It is Sunday morning and I don’t often do this, but how about a little gospel singing to get us back on the path from Saturday night. This is American music sung every Sunday all across this nation. Some of the best voices every Sunday are in little churches you will never discover. Those of us who aren’t there setting in those hard wooden pews miss out. But some of them make you-tube recordings, so we get to listen an enjoy what we have missed by sleeping in late.
Today’s playlist starts out with a video that brings chills up the spine. Beautiful voices that could be the Carter family reincarnated.
Sit back relax and enjoy your Sunday morning, Jack
thanks, Jack. It’s a gift to be simple.
Simple Gifts – traditional Shaker song
Lisa Dawson
ahh acapella
a bit more upbeat with some pickers and strummers thrown in for good measure
Backwoods Bluegrass Band
if those last 2 ditties sound familiar, haunting versions plus “down to the river to pray” and more gospel hymns were background music in the Coen bros movie O Brother Where Art Thou.
speaking of haunting music from O, Brother
Lonesome Valley performed by legendary Gospel group The Fairfield
A nice twist this morning Jack. Another option is to do as my Uncle John Lair used to say about his Renfro Valley (KY) Barn Dances: “We have the kind of fun on Saturday nights we don’t have to be ashamed of on Sunday morning”
How much would all of Trump’s proposed giveaway checks cost? I asked ChatGPT before the coffee kicked in. The answer had a lot of zeros. ☕👀
Watch FIRST CUP:
With Trump wanting to add another trillion dollars to the debt for bribing voters, just how much red ink has he added — ONE THIRD of our current national debt is his doing. Get the receipts at our Trail Mix Debt Clock → https://trailmix.cc/debt/
Feel like I went to a bit of heaven with MSNOW last night (except for the way too hard rockers), but I’ll bite with one of my favorites.
Thank you Jack. Another great idea for Serendipity
Gospel music shows filled the Sunday airwaves in the 50’s-60’s
These guys were all over.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“It was so frustrating to have to go through all that process just to be told my vote wouldn’t count because I wasn’t registered.” – William Furney, a 29-year-old voter from North Texas who believes he was one of the voters whose registrations were never sent to county officials after using the DPS web portal, on his issues voting during the March primary.
NOTABLE TRENDS
SCOTUS Allowed DHS to Share Citizenship Data With States as Passport Records Also Eyed for Voter Rolls: A 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowed The U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide citizenship information from the controversial SAVE program to local governments to verify voter citizenship status. The Trump administration outlined plans in a court filing to also use State Department passport records to identify noncitizens on voter rolls, with a Federal Register notice proposing to share passport records potentially published as soon as October 22.
Over 300,000 Transgender Voters Could Face Barriers to Voting Due to Voter ID Laws: An estimated 323,700 transgender citizens may face barriers to voting in the November midterms because they lack ID documents that correctly list their name and/or gender, with approximately 113,700 living in states with the strictest photo ID requirements and few alternatives. Among transgender adult citizens surveyed, 49% had no ID listing their correct name, 54% had no ID listing their correct gender, and ~58% had no ID that correctly reflected both.
White House Proposal Could Cut Federal Funding for Voter Registration Drives Serving Disabled Voters: The White House Office of Management and Budget is proposing to ban federal grant money from being used for voter registration drives, threatening the work of nonprofits that help disabled voters – a population that already experiences registration difficulties for about 740,000 voters. Nonprofit experts warn that the confusion over which groups the ban affects and the burden of proving an organization is in compliance could lead many to pause or curb registration efforts, with effects potentially extending to colleges helping students register to vote.
Mail Ballot Requests Drop in North Carolina and Florida Ahead of Midterms: Fewer North Carolina voters are requesting absentee ballots this election, with new state data showing requests down by nearly one-third compared to the same point during the 2022 midterms. In Florida, less than 13% of Orange County voters have requested a mail ballot – a figure that may be attributed over a 2021 law that expired all existing VBM request after 2022, requiring voters to submit new requests. Political scientists also say Trump’s repeated attacks on mail voting have contributed to declining confidence, with a new poll finding 46% of Americans believe that mail-in voting is often tampered with or fraudulent.
