.C. took another tack that NewsGuard said affected it directly, related to the merger of two of the country’s largest advertising holding companies, Omnicom and Interpublic Group. The F.T.C. entered into a consent decree with the newly joined company barring it from broadly using ratings like those published by NewsGuard to withhold ad spending from certain sites, among other things. (It could still follow individual clients’ requests to do so.)
In a lawsuit filed in February, NewsGuard said the provision effectively placed it on a blacklist, immediately causing it to lose business.
The F.T.C. ultimately dropped its investigations into both NewsGuard and Media Matters, saying it had achieved its goal of defending free speech through agreements with ad firms. It said it was fulfilling its mission of protecting consumers from anticompetitive behavior that “distorted the marketplace of ideas,” as Mr. Ferguson put it.
Dan Schneider, vice president for free speech at the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center, described the actions by the F.T.C. and the F.C.C. as a correction against abuses under the past two Democratic presidents. “Please, let’s not forget history and rewrite everything that went on before,” Mr. Schneider said.
But Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic F.T.C. commissioner fired by Mr. Trump last year, said in an interview that the agency’s actions were “a perversion of the F.T.C.’s authorities in order to punish the speech of perceived enemies and reward perceived allies.”
‘Deeply Un-American’
Much of the administration’s action has been led by Mr. Carr. The longtime F.C.C. lawyer is known to frequent the president’s golf clubs when Mr. Trump is there on weekends and often speaks to the president directly about his grievances with news outlets, according to people briefed on their conversations.
He has bent the F.C.C. to the president’s will, investigating the major broadcast networks by reviving largely dormant rules, like those against so-called news distortion — meant to punish the deliberate staging or distortion of a news event. Mr. Carr has also pursued networks for their diversity, equity and inclusion practices, inquiring whether they violate federal law and agency regulations, a tactic the administration has used to significant effect against universities and law firms.
Early on, Mr. Carr extracted extraordinary concessions from Skydance, the company run by the studio executive David Ellison, the son of the billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison, as it sought to purchase Paramount, the parent company of CBS. To secure F.C.C. approval for the merger, Skydance agreed to end CBS’s diversity policies and appoint a monitor for news bias. (Mr. Trump has since shown a rooting interest in the Ellisons’ attempt to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.)
Critics, among them F.C.C. chairs from past Republican administrations, have said Mr. Carr is exceeding his authority. Mr. Carr says he is simply following the law by requiring broadcasters to serve the public interest in ways that he says his predecessors had failed to do.
Mr. Trump is clearly pleased with Mr. Carr’s effort to solve the so-called fake news problem, as he put it in a speech in April at a private White House event ahead of the celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary.
“He’s keeping these crooked networks honest,” Mr. Trump said as he spotted Mr. Carr in the crowd, describing his appointee as “the most powerful man in the world.”
After Mr. Trump recently called for punishment of the NBC host Kristen Welker for reporting he did not like, and suggested F.C.C. action against the airing of “fake polls,” Mr. Carr responded by saying the agency was considering “a lot of actions,” including on “fake polls.”
No network has borne the brunt of the president’s ire as much as the Disney-owned ABC network.
Mr. Trump’s animus against ABC grew in 2024, when he sued over the anchor George Stephanopoulos’s characterization of the verdict in the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, who accused Mr. Trump of sexual abuse. ABC settled the suit for $15 million.
In the president’s second term, his anger has increased as the ABC late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel has made him the regular butt of jokes.
Last year, the F.C.C. opened an investigation into the network’s diversity and inclusion hiring policies and revived a conservative group’s complaint over ABC’s 2024 presidential debate.
Early this year, the agency sought to require its talk show “The View” to follow so-called equal-time rules for political candidates, even though the F.C.C. previously agreed that the show qualified for an exemption.
In April, after Mr. Trump and the first lady demanded ABC fire Mr. Kimmel over a joke he made about her being an “expectant widow,” the F.C.C. started an early review of the federal licenses that ABC stations need to operate, years before they are set to expire.
