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Monday, July 10, 2023

July archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 40543 [40512] rated (+31), 17 [14] unrated (+3).

Another hefty Speaking of Which yesterday (80 links, 5441 words). I was panicking about my inability to get anything done, but once I settled into this piece, a calm settled over me, and I felt my thinking and (hopefully) my writing become clear. Perhaps I should stop worrying about whether anyone else reads and/or cares about these exercises, and just consider them therapy.

Picks last week were non-jazz, but this week they're all jazz -- the band behind Aja Monet is practically all-star, while the others are more avant. Gerry Hemingway wrote a while back and asked if I'd be interested in him sending me something. I said sure, not expecting side credits, but they made my week. His own songs-with-vocals album Afterlife was perhaps the biggest, most pleasant surprise of 2022.

Spent most of today catching up with the indexing on June's Streamnotes, which entails the annual list and the artist index. Beware that the latter is 21,814 records long.

New records reviewed this week:

Jason Adasiewicz: Roy's World (2017 [2023], Corbett vs. Dempsey): From Chicago, plays vibraphone and balafon, couple dozen albums since 2000, many more side credits. Project here was music for a film. Group a nicely balanced quintet, with Josh Berman (cornet), Jonathan Doyle (saxes), Joshua Abrams (bass), and Hamid Drake (drums). A- [bc]

Susan Alcorn/José Lencastre/Hernâni Faustino: Manifesto (2022 [2023], Clean Feed): Pedal/lap steel guitar, alto/tenor sax, acoustic/electric bass. B+(*) [sp]

Jalen Baker: Be Still (2022 [2023], Cellar): Vibraphonist, second album, with piano (Paul Cornish), bass (Gabriel Godoy), and drums (Gavin Moolchan). B+(*) [cd]

João Barradas: Solo II: Live at Festival D'Aix-En-Provence (2022 [2023], Clean Feed): Portuguese accordion player, several albums since 2013, this a six-part improv, where he is also credited with MIDI controller and voice. B+(*) [bc]

Carlos Bica: Playing With Beethoven (2022 [2023], Clean Feed): Portuguese bassist, albums since 1995, was commissioned by Cineteatro Louletano "to respond creatively to the musical legacy of Ludwig von Beethoven," so starts with eleven classical themes and plays with them. With Daniel Erdmann (tenor/soprano sax), João Barradas (accordion), and DJ Illvibe (turntables). Mixed results. I'm hard pressed to identify the Beethoven here, although he makes a ready scapegoat when it goes wrong. B [sp]

Big Freedia: Central City (2023, Queen Diva): New Orleans bounce rapper Freddie Ross, second album (plus mixtapes, EPs, and a bunch of singles). At best, this reminds me of George Clinton's funk foundry, but at worst the banging gets out of hand, turning into pure headache. B- [sp]

Valentin Ceccaldi: Bonbon Flamme (2023, Clean Feed): French cello player, brother of violinist Théo Ceccaldi, has at least one previous album. Joined here by Luis Lopes (guitar), Fulco Ottervanger (piano, keyboards), and Étienne Ziemniak (drums), bits of spoken word. Dense, with rock energy that might explode but doesn't quite. B+(***) [bc]

Entoto Band: Entoto Band (2023, Guitar Globetrotter): Songs from "the golden era of Ethiojazz," with singer Helen Mengestu and saxophonist Amanyal Tewelde, along with Dutch guitarist Joep Pelt. B+(**) [sp]

Gloss Up: Before the Gloss Up (2023, Quality Control): Memphis rapper, first mixtape after a flurry of singles appearances (4 in Discogs), 12 tracks, 29:53. B+(***) [sp]

HIIT: For Beauty Is Nothing but the Beginning of Terror (2022 [2023], Clean Feed): Italian pianist Simone Quatrana, in a trio with Andrea Grossi (bass) and Pedro Melo Alves (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Jelly Roll: Whitsitt Chapel (2023, BBR Music Group): Singer-songwriter Jason Bradley DeFord, from Tennessee, started out hip-hop but goes country here, which among other things means he gets to stretch out his drawl and crank the guitars up. But he's as dissolute as anyone around, and religion can't save him (neither "Dancing with the Devil" nor "Hungover in a Church Pew." B+(**) [sp]

Kala Jula & Gangbé Brass Band: Asro (2019 [2023], Buda Musique): Band with roots in Mali and Benin, feat. credit on cover for Fama Diabaté (voice, balafon), with three guitarists (one also on kora, and everyone adding to the percussion), with added sax and brass from the Gangbé Brass Band. B+(**) [sp]

Izumi Kimura/Gerry Hemingway: Kairos (2022 [2023], Fundacja Sluchaj): Japanese pianist, based in Ireland, has a 2010 album and several more since 2016, including a 2019 trio with the drummer and Barry Guy. Sharper here as a duo, the focus shifting from piano to drums (or marimba or vibraphone), and back again. Then out of nowhere comes something totally different: a trad piece with Hemingway's bluesy, otherworldly vocal. A- [cd]

John Carroll Kirby: Blowout (2023, Stones Throw): Los Angeles-based keyboard player, tenth album since 2015, also lots of pop session work. Dance grooves, but closer to smooth jazz than to techno. B- [sp]

Kool Keith: Black Elvis 2 (2023, Mello Music Group): Veteran rapper Keith Thornton, started with Ultramagnetic MCs (1984-93), also worked as Dr. Octagon and Dr. Dooom (not to be confused with MF Doom, the late Daniel Dumile), used this name for his 1999 release of Black Elvis/Lost in Space, released much more before cycling around for this sequel. (The Return of Dr. Octagon came out in 2006, 10 years after Dr. Octagonecologyst.) Has some of that old school bite. B+(**) [sp]

Lil Uzi Vert: Pink Tape (2023, Generation Now/Atlantic): Rapper Symere Woods, from Philadelphia, third album, a big one at 87:03 (26 songs, 3 billed as bonuses). Mostly stuff I have trouble distinguishing from dozens of other young rappers, although the beats and production are above average. Then there are the metal mash ups with Bring Me the Horizon and Babymetal. Not awful, but wtf? B+(**) [sp]

Aja Monet: When the Poems Do What They Do (2023, Drink Sum Wtr): Poet, from Brooklyn, last name Bacquie, four books since 2012, first album, songs co-credited to the musicians: Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (trumpet), Weedie Braimah (percussion), Luques Curtis (bass guitar), Marcus Gilmore (drums), Elena Pinderhughes (flute), and Samora Pinderhughes (piano). Much remarkable here, but it does go on awfully long (83:00), and demands a lot of attention. A- [sp]

Margaux Oswald/Jesper Zeuthen: Magnetite (2022 [2023], Clean Feed): Swiss pianist, based in Copenhagen, has a couple previous albums. Duo with Zeuthen, who is Danish, older (b. 1949), plays alto sax, played in Pierre Dørge's New Jungle Orchestra. B+(***) [sp]

Bruno Parrinha/Vine Leaf: Tales of Senses (2022 [2023], Clean Feed): Just the group name on the cover, which is an English translation of the Portuguese alto saxophonist's name. With Luis Lopes (guitar) and João Valinho (drums). Strong, steady. B+(***) [sp]

Emanuele Parrini/Samo Salamon/Vasco Trilla: Eating Poetry (2022 [2023], Clean Feed): Italian violinist, debut a duo album in 1998, joined here by guitar (from Slovenia) and drums (from Portugal). B+(**) [sp]

Phiik & Lungs: Another Planet 4 (2023, Tase Grip/Break All): Two rappers from New York, otherwise I know very little about them. B+(*) [sp]

Peso Pluma: Génesis (2023, Double P): Mexican rapper, sings more, actual name Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija, father traces roots back to Lebanon, third album. B+(**) [sp]

Marek Pospieszalski: No Other End of the World Will There Be: Based on the Works of Polish Female Composers of the 20th Century (2022 [2023], Clean Feed): Polish saxophonist, leads an octet here. Listing the composers, or even the musicians, would be an obscure exercise (not that I don't recognize trumpet player Tomasz Dabrowski). I rarely like records that lean this much toward classical, but this keeps me interested. B+(**) [sp]

Sexyy Red: Hood Hottest Princess (2023, Heavy on It): Rapper Janae Wherry, from St. Louis, second mixtape. No doubt she puts out, but B+(*) [sp]

Liba Villavecchia Trio: Birchwood (2022 [2023], Clean Feed): Alto saxophonist from Barcelona, Discogs lists two items 1999-2002 but kicked off from 2020 on. Second Trio album with Alex Reviriego (bass) and Vasco Trilla (drums). Sounds great at first, then pretty good as the riffs roll on. B+(***) [sp]

WiFiGawd & Soudiere: 36 Chambers of Pressure Vol. 2 (2023, Purple Posse, EP): DC rapper, has a lot of work out since 2016, as does French DJ Soudiere, their first volume (9 songs, 23:47) out in October 2022. This one offers 9 more songs (22:03). Tight in the groove, or buried in the mix. B [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Brew: Heat/Between Reflections (1998-2019 [2023], Clean Feed, 2CD): Trio of Miya Masaoka (koto), Reggie Workman (bass), and Gerry Hemingway (drums). Masaoka was born in Washington DC, lived in Paris, studied in San Francisco, is based in New York, is a master of many traditional Japanese instruments, has appeared on 50+ albums, mostly with free jazz figures. First disc, with two 1998-99 sessions, is deeply compelling. The latter disc is a recent session, considerably lighter. A- [cd]

Luther Thomas: 11th Street Fire Suite (1978 [2023], Corbett vs. Dempsey): Alto saxophonist (1950-2009), from St. Louis, was involved in the Black Artists Group, Human Arts Ensemble, and Saint Louis Creative Ensemble, with just a handful of albums under his own name. Mostly solo -- Luther C. Petty gets a flute credit -- including voice and "little instruments." Starts out of tune, and never really gets on track. C+ [bc]

Old music:

Izumi Kimura: Asymmetry: Piano Music From Japan and Ireland (2009 [2010], Diatribe): Japanese pianist, born in Yokohama but based in Ireland. First album. Label ran a "Solo Series" with four releases each in 2010 and 2014, with no one else I've heard of. Composed pieces, alternating as advertised, still not easy to dive in randomly and discern which is which, but I'm hardly one to know. B+(**) [sp]