Postmaster General Reveals Internal Resistance to Trump’s Mail Voting Order as USPS Struggled with Rushed Implementation: New reporting reveals that career USPS officials, who were concerned about voter privacy and disenfranchisement, quietly tried to do as little as possible to comply with Trump’s VBM EO while it was being developed. Postmaster General David Steiner said he first received the order about a month before it was signed and was not involved in its development. After SCOTUS blocked it, Steiner said work stopped on the voter roll portal – the most controversial element – but faced bipartisan criticism for not pushing back more forcefully.
NSA and Military Intelligence Deployed to “Guard” Midterm Elections AFter CISA was Gutted: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the NSA and other military intelligence and cybersecurity forces will guard election systems during the November midterms, just weeks after CISA released a belated and widely criticized election security plan. David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department attorney who leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, noting the short timeline before Election Day “suggests this is just theater.” At the same time, the Pentagon used an emergency measure to make changes to the federal voter registration form used by UOCAVA voters that removes the checkbox that allows a voter to declare that they are a citizen living overseas who has never lived in the United States.
STATE ACTIVITY
Kansas • Attorney General Orders League of Women Voters to Stop Incentivizing Voter Registrations with Gift Cards: Kansas AG Kris Kobach sent a cease-and-desist letter to the League of Women Voters (LWV) to stop offering financial incentives to high school students who register to vote. The LWV must respond within 30 days identifying every instance it distributed cash or gift cards in connection with voter registration, and must preserve all related financial records.
Michigan • Counties Miss Absentee Ballot Mailing Deadline: Several Michigan counties missed the state’s legal requirement to mail absentee ballots at least 40 days before the election — which, for the 2026 midterms, was Sept. 24. As of Tuesday, voters in Antrim and Presque Isle counties are still waiting on their ballots. Officials blamed a limited number of state-approved ballot printers and tight turnaround times following the August primary. Jennifer Morrell, CEO and co-founder of The Elections Group, says Michigan’s relatively new no-excuse absentee voting system (approved in 2018) is still developing the infrastructure needed to handle the more than 1.9 million voters now on the state’s permanent mail ballot list.
New Jersey • Top Election Officer Resigns: SOS Dale Caldwell resigned following an internal ethics investigation, less than 24 hours after Gov. Mikie Sherril called for his departure. The resignation comes as the state continues to grapple with the fallout from a DMV software error that wrongly registered ~6,600 noncitizens to vote, with 340 voting at least once.
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ANTI-VOTING GROUP ACTIVITY
RNC Training New “Special Monitors” To Focus On Voting Machines: Republican National Committee is training a new class of “special monitors” that focus their attention on voting machines this November. The RNC piloted the new operation during Wisconsin’s August primary and told volunteers it plans to scale it up for the general election. These new “special monitors” are tasked with recording and relaying information to party lawyers including voting machine serial numbers, tamper seals, photographing results tapes, and filing records requests for chain-of-custody logs.
Paid for by Fair Fight Action.
This is a lot, referring to a comment I made about Marcy Kaptur D-OH:
I searched for that specific spot and I can’t find an official printed transcript published by the campaign with that exact wording.
There is no transcript on her campaign site, the DCCC site, or in the ad databases right now that matches word-for-word:
> “I will work with when he does the right thing and I will work with Republicans to help people”
What *is* publicly documented is the pattern you’re describing:
**1. Ads claiming she works with Trump**
Commentary on the current 2026 cycle notes: “Even Marcy Kaptur is running ads claiming she works with Trump, which is certainly a choice.”
**2. The campaign’s broader bipartisan message**
Her campaign and allies have used this framing repeatedly:
“She has proven countless times throughout her career that she will work with anyone, regardless of party, to accomplish that”
In a recent DCCC/Kaptur ad “Common Sense” airing in the Toledo market, the transcript that *was* released is:
> *First, Data Center Derek gave the billionaires and greedy corporations a $2 billion tax break. Driving up our electric bills. Destroying Ohio farms. Then Data Center Derek handed FirstEnergy a billion dollar bailout, raising our rates even higher. I’m Marcy Kaptur, and I approve this message, because we’ve got to stop these data center giveaways. They increase our electric bills and hurt our family farms. That’s not Republican or Democrat, that’s just common sense.*
**3. The “voted with Republicans” ads from September 2026**
Those do have a transcript, which is the one most outlets picked up:
> “I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools because parents know what’s best for their kids”
The context for this messaging is that her redrawn district went for Trump by almost 11 points in 2024, so her recent ads lean heavily on working across party lines.