The agency had never brought such a mass challenge to a major network’s station licenses. It said it was doing so because ABC was deficient in its responses to the diversity and inclusion inquiry.
ABC is now fighting the agency’s actions, which it called “deeply un-American.”
The network has asked a federal court to intervene immediately, arguing that Mr. Carr was effectively using the agency’s enforcement process to wage a “retaliatory campaign” that is already negatively affecting its programming decisions.
Out of fear of retaliation, ABC decided to carry live online a prime-time speech that Mr. Trump gave on election security, which it would not have otherwise done, and avoided certain bookings and video clips on “The View,” the network said in court papers.
It also reported onerous F.C.C. demands for documents, including staff communications from inside “The View” and internal ABC News editorial policies.
“It’s unprecedented to seek these records because they are part of the editorial decision-making,” Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic F.C.C. commissioner, said in an interview. “It’s all a strategy, and tools, to intimidate broadcasters into submission.”
Mr. Carr has called ABC’s suit meritless. This month, the F.C.C. moved to get the case dismissed, arguing ABC was simply trying to short-circuit an agency investigation while exaggerating harms to its speech rights.
‘Off the Charts’
Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit group that tracks press freedom violations in the United States, said that the administration’s moves “have certainly risen to the level where they’re kind of off the charts.”
Government efforts to subpoena journalists and chill their reporting through threats are at the highest level since the foundation started tracking incidents in 2017.
And as a private citizen, Mr. Trump has filed lawsuits against a wide range of targets including the Guardian newspaper, the journalist Bob Woodward and the Pulitzer Prize board — legal battles often financed by his donor-funded political action committee.
Many of the moves have also drawn stern rebukes and concern from judges.
That was the case after the F.B.I. served a search warrant in January at the home of a Washington Post reporter and seized several of her devices, as part of an investigation into a contractor’s handling of classified material. In February, Judge William B. Porter chastised the government and forbade officials from immediately reviewing the reporter’s materials, saying to do otherwise would be “the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of The Washington Post’s henhouse.”
While weighing a suit Mr. Trump has personally brought against The Des Moines Register for a poll it published showing him behind in Iowa in 2024, a judge worried that allowing the suit to proceed could have “a massive, chilling effect.”
After a judge harshly questioned government lawyers in July over subpoenas for phone records and testimony from Times journalists who reported on the security capabilities of the new Qatari-donated Air Force One jet, the Justice Department withdrew the subpoenas.
At the time, David McCraw, the paper’s top newsroom lawyer, called the outcome “an important affirmation of our country’s commitment to a free press,” but added in a statement that the subpoenas “should never have been issued in the first place.”
In siding with The Times in a challenge to restrictions for reporters at the Pentagon, Judge Paul Friedman of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in March, “Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech.”
After The Times initially prevailed in court, Pentagon officials sidestepped the ruling to again limit the access of journalists to the building. The Times sued again. This time, an appellate panel allowed a key new restriction to stand, at least temporarily — reporters must have escorts inside the Pentagon where they once roamed freely.
The rule remains in place while the legal fight presses on.
Just to finish up on 9/11 – We didn’t do anything special. We just didn’t do nothing.
Jack,
Thank you. Classical Spanish guitar is a real treat.
Irish Meme
Guitar leading an orchestra. Yes!
The traditional post-Labor Day GOP cash flood begins.👉 Now on The Digital Diner
Paxton spends his billionaire allowance on “girls sports” culture war.
Chet
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c14dpgm0rg4o
The head of AI company Anthropic has called for the pace of development of artificial intelligence models to slow down and to be closely monitored.
The bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk, have both said they agree with Amodei.
*All of the foxes agree that the henhouse needs a guard who isn’t a fox?
In Amodei’s essay, called We Must Pace the Frontier and published on Saturday, he proposed a three-point plan that included independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed, industry-wide regulation and global regulation.
This would have to be done in a co-ordinated manner “without sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI”. Any slowdown would have to be limited, he said, to avoid allowing China to pull ahead.
He urged the US government to take measures so that US companies’ AI chips could not be sold to China – or the technology shared with authoritarian countries.