Izumi Kimura/Cora Venus Lunny: Invisible Resistances (2022, Farpoint): Lunny is an Irish violinist, daughter of a noted Irish folk musician, has a few albums since 2011. Duet with pianist Kimura. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Maria Da Rocha/Ernesto Rodrigues/Daniel Levin/João Madeira: Hoya (Creative Sources) [06-01]
• Gabriel Espinosa: Bossas and Boleros (Zoho) [06-23]
• Doug MacDonald Trio: Edwin Alley (DMAC Music) [08-01]
• Ernesto Rodrigues/Florian Stoffner/Bruno Parrinha/João Madeira: Altered Egos (Creative Sources) [06-01]
• Ernesto Rodrigues/Fred Lonberg-Holm/Flak/João Madeira/José Oliveira: The Giving Tree Moving On (Creative Sources) [06-01]
• Paul Tynan & Aaron Lington: Bicoastal Collective: Chapter Six (OA2) [07-21]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, July 9, 2023

I could write about Israel every week, as every week some new outrage occurs there. I don't, because I tire of making the same points over and over, and because what happens there is mostly out of sight and therefore out of mind. But since the current Netanyahu government took power, built as it is on ultra-religious parties tied to settler aggression and violence, a direction has clearly emerged, which if unchecked will lead to the end of Jewish Democracy -- let's face it, there's never been universal democracy in Israel -- and eventually to genocide against Palestinians. The ruling junta's plot to break the judicial system, which sometimes acts as a brake on the government's violence, has been widely reported, because it's been widely protested by Israeli Jews and their sympathizers in the US. The violence directed against Palestinians has received much less attention, mostly in the form of pieces like: [07-04] Israel targets West Bank militant stronghold in major operation. Of course, it helps to know that all Palestinians are considered "militants," and any place they're in the majority is a "stronghold." For a brief introduction to what happened there, see Jeffrey St Clair: [07-07] The meaning of Jenin.

I'll follow up with some more links, but first I want to be clear on several points:

1. From its inception in the 1880s, Zionism has always been a colonial settler project, pitched to gain sponsorship by an imperial power. The UK adopted the movement in 1917 to use against the Ottomans. After the British withdrew in 1948, Israel became independent, but still needed allies for arms (first Russia, then France, then the US).

2. With British protection secured, the Zionist community (Yishuv) was segregated and grew self-sufficient, buying land while marginalizing Palestinian workers -- the powerful Jewish labor union insisted on only employing Jewish labor. The adoption of Hebrew as their national language further isolated Jews from Arabs. When Israel was declared, a separate-and-unequal society and economy already existed, reinforced by law.

3. Like all settler colonialists, Zionists understdood that success depended on numbers. In the US and Australia, an overwhelming number of settlers (aided by disease and superior arms) relegated the few surviving natives to reservations. But settlers never had a chance in places where they were a tiny minority (like Haiti or Kenya), nor were settlers ultimately able to retain power in places where they held substantial power but were still a minority (like South Africa and Algeria). When the British withdrew, the Jewish population of Palestine was about 35%. Israel attempted to solve this problem by partition (a UN-approved plan they agreed to but didn't honor), war, and the mass expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from land they occupied during the war. The Palestinians remaining in Israel were accorded some rights, but lived under a military justice system separate from Jews, and faced economic restrictions.

4. Israel never accepted its borders. (There are still Israelis who believe they are entitled to the East Bank of the Jordan, to southern Lebanon, and to Sinai.) It obliterated the UN partition plan, by seizing West Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Western Galilee, among other expansions. It then launched wars in 1956 and 1967 to seize more land. After 1967, Israel developed a complex system of control over the occupied territories, but they kept wanting more, to which aim they permitted settlers to claim an ever-expanding array of select locations.

In 1967, Israel faced three threats -- Arab attack, Palestinian uprising, and world opinion turning against Israel -- beyond the obvious demographic trap, but could have navigated their way around them. The threat of Arab armies (mostly Egypt and Syria) was largely ended by Israel's 1967 blitz, which gave them territories that could be returned for peace -- as finally happened with Egypt in 1979, and almost happened with Syria in 2000 (before Barak got cold feet and/or greedy). Israel could have organized Gaza and the West Bank into an indepdendent Palestinian state, which could have repatriated refugees, thus degrading the PLO and its offshoots. And world opinion -- which would later tip the balance against South Africa -- was most sensitive to injustice, which Israel had started to address by ending military rule within the 1967 borders.

But Israelis weren't satisfied, and given the belief system they had painstakingly constructed, probably couldn't be. They had built a military juggernaut, and doubled down on it, becoming one of the most thoroughly militaristic societies the world has ever known. Meanwhile, the state supported the ultra-orthodox, who moved from apolitical to nationalist and beyond. The stratification of society and economy inflated Jewish pride, while grinding Palestinians into resistance, which could be met with half-hearted accommodation (like Oslo), or simply with violence. Such violence risks international support, but as long as the US blindly follows, Israel can manage the rest.

I'm not insensitive to the plight of Palestinians under Israel's yoke. Nor do I see this oppression as steady state. Under the current political regime, Israelis will continue to take land and livelihood from Palestinians. Moreover, they don't fear violent uprising. They welcome it as an opportunity for even more violent reprisals. No one can doubt that Israel has the firepower to commit genocide. And more than a few Israelis already have the mindset. With more violence, more will join them, until some tipping point, which is becoming increasingly likely -- especially if the US swings back to some Christian Zionist fanatic or fool. Donald Trump is certainly the latter, if not necessarily the former.

But I'm also bothered by what Israel's cult of dominance is doing to them. They have ordered a society which is racist at its core, which is profoundly unequal and unjust, which is maintained both by psychological manipulation and brutality. That's no way to live. (Late in his life, Ariel Sharon admitted as much, not that he did anything about it.) As a result, Israelis are doomed to struggle and suffer, finding themselves increasingly out of step from the rest of the world -- not least from Jews in the diaspora, who are finding it increasingly difficult to even recognize their brethren.

Injustices everywhere increase the odds of revolutionary violence spilling into further war, which is a big reason -- even if sympathy and solidarity doesn't move you -- to worry and warn against them. However you measure such things, Israel is one of the most unjust nations in the world today. It's also one of the most heavily armed, so it's not like world opinion can do much if they snap. But the threat I worry even more about is that the US will see Israel as a model, and seek to replicate its injustices at 50 times the scale. If you don't know who I'm talking about, start with the Republicans section below.

Top story threads:

Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans:

• Walker Bragman: [07-06] How Ron DeSantis turned Covid denialism in a major political weapon: "The Florida governor's deadly anti-public health politics may just help him outflank Trump, who looks like a moderate in comparison." I wouldn't call Trump a "moderate" here. He just likes to have it both ways, taking credit for the vaccination program while through his own miraculous recovery testifying that we didn't really need it. If you want to dwell on a pivotal moment in history, consider what would be different if Trump had died in Walter Mead instead of bouncing back. His recovery, more than anything else, revitalized his campaign -- and, of course, allowed him to carry on with his post-election nonsense.

• Philip Bump: [07-05] You can't be more conservative than Trump when he defines conservatism.

• Margaret Hartmann: [07-06] Trump sours on Kari Lake because she's too Trumpy. Follow up to reports a few weeks back touting her as Trump's vice-presidential running mate. Not only does she add gender balance to the ticket, she's already proved she can lose Arizona. Highlight is a Trump "truth" on Lake's new book: "I know this book is great, because I wrote the foreword." Hartmann also wrote: [06-29] Melania Trump releases 'Yearning to Breathe Free' NFT. Biggest surprise here is that Melania seems to have gotten into the NFT racket earlier than her husband.

• Nicole Narea: [07-06] 4 revelations from the latest unsealed records in the Trump classified documents case:

  1. Prosecutors relied on security footage to build their case against Trump
  2. Trump didn't initially argue to prosecutors that he declassified the documents
  3. Trump's lawyers probably never looked beyond the storage room for classified documents
  4. We still don't know all the reasons why prosecutors believed that Trump still had documents in his possession

• Timothy Noah: [07-06] The truth about the GOP and the deficit: All they do is raise it. You know this, right?

• Robert Schlesinger: [07-06] Ron DeSantis's ghoulish embrace of American Psycho Patrick Bateman: "The increasingly hopeless presidential candidate is now clinging to a weird right-wing meme in hopes of winning over the misogynistic-sociopath vote." Aka, "the base"?

• Marianna Sotomayor/John Wagner: [07-07] House Freedom Caucus votes to oust conservative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Further proof that they eat their own. (Mo Brooks is a previous example, in case you forgot.) Admittedly, not as dramatic as the guillotining of Robespierre. More like a playground squabble. Also note: the most unflattering pic of MTG to date.

• Michael Tomasky: [07-07] Pay attention to what you see: Donald Trump is losing his marbles.

• Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [07-03] There are plenty of reasons to boo Lindsey Graham off a stage: "Let us count the ways." Provides many examples of Graham's warmongering over the years, but woefully incomplete, missing even such egregious examples as his insistence in 2008 that the US go to war with Russia over Georgia. But while he's a broken record on war, on many other subjects -- especially Trump -- the one thing he repeatedly shows us is how little thought occurs before he speaks. There's quite a bit on him in Mark Leibovich's Thank You for Your Servitude, where he is depicted as a habitual flunky who's always looking for a leader type to suck up to -- he's floundered since John McCain's death. (As Kathleen Parker put it: McCain's "death five years ago left his wingman without a lead pilot.")

  I still have this vague memory of a quote from him from back when he was still in the House (1995-2003), explaining that Republicans need to lock in as much power as possible while they still have the chance, because longer trends were working against them. That stuck with me as smart, cynical, and evil. But probably not an original thought, as those seem beyond him. Rather, as he's wont to, he just inadvertently spilled the beans about a plot that had already been hatched. Vlahos also cites: Jack Hunter: [2022-03-05] Sadly, Graham's call for Putin's assassination is not his craziest moment.

• Peter Wade: [07-09] DeSantis whines to Fox News that 'the media' is sabotaging his campaign. After all, that's his job.

Democrats: Like a shaggy old coat, the only thing protecting us from the life-sapping chill of Republican sociopathy. The latter should be so obvious by now that a Democratic rout in 2024 should be a lock, but still we worry.

• Jonathan Chait: [07-07] Non-white moderates are real Democrats -- not GOP pawns. My initial negative reaction here was to the hated word "moderates," which is used here for people (and not just non-whites) with a mix of conservative and liberal views. Some such views are reasonable and should be respected, while making an effort to bridge gaps and join forces.

• Michelle Goldberg: [06-30] Robert F Kennedy Jr and the coalition of the distrustful: This goes deeper than most critiques of Kennedy, noting how he personalizes conspiracism by starting with the assassinations of his uncle and his father. Paranoia works on the left as well as on the right, as there is little reason to trust official versions of most things. Other recent Goldberg pieces: [05-15] Whose version of Christian nationalism will win in 2024?; and [05-25] Ron DeSantis vs the 'woke mind virus'.