If you saw it on TV in the Bryan area very recently, it likely hasn’t been uploaded with a transcript yet. The best places to find the printed text when it posts are:
– **Kaptur for Congress YouTube** – they post the TV spots there
– **Facebook Ad Library** – search “Marcy Kaptur” – every active ad includes the video and often the caption text
– **DCCC.org press releases** – they publish transcripts for coordinated ads, like the “Common Sense” example above
The groups were sometimes from off the beaten track.
*Be good & you might get to a better place.
Are You Better Off?
Reagan’s famous rhetorical question hangs today over images of gas prices, grocery shopping, the Iran war and immigration enforcement.
Your vote is one way to make your voice heard. Check your registration and make a plan to vote at https://www.vote.org/
One good spin deserves another.
This is as close as I get to Gospel.
Off a masterpiece of an album.
Senator John Kennedy, R-LA just said if a bunch of goobers from his party are going to run for president against JD Vance, then he is going to run for president if he figures that his time in the Senate is no longer productive.
“Goobers “ is a favorite word of mine. That’s what I lovingly call my family…, a bunch of goober.
POG, you don’t have to link a youtube url, just paste it in raw on its own line (i switched yours above). Just be sure the url is on its own line to trigger our embed code.
Dexter, I keep this in my phony John Kennedy file — when the Vanderbilt/UVA law/OXFORD grad was a Democrat campaigning for John Kerry
Hmmm. Thought that’s what I did. Oh well.
With friends like Throw-up-in-his-mouth Goober Kennedy, who needs enemas.
today’s meme…
The latest anti-Abdul ads are airing now. One talks about how if he is elected “Our freedoms will be gone forever.” Another new Mike Rogers ad calls upon us to “Say no to socialism”. Gas was $4.49 a gallon here in Holland on Friday night, but I found it for $4.25 just north of here. What a steal!
Today in the Diner…
Donald Trump’s $5,000 Check Pitch and the National Debt Debate
Donald Trump, $5,000 checks and national debt: Digital Diner debates the pitch, reviews Vandalia rally clips and talks Brazil and early voting.
Craig Crawford and the Digital Diner crew dig into the proposed $5,000 checks discussed in First Cup and argue over the national debt, Republican campaign promises and possible threats to the November elections. Then it’s on to Donald Trump’s rally in Vandalia, Ohio, with clips and commentary involving Vivek Ramaswamy and Jon Husted. Campaign promises sound lovely. Somebody still gets the bill.
The conversation moves to Brazil, Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro, plus speculation about John Kennedy, Rahm Emanuel and the next presidential race. We also discuss No Kings organizing in Kansas City and close with questions about Maine early voting. Plenty to chew on before anybody orders dessert.
Sunday gets its music, too: Pink Floyd, the Fabulous Armadillos in Minnesota, the Power to the People concert and gospel favorites. Add a little college football griping, a very opinionated parrot and a Renfro Valley Barn Dance farewell from Kentucky. Around here, politics has to share the table.
Live Chat: https://trailmix.cc/chat
Website: https://trailmix.cc
Alerts: https://trailmix.cc/alerts
00:00 Intro
01:09 Pink Floyd and Fabulous Armadillos
04:32 Roger Daltrey and Concert Etiquette
09:17 Donald Trump’s $5,000 Check Pitch
11:05 Republicans and National Debt
13:19 Trump and Election Disruption Concerns
14:56 Power to the People Concert
16:42 John Kennedy and Rahm Emanuel
20:47 Parrots and Their Favorite Foods
24:42 Gospel Music and Amish Traditions
29:25 Michigan vs. Minnesota Football
30:19 Trump’s Vandalia Rally Remarks
32:49 Brazil: Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro
38:21 Ohio: Ramaswamy, Husted and Trump
42:10 Donald Trump’s Interview Comparisons
46:01 No Kings Organizing in Kansas City
48:17 Southern Raised and the Finley River
51:55 Trail Mix Substack Conversation
55:37 Brazil and a Bolsonaro Encounter
58:17 YouTube and Kiki the Parrot
01:00:08 Maine Early Voting Questions
01:01:41 Kentucky’s Renfro Valley Farewell
— Human directed and edited. Machine drafted (Gemini Pro).