*So, it’s about a lot of things…and what about these “independent” monitors. So, the foxes want to make sure they control who guards the henhouse.
Anthropic and OpenAI are both reportedly preparing for potentially record-setting initial public offerings.
*Ah-ha! They want it to look like a safe bet.
That guy who quit and his exit letter said Ai will kill humanity…maybe he was in on it.
Chet Atkins did a great series of albums with other CGP (Certified Guitar Player/plucker) guitarists.
Chester & Lester (with Les Paul)
Neck to Neck (with Mark Knopfler)
The Day Finger Pluckers Took Over the World (with Tommy Emanuel)
The Atkins & Travis Traveling Show (with Merle Travis)
Several with Jerry Reed
All worth adding to your collections if you love great guitar.
Sounds like they need a coalition of AI corporations to create a standard industry wide agreement complete with proposed legislation they will all back, fund and enforce. They can each offer bells and whistles as long as they abide by the agreed upon limits.
Meet our Sunday goddess, Sól
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/republican-senators-tv-interview-passes-030359471.html
Republican senator’s TV interview passes muster with FCC’s Carr even though Democratic candidate’s does not
An ESPN interview on Saturday with a Republican U.S. senator did not violate the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time rule, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said, days after the agency issued a warning to another network about a Democratic political candidate’s appearance on a late-night TV program.
Responding to a social media post by a group of college Democrats, Carr wrote that equal-time rules, which require TV networks to give airtime to opposing candidates, do not apply to Senator Ted Cruz’s appearance on ESPN’s “College GameDay” program because the law applies to broadcast TV stations, not cable programs.
Additionally, the statute only applies to legally qualified candidates, which Cruz is not, he said. Cruz, a Texas Republican, is not a candidate in this year’s midterm elections.
ESPN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Carr’s post came days after his agency warned one of ESPN’s sister networks, ABC, over late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s interview with James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for Texas’ other U.S. Senate seat.
“Congress wanted to ensure that voters would decide elections, not media gatekeepers picking winners and losers by providing preferential airtime to some candidates and not others,” Carr wrote on Saturday.
Kimmel on Thursday aired his interview with Talarico on YouTube rather than on his network broadcast, citing the FCC threat. Talarico is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, in a race that could decide control of the U.S. Senate in November.
In January, the Republican-led FCC said daytime and late-night TV talk shows are no longer considered “bona fide” news programs that are exempt from equal-time rules.
Cruz earlier this year criticized an FCC decision to review broadcast licenses held by Walt Disney, the parent company of ABC and ESPN.
“It is not government’s job to censor speech and I do not believe the FCC should operate as the speech police,” he told Punchbowl News in comments confirmed by his office.
The audience at College Game Day knew their mission. One woman even held up Talarico For Texas on her phone.
Ai self-governance is what the techbros are after…and to throttle back China. If government is going to set up guardrails, they want someone on the inside to steer them. Hmmm, billionaires with a friend embedded in a government oversight capacity. What could go wrong?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/13/openai-sam-altman-elon-musk-back-anthropic-calls-brakes-ai-development
*Do not buy what they are selling.
Amodei’s plan seeks a waiver from the US government to allow the frontier AI companies to coordinate without being punished for anti-competitive collusion.
But David Sacks, a co-chair of Donald Trump’s council of advisers on science and technology, said: “Stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission … Stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyber-attack.”
*It goes beyond concerns about liability.
Amodei said “building [AI] too fast is reckless” and he feared that after hundreds of OpenAI agents hacked into the Hugging Face website this summer, a swarm with greater capabilities but similarly misaligned could cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage by “taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet”. This was disputed by some AI experts as not particularly plausible and to be treated with scepticism.
Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, responded to Amodei’s slowdown plan with a post on X: “Dario is right.” He said: “I’ve been sounding the alarm on AI for a long time,” and referred to a 2014 post where he said: “We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.”