• Paul Krugman: [07-04] Biden versus the Bad News Bros, followed by [07-06] The rich are crazier than you and me.

• Jennifer Rubin: [07-07] A perpetually surprised media isn't doing its job: "When the media consistently gets the big stories wrong or fails to cover major economic changes, one would hope they'd look back to explain why their coverage diverged from reality and do a better job of covering actual developments rather than GOP talking points, process stories (how Biden is "selling" his plan) and polling." Also: "Democratic candidates would be smart to ask voters if they want to be ruled by judges who think constitutional law was frozen in the 19th century."

Courts and Law:

• [07-09] How abortion bans will strain an already failing foster system.

• Garrett Epps: [07-03] John Roberts's tiresome act: "The Supreme Court's conservative majority has taken a sledgehammer to precedent and balanced notions of judicial responsibility -- led by a chief justice who acts like he's just an ol' country lawyer."

• Michael Hudson: [07-07] Should there be a Supreme Court? Its role has always been anti-democratic.

• Ellen Ioanes: [07-09] A year after Dobbs, here's how states are legislating abortion.

• Ian Millhiser: [07-08] The importance of staying angry at the Supreme Court.

• Rob Pegorano: [07-07] A judge says Biden can't scold social media firms. That makes zero sense.

Climate and Environment: I can add that in Wichita, at least, we've been in a lucky bubble of nice weather, with major storm fronts bypassing us to the north or to the south. We did have three days over 100°F when the heat dome that's so impacted Texas spread north, but no record temps were threatened. We did have an exceptionally warm and early Spring, associated with a drought that really hurt the winter wheat crop (so farmers may dispute my use of "nice"). And while this week has brought a lot of rain -- still not enough to bring the year back to normal, but the farmers raising corn are optimistic -- we've been spared the severe weather that's repeated hit points to the east.

• Philip Bump: [07-07] Climate denialism has burnt to a crisp.

• Scott Dance: [07-08] Earth is at its hottest in thousands of years. Here's how we know.

• Jeff Goodell: [07-08] In Texas, dead fish and red-faced desperation are signs of things to come. Note that the author has a forthcoming book: The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.

• Benji Jones: [07-06] Yes, it's hot. But this could be one of the coolest summers of the rest of your life.

• Keren Landman: [07-06] 7 people have acquired malaria in the US. They're the first in 20 years. Well, in Florida and Texas. Just in time for Rachel DuRose: [07-06] We finally have malaria vaccines. The next hurdle: Distributing them.

• Ian Livingston: [07-07] Extreme heat wave bound for Phoenix and Southwest could be worst ever: "It's already hot and set to get much worse. Numerous heat records are at risk next week and probably beyond."

Ukraine War:

• Blaise Malley: [07-07] Diplomacy Watch: Washington may deny it, but looks like someone wants to talk to Russia. Still too early to declare that sanity is at long last breaking out, as details are few and veiled. The same "Track II" is discussed by Trita Parsi: [07-06] Former US officials reportedly open talks with Moscow. Also mentioned is Richard Haass/Charles Kupchan: [04-13] The West needs a new strategy in Ukraine: "A plan for getting from the battlefield to the negotiating table." Haass is outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations, where Kupchan is a senior fellow. Both are wired deep into the foreign policy blob, but aren't speaking in any official capacity. Kupchan wrote on [02-24]: US-West must prepare for a diplomatic endgame in Ukraine. It doesn't take a genius to see that much, but feigned ignorance is still the word in Washington, and will be until it isn't.

• Jen Kirby: [07-07] The US's controversial decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, explained.

• Patrick Leahy/Jeff Merkley: [07-07] Here's why supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions would be a terrible mistake.

• Marc A Thiessen/Stephen E Biegun: [07-08] Only NATO membership can guarantee peace for Ukraine: I don't think I've ever linked to one of Thiessen's columns before. He's never right about anything, but this one is outrageously dumb that I couldn't help. Just give it a second's worth of thought. NATO's proposition offers two things: one is access to American and European arms; the other is the deterrence provided by its vow to jointly defend any member (at least attacked by a non-member, as Greece and Turkey found out). Maybe NATO membership would have deterred Russia from attacking, but that was never an option: before 2014, Ukraine was effectively aligned with Russia; and as soon as the government flipped in 2014, ethnic Russian enclaves divided Ukraine, with Donbas proclaiming independence and Crimea being annexed by Russia. From that point, Ukraine could buy arms from the West, but NATO membership was out of the question as long as borders were disputed. But it's too late now for joining NATO to deter a Russian attack.

  Until Ukraine settles its borders with Russia, NATO membership would mean two things: a declaration of war [*], committing NATO members to send troops into the fight to reclaim Ukrainian territory; and it would undermine Zelensky's command -- unless you think NATO would give up command of its own troops. And in theory it would commit Ukraine to defend other countries -- not that any of them are currently under threat, but there are always "war games" to participate in (which is pretty much NATO's speed -- it was never designed to fight real wars, just to parade about and feel self-important). Ukraine actually has the best of possible deals now: unlimited arms and support, while retaining its own control and autonomy.

  As for "after the war," NATO membership might be possible, but the prospect only gives Russia more reason to prolong the war. At best, it's a chip that Ukraine can exchange in negotiations, but there may never be negotiations if Zelensky holds it too tight.

  [*] Biden has said as much: see Katie Rogers: [07-09] Biden says Ukraine is not erady for NATO membership.

Israel, and elsewhere around the world: See the introduction above.

• Julia Frankel: [07-02] Israel to buy more F-35 fighter jets from US. Deal expands fleet by 50% and deepens partnership.

• Jonathan Guyer: [07-06] What the siege of Jenin signals about the future of Israel and Palestine.

• David Hearst: [07-05] As Israel smashes up Jenin, its British apologists are enabling this violence.

• Mitchell Plitnick: [07-06] Israel does not have a right to self-defense for its occupation: Amen. More people should be saying this. When Israel shoots a "militant" or bombs a building anywhere in the occupied territories, that's a crime. When a Palestinian shoots back, that's self-defense. I'm not sure that the latter is justified[*], but I am sure that the former is not. The UN muddles the situation when they say that rockets from Gaza and F-15s from Israel are both war crimes, so "both sides do it." Only one side occupies, blockades, and strangles the other. People have a right to fight back when that happens. They don't have a right to do it.

  [*] Not all "self-defense" is justifiable. "Stand your ground" may be defensible in some cases, but it shouldn't be a license to shoot just anyone. Also, a violent response to aggression may be bad tactics politically, but still fairly described as "self-defense." If someone had shot Bull Connor during a civil rights protest, I'd be tempted to acquit that person, but it would have messed with the political narrative.

• Nathan J Robinson: [07-05] If you support Ukrainian resistance to occupation, you must also support Palestinian resistance to occupation.

• Salman Abu Sitta: [07-05] 'Zionism is an Ashkenazi thing': How Zionism engineering the expulsion of Iraq's Arab Jews: Review of revisionist historian Avi Shlaim's Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew. As is well known, after WWII the Zionist settlement sent agents around Europe to organize the immigration of Jews to Palestine (mostly forbidden by the British). As independence approached, Israel also sent agents throughout the Arab world, in an effort to persuade or coerce as many as possible to immigrate. Iraq, which had been a home to Jews ever since the "first captivity" (the Babylonians), was a major target, and the exodus there was stimulated by acts of terror, mostly by Israeli agents.

• Philip Weiss: [07-04] Biden plays Netanyahu's lapdog -- but many in US are critical of Jenin onslaught.

• Mairav Zonszein: [07-07] From the Jenin raid to settlements, Biden is giving Israel's far-right government a green light.

Other stories:

Dean Baker: [07-09] Mixed progress in the fight against inequality and for democracy.

David Broder: [06-12] Silvio Berlusconi was the iconic political figure of our times: Trump, and maybe Putin, will be disappointed to have been overlooked, but if you've ever had trouble imagining what Trump might have been like if he had been twice as rich and not a fucking idiot, Berlusconi would fill the bill.

Sean T Byrnes: [07-06] The myth of Reagan's Cold War toughness haunts American foreign policy: I was just reminded of this in the Lindsey Graham articles above, where Graham's Reagan would be shooting Russian planes down. This is a review of William Inboden's book, The Peacemarker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. The book tries to pass Reagan off as a great diplomat. The reviewer is critical, and I'm more so, but sure, Reagan deserves some credit for overcoming his jingoism and letting the dissolution of the Soviet empire play out. But it's not like he learned any meaningful lessons from the experience. American hubris only grew after the Cold War, to no small extent out of the demented notion that Reagan's rhetoric and his military buildup had succeeded.

Sam Fraser: [07-06] Biden's disgraceful nomination of Elliott Abrams: It's not much of a reward: a seat on the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which can issue reports and make recommendations but has no policy role. The USACPD is variously described as non-partisan or bi-partisan (with four vacancies, is Biden obligated to appoint a Republican?). [PS: As the update to Corn, below, explains, Abrams was recommended by Republican congressional leaders to fill a Republican slot on the Commission. Still seems like Biden could have vetoed their recommendation, especially considering the embarrassment it caused.]

In any case, on paper Abrams looks like a perfect choice. He's had many titles involving "public diplomacy," and no one has more experience lying about human rights abuses by the US and its allies. Fraser mentions some of these, starting with the 1981 massacre in El Salvador that was the first of many things Abrams lied to Congress about. Fraser also reminds us that Abrams was finally convicted of lying to Congress in 1991, but avoided jail thanks to a pardon from GWH Bush. He also mentions Abrams' work for Trump to undo diplomatic relations with Venezuela and Iran. But for some reason he skips over Abrams' tenure under GW Bush, especially his role in dismantling the Oslo Accords and ending any prospect for a "two-state solution" in Israel. More on Abrams:

• Sarah Jones: [07-07] Why is the Biden administration rewarding Elliott Abrams? "It would seem the Biden administration is practically begging us not to take its human rights rhetoric seriously." This adds some details to Fraser's piece, but still doesn't address Israel.

• David Corn: [07-05] Why has Joe Biden just rewarded a guy who supported murderous war criminals?

• Jeet Heer: [06-07] Henry Kissinger, Elliott Abrams, and the rot of American foreign policy: "Our bipartisan elite is always willing to forgive war crimes by its made men."

• Caitlin Johnstone: [07-04] Presidents keep hiring Elliot Abrams because the US empire is just that evil.

