My 16th Jazz Consumer Guide column is up on the Village Voice website now -- presumably also on the streets of New York City. I evidently misread the message about no cuts, as it got hacked up quite a bit, although mostly within my guidelines. (Exception: only one of three Harry Allen albums made it through. Also note that Nannette Natal's name was misspelled Natali.)

Still away from home, getting ready to leave Detroit and head back towards Kansas. Planning a few stops with relatives along the way, so I don't know when I'll get back. I'm likely to be offline the next few days. Don't have time to write much now, or do my usual cyclical cleanup. Also unable to send out my usual email notice to the many jazz publicists who help me out. Hope they read about it here.

Josh Marshall: Upcountry. Subtitle this one "What's the Matter With West Virginia?" Marshall argues that Clinton has consistently beat Obama by 2-to-1 margins throughout Appalachia, from New York through Mississippi (not that the Appalachian mountains actually reach Mississippi). This provides a caveat against more simplistic explanations that whites, rural voters, and older voters favor Clinton (although all combine in Appalachia). West Virginia is an interesting case for the Democrats precisely because it used to be such a stronghold. It isn't now, and not just because Bush learned to say "clean coal" with a straight face. Don't have time to figure out why, but a big part of it is that Democrats have mostly come to realize that rural poverty isn't very fertile ground either for votes (there's less of it all the time, mostly because of population shifts -- certainly not because folks are escaping poverty) or for contributions (which should be obvious enough). We'll see proof of that soon enough, as Clinton's people try to hype her win there, and most likely will get little or no value out of it.