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, responded to Amodei’s comments on Saturday. “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” he said in a post on X. “Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”
Amodei’s call comes as Anthropic prepares to float on the US stock market, in what is expected to be the biggest initial public offering of all time. It is expected to start marketing its planned $2tn-plus (£1.5tn) IPO soon.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/13/spain-james-fergie-chambers-extradition-request
Pressure builds in Spain to deny US extradition request for leftwing donor
“It would set an alarming precedent in all of Europe if Spain allowed the Trump administration to criminalize offering vital humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people and defending their rights,” said Baltasar Garzón, the acclaimed human rights lawyer and a member of Chambers’ legal team.
“That’s what Fergie has financed: humanitarian aid and support for people in a situation of great need,” said Garzón. “That’s not terrorism, according to Spanish and European legal standards.”
The US government’s case centers on Chambers allegedly laundering $7.5m that he wired several years ago from a US bank account to Tunisia, where he lived at the time, and allegedly using the money to support the Palestinian group Hamas. The exact details of the indictment against Chambers remain sealed.
Chambers’ team say he has been supporting humanitarian aid and other projects. The 41–year-old self-described anti–imperialist’s defense is also asserting that the Trump administration’s additional charges of “international money laundering” don’t hold up because, as heir to one of the richest families in the US, he obtained his personal wealth through legal means. Chambers’ donations have gone to about 100 projects in 20 countries for several years – including the Sameer Project, in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Schnabel has met with members of Sumar and Podemos – progressive political movements vital to the coalition government of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez – and has written a one-page letter to Sánchez asking him to make “the only morally acceptable decision”, that of denying extradition. Sánchez forms part of the council of ministers.
Schnabel has not escaped scrutiny since her partner was detained on 10 July in Ibiza. On a recent trip to New York, the FBI pulled her aside at JFK airport and confiscated her phone, she said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/republican-seeking-implicate-abdul-el-141758256.html
Republican seeking to implicate Abdul El-Sayed over 9/11 voted twice against benefits for first responders
Rogers has twice voted against healthcare and other benefits for 9/11 first responders and survivors, congressional records show. He has also helped kill other bills that would have provided benefits and healthcare to first responders nationwide. Rogers, a former member of Congress, is vying for Michigan’s open US Senate seat in a tight race that could decide control of Congress during the next session.
Rogers was among Republicans who voted against the 2010 James Zadroga Act to fund healthcare for 9/11 first responders and survivors, which was used in part to treat and monitor 40,000 people who worked in toxic conditions in the attack’s aftermath. The bills’ funding also helped treat responders for more than 50 types of cancer linked to exposures at Ground Zero.
Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican US Senate candidate, has sought in recent weeks to create controversy over old tweets his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed posted about 9/11. He has for example, falsely suggested El-Sayed, who is Muslim, said the US deserved the attack.
thanks,Jack…
today’s meme…
HA!
Message for Trump about Irish unification.
Thanks Jack! one of my favorites. Here’s a jazz version I never stopped listening to since it was released. Also the Miles Davis version from “Spain.”
Today in the Diner…
SEO: Dolly Parton Airport Vote & Texas Senate Race Cash
Curiosity: What Trump Just Said About Ireland Sparked Outrage
Punch: Billionaire Cash & Bob Hope
Ken Paxton gets billionaire cash in Texas, Trump sparks outrage in Dublin, and Nashville’s BNA votes on a Dolly Parton Airport rename.
Sunday Serendipity takes a turn today as we dig into the brutal facts of political cash. Ken Paxton is suddenly swimming in billionaire money down in the Texas Senate race, proving the big donors are getting nervous right before the bell. Meanwhile, we trade the corporate boardroom for the factory floor, talking about the real working class, from the United Auto Workers backing Sean Fain to the days of running a forklift for the Dana Corporation while listening to NPR.
Overseas, Donald Trump went to the Republic of Ireland and accidentally kicked the hornet’s nest by talking about a united Ireland, leaving folks in Dublin furious about the twenty million dollar security bill. Back home, we’re tracking a much better naming convention: Nashville International Airport officially taking the first steps to rename itself after Dolly Parton, successfully boxing out a push to name it after Trump.