• Branko Marcetic: [07-06] The nomination of Elliott Abrams is a stain on Joe Biden's human rights record.

• Charles P Pierce: [07-05] Congratulations to Elliott Abrams, hype man for murderous regimes past, on his new job.

I'm seriously baffled by the lack of reference to Abrams' role under GW Bush regarding Israel/Palestine. At the time, it was well known that he was in direct contact with Ariel Sharon, providing advice as well as cover for carving up the PA, especially the decision to dismantle settlements in Gaza and wall it up into a Hamas-run prison enclave. Afterwards, Abrams wrote a book about his role. I haven't read it, but I wrote up this Book Roundup entry at the time:

Elliott Abrams: Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2013, Cambridge University Press): A self-serving memoir in the manner of Dennis Ross and so many other failures, but Abrams didn't fail -- he was pure evil, and was remarkably successful not just at wrecking any prospects for peace in Israel's neighborhood but in making everyone involved, including the US, much meaner and crazier. No idea how much of this he admits to -- such creatures usually prefer to dwell in the dark.

Steve Fraser: [07-06] The return of child labor is the latest sign of American decline.

Eric Levitz: [07-06] It makes sense that Bidenomics is unpopular (so far): For one thing, I hate the term. New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, even Great Society were better. The only other president to get his own "omics" was Reagan, and hardly anyone ever understood what that was about. (Had they done so, they would have hated it.) Clement Attlee liked to speak of "leveling up" as a path to greater equality that didn't involve hardship. Biden's preferred term seems to be "middle out," which is less easily diagrammable, but at least graphic. The problem, of course, is that Biden's reforms, while more substantial than anything Obama or Clinton attempted, are still piecemeal, and depend a lot on companies to grow before the benefits trickle down to workers and the public. If that's a hard sell, it might help to offer greater rewards with more Democrats elected to Congress. And/or it might help to scare people about how much worse off Republicans would make us.

Annie Lowrey: [2019-10-21] $350,000 a year, and just getting by. We've heard variants of this many times before. They're always based on mistaking elite private services (e.g., education) for essentials and/or high savings rates based on the assumption that public programs like Social Security won't suffice.

Mark Oppenheimer: [07-07] In Tabula Rasa, John McPhee looks back at books not written. Since he turned 80, McPhee seems to have given up on writing about new travels and acquaintances, and settled for writing about writing, in this case "a charming, breezy collection of reminiscences about projects that didn't make it."

Adam Ozimek: [07-05] The simple mistake that almost triggered a recession: The "idea" is that the way to reduce inflation is to lay people off. I don't doubt that it works, but it's the worst of all possible solutions.

Nathan Robinson:

• [06-29] What 'economic freedom' would look like: Interview with Mark Paul, who "explains why we need an 'economic bill of rights' and why the right-wing libertarian conception of 'freedom' is bananas and won't actually make us free." Paul is the author of The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America's Lost Promise of Economic Rights.

• [07-07] How to explain socialism clearly in a way that actually persuades people: Interview with comedian and writer Danny Katch, author of Socialism . . . Seriously: A Brief Guide to Surviving the 21st Century, and several other books. For an excerpt, see his Socialism means expanding democracy to all of society.

Lily Sánchez: [07-08] Cornel West's presidential campaign deserves the left's solidarity: I wouldn't go that far, but it deserves some respect. West is going to be saying a lot of things that Biden won't say, and that deserve a respectful hearing. One hopes that if his arguments are persuasive, Biden (or whoever the Democratic nominee is) will adopt some of them. In any case, we should at least respect his freedom of speech, and see his campaign as an exercise thereof. Especially tiresome and disrespectful is the argument that he could act as a spoiler. If that happens, the only thing that proves is that the Biden/whoever failed to make the pretty obvious argument that a majority of voters would be better off with the Democrat than with the Republican. I know that no matter how much I might prefer West, it's extremely unlikely that I won't vote for the Democrat in 2024. But I'm not going to waste my breath denouncing West when there are Republicans that actually deserve taking down.

An alternative view comes from Ben Burgis: [06-13] Cornel West should challenge Biden in the Democratic primaries. This makes sense because we live in a two-party system, and the right has chosen one of those parties, which gives the rest of us only one realistic option. One result is that most of the left have aligned with the Democrats, as have most of the people the left needs to convince to achieve even the most obvious reforms. And sure, there are a lot of retrograde elements in the Democratic Party, but it's not beyond hope, or reason. One of my mantras is that the solutions are all on the left. Republicans are only interested in power, but Democrats are also interested in results, and that's what's moving them to the left. Well, along with Bernie Sanders, who by running with the Democrats has gotten a lot more open ears and doors than he ever could in a third party.

On the other hand, West may have his own reasons for running on the fringe. I can think of several, but no point speculating here.

Norman Solomon: [07-04] Patriotism and war: Can America break that deadly connection? I'd be happy just for a respite from the fireworks, which on the evening of the 4th were audible 50-100 times per minute for hours on end, well into the night. I always figured if you loved the land and the people you were good, but the never-before-permanent military became some kind of fetish after WWII. By the time I was a teenager, I was being told to "love it or leave it," where "it" was every stupid and senseless thing done in the name of "national defense." In that environment, the usual icons and tchotchkes like flags and anthems lost all their allure. Still, to the cultists who worship such things, our reluctance only proves that we should be chucked out (if not simply wiped out). On the other hand, we can still read the Declaration of Independence, which was what the day was originally about, as an aspiration we still need to work on. Meanwhile:

• Chantal Da Silva: [07-05] At least 17 mass shootings mark Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Too late for me tonight, but do take a look at the blog for No More Mister Nice Blog, especially First they came for the pro-LGBTQ retailers.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 3, 2023

July archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 40512 [40476] rated (+36), 14 [9] unrated (+5).

I wrote another substantial Speaking of Which yesterday. Well, it didn't seem like such a big deal until I started to wrap up, and added another 1300 words in the form of an 11-point summary of the current state of the Ukraine War. Well, not exactly "current state," which implies a reckoning of the battle lines and various economic factors, which I regard as minor and possibly trivial. What does matter is the mental state of the protagonists, which on both sides remains locked in bizarre belief that the war should continue to play out. I'll resist the temptation to write another 1300 words here, but I do insist that while the decision to invade was solely Russia's fault, and the efforts to thwart the invasion were justifiable, the unwillingness to even start to negotiate a peace deserves blame on both sides.

Laura Tillem cut out the Ukraine part and posted it to Facebook. It's already disappeared from my feed.

In case you missed it, I also published a TV Midyear Report last week. Since then, Endeavour ended, more or less successfully, so B+. The second episode of Ridley brought its case to a close, but I gather there are two more episodes to go, with another closed case. It's pretty solidly in B+ territory. We're still waiting for the last episode of Deadloch, which is only getting better. And I've started season 3 of The Great, and I'm enjoying it immensely (though still impatiently waiting for Peter III's demise, and a bit bothered by rumors that Nicholas Hoult is coming back as another character).

Favorite Facebook meme of the day: "People who wonder if the glass is half empty or half full, miss the point. The glass is refillable."

Weekly rated count continues to drop, as I've been starting off most days with something classic from the cases, before trying to find something new to check out. This has taken some scratching, but I wound up with four A- records, all (I think) initially suggested by members of the Expert Witness Facebook group, many of whom have spawned Substack newsletters. (It could be that I found LaVette on my own, but her records has been much admired by group members in the last few days.) I should construct a list, or at least add them to my "Music" navigation menu, but don't feel up to it today. For a while, I toyed with the idea of setting up my own Substack, but it still doesn't feel right, and the more people who do it, the less inclined I feel.

I thought of doing Madonna after news she was hospitalized. After a strong ending, I could have gone with an A-, but I noticed on Wikipedia that my grade for the previous one-CD sampler was B+(***), and finally decided that works here as well. Why make them extra work? It shouldn't be hard to compile an A- compilation of her post-1990 work, given that half of the albums are already there. Note that the Pet Shop Boys have a similar compilation, but I haven't been able to stream it yet.

Also not getting done today is the indexing I put off for last month's Streamnotes. Maybe next week. Other projects are falling by the wayside. The one that bothers me most is that the Sony CD changer upstairs is broken, so I haven't had any bedtime music for several weeks now. Seems like it's probably just a broken belt, but I haven't even managed to take it apart to see -- at least beyond removing the top, which allowed me to rescue the CD.

New records reviewed this week:

JoVia Armstrong & Eunoia Society: Inception (2021 [2023], Black Earth Music): Percussionist, credited here with hybrid cajon, the group adding "5 Strings," bass, and guitar. Fusion of some sort, lots of riff without much rhyme. B [cd]

Tor Einar Bekken/Inga-Mei Steinbru: Jungle One Jungle Two Jungle Blues (2023, self-released): Piano and drums duo, the former with records as Dr. Bekken back to 1995, the latter apparently not in Discogs. B+(**) [bc]

Ice Cold Bishop: Generational Curse (2023, Epic): Los Angeles rapper, hasn't made it big enough for Wikipedia yet, debut album not yet in Discogs (which has 2022's single), credit jammed together in all-caps but Pitchfork review repeatedly refers to "Bishop." Tight loops, hard to follow, with high voices tracked cartoonishly but something deeper in the message. A- [sp]

Samuel Blaser: Routes (2021-22 [2023], Enja): Trombonist, from Switzerland, couple dozen albums since 2008, mostly plays free jazz but pays tribute here to reggae great Don Drummond, with Alex Wilson (piano/organ/melodica), Alan Weekes (guitar), Ira Coleman (bass), Dion Parson (drums), Soweto Kinch (alto sax/vocals), Michael Blake (tenor sax), and Edwin Sanz (percussion), with Scratch Perry dubbing on two tracks, and extra trombones on another. B+(***) [sp]

Pony Bradshaw: North Georgia Rounder (2023, Black Mountain Music): Country singer-songwriter from north Georgia, fourth album. B+(**) [sp]

Dee Byrne: Outlines (2021 [2023], Whirlwind): British alto saxophonist, has a couple previous albums, leads a sextet, with trumpet, clarinet, piano, bass, and drums -- only name familiar to me is Olie Brice (bass). B+(**) [sp]

Shirley Collins: Archangel Hill (2023, Domino): Venerable British folk singer, now 87, returned from a 38-year hiatus in 2016, with a second album in 2020, and now this third one. Voice continues to wither, as does the songs. B+(*) [sp]

Chuck D as Mistachuck: We Wreck Stadiums: Homage to Rap & Baseball Heroes (2023, SpitSLAM): Public Enemy front man Carlton Ridenhour, feeling nostalgic about his baseball cards, ten years younger than me, which is close enough I recognize the players he namechecks. Interesting as that is, his beats are what I'm more nostalgic for. B+(***) [sp]

