Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Davids Daily Dose - Tuesday October 21


1/. How the Trump administration looked at the No Kings protests.....Heather Cox Richardson comments......

All last week, Republican leaders tried to portray the No Kings protests scheduled for Saturday, October 18, as “Hate America” rallies. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers partnered with Atlanta-based science newsroom The Xylom to estimate that as many as 8.2 million people turned out yesterday to oppose the Trump administration. The mood at the protests was joyful and peaceful, with protesters holding signs that championed American principles of democracy, free speech, equality, and the rule of law. As the Grand Junction, Colorado, Daily Sentinel put it in a front-page headline: “‘This is America’ ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump bring a street party vibe to cities nationwide.”

Then last night, after the protests, the president’s social media account posted an AI-generated video showing Trump in a fighter jet with “KING TRUMP” painted on the side. The president sits in the airplane in front of something round that could be seen as a halo. He is wearing a gold crown; weirdly, the oxygen mask is over his mouth and chin, rather than mouth and nose.



2/. In case you haven't seen it, this is the King Trump video......disgusting and sick.....20 seconds.



3/. Why has Trump turned to the sewer? It's what authoritarians do.......good story from the Atlantic....

Lieutenant Colonel Harald Jäger was in charge of a Berlin Wall checkpoint on the evening of November 9, 1989, when a garbled televised press conferenceconvinced thousands of East Berliners that they were allowed to cross into West Germany. People ran to the checkpoint. They started shouting at Jäger, telling him to open the barrier, even though no one had told him about any changes.

Still, “when I saw the masses of East German citizens there, I knew they were in the right,” he told an interviewer, many years later. In another interview, he recalled, “At the moment it became so clear to me … the stupidity, the lack of humanity. I finally said to myself: ‘Kiss my arse. Now I will do what I think is right.’” He opened the barrier and people started walking through.



4/. One of the Times' interactive articles with amazing graphics and pictures......this is about ultra processed food.......




5/. Tom Tomorrow himself!



6/. Thom Hartmann with a very disturbing story on how our military is being prepped for anything Trump 
wants to do......quietly and systematically....

Is the U.S. military already in the early stages of a Trump-led coup against our Constitution? 

Inside the Pentagon, loyalty is being elevated above law as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quietly removes senior military lawyers, the very officials meant to uphold legality and restraint, and replaces them with loyalists. 

The purge has also happened to senior military leadership. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Admiral Alvin Holsey, the head us Southern Command, which has overseen the strikes against boats off the coast of Venezuela, is stepping down. 

While Admiral Holsey has not said why he’s leaving, it may well be a continuation of the troubling trend of purges of highly qualified senior military officials who may have been inclined to restrain Trump’s illegal and fascistic impulses.

The recent purge of military attorneys, in particular, isn’t routine bureaucracy; it’s the deliberate dismantling of the safeguards that prevent America’s armed forces from becoming a political weapon against America’s citizens and democracy.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of what’s happening right now inside the Pentagon.



7/. Tom Tomorrow - I wish this was funny......



8/. I'm including this as a story, not a TV recommendation, because this documentary about 
Alabama Prisons might be disturbingly unwatchable.
However if you're up for it, it's on HBO.....

W

hen film-makers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited Alabama’s Easterling prison in 2019, they found a deceptively pleasant scene. Like Alabama’s 13 other prisons, Easterling largely prohibits media access, but allowed the documentarians to film its annual volunteer-run barbecue, a sunny day in which incarcerated men, most of them Black, ate fresh roasts to live music and sermons. On camera, men danced and smiled. But off camera, many more told a different story – horrific beatings, unreported stabbings, unimaginable violence swept under the rug and appalling conditions that “ain’t fit for human society”. Cries for help emerged from inside the sweltering, filthy dorms. When Jarecki approached the voices, a prison official shut down filming, claiming that it was unsafe for him to speak to the men without a police chaperone.



9/. So here's some stylish AI for you......Kelly Eldridge Bosch....



10/. Democrats are afraid to offend anyone, so always come across bland and safe.....which doesn't cut it any more.
The Party needs to change, to get some cojones and believe in something....

In early August, dozens of Democratic lawmakers fled Texas for Illinois, denying Republicans the quorum needed to pass new congressional maps projected to give the party as many as five additional seats. Their absence paralyzed the state legislature, turning a walkout into political resistance and drawing national attention.

As the standoff dragged on, Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, offered an unorthodox countermove: a proposal to suspend his state’s independent redistricting commission and draw maps designed to hand Democrats a comparable advantage. He unveiled the plan with spectacle, mimicking Donald Trump’s signature style through all-caps declarations, a mocking nickname for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt (“KaroLYIN”) and AI-generated celebrity endorsements.

While Texas Democrats ultimately returned and the Republican redistricting plan has advanced, Newsom has been cast as the emerging leader of Democratic opposition to Trump. Why did it take the party nine months to find one?



11/. Sarah Sherman comments on the Victoria's Secret fashion show......very funny, 3 minutes....



12/. A heartfelt, almost poetic homage to the lakes and rivers of the world that are disappearing......
One of the many tipping points in the polycrisis that is slowly changing our lives.....