LOVE this sign….
I can count on the magat world to provide a laugh every day to help get through their stupidity. This morning that fat phony John Kennedy from more than Louisiana, like England, provided the chuckles. Yeah, he will run for president, like he will run for representative. It can’t be better for him than the Senate, a do nothing but get a lot of television time and paid well.
Kennedy Before the Act ➡️ We roll 2028 contender John Kennedy’s old John Kerry endorsement. Funny what survives the costume change.
🍽️ From today’s Digital Diner menu
What he doesn’t get is FOX avoids him as a favor to Republicans who don’t want him campaigning.
Red Skelton used to have this character on his TV show he called “The Mean Widdle Kid”.
Red was a prophet.
PS….If you’ve never seen the film “The Yellow Cab Man” check it out Red had some good ones, “The Clown” being bout my favorite, though “A Southern Yankee” was great too.
The Detroit Free Press has endorsed Democrat Jocelyn Benson over Republican nominee John James in the race for Michigan Governor.. The latest James ad says that Michigan is ranked 45th in education and that he will fix that. He is a proponent of school of choice, which has long been pushed by Betsey DeVos. The DeVos family has donated $5 million dollars to James’ campaign.
ofc they sell tickets to those rallies
everything’s a grift
New Telemundo pull this morning, still hasn’t found his floor…
Thanks for the Michigan update Corey. Sounds like Rogers is in full Hail Mary mode. Still no numbers showing his attack ads are working. They seem really over the top, could they actually backfire with Independents?
HOUSEKEPPING QUESTION: Do you prefer the top-down button in the attached screenshot on the right or left side?
While troubleshooting I noticed our top-down button had not been updated for 12 years, so I got another brand new plug-in which allows a choice.
this is a trick to teach robot which way i’m handed isn’t it
wasn’t born yesterday!
also totally sane
Anon has a bad case of conspiracy so I’ll go for not hiding a thing. I’m right handed and like the arrows on the right. The southpaws might feel different about this choice.
That’s right Anon, this is the final data point before exctinction
i’m playing 8D chess
I do sincerely think someone at NBC news is trying to do Trump favors
and it’s a rather cunning technique for influencing the public discourse for political ends
But they didn’t count on me
Election interference in Georgia:
Georgia’s Republican-controlled State Election Board has formally asked the Trump administration to intervene in the state’s voting system just before early voting begins October 13. Executive Director James Mills sent letters to the Justice Department and DHS asking federal officials to prohibit Georgia’s current QR-code method of tabulating ballots, require software changes, establish a six-month deadline for replacing the system, and investigate allegations concerning election records. ajc
The timing is the important part. Georgia uses this equipment statewide in all 159 counties, and election officials are already testing it for November. The Secretary of State’s office says attempting major changes now could itself jeopardize orderly administration of the election. There is no indication that Georgia’s machines have been manipulated during an election, and the recently identified ballot-privacy vulnerability we discussed yesterday does not alter vote totals. ajc
Nor has DOJ ordered Georgia to change or stop using its machines. At this stage, this is a request from one part of Georgia’s election apparatus for federal intervention against another part of Georgia’s election apparatus. That institutional collision, less than ten days before early voting, is what makes it significant.
Given the federal government’s broader interest in voting machines that we have been tracking, I would put this in the orange-watch category. The next genuinely consequential event would be DOJ or DHS actually responding, seeking a court order, demanding access to equipment, or otherwise attempting to alter Georgia’s November procedures. ajc
like I don’t know who owns NBC news, but if I look it up, it’s gonna say Larry Ellison’s son, isn’t it?