McKinley Dixon: Beloved! Paradise! Jazz! (2023, City Slang): Rapper from Virginia, fourth album. B+(*) [sp]

The Sofia Goodman Group: Secrets of the Shore (2023, Joyous): Jazz drummer, based in Nashville, second album, with saxophonists Joel Frahm and Dan Hitchcock, clarinet, guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums, performing Goodman originals (three with co-credits). Fairly luxe postbop. B+(*) [cd] [07-14]

Daniel Hersog Jazz Orchestra: Open Spaces: Folk Songs Reimagined (2022 [2023], Cellar): Canadian trumpet player, second big band recording, big name soloists include Kurt Rosenwinkel (guitar), Scott Robinson (reeds), Noah Preminger (tenor sax), and Frank Carlberg (piano). Seems like I should have recognized most of the folk songs, but they tend to get lost in the arrangements. B+(*) [cd]

Bettye LaVette: LaVette! (2023, Jay-Vee): Soul singer, raised in Detroit, was 16 when she recorded her first hit in 1962 but struggled after that, until the breakthrough of her 2003 album A Woman Like Me. All tracks here were written by Randall Bramblett, who I remember as a singer-songwriter in the mid-1970s, who dovetailed into soul but couldn't pull it off himself. LaVette can, and then some. A- [sp]

Brennen Leigh: Ain't Through Honky-Tonkin' Yet (2023, Signature Sounds): Country singer-songwriter, based in Nashville, ten-plus albums since 2002 (and still doesn't have a Wikipedia page). Starts with a song about escaping Hope, Arkansas. B+(***) [sp]

Mach-Hommy/Tha God Fahim: Notorious Dump Legends Vol. 2 (2023, self-released): New Jersey rapper Ramar Begon, Haitian parents, spent much of his childhood in Port-au-Prince. First EPs in 2011, many albums since 2017, this a short one (27:31). B+(*) [sp]

Gabriela Martina: Homage to Grämilis (2023, self-released): Jazz singer-songwriter, from Switzerland, second album, backed with guitar (Jussi Reijonen), accordion (Ben Rosenblum), piano (Maxim Lubarsky), bass, and drums. B+(*) [cd] [07-14]

Okwy Osadebe and Highlife Soundmakers International: Igbo Amaka (2023, Palenque): Nigerian, the son of Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe (1936-2007), an Igbo highlife star in Lagos from his first album in 1958. During the 1970s, highlife was eclipsed by juju and afrobeat, but I always found the early stuff especially charming, as is this slight update. A- [sp]

Brandon Ross: Of Sight and Sound (2019 [2023], Sunnyside): Guitarist, short list of records since 2004, played in Harriet Tubman and other groups. Music here -- with Kevin Ross (bass guitar), Chris Eddleton (drums), and Hardedge (sound design) -- was presented to accompany paintings by Ford Crull. B+(*) [sp]

Rome Streetz: Wasn't Built in a Day (2023, De Rap Winkel): Rapper Jerome Allen, busy since 2018, produced by Big Ghost LTD, who sometimes gets a co-credit here. B+(*) [sp]

Marina Sena: Vicio Inerente (2023, Sony Music Brasil): Brazilian singer-songwriter, second album. B+(***) [sp]

Isach Skeidsvoll: Dance to Summon (2021 [2023], Ultraääni): Norwegian pianist, has several albums, the one I've heard is a duo with his brother Lauritz, who plays soprano sax here. Also with Espen Songstad (tenor sax), Aksel Øvreas Reed (baritone sax), Peder Skeidsvoll (pocket trumpet), bass, and drums, with everyone also credited with percussion, some with voice. They make a very impressive noise, but I'm not quite up to it all. B+(***) [sp]

Sam Smith: Gloria (2023, Capitol): British singer, first album (2014) was a big hit, others have followed suit, even this fourth one, after he (ok, they) went non-binary. Has a rich, but limited, soul crooner voice, increasingly turned into a choir here. B [sp]

Emilio Solla/Antonio Lizana: El Siempre Mar (2023, Tiger Turn): Pianist, from Argentina, based in New York, started with the band Apertura (1983-89), most of his albums are steeped in tango. Joined here by the Spanish flamenco-rooted saxophonist, who also sings, with smaller front cover print for Jorge Roeder (bass) and Ferenc Nemeth (drums). B+(*) [cd]

Sonar With David Torn and J. Peter Schwalm: Three Movements (2022 [2023], 7d): Swiss quartet, with two guitarists (Stephan Thelen and Bernhard Wagner), bass (Christian Kunther), and drums (Manuel Pasquinelli) -- tenth album since 2012, sometimes considered math rock (due to the intricate rhythms, or maybe because leader Thelen is a mathematician), but complex enough for jazz with no real hint of fusion. Joined here by guitarist Torn, who's appeared on several of their albums, and Schwalm (electronics). B+(**) [sp]

Joanna Sternberg: I've Got Me (2023, Fat Possum): Singer-songwriter, visual artist, multi-instrumentalist, based in New York, second album. Holds your attention with just guitar or piano and voice. A- [sp]

Sundy Best: Feel Good Country (2023, self-released): Country duo, Kristofer Bentley and Nicholas Jamerson, from Kentucky, five albums 2012-16, split up in 2018, announced a reunion in 2020, which finally led to this. B+(*) [sp]

Pictoria Vark: The Parts I Dread (2022, Get Better): Singer-songwriter, bassist from Iowa City, actual name Victoria Park, has a previous double-EP called Self-Titled (2018). Rob Sheffield is enough of a fan that he brought this to a "Pazz and Jop" podcast with Robert Christgau, who hasn't weighed in yet. I don't have much to say, either. B+(*) [sp]

The War and Treaty: Lover's Game (2023, Mercury Nashville): Michigan duo, Michael and Tanya Trotter, fourth album, first with a major label, which is pushing them as Americana, but their roots are in blues and gospel. B+(**) [sp]

Wild Up: Julius Eastman Vol 3: If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? (2023, New Amsterdam): Large Los Angeles group, conducted by Christopher Rountree, their third foray into the composer's work. B+(***) [sp]

Jess Williamson: Time Ain't Accidental (2023, Mexican Summer): Alt-country singer-songwriter, from Austin but based in Los Angeles, four previous albums, but is probably best known for her duo project Plains, with Katie Crutchfield. B+(***) [sp]

Denny Zeitlin: Crazy Rhythm: Exploring George Gershwin (2018 [2023], Sunnyside): Pianist, has recorded extensively since 1963. Solo here, a bit of percussion, on eleven Gershwin compositions (no title tune, but "Fascinating Rhythm" appears). B [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Joel Futterman: Inneraction (1984 [2023], Mahakala Music): Avant-jazz pianist, originally from Chicago, debut 1979, has co-led important groups with Kidd Jordan, Hal Russell, and Ike Levin. This reissues his third album, with Jimmy Lyons (alto sax), Richard Davis (bass), and Robert Adkins (drums), with Nat Hentoff's original liner notes. B+(***) [bc]

Madonna: Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones (1982-2019 [2022], Warner, 3CD): I can only imagine what it was to grow up with Madonna, but I got a glimpse when walking in New York, when the young daughter of a friend saw an iconic photo of Marilyn Monroe in a store window, and exclaimed. But from the few times I got stuck listening to radio in the 1980s, I got the sense that she produced most of the decade's memorable pop music (seems I only got Prince via albums). Her albums were rarely as great as the singles, but 1990's The Immaculate Collection was just that. That ended with "Vogue," which is track 11 on the first disc here. She never got better than that, but I count nine A/A- albums since, vs. four before, so she's entitled to a career-spanning compilation. This has a couple of dubious covers from back when she was toying with becoming a crossover star, but then she settled back into her dance groove, and hired the best beats she could afford, for a final disc that is serviceable but rather short of immaculate. B+(***) [sp]

Arthur Russell: Picture of Bunny Rabbit (1985-86 [2023], Audika): From Iowa (1951-92), moved to New York in 1973, studied electronic music, became music director of the Kitchen (a famous avant-garde spot), played cello, later moved into dance music, releasing an album as Dinosaur L. His legend has grown since his premature (AIDS) death, especially with the 2004 release of The World of Arthur Russell. This new discovery is a sketchy minimalist piece of solo voice, cello, keyboards, guitar, harmonica, and echoes. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

Johnny Adams: There's Always One More Time (1983-97 [2000], Rounder): Rhythm and blues singer (1932-98), from New Orleans, ranged into gospel and jazz, had some minor hits in the 1960s, signed with folk-oriented Rounder in 1983, which is where this -- an entry in the label's "Rounder Heritage" series of compilations -- picks up. B+(**) [sp]

Christer Bothén 3: Omen (2019 [2021], Bocian): Swedish bass/contrabass clarinetist, albums as far back as 1982, spent time in Mali learning donso n'goni (which he was introduced to by Don Cherry), also in Morocco. Trio with Vilhelm Bromander (bass) and Konrad Agnas (drums). B+(***) [bc]

Bashful Brother Oswald: Dobro's Best (1976 [2008], Gusto): Beecher Ray Kirby (1911-2002), from Tennessee, played Dobro resonator guitar, notably in Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys. He recorded four albums for Rounder, as well as isolated albums for a few other labels. Most (11 of 12) of these songs appeared on his 1976 album for Gusto, 14 Songs, which is the only one on Spotify. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Jeff Babko/David Piltch: The Libretto Show (Tudortones) [06-23]
• Jalen Baker: Be Still (Cellar) [07-07]
• Brew: Heat (Clean Feed) [06-23]
• Alex Coke & Carl Michel Sextet: Emergence (PlayOn) [07-07]
• Sammy Figueroa: Something for a Memory: Busco Tu Recuerdo (Ashe) [07-14]
• Jason Kao Hwang Critical Response: Book of Stories (True Sound) [06-31]
• Izumi Kimura/Gerry Hemingway: Kairos (Fundacja Sluchaj) [07-07]
• Bruno Perrinha: Da Erosão (4DaRecord) [05-28]
• The Rodriguez Brothers: Reunited: Live at Dizzy's Club (RodBros Music) [07-14]
• Nicole Zuraitis: How Love Begins (Outside In Music) [07-07]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, July 2, 2023

Started this early enough, but can't say as I brought much enthusiasm to it. Links are down to 63, words to 4752 (as I'm typing this, so a bit more [PS: now 68 links, 6061 words]). Main news was that the Trump Supreme Court finally (well, once again) lived up to our fears. It is, as Biden pointed out, still too early to resort to radical measures like expanding the court, but more and more people are grasping the need for bringing the Court back into the political mainstream. Still, the Court's partisan rulings aren't way out of whack given the still substantial extent of Republican power in Congress and in the States. What we need more than speculation about changing the Court is robust electoral victories. For instance, would the Court invalidate a law (as opposed to an executive order) that explicitly forgave student debt? Would the Court chuck out a voting rights act that applied to all states? Would the Court question a law which directs the EPA to regular carbon dioxide emissions? With this court, maybe, but until you pass the laws, we don't know. And until you get the power to pass such laws, you have no chance of expanding the Court (or impeaching a couple egregious examples).