Throw in some classic Chet Atkins guitar history, a look at voter turnout strategies with Angie Nixon and Mary Peltola, stolen yard signs for Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur in Ohio, and an old operator’s tale about putting a call through for Bob Hope and Dolores Hope, and you have got a full plate at the diner today.
Live Chat: https://trailmix.cc/chat
Website: https://trailmix.cc
Alerts: https://trailmix.cc/alerts
00:00 Intro
02:25 Chet Atkins and Boston Pops
03:40 Ken Paxton Texas Senate Money
05:50 UAW Vote and Sean Fain
09:50 Alaskan Earthquake Operator
17:35 Bob Hope Celebrity Phone Call
23:10 Humphrey Bogart Cigarettes
30:30 Zinzendorf Hotel Segregation
36:20 Donald Trump Ireland Outrage
48:15 Dolly Parton Nashville Airport
51:40 Angie Nixon and Mary Peltola
58:30 Marcy Kaptur Ohio Yard Signs
— Human directed and edited. Machine drafted (Gemini Pro).
The reviews of sfb visit to Ireland are enjoyable to read. Disclaimer, I have Irish family living there so I am getting a wee bit more pleasure out of the reviews than usual. Basically the idiot was his usual stupid self. The President of Ireland read him the riot act over a few things, resulting in his confused and pissed off alternate world. He is completely not in this one anymore. There is little more to add than he has once again demonstrated his low intelligence and stupidity of embarrassing the United States.
Trump ignites Irish fury 😡
🍽️ From today’s Digital Diner menu
AN INVITATION TO VISITORS
Look at the chart. The server logs don’t lie. Every day at 11-Noon ET, just as The Digital Diner goes live, traffic surges here at trailmix.cc. You read the room. But most of you keep quiet.
We’ve kept this joint open for 21 years because people actually talk to one another. There’s no velvet rope and no formal registration. Just conversation.
Pull up a stool. Click https://trailmix.cc/comment and tell us what the official story left out today.
Don’t be a stranger.
you sure it’s not just me refreshing
WinterLinde joined us at the end after voting so we didn’t have time to discuss it. We’ll get into the results tomorrow. I asked AI for a paragraph:
Lower Saxony’s local elections are worth watching as a political thermometer for Germany. The big number is the far-right AfD, which won just 4.6% here in 2021. A big jump would show its national surge taking root in everyday western German politics, while losses for the SPD would signal more trouble for the traditional center-left.
Ha, Anon, even you only count once
Craig,
This place is special because you created a location for real conversation. It is a tribute to your ability to invite civility.
I was listening to a comedian who I wanted to learn more about, so I looked up their birthday, which led me to an in-depth discussion concerning genocide in Gaza and antisemitism
on a comedian’s reddit page
because i looked up their birthday
we’ve lost our minds
Well I see the Hunter Biden crypto coin crashed and burned. Given his track record not surprising I guess there is one in every family.
Jack
yeah but he made money on the issuance
all hunter did was have his data stolen and then broadcast by nefarious actors
did drugs and took some nudes
describes most people under 40 now
cultural shift
Right wing test in Swedish election today. Here’s an English language site following live results;
Can Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s right-wing bloc hold on to power, or will Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats lead the opposition back into government? With the far-right Sweden Democrats seeking cabinet seats for the first time, the stakes go well beyond who becomes prime minister. Join us as we break down the results, the possible coalitions and what this election means for Sweden and Europe…
Working on our final god video of the week: Luna, for Monday
Here’s Tuesday through Sunday:
neil gaiman’s “american gods” is about the old gods vs the new gods
the new gods are like the internet god, the christofascist god and stuff like that
gaimann wad “cancelled” by the internet scolds cuz he’s a bit of a perv bit once again so are most people
Anon, I see that Gaiman has a character called Shadow Moon. Wonder if I can work him into our Mondays Luna vid
something like..
I’m SHADOW MOON.
LUNA gave you MONDAY.
I’m just here because Neil Gaiman
gave me a convenient last name.
–or–
I’m SHADOW MOON.
LUNA gave you MONDAY.
I’m just here for the symbolism.
