Michelle Sura

New, fun, one-minute learning, the modern School House Rock® of American History by @hcrichardson.bsky.social team #250to250 (This one didn't get the views so let's pump it up.) Voting Rights Act Narrated by @kevinmkruse.bsky.social #WeAreAmerica250 #CivilRights youtu.be/hJpNEm8lctc?...

President Donald Trump wants to interfere with mail voting during the upcoming midterm elections, and he’s betting the U.S. Supreme Court will let him. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

There is a broad and durable political coalition in Canada to stand up to Trump. The political coalition for hammering Canada with tariffs in the US is basically confined to a few Twitter posters.

Debby Gunn remaining as E-911 director until replacement is found

“After the deportations that we’ve seen during the President Trump administration … we don’t need to produce as many jobs,” Bessent told CNBC. In July, the U.S. labor market shed 23,000 jobs. trib.al/2Nyv2ko

Ukraine, Syria, Haïti, Colombia, …. and Indiana. Of course I am hugely grateful to and impressed (as always) by WCK, but didn’t we used to have federal agencies and state governments that often prevented humanitarian disasters from getting this bad in the continental USA? Okay. Yah. Katrina.

Mostly Perseids: Recorded the night of August 12-13, images from four dedicated meteor-monitoring cameras at an astronomical observatory in Czechia were aligned and combined to create this all-night, all-sky view. On that night, the total count came to 1,706 meteors.

The aesthetics of 50’s Hollywood musicals were just a joy.

Right. Communism was a big deal during the Cold War. Now? Not so much. The Cold War zing has worn off. Weak sauce. (And…that’s the first time I’ve used that phrase. Ain’t social media fun?)

Fired Federal Employees Are Bringing Climate Change Info Back to the People truthout.org/articles/fir...

remember when there was that train accident in east palestine ohio and the right wing talked endlessly about how biden & co didn't care about the middle of the country? www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/u...

⚠️WOKE CONTENT⚠️™️ 🧵 Maj.(later Colonel) Fred Vann Cherry was a career U.S. Air Force officer and pilot who became the first and highest-ranking Black pilot captured and held as a P.O.W. during the Vietnam War. Pull up a seat🪑my friends. (cont) #ProudBlue #ResistanceRoots #USDemocracy #Voices4Victory

This Day in Labor History: August 23, 1927. The state of Massachusetts executed the Italian immigrant anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti for a 1920 murder that they may (Sacco) or may not (Vanzetti) have committed. But they were on trial for their race and beliefs as much as the murder!!!

WELKER: Collins says Trump's Canada tariffs will increase costs on families. Is she right? SCOTT: Let's look back at Biden-- W: Wait. Trump has been in office for two years. Inflation was at 3% when Biden left office. It's at 3.4% right now. S: Joe Biden ... W: The Biden administration is over!

Trump is simply toxic in the domestic politics of almost all democracies, so the more he does shit like this, the less he will get. Carney simply could not give into this guy. And, of course, when the bully punches you whether you give him lunch money or not, you might as well not submit.

www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/u...

Saturated soil contributed to trees falling and taking out power lines, but there’s more to why Gary’s outage has lasted so long.

"Visiting American man way more on fire about Southeast Asia than it is about him" tale as old as time

Eliot Jacobson: Only three years in recorded history have seen a day reach more than 4 standard deviations (4σ) above the 1991-2020 mean for that day. The previous days this happened were in 2023 and 2024. Now add August 19 & 20, 2026 to that list.

The United States and Canada, historic allies along an undefended border, fell deeper into a trade war Saturday marked by angry recriminations and new tariffs that are expected to raise prices for products in both countries.

"Bessent’s running battle with the bond market is starting to look like his boss’s war in Iran — started by his own hand with a tangled set of objectives, an underestimated opponent and an implausible path to victory. And like the conflict in the Middle East, we are all going to suffer its effects."

Public support for Supreme Court term limits comes from a simple but fundamental democratic value: No one should have too much power for too long. bit.ly/4glJ7w4

"Iran has, with American help, completely reconfigured the power structure of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. The dominant power in the region going forward will be Iran, not the U.S. or Israel." www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

Marathon runners are training for a hotter world: ‘Our bodies don’t know pace, they know effort’

Vance coming to Maine for a second time. Susan Collins won’t go anywhere near him when he does.

My work has meant I've followed CEO pay for years & always loved Costco. Companies set up pay based on comparison to peers & many years ago I was reading McDonalds proxy statement & saw that it was removing Costco from its peer group b/c of philosphical differences. And I thought, "Yup."

Thousands of athletes from around the world descended on Chicago this weekend, ready to test months of training at the country’s largest triathlon.

Good album by this Woody Guthrie fella

#ResistanceRoots “When we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So, it is better to speak.” — Audre Lorde

Karl: "You said recently that the price of gas in Texas would be below $2 by the end of the summer. Are voters gonna punish you and other Republicans if it's not? Because right now the average is $3.60." Gov. Greg Abbott: "The answer to that's far more complex than just one price point."

i wrote this last year but there is literally no publicly available evidence that donald trump knows what a tariff actually is

Citing ProPublica’s reporting, eight senators wrote a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio questioning the Trump administration’s approach to foreign health data. They said it could set an “alarming precedent.”

Today is Trinitatis XII, the 12th Sunday after Trinitatis. Listen to a cantata that JS Bach composed for this day, Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV 69a, here in a performance by the Swiss JS Bach Stiftung. youtu.be/q6Zs4Gi_4DY?...

If the media corporations want people like me and you to fight for their constitutional rights, maybe they should stand up and start protecting their own damn constitutional rights rather than holding black-tie events honoring the guy. newsletters.democracydocket.com/i-was-told-i...

"Against Canada, Trump is fighting a trade war that very few Americans support, under leadership that most Americans reject, to achieve results that virtually all Americans would dismiss as pointless if not crazy" Read David Frum: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Reading something on calculating the size of the 1600s French army (...yes, I am somewhat behind) and it is really funny as a Romanist the sort of, "but if we use THIS evidence, we get this number, but this OTHER pile of evidence." Look, Tacitus told me there were 25 legions. He seems trustworthy.

The Iran War is a Master Class in Squandering a Superpower's Credibility by Fareed Zakaria buff.ly/YKQdNN2

New Bedford, Massachusetts: newbedfordlight.org/chaos-at-new...

Imagine handing your state over to this guy.