I wrote quite a bit about Ukraine below. I should probably consolidate my recent points into something succinct (much more so than my still-useful 23 Theses on Ukraine). At the risk of being too schematic, let me point out:

1. It is important to understand what the US and NATO did to provoke the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and for that matter to provoke the regional revolts in Crimea and Donbas in 2014, not because they in any way justify Russia's reaction but because understanding is useful to figure out how to resolve the crisis.
2. And the extent of the current crisis is really huge, especially in Ukraine but also in Russia, and all around the world. And this crisis deepens with every day the war goes on. The long-term consequences are already unfathomable, and will only grow more so.
3. Russia is capable of fighting this war indefinitely, as long as its leadership believes necessary to secure its minimal goals, to the ever increasing destruction of Ukraine. Oh, and perhaps I should mention Russia's nuclear arsenal, which they are unlikely to use unless they get backed into a severe corner and/or get taken over by someone truly insane. Which, as far as we can tell, Putin is not, but he has gotten a bit wobbly.
4. We should recognize that Russia is "too big to fail." We all need Russia to be integrated into the world economy, and to participate in projects like limiting climate change. And to do that, we need Russia to have a stable political system (even if it doesn't fit our idea of democratic norms). Sanctions and disinvestment may have been reasonable responses to invasion, but are not things we should seek to maintain indefinitely).
5. On the other hand, Ukraine cannot afford to fight Russia indefinitely, even if the flow of arms is inexhaustible. The destruction of land and people have limits -- especially the latter, as it is unlikely that Ukraine's allies will send more than trivial numbers of volunteers to help Ukraine fight.
6. While I have no problem with arming Ukraine to defend itself against Russian invasion, we should recognize that its borders are arbitrary, and are ultimately subject to the will of the people who live there. A fair solution before the invasion would have been to let each disputed territory vote on whether it prefers to be part of Ukraine or Russia. The invasion and subsequent displacements have complicated this, but it should still serve as a basis for fairly resolving the conflict. Zelensky's refusal to negotiate until Russian troops retreat to their pre-2014 borders is not just impractical but wrong-headed.
7. Expansion is not a legitimate goal of NATO. The only legitimate goal is peace, and the only way to achieve it is to deëscalate the tension and hostility between Russia and the rest of Europe. On the other hand, Putin's actions would seem to justify both the existence and expansion of NATO, so it is largely up to him to show that NATO is no longer needed.
8. Once Ukraine is secure in universally recognized borders, it should be free to join the EU, NATO, and/or any other international arrangement. On the other hand, it is clear from the last year that Ukraine does not need to join NATO to obtain arms and other support necessary to defend itself. Such arrangements can continue, as long as Ukraine doesn't abuse them (e.g., by escalating the war against Russia).
9. The US and Europe need to fundamentally revise much of their strategic military thinking, based on its failure to prevent the current war. The practice of implementing sanctions against Russia has only aggravated the level of hostility (as well as preparing Russia to work around them). Sanctions are still better than armed reprisals, but only barely. They are more likely to provoke war than to deter it. Speaking of which, the idea of basing defense on deterrence is fundamentally flawed. It "works" primarily when the other country has no intention of attacking (as was the case between the US and USSR during the Cold War). Otherwise, it tends to incite wars, especially among relative equals, where there might seem to be an advantage to fighting now instead of later.
10. While the events leading up to Russia's invasion in no way excuse the invasion itself, those responsible for refusing to negotiate the current war are every bit as responsible for its continuation as Russia is for its launch. While it's certainly possible that Putin is in no mood to negotiate, that he has no opportunity is solely the fault of those in Kyiv and elsewhere who refuse to make the offer. I'm not saying that the US should force Ukraine to accept an adverse treaty, but that reasonable offers need to be entertained.
11. As A.J. Muste put it, the way to peace is peace. This war is what happens when you assign all power on all sides to people who don't have the slightest fucking understanding of that.

By the way, if you have some kind of publication and would be interested in reprinting the above on Ukraine, let me know, and I'll work with you on it. At present, this is a one-pass draft, with a couple extra points wedged in as seemed appropriate.

As usual, this is a quick scan through the usual sources. No doubt I missed much, but that's inevitable.

Top story threads:

Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans:

• David Atkins: [06-26] Who's really in charge of the GOP? (Hint: It's not Trump): "Rabidly conservative base voters are the tail wagging the very sick dog." I wonder whether it's a good idea to blame the people for their leaders, no matter how much the latter pander to the baser impulses of the former. It's still the case that Republican legislators act with remarkable uniformity even when polls show the Republican base divided. That suggests that someone is coordinating, even if it isn't obvious who's in charge.

• Ryan Bort: [06-30] One thing GOP presidential candidates agree on: Marginalized Americans should suffer: "Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and other 2024 hopeful were quick to praise the Supreme Court's devastating decisions this week."

• Susan B Glasser: [06-28] Why Donald Trump was so mad at Mark Milley that he confessed to a crime: "The backstory on the tape that could get the ex-President convicted in the classified-documents case."

• Ginny Hogan: [06-29] Is Josh Hawley all right? "His new book Manhood advocates for a return to ancient values of family and masculinity. In reality, it reveals the Missouri senator's weird fixations." Another review of an easy target.

• Ed Kilgore: [06-29] DeSantis continues race to right with criminal-justice reform veto.

• Maria Laurino: [06-29] The right's new post-Dobbs panacea: The baby safe deposit box.

• Kelly McClure: [07-01] Trump thrilled with his appointed Supreme Court Justices -- calls them "gold": Although it appears that the ones who preceded him, Thomas and Alito, are the ones most closely tied to the gold. Or maybe the sleaze just hasn't caught up with the others yet.

• Heather Digby Parton: [06-26] Trump's messianic appeal can't be replicated.

• Christian Paz: [07-02] Florida's new immigration law previews a DeSantis presidency.

• Martin Pengelly: [06-27] Trump adviser suggested blowing up migrants' boats with drones, book says. The adviser is Stephen Miller. The book is Miles Taylor: Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump. The incident occurred in April 2018. Taylor was the Trump staffer who anonymously published A Warning in 2019.

The Supreme Court:

• Fabiola Cineas/Ian Millhiser: [06-29] The SCOTUS decision on affirmative action in colleges, explained. Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent policy. The idea was that, having discriminated so severely for so long, we should actively lean against discrimination. It was based on the principle that we can and should deliberately do things to affirm justice, and not just assume that the end of de jure discrimination will be sufficient. And it was a reaction to the slowballing of the "all deliberate speed" Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which by the late 1960s still had far to go. Whether affirmative action helped is hard to say: certainly there are cases where it did, but it was often implemented in bad faith, or in no faith at all, and often served as a rallying point for resistance, eventually allowing opponents to redefine their opposition as some kind of defense of civil rights. What hurts about the ruling isn't that now a few elite schools will have to work harder to show that they value diversity and oppose discrimination. Rather, what hurts is that the bigots finally won their case, even if they had to tone their racism down to do so. On the other hand, why not welcome the "race-neutral" rhetoric as vindication of the civil rights movement. And should those elite schools backslide, why not enforce the law and sue their asses for racial discrimination? Until this ruling, they could point to their affirmative action programs as a defense against such charges. Now they can't. Now they need to walk the walk, and should be held accountable when they fail.

• Daniel Boguslaw: [06-26] Samuel Alito's wife leased land to an oil and gas firm while the Justice fought the EPA.

• Kristine Bowman/Kimberly Robinson/Vinay Harpalani: [06-30] SCOTUS affirmative action ruling says military academies can still consider race in admissions.

• Kevin Breuninger/Chelsey Cox: [06-29] Supreme Court's Ketanji Brown Jackson blasts affirmative action ruling, clashes with Clarence Thomas.

• Jelani Cobb: [06-29] The end of affirmative action: "The scale of what has been lost is difficult to assess in the moment."

• Chas Danner: [07-01] Fallout from SCOTUS affirmative action, student-loan decisions.

• Matt Ford: [06-30] John Roberts begs the liberal Justices to stop criticizing the Court: "The chief justice doesn't like his conservative Supreme Court colleagues getting called out for judicial overreach." Of course, Roberts could limit the discrediting of the court, as he has done on occasion (if not nearly often enough) by moderating his opinions. The Supreme Court's right-wing majority is undermining the legitimacy of the institution, causing it increasingly to be recognized as a grave threat not just to democracy but to law and order. Dissent within the court at least shows that its rulings are not incontrovertible, and that the institution can eventually be saved from its current disease.

• Melissa Gira Grant: [06-29] The mysterious case of the fake gay marriage website, the real straight man, and the Supreme Court: The claimants were phony, the claim was imaginary, the case was hypothetical, and still the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in their favor, so anxious were they to exempt bigotry claiming to be religion from anti-discrimination law.

• Ankush Khardori: [06-29] The end of affirmative action is only the beginning: "Yet again, the Supreme Court's conservatives just get rid of precedents that they don't like."

• Jay Michaelson:

  • [06-29] What was affirmative action really about? And what happens now? One tangible effect of racism was income inequality, which was major before the passage of civil rights laws, and persists today. A big part of the problem was that we tried to solve the economic inequities of racism at the same time the nation as a whole was becoming -- and this was very much the effect of political policy -- more and more inequal. So while women, blacks, and other made marginal gains as compared to most white males, pretty much everyone lost ground to the very rich. And while the very rich is probably more diverse than 50+ years ago, that does the rest of us very little good.

  • [06-30] The Supreme Court sold its soul to the Christian Right.

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [06-29] The other big decision handed down by the Supreme Court today, explained: The unanimous decision replaces one vague standard with another one, one that would appear to allow more businesses to reject employee requests for accommodations on religious grounds.

  • [06-30] The Supreme Court will decide if abusive spouses have a right to own guns.

  • [06-30] The Supreme Court's lawless, completely partisan student loans decision, explained: "The Court's decision in Biden v. Nebraska is nothing more than an exercise of raw power. It bears no resemblance to actual law."