Anon
The Gaiman scandal news upset me because it turned a third possible season of Good Omens into a 90 minute much less funny movie.
Oh well, do we have to stay away from gaiman for our monday video?
I would leave Gaiman out of it. There are enough legal cases around without tripping over another one.
i’ll go back to my original cow jumping over Luna idea
lol blame the scolds jamie
There’s always Jack and Jill for the nursery rhyme connection as well as jumping cows, cats, fiddles, laughing dogs, and runaway cutlery.
here’s our first draft of Luna’s look
Note: The cow jumping involved the “man” in the moon as did the Nordic Mani version with the children. Luna as female needs another story.
Luna wears a crescent moon crown or tiara on her head.She drives a two-horse chariot called a biga across the night sky.
Luna fell deeply in love with Endymion, a breathtakingly handsome mortal shepherd. She watched him sleep every night as she drove her chariot across the heavens. To keep him young and handsome forever, she asked for him to be granted eternal youth and an endless, peaceful sleep. In some versions of the myth, they had fifty daughters known as the Menae, representing the months of the lunar Olympiad.
Luna is the exact equivalent of the Greek goddess Selene. The Romans also associated her with other lunar deities like Diana and Juno.
The English word lunacy comes from her name, because ancient people believed the full moon caused madness and strange behavior.
https://x.com/Damaan4u33/status/2099161667451937049
@Damaan4u33 X.com
Irish President Catherine Connolly threw Trump behind the smallest desk available. The assignment was clear.
A tiny desk, for a tiny man!
It was way over Trump’s narcissistic head.
Kudos to her for showing him exactly what she thinks of him!
*Is the desk photo real?
https://x.com/DerekDZG11/status/2098901302734426355
*Closing remarks from Hamilton KS debate.
“We have a lot people who lost their hearts in Washington D.C.”
i just can’t help mixing metaphors Jamie, here’s our thumbnail, video coming
Dolly blocks Trump airport:
Nashville just voted to name their airport after Dolly. Sorry Donald, you lose this round of the vanity sweepstakes.
🍽️ From today’s Digital Diner menu
I love the cow just thought you might want some alternate livestock with that sleeping shepherd’s sheep. 😁
Luna now anchors Mondays at Digital Diner, when we collect the weekend’s news receipts and find out what fresh lunacy awaits.
Meet all the gods behind our days: trailmix.cc/days
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/9/13/iran-war-live-saudi-arabia-and-houthis-trade-strikes-over-bab-al-mandeb
Iran unlikely to give up control of Strait of Hormuz, former US diplomat says
Alan Eyre, a former US diplomat and a fellow at the Middle East Institute, says Iran is unlikely to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz because Tehran increasingly sees the waterway as its main source of strategic deterrence.
Eyre told Al Jazeera that Iran’s leadership is focused above all on preventing future attacks by the US and Israel.
“It sees control of the strait as the only way of doing that,” he said. “That’s not a chip it’s going to bargain away.”
He said Washington and Gulf states may therefore have to accept Iranian control of the strait “at least as a short-term reality” if they want to limit the damage to the global economy.
He added that diplomacy had increasingly shifted away from Washington towards Gulf states and Iraq, saying the US was “unwilling and unable” to sustain the kind of diplomacy needed.
*Dumbass was just on the news lying about Iran being desperate to make a deal with us, but that the “war” will end immediately after the midterms.
looking mighty blue out there
he was right once ten years ago
take nothing for granted
Nate has a strong long-term forecasting record, but he’d be the first to say polling leads under 3 points are little better than toss-ups, while leads above 6 points are far more reliable.
They are showing a new ad here for El-Sayed. I’m not sure who made it, but it features Barack Obama. Although, it makes it clear that using Obama’s words in the ad do not equal and an endorsement of any political candidate. The Senate Leadership Fund and Americans for Prosperity continue to hammer the message that El-Sayed is a dangerous radical and that our cost of living will rise if he gets elected. Saying that Mike Rogers will lower taxes and make life more affordable with “Commonsense Solutions”. Ads here against Mike Rogers were from the “Giffords PAC” which hit Rogers his stance on guns. Another ad is called Mike Rogers “Price Hike Mike” or something to that effect.
