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  “People Get Ready” A Reason To Smile Dan Rather and Team Steady Nov 1   Credit: Getty Images As we head into what is shaping up to be an anxious week, awaiting election results and bracing for presidential tantrums and shenanigans, we thought about what kind of reason to smile might help ease some of that understandable trepidation. The song “People Get Ready” quickly came to mind. The title is an astute description of the anticipatory feeling many of us have… we are getting ready, ready for change. In 1965, singer-songwriter Curtis Mayfield wrote the freedom song and recorded it with his group, The Impressions. Soon after, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called it the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. He played “People Get Ready” to get people marching and to calm and comfort them. The song feels like a musical refuge, embracing grace and dignity. The metaphor of the train, a common theme in Black spirituals, portends good things coming, like freedom and justice. ...

Fox News Caught Passing Off Rogers Campaign Backers as 'Bipartisan' Voter Panel Four of Lara Trump's five Fox voter panelists appeared at Mike Rogers campaign events. One also serves as treasurer of a multimillion-dollar pro-Rogers super PAC. Brett Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network Oct 31 Just days before the midterms, Lara Trump presented Fox News viewers with what the network billed as a bipartisan panel of Michigan voters. So the president’s daughter-in-law gathered five people at a waterfront restaurant in Detroit for a discussion about the race between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. They talked about socialism, immigration, the economy and why some traditional Democratic voters were turning away from their party. Fox News identified each participant with a simple description: “MICHIGAN VOTER.” During the segment, the network even displayed a chyron declaring: “BIPARTISAN VOTER PANEL SHARES UNIFYING MESSAGE.” There was just one rather glaring omiss...

A Year Ago, Trump Bet You’d Forget This. Did You? Joyce Vance Oct 31 I woke up to this reminder that I had left myself on my calendar exactly a year ago. And I had absolutely no idea what it was when I saw it. So I checked. It turned out to be two similar posts that I’d made on both Twitter and Bluesky last year. Here’s the post from Bluesky: “A lot is happening right now” might be the most understated sentence ever written. It reminds me that the first Trump administration, though shocking, proceeded at a slower pace. Usually, there was just one major scandal a day, not 12. We’ve now reached such a point of overwhelm that it’s hard to keep track of everything, and so much disappears from memory. So I’m glad I made that note to myself to revisit events from October 31, 2025. We were in the middle of a government shutdown. Congress had failed to pass a spending bill for the new fiscal year. When the old one ended on September 30, 2025, funding ran out, and the government largely shut do...