  • [06-30] Neil Gorsuch has a problem with telling the truth: "Gorsuch hands a victory to the Christian right by making false claims about an important First Amendment case."

• Christian Paz: [06-30] The Supreme Court just struck down Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. Here's Plan B. "The White House hasn't given up on loan forgiveness."

• Li Zhou: [06-30] Anti-trans bills keep losing in court: "Kentucky and Tennessee are the latest states to see parts of gender-affirming care bans targeting trans youth blocked by a federal judge." Laws have also been struck down in Arkansas, Florida, and Indiana.

Climate and Environment:

• Kate Aronoff: [06-30] Texas GOP offers workers the freedom to boil alive: "A new bill rolls back city-level rights for workers to take breaks during hot days -- as Texas swelters through a punishing heat wave." As cities in Texas have become more Democratic, the Republicans in control of the state have been working ever harder to deny cities the right to govern themselves.

• Matthew Cappucci: [06-30] Derecho tears through Plains and Midwest, cutting power with 100 mph winds: "The storms traveled more than 600 miles from Kansas to Kentucky-Tennessee border."

• Umair Irfan: [07-01] The unusual factors behind the extraordinary heat across the southern US.

• Li Zhou: [06-29] Why Canada's wildfires will affect air quality for weeks to come.

Ukraine War:

• Blaise Malley: [06-30] Diplomacy Watch: How is the West responding to Prigozhin's abandoned revolt? No real change, although one should consider the chances that Russian leadership could change from bad to worse. As for diplomacy, which remains the only viable option, the Vatican sent its envoy to Moscow, where he was received politely.

• Matthew Blackburn: [06-29] The dangers of Europe's blindness to a long war in Ukraine.

• Chatham House Report: [06-27] How to end Russia's war on Ukraine: British think tank, founded 1920, aka The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Title is misleading, because the only end to the war they approve of is a smashing defeat of Russia, because, well, if we don't teach them a lesson, they in the future they might do something like they just did. The report attempts to dispell nine "fallacies," all set up as strawmen to be beat down, even though most of them are fallacious, or at least evasive, to begin with. The only thing that keeps this from being a plan for perpetual war is the "it's now or never for Ukraine" sense of urgent hawkishness: "A protracted or frozen conflict benefits Russia and hurts Ukraine, as does a ceasefire or negotiated settlement on Russia's terms." Protracted war hurts everyone, but most especially the people of Ukraine.

• Keith Gessen: [07-01] Could Putin lose power? Author turns to historian Vladislav Zubok and others for analogies, but doesn't find much, so falls back on: "Regime stability is a funny thing. One day it's there; the next day, poof, it's gone." Nothing here convinces me that this is a germane question. Even if Putin is replaced, the most likely scenarios favor someone already close to power, with the same basic commitments and views as Putin. This may promote someone more cautious and conservative, like Brezhnev replacing Krushchev. It may even be someone willing to make a tactical shift to end a debilitating war, as when Eisenhower replaced Truman -- ending the Korean War while planting seeds for future wars, especially in Vietnam. Less likely would be the rise of a Lenin, who accepted defeat then regrouped to become a still greater threat. Regime change rarely changes regimes in any fundamental way. If that's your best hope, you really don't have much. On the other hand, with Putin you have someone who still has enough national power to make a deal and make it stick. It should be clear now that the US could have negotiated better deals with Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein than they got by insisting on regime change.

• Masha Gessen: [06-26] Prigozhin showed Russians that they might have a choice: Talk about starry-eyed optimists: Prigozhin is a choice?

• Matthew Hoh: [06-30] Destroying Eastern Ukraine to save it. To take one example, Bakhmut had an estimated population of 71,094 in January 2022. The most recent estimate, much less precise, is ">500." The population of Mariupol, which fell to Russia relatively quickly, dropped from 425,681 to "<100,000." The total number of refugees from Ukraine has been variously estimated in excess of 8 million, plus millions more internally displaced within Ukraine, not counting an unknown number in Russia (one figure I've seen is 65,400). While the air war gets most of the press, the battle lines are mostly fought with artillery and small missiles, and the devastation is immense (e.g., Bakhmut). The longer the war drags on, the more devastating it will become. Zelensky's refusal to negotiate is based on the belief that Ukraine can regain its pre-2014 territory, but at the current rate, that will not only take years, it will deliver the "victors" nothing but a wasteland. By the way, Hoh includes a link to a [2022-03-15] piece by David Swanson: 30 Nonviolent things Russia could have done and 30 nonviolent things Ukraine could do. Number one was: "Continued mocking the daily predictions of an invasion and created worldwide hilarity, rather than invading and making the predictions simply off by a matter of days." Why is this sort of thing so hard for many people?

• Caitlin Johnstone: [06-29] Aging Iraq invaders keep accidentally saying 'Iraq' instead of 'Ukraine'.

• Frederick Kunkle/Kostiantyn Khudov: [07-02] Ukraine says Putin is planning a nuclear disaster. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plays is currently controlled by Russia, as was the now-destroyed Kakhovka dam. Both are in areas Ukraine is threatening to take back with its counteroffensive. It's not unusual for retreating armies to blow up things they're abandoning. (Both Russia and Germany blew up a Ukraine dam in 1941 and 1943, so the lesson is perhaps more vivid there.) By the way, the blown dam has reduced the power plant's access to cooling water.

• Branko Marcetic: [06-28] We shouldn't be cheering for state collapse in Russia: Starts by pointing out that Gen. Anthony Zinni in 1998 did a war game study of Iraq that concluded that removing Saddam Hussein would plunge Iraq into "bloody chaos," which is pretty much what happened five years later. Last week's mutiny revived dreams of regime change among hawks who dream of little else, but worse scenarios are possible if Putin should fall from power. Some links to older Marcetic pieces: [03-23] For Putin, Iraq War marked a turning point in US-Russia relations; and [06-13] Is the US military more intent on ending Ukraine war than US diplomats?

• Prisha: [07-02] CIA director calls Russia-Ukraine war 'once-in-a-generation opportunity' to recruit spies: Isn't this the sort of thing that you wouldn't say if it was true, because it would tip Russia off to the new spies, and that you wouldn't say even if it wasn't true, because it would give Russia cover for charging mere dissidents as being foreign spies? And wasn't Burns supposed to be the smart one among Biden's entourage of neocons?

• James Risen: [07-01] Prigozhin told the truth about Putin's war in Ukraine: "Yevgeny Prigozhin is a disinformation artist whose failed rebellion was marked by a burst of radical honesty." Risen also wrote: [06-24] Yevgeny Prigozhin's coup targets Putin and his "oligarchic clan".

• Mikhail Zygar: [06-30] Putin thinks he's still in control. He's not. Author of a book on the internal political dynamics of the Russian government (All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin) and the new (out July 25) War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, I linked to an interview with him last week. One of many premature obituaries, speculating about exposed weaknesses, his power "desacralized." The NY Times has been churning them out:

  • Andrei Kolesnikov: [06-27] Yesterday's Putin is gone.

  • Thomas L Friedman: [06-27] What happens to Putin now?

  • Serge Schmemann: [06-26] Prigozhin and the long and infamous history of failed Russian rebellions.

• Robert Wright: [06-30] Michael McFaul's dangerous muddle: The "influential Russia hawk, says Putin's handling of the [Wagner] crisis shows that fears of his using a nuclear weapon are exaggerated; Putin chose to negotiate with Prigozhin rather than fight, so we can assume that he wouldn't go nuclear if faced with big losses on the battlefield, including even the loss of Crimea." So, the more evidence that Putin is acting with sane restraint, the more recklessly we can trample over his "red lines"? One thing the hawks fail to understand is that evidence that Putin behaves rationally casts doubt on their picture of him as a tyrant with an insatiable lust for expansion. It actually suggests that he is someone who can be reasoned with, but to do so you'll need to match concessions to his, and not just beat him into submission. Unfortunately, the hawks are not just incapable of seeing possible compromises, they think the very idea of sitting down to negotiate is a sign of weakness. But it's really just a sign of contempt, a way of telling Putin you won't be satisfied until he's destroyed.

  The worst hawks, and McFaul is a good example, are obsessed with destroying Putin and Russia, and see Ukraine primarily as a cudgel to beat Russia with. That poisons their understanding of events. For instance, Wright writes:

  Yet McFaul seems to expect Putin, if cornered, to gracefully surrender -- because, according to McFaul, that's what happened last week. He says Putin "capitulated" to Prigozhin.

  Huh? Prigozhin had these demands: (1) Don't integrate Wagner's forces in Ukraine into the Russian military. (2) Fire Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. (3) Fire Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Prigozhin got none of these things. Plus, he got exiled! And the (probably few) Wagner troops who choose to follow him into exile won't be allowed to bring heavy armaments.

  The only concession Putin made was to withdraw his threat to prosecute Prigozhin for treason. That isn't much, seeing as how Putin has gone on to strip Wagner assets, and render Prigozhin powerless. On the other hand, he managed to avoid unnecessary bloodshed -- most likely, the "Russian blood" that Prigozhin claimed to have saved by accepting the deal was his own, although there always is a small chance that Russian soldiers would have refused to fire -- as they refused to support the coup against Gorbachev -- and that would have been disastrous. None of these things suggest to me that Putin is weak or foolish. He is, rather, someone who knows that his power and ambition have limits. I wish I could say the same thing for Zelensky, Stoltenberg, and Biden.

Around the world:

• Lee Hockstader:

  • [07-01] French cities are in flames over systemic racism.

  • [06-01] Germany has one politician who's serious about arming Ukraine: Meet Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who not only insists that Ukraine must win its war with Russia, but who also aims "for Germany to succeed in transforming its anemic military into a dynamic fighting force that could buttress a muscular European defense." So add that to your list of risks of not negotiating an end to the Ukraine war as soon as possible.

• Nicole Narea: [06-30] France's protests over a police killing, briefly explained.

• Michael D Swaine/Jake Werner/James Park: [06-29] How a reckless report could increase the chance of a crisis with China.

Other stories:

Phyllis Bennis: [06-30] A tale of two tragedies at sea.

Lindsey Bever: [06-29] President Biden uses a CPAP machine for sleep apnea. Here's what to know. Not sure this should be news, but good on him. I use a CPAP machine, and sleep much better for it, and never doze off during the day or evening, as I sometimes did before. I know many other people who use them. My father didn't, but suffered severely. He dozed off literally every evening in front of the TV. A cousin asked him how he decides when to go to bed. His answer: when I wake up.