Corey, do you get a sense the number of ads roughly equal? Abdul has been catching up in the money race since Schumer finally kicked in
Lot of negative commentary on CNN towards Cooper for NC. Given those poll numbers someone must have ordered some Fox light coverage.
The phantom voting bloc 👉 Campaigns obsess over shrinking bases while ignoring 90 million non-voters. Wake up the couch potatoes and you win.
🍽️ From today’s Digital Diner menu
Jamie, i’ve been hollering about not taking Cooper for granted. A fortune on phony crime and gun ads can make NC competitive.
Most of the ads here are equal. A lot of ads against El-Sayed and a lot against Rogers. Some ads for Rogers envision the future. Such as: How great things are going to be 2 years from now after he’s been elected.
Or, as Trump always says, in 2 weeks
Some of those “couch potatoes” thought they were protesting the war in Gaza. They hated tRUMP, but were disgusted at US involvement which was (for real this one time) under Biden’s watch, and Kamala inherited that mantle, rightly or wrongly.
As for the folks that actually showed up to vote, I still question the validity; non-existent counties (plural) don’t show vote tallies for Harris and then have them move in the exact number to tRUMP. What’s done is done, but you have to look at it to make sure everything is on the up-and-up this time.
Also, there’s the matter of militarization of polling places, kicking folks off of voter rolls, trying to extort voting records from blue states in exchange for funding appropriated for them, and getting rid of the House Clerk to install a tRUMP loyalist, so maybe no new, Dem members get sworn in.
ps – tRUMP loyalists should just be called traitors.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/adam-hamilton-roger-marshall-woke-pastor_n_6a7f8508e4b05886dff50d70
*Roger Marshall paints “the left” as “weak and woke,” and it’s just staged stuff of him near farm animals and in the cab of a combine. It’s some very weak sauce.
To bolster their claims of wokeness, the Main Street Fund TV ad claims Hamilton used church funds to promote drag queen story time for children, that he wants to force people to become vegetarians, and the ad plays a clip of Hamilton talking about racial justice: “By virtue of being white, I have to repent.” (The ad is wildly misleading — Hamilton did say those individual words in a June 2020 sermon, but not in that sequence.)
“I grew up in a way that I’m blind to certain things in our society. I just am, and I have certain benefits by virtue of being educated, white, and male,” Hamilton said, just weeks after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Almost a minute and 200 words later, Hamilton added, “I have to listen and understand and finally be able to see the brokenness in myself and my indifference before I can do anything to help anyone else. I have to have a conversion. I have to repent.”
Hamilton attended a protest following the killing of Floyd in 2020, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has noted, and Republicans have also highlighted his support for LGBTQ clergy.
Even pastors at Marshall’s own church, First Christian Church in Great Bend, Kansas, in recent years have sought to raise awareness of racism.
“If you don’t think racism is alive and well in Great Bend, Kansas, I would encourage you to have a conversation with one of our Hispanic or African American brothers and sisters who live here and have them tell you what it’s really like to live as a minority in Great Bend, Kansas,” Joshua Leu, who served as the church’s senior pastor for years, said in a 2025 video sermon.
Leu has followed Hamilton’s work and said he’s not a radical leftist.
“I would say that he’s a middle-of-the-road pastor who is willing to listen to all sides, and then based on his understanding of the gospel, try to make the best decision,” Leu told HuffPost in an interview. “But he knows he could be wrong, and is willing and able to allow others to disagree with him, and not hate them. He’s pretty good at loving his enemies.”
E.P.A. Expected to Erase Limits on Climate Pollution From Power Plants
Generation of electricity is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases in the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/climate/epa-power-plant-climate-rules.html?emc=edit_na_20260914&nl=breaking-news&segment_id=226461
a lot of the nonvoters see through the bullshit, know their vote doesn’t matter and realize the same powerful interests rule regardless
they’re right and wrong but you’re not mobilizing them regardless
NEW THREAD by our fearless leader