Her eyes had the color of ice about to break. That pale, impossible blue that you could only find in the deepest crevasses and in the look of my grandmother, Alme. She fixed on me without a word, only the faint nod that meant it’s time.

The air was sharp enough to slice your thoughts. When she took my hand, her skin felt carved from the same determination that gripped the valley. Together, we balanced on stones worn smooth by the elements and stepped into Lake Akkajaure, a vast mirror of half-frozen water stretching out before us, its surface reflecting the pale winter sky. The cold struck like a slap, but she called it medicine.

In our family, plunging into ice isn’t a dare. It is inheritance. A belief, passed down like a wool sweater, where endurance is the first language you learn, and pain is a teacher for survival during the dark months. And so, when I resurfaced, gasping, she smiled the way old herders do, tender and proud, and whispered in my ear,

“Now you belong to the North.”                                                                                                                                                                          https://medium.com/southern-winds/humanity-is-drying-from-the-inside-out-af6ce709200d



13/. Guess which ones belong.....





14/. For our Mount Dora readers, a video about how the Wolf Branch Sink which drains directly into the Central Florida aquifer 
is being polluted by the landfill on SR 46, BTW the same landfill that's causing the horrible smell. 
Think of the gully washers we've been having, and think flooding.
FINALLY the Lake County authorities are waking up to the fact this might be a problem, but will anything ever get done? 

MOUNT DORA, Fla. - The City of Mount Dora is home to an extremely unique water feature called the Wolf Branch Sink, which has a direct path to the aquifer. It’s like an immediate drain, going straight into our drinking water system.

Right next to it is a landfill that officials in Lake County fear could pollute the water, without proper precautions in place. 

Experts say storms could carry chemicals to the sink, and seepage could even happen horizontally through the ground.                     https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/lake-county-officials-raise-concerns-over-landfill-expansion-near-sensitive-water-feature



15/. How did Trump get a cease fire agreement in Gaza.......Andrew Sullivan tells us how, and it's Netanyahu's stupidity that caused it.
Fascinating and eye opening analysis......

It was the winningest win of them all for the winner of all winners. 

He took command and now “bestrides the world scene like no other,” gushed Walter Russell Mead. “Only Mr. Trump could have made this happen … No other living politician could have reassured Israel, threatened Hamas and patched together a broad Arab coalition the way he has done.” He’s “the president we’ve been waiting for,” added Pulitzer winner Kathleen Parker this morning.

My old friend Niall Ferguson paid tribute to Trump’s “imaginative 20-point plan, set to transform the Middle East” — just one of so many “transformational results at home and abroad” since Trump took office. At the Free Press, Amit Segal also gurgled:

I’ve been covering the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, for 25 years. Never before have I seen it in such a state of ecstasy as when the president of the United States ascended the podium Monday … Here, the United States of America and the State of Israel are celebrating victory at the end of a two-year war, together.

Yes, that was a piece of journalism in America, not something that sounds like it might have been originally written in North Korea. Konstantin Kisin merely decidedthe hostage deal meant that “it’s time for people with Trump Derangement Syndrome to admit they were wrong.”



16/. The Young Republicans story of racist and Nazi texts and emails was 
quite a shocker......well not really....



17/. Guardian writers list their most stressful movies, and explain why. 
Some good ones here!

With the US release of Rose Byrne’s anxiety-inducing motherhood spiral If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, writers relive their most uncomfortable movie watches



18/. "The Lowdown".......good review in the New Yorker, on Hulu......

The new series “The Lowdown,” on FX, offers him another role in that irresistible mold. Its creator, the Native American writer and director Sterlin Harjo, has worked with Hawke before, on his landmark show “Reservation Dogs”; here, Hawke is cast as an indefatigable Tulsa journalist named Lee Raybon. From the start, it’s evident that Lee’s single-minded pursuit of the truth comes at a personal cost. His wife has left him, and his relationship with his thirteen-year-old daughter, Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), is correspondingly shaky. His income, such as it is, is cobbled together from bookselling, freelance reporting, and flipping the odd work of art. He routinely gets beaten or abducted by subjects who resent his coverage. But Lee is the kind of crusader who inspires more bemusement than admiration from those around him. When a neo-Nazi breaks into his home, burns him with a cigarette, and rails against his “shitty fucking newspaper,” he can’t help but reply, “It’s a long-form magazine!” Even a loyal reader of his work says, with a sigh, “There’s nothing worse than a white man who cares.”
Lee is loosely based on the self-taught historian Lee Roy Chapman, a citizen journalist who unearthed the involvement of one of Tulsa’s founding fathers, Tate Brady, in the city’s 1921 race massacre. Chapman, who died in 2015, at the age of forty-six, was a friend of Harjo’s, as well as a colleague of his at the Oklahoma-based This Land Press. Like the character he inspired, Chapman was a Jack-of-all-trades and a dealer of rare books. But the similarities more or less end there. “The Lowdown” is a noir above all else, and the fictional Lee is unfettered by basic journalistic ethics: when he finds a stack of hundred-dollar bills in a skinhead’s car, he has no qualms about treating it like a winning lottery ticket.