The Math of a Vote Against Trump
When we look at what voters say is driving their choice, a remarkable imbalance emerges:
Marist’s Michigan poll of registered voters found that 42% said their congressional vote was mainly against Trump, 20% mainly for him, and 37% said he had no bearing on their vote.
For a simple illustration, round that to a 40–20–40 split. Democrats start with 40 points; Republicans start with 20. Democrats need 10 of the remaining 40 points to reach 50—one quarter of that group. Republicans need 30 points—three quarters—to tie.
In this simplified math, Republicans need three times as many of the remaining voters just to catch up.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/03/ted-cruz-blasts-jd-vance-as-insecure-says-hes-focused-on-helping-gop-win-midterms-01106033
“It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” Vance said. “At this moment, I’m not. I’m trying to help elect Republicans. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing.”
Vance is widely viewed as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, but Cruz has said he doesn’t believe Vance is the sure-fire nominee and suggested he might throw his own hat in the ring. “I’ll certainly be part of the discussion,” he told MS NOW in August.
Yesterday morning the New York Times revealed that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the envoys who are ostensibly negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, are simultaneously discussing a multibillion-dollar oil deal with Lukoil, a Russian company. Remarkably, the deal includes the protagonists of several previous stories about Trump administration conflicts of interest, giving the story a kind of “greatest hits” feel to it: All the old names are back in the news.
Among the investors in the proposed deal, for example, is Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the UAE, whose fund purchased a large stake in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, run in part by Witkoff’s son. Months later, the US agreed to sell sensitive computer chips to the UAE. Another investor is a Qatar-based conglomerate controlled by two brothers, Moutaz Al-Khayyat and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who appeared at Trump’s inauguration in 2025 and who are now partnering with Kushner and Ivanka Trump to build a multibillion-dollar luxury hotel in Albania. This is the project, as some may remember, that led to weeks of protest in the Albanian capital. An American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated both to Donald Trump’s inauguration as well as MAGA Inc, the Trump-aligned campaign committee, is leading the project. The US government is also involved, and seems to control the deal because the Treasury makes decisions about lifting sanctions on Russian property.
There are at least two major scandals here. For one, it looks from the reporting as if the administration designed the deal to favor Trump’s friends in the Middle East over other American business groups who tried to acquire the property, which is bad enough.
But this story also helps explain a bigger mystery. Five years into their failed invasion, the Russians, unable to move forward on the front line, are stepping up their aggressive bombing campaign, hitting schools, hospitals and bridges in Kyiv and other cities, along with power plants and factories. Why? Because Putin believes he can.
The Russian president has reason to believe that he has bought off Trump and his envoys with flattery, fake talk of “peace” and business deals. He repeatedly stops Americans from helping Ukraine. Even if no money ever changes hands and no deal is completed, the fact that Kushner, Witkoff and others around Trump discuss them gives Putin the conviction that he can continue to commit war crimes, kill civilians and never pay a price.
America and America’s allies are all badly damaged by this policy, which is a disaster for Ukraine, for European security, for America’s reputation, for the rule of law around the world and ultimately for American security and prosperity too. The only beneficiaries are Kushner and Witkoff’s Middle Eastern partners and some businessmen close to the president.
American foreign policy should be good for Americans, not for a tiny predator clan linked to the White House. That was the argument of my recent Atlantic cover story, and it seems like it will need repeating many more times before this presidency is over.
crus isn’t even a third as charismatic as he thinks he is
please do run
He’s doing the political media rounds now and he makes you pine for a don bacon segment
oh he “wrote a book” is the pretense for the tour, that’s a precampaign move ofc
https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/kansas/article317458250.html
The Greater Topeka Chamber of Commerce will host the Kansas Republican on Friday, Oct. 16 from 8 to 10 a.m. at the Great Overland Station in Topeka. Tickets to the chamber’s legislative forum range from $70 for chamber members to $95 for non-members.
A leaked Johnson County Republicans flyer posted to Facebook advertised Marshall as a guest speaker at an Oct. 20 ticketed luncheon at Zarda Bar-B-Q in Lenexa.
The flyer read, “This announcement must NOT be shared on social media due to congressional security protocols.”
Payton Fuller, spokesperson for Marshall, told The Star this is a standard precaution.
However, organizers have advertised Marshall’s Topeka engagement multiple times on social media.
The staff of Zarda only knew the back room was booked and were unaware a U.S. senator was scheduled to speak at their restaurant, according to Terry Hyer, the barbecue company’s chief operating officer.
In recent years, Marshall has drawn criticism for avoiding holding public appearances to hear constituents.
Marshall hasn’t hosted a town hall open to the public since March of last year, when a crowd jeered at Marshall until he left 15 minutes before the event’s scheduled end. On Sept. 12, Marshall and Hamilton debated onstage at the Kansas State Fair.
In August, Marshall told a Kansas newspaper that he had backed away from public appearances.
“The town halls just became non-productive and dangerous, not just dangerous for myself, but dangerous for my staff and dangerous for the people in the audience as well, so I just don’t think that they’re safe to do,” he told the Junction City Post.
This May, protestors delivered 3,800 signed petitions to Marshall’s Overland Park office, demanding that he host town halls across the state.
Hyer said organizers moved the lunch away from Zarda Wednesday, after event details became public. He said he didn’t know the new location.
Such secretive BS from Roger Marshall. You’ve gotta pay to see him, but they won’t tell you where now…even though they have in the past.
Surely it’s worth $95 for someone to travel/be in whatever room with him…
not that he’ll answer questions.
That $95 is a heckle barrier.
https://www.ksn.com/news/your-local-election-hq/another-former-kansas-republican-governor-endorses-adam-hamilton-for-us-senate/
Former Republican Kansas Gov. Mike Hayden is supporting the Rev. Adam Hamilton, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.
Hayden made his endorsement in an opinion piece published in the Wichita Eagle on Friday.
He served as governor from 1987 to 1991.
“Governing should always center around the best interests of the people,” Hayden said, accusing Sen. Roger Marshall of “failing to live up to that standard.”
He criticized Marshall for supporting tariffs and the Iran war, which he said are hurting Kansans.
Hayden said Hamilton work across the aisle to address the nation’s problems.
“Adam’s experience as the pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country — a church that is made up of equal parts Republicans, Democrats, and Independents — makes him uniquely prepared to go to Washington and bring people together,” he wrote.
🙌
Boring? Our Superpower. ➡️ We confess our secret weapon: boring people. Finally, a campaign promise we can keep.
😋From Today’s Digital Diner Menu
South Carolina Senate has tightened enough to force a ratings change. Cook Political Report moved the contest from Solid Republican to Likely Republican after multiple polls put Republican Darline Graham only 1–3 points ahead of Democrat Annie Andrews. The latest InsiderAdvantage survey, conducted September 28–29 among 1,200 likely voters, has Graham ahead just 46%–45%.
Spotted at Power To The People
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/10/03/angela-paxton-tv-ad-ken-paxton-texas-senate-2026/
In TV ad, Angela Paxton urges voters to back “the Republican ticket” that includes her estranged husband
The ad is funded by a super PAC that has spent well over $100 million boosting Senate GOP nominee Ken Paxton, whom Angela Paxton accused of adultery in filing for divorce last year.
The new ad comes a couple weeks after Angela Paxton privately delivered a similar message to a group of conservative women in Round Rock, whom she encouraged to consider the importance of keeping the U.S. Senate seat in GOP hands.
In a speech to
a ticketed meeting
of the Texas Federation of Republican Women of more than 100 board members, she encouraged attendees to put their party’s values over individual candidates.
“It’s not the people — it’s the seat,” Paxton said in a video clip of the speech to the Texas Federation of Republican Women. “Because we have more control over that seat and the future when we control the seat — when it’s still in the family, even if we’re mad at them. But if we lose it to the other team, the nuances that we want to fix with maybe a certain candidate are nothing compared to what it’s going to take to get it back, right?”
The title of her speech was “The Elephant in the Room,” a euphemism she repeats in the Texas PAC ad, telling the audience, “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.”