19/. Best TV this autumn, from the Guardian......

The epic Stranger Things finale, Sally Wainwright’s menopausal punks, Alan Partridge in therapy and Stephen Fry … in a Traitors robe? Here’s your ultimate guide to the must-see series of the season



20/. "Nobody Wants This".....sounds like a really good rom-com......the Guardian likes it a lot! Netflix.....

For a while, it seemed as if the romcom as an art form died and had been replaced by Marvel sequels and issue-led dramedies. Rachel and Ross were a distant memory (and not just because it was 20 years ago). Luckily, the genre – and our collective broken hearts – has been given CPR by a flurry of new releases. Few have been more affecting than Nobody Wants This (Netflix, from Thursday 23 October), the stomach-flipping story of rabbi Noah and relationship podcaster Joanne.

When the first series appeared on Netflix last year, the success was somewhat unexpected. With the streaming giant focused on content viewers could watch after a lobotomy, few expected a mega hit that would create a genuine emotional connection. Then we met Noah (millennial nostalgia-fix Adam Brody) and Joanne (Kristen Bell) and the combination of acting, lovable characterisation and tight writing saw critical acclaim, Emmy nominations and – most importantly – old-fashioned longing. The internet had a new boyfriend.




Today's video 
Bike outruns cops......six minutes of adrenalin....ahoooooogah!



Todays golf joke
The room was full of pregnant women with their husbands. 

 The instructor said, "Ladies, remember that exercise is good for you. Walking is especially beneficial - strengthens the pelvic muscles and will make delivery that much easier.  Just pace yourself, make plenty of stops and try to stay on a soft surfaces, like a grass path."

"Gentlemen, remember -- you're in this together. It wouldn't hurt you to go walking with her.  In fact, that shared experience would be good for you both."


The room suddenly became very quiet as the men absorbed this information. After a few  moments a man, name unknown, at the back of the room, slowly raised his hand.


"Yes?" said the Instructor.


"I was just wondering .  .  . would it be alright if she carries a golf bag?"


Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?


Today's smart ass jokes
SMART ASS ANSWER #6
It was mealtime during an airline flight. 
'Would you like dinner?', the flight attendant asked John, seated in front. 
'What are my choices?' John asked. 
'Yes or no,' she replied.


SMART ASS ANSWER #5
A flight attendant was stationed at the departure gate to check tickets. As a man approached, she extended her hand for the ticket and he opened his trench coat and flashed her. 
Without missing a beat, she said, 'Sir, I need to see your ticket, not your stub.'

SMART ASS ANSWER #4
A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at the grocery store but she couldn't find one big enough for her family. She asked a stock boy, ' Do these turkeys get any bigger?' 
The stock boy replied, 'No ma'am, they're dead...'
 
SMART ASS ANSWER #3
The police officer got out of his car as the kid who was stopped for speeding rolled down his window. 'I've been waiting for you all day,' the officer said. 
The kid replied, Yeah, well I got here as fast as I could.'
When the cop finally stopped laughing, he sent the kid on his way without a ticket.


SMART ASS ANSWER #2
A truck driver was driving along on the freeway and noticed a sign that read: Low Bridge Ahead. Before he knows it, the bridge is right in front of him and his truck gets wedged under it. Cars are backed up for miles. Finally a police car comes up. The cop gets out of his car and walks to the truck driver, puts his hands on his hips and says, 'Got stuck, huh?' 
The truck driver says, 'No, I was delivering this bridge and I ran out of gas.'

SMART ASS ANSWER OF THE YEAR 2017!!
A college teacher reminds her class of tomorrow's final exam. 'Now class, I won't tolerate any excuses for you not being here tomorrow. I might consider a nuclear attack or a serious personal injury, illness, or a death in your immediate family, but that's it, no other excuses whatsoever!' 
A smart-ass student in the back of the room raised his hand and asked, 'What would you say if tomorrow I said I was suffering from complete and utter sexual exhaustion?'
The entire class is reduced to laughter and snickering. When silence was restored, the teacher smiled knowingly at the student, shook her head and sweetly said, 'Well, I guess you'd have to write the exam with your other hand.'


Today's Floriduh joke
Florida Woman Stops Alligator Attack Using a Small Beretta Pistol:
This is a story of self-control and marksmanship by a brave, cool-headed woman with a small pistol against a fierce predator.  What’s the smallest caliber that you would trust to protect yourself?
 
 Here’s her story in her own words:  
"While out walking along the edge of a pond just outside my house in The Villages with my soon to be ex-husband, discussing property settlement and other divorce issues, we were surprised by a huge 12-ft. alligator which suddenly emerged from the murky water and began charging us with its large jaws wide open. 
She must have been protecting her nest because she was extremely aggressive.
 
 If I had not had my little Beretta .25 caliber pistol with me, I would not be here today!"   

"Just one shot to my estranged husband's knee cap was all it took.  
The 'gator got him easily, and I was able to escape by just walking away at a brisk pace." 

 It's one of the best pistols in my collection, plus the amount I saved in lawyer's fees was really incredible.  
His life insurance was a big bonus.