Mark Hill: [06-29] A billionaire baseball owner failed to extort Oakland, so he's scamming Nevada instead: "John Fisher, an heir to the Gap fortune, is being handed hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to screw over A's fans by moving his team to Las Vegas." Author notes that the move has "revived the national debate over public funding for private sports clubs," and adds that it's been proven that "the public never gets its money's worth." The debate it should stimulate is about expropriating the errant teams and redistributing ownership to the fans. That is, by the way, the reason the Packers are still in Green Bay, despite the fact that there are about 150 larger markets a greedy owner could shop the team to.

Elizabeth Kolbert: [06-26] How plastics are poisoning us: Draws on Matt Simon: A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies. I personally cannot imagine how we could go on without plastics. (Kenneth Deffeyes, who wrote Hubbert's Peak about the impending "peak oil" crisis, believed that even after we ran out of oil for fuel, we'd still need what little was left to make plastics.) But we're hearing more and more about this, and it's not going to let up.

Mike Lofgren: [07-01] There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual -- only apologists for right-wing power: "From Burke to Buckley to Patrick Deneen, we've seen a 200-year history of defending the indefensible." Starts with the famous Lionel Trilling quote which dismisses conservative thinking as "irritable mental gestures." I wouldn't go as far as the title, but that's largely because I've never been comfortable calling myself an intellectual. Over the last couple centuries, intellectuals have mostly emerged from the conservative class, and have occupied rarefied positions in establishment-controlled institutions, which they rarely failed to serve. It's hard for me to deny that Friedrich Hayek, John Von Neumann, or T.S. Elliot were real intellectuals, even if they were often wrong.

However, as Trilling claimed, the dominant intellectual tradition in America was liberalism, which allowed for dissent and debate, and expected progressive (but not revolutionary) change. But as the Cold War heated up, and even more so with Reagan's win in 1980, conservative instincts gave way to reactionary ones, as the right sought to build its own politically charged intellectual world, from which liberals and worse would ultimately be purged. On the other hand, the more they insist that truth be politically theirs, the less credibility they have. Conservative public intellectuals like William F. Buckley often came off as empty rhetoric wrapped up in a gauze of snobbery -- a tradition that continues today with the likes of George Will and David Brooks, but has more often given way to even baser impulses. The subject here is Deneen, who wrote Why Liberalism Failed and has a new book: Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future. You don't need an extended survey to see why such books don't deserve to be taken seriously (despite Deneen's real academic credentials), but Lofgren indulges you. Here's a bit:

Modern conservatives are hag-ridden by demons -- the fallen state of man, the hopeless decadence of secular humanism, the imminent collapse of Western Civilization (a term always capitalized). They are radical rather than pragmatic, undeterred by the mountain of evidence that tax cuts don't increase revenue, an unregulated market is not stable, and banning abortion won't make people more moral. They crave power, are as humorless as a commissar, and entirely lack introspection as to their own fallibility.

That the first line could easily have come from Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950; there must be earlier examples but this one is explicit) just reminds us how timeless the imminent demise of the upper class has been. The only thing that's changed of late is that the whines have become ever more shrill, and the proposed remedies ever more crude. I've tracked conservative thought as expressed in recent books (they're here, but so is everything else, so it might be useful to break them out into their own file), and they've gotten so deranged of late that it's hard to give them any credit at all.

Blaise Malley: [06-20] Do laws preventing Chinese from buying US land even make sense? I'm inclined to say yes, because I think local ownership is better than distant ownership, especially across borders. Sure, it doesn't help that these laws are being pushed by Republican presidential candidates -- Ron DeSantis (FL) and Doug Burgum (ND) recently signed bills to this effect -- combined with jingoistic anti-Chinese bile. I'd go further and say that companies should be employee-owned, and that land should either be owner-occupied or regulated (some form of rent control).

Timothy Noah: [06-30] Bidenomics is working -- here's why the business press won't say so: "To economics journalists, bad news is always just around the corner -- especially when a Democrat is in the White House." He blames the business press, but it's something deeper than that: "Democratic presidents consistently outperform Republicans on managing the economy. This isn't anything new. It's been true for the past century. Folks just don't want to believe it." Part of the reason, I think, is that rank-and-file Democrats are never really satisfied with the greater growth under Democratic presidents, largely because it rarely trickles down to their own bottom lines. And that's partly because the long-term trend has been toward greater inequality, and Democrats have abetted that trend, largely in pursuit of donors. On the other hand, Republican presidents always claim to be presiding over perfect economics, even with more or less major recessions in each of them. Lots of pundits want Democrats to brag more, but I doubt that's going to do the trick. Better to point out the myriad ways Republicans are plotting to screw virtually everyone over.

Alex Shephard: [06-24] He made a mess of CNN. Now he's ruining Turner Classic Movies too. "David Zaslav, whose Chris Light hire butchered CNN, is vandalizing TCM, a beloved cultural institution."

Jeffrey St Clair: [06-30] Roaming Charges: Strange coup. Admitting he has no idea how the war in Ukraine will end, he doesn't have anything definitive to add about Prigozhin's mutiny, but voice a thought that's also occurred to me: "I've always believed that fragging of officers by US troops did more to end the US's rampages in Vietnam than the peace movement back home." At the very least, fragging ended the draft, which meant that the war could no longer be fought the way it had been for ten years. Russia's use of "conscripts and convicts" (as well as private militias like Wagner, and he also mentions "Chechen paramilitaries under the control of Ramzon Kadyrov, who has repeated urged the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine," so another less than happy camper) has got to be a vulnerability. (On the other hand, note that Ukraine is also using conscription, much more aggressively than Russia is, but it seems to be less of a morale problem, most likely because Ukrainians are defending their own land from invasion.)

Nikki Haley tweeted this:

Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out.

Haley was born in 1972, by which time America had been divided by the civil rights movement and the racist reaction, by the Vietnam War and antiwar dissent, by women's liberation and a reaction that would soon kill the ERA, and by various cultural issues. She must have been pretty isolated to view those times as idyllic. I was born in 1950, before most of those fractures, in a period that could plausibly be remembered as a Golden Age of affluence and shared-interest, but the last word I would pick to describe my childhood is "easy." I mostly remember those years as demanding a lot of hard work. And threatening various terrors if we didn't work hard enough, or if we failed, or sometimes just for the hell of it. And we were fairly well insulated from the plight of the poorest. We never had to worry about where the next meal would come from, or that we might be evicted, or that we couldn't afford to see the doctor, in large part because we had little reason to fear that my father might lose his union job.

True that people today have things to worry about that we didn't. But that doesn't mean that we had it easy. As for Biden's role in ruining our country, I suppose that's easier to argue than it is to make a case that Haley or any other Republican could lead us into a promised land. But most of the things I can fault Biden for are cases where he simply went along with bad ideas other were pushing, and a number of those he seems to have grown out of. He's easy to mock, but he's the first president in my lifetime who's surprised me favorably. (To be fair, Haley surprised me favorably when she took those Confederate flags down, but she's not exactly playing that up in her campaign.)

St Clair's response to the Haley tweet:

Give Nikki credit. Perhaps she's talking about those easier, simpler days -- only a year ago -- when 10-year-old girls weren't forced to give birth to their uncle's child and 12 year-old boys weren't sent to work on the midnight shift sharpening cutting blades at the slaughterhouse.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 26, 2023

On something of a lark, I started jotting this down while working on Speaking of Which, linking to the Washington Post list. As it grew, I decided to hold it back, giving me a couple extra days to play with it.

I've pretty much given up on watching movies. For one thing, the story arc timing is almost always both too long or too short: too long because the 2-3 hour time chunk tries one's patience, especially given how clichéd most movie story arcs are; and too short because there's very little you can do with characters in the given chunk of time. TV started getting more interesting when they learned to develop the stories and characters over multiple episodes, instead of always returning to the rest state of traditional TV series. And the lengths got shorter, flexible enough to fit the story -- not that it isn't annoying when they decide to split stories over multiple seasons. It also helped to get past the family censors -- although the rise of anti-heroes isn't something I'm particularly happy with.

My wife, Laura, and I watch a couple hours late each night. She watches some more during the day, which I may or may not notice. She also watches news -- she's much more engaged in daily politics than I am -- and she's still interested in movies, although finding 2-3 hour chunks of time can be difficult (cartoons and classics tend to be shorter). Sometimes, I'll watch something on my own, usually late, but it's hard for me to find time.

Two lists follow. The first starts with a qualification of how much (or often, how little) I've seen, followed by an explanatory note. This falls far short of a review or even description, but may help explain my reaction. The notes inevitably include spoilers, so if you're phobic about that, sorry. (I tried to implement some workaround code, but failed and gave up. I understand why, but don't see a workaround.) For some entries, I've included a letter grade, which is a summary judgment on nothing more than how much I enjoyed the show. The grades are probably scaled lower than my music grades, but that's partly because we're talking about whole series, not individual episodes. (Also, note that grades are for this year only. Shows that I've only seen previous seasons from aren't graded.) As a rule of thumb, anything with a B or higher was pleasant enough to watch, and not a waste of time. That there's nothing lower below just signifies that I didn't have the patience to finish anything worse.

The lists consulted are as follows (the Washington Post was the first). The shows appeared in one or more lists, and are divided into two sets: ones I've seen at least some of, and ones I've never seen. I've also added shows to the first list that didn't make any of the consulted lists, but which we watched. These are marked [*].

• AV Club
• Complex
• Consequence
• Cosmopolitan
• Glamour
• The Guardian
• The Hollywood Reporter.
• Looper
• Mashable
• Paste
• Polygon
• Primetimer
• Rolling Stone
• Slant
• Stuff
• Time
• TimeOut
• Town & Country
• Uproxx
• USA Today
• Variety
• Vogue
• Vulture
• Washington Post

I also looked at several more lists to try to remind myself of TV shows that we've seen that didn't show up in the best-of lists. These shows, in this first section, are marked with [*].

Abbott Elementary, Season 2: Seen: first season, working on second. Comedy. Feels a little claustrophobic with just five teachers and two other adult regulars, all finely drawn and brilliantly acted caricatures, but that seems to be some constraint of the workplace sit-com universe. More troubling is the lack of significant roles for children in a series that's ostensibly about teaching them. B+

All Creatures Great and Small, Season 3: Seen: all. Based on a series of books about a Yorkshire veterinarian named James Herriot, proceeds from 1937 to the call up for war in 1939 (with gruesome flashbacks to the Great War). The veterinary work often makes me wonder, but you get lots of countryside and animals, and while the home life isn't exactly idyllic, you wish them the best. And fear for the war, which the young Tristan Farnon foolishly signed up for, not least to prove himself to his older brother, who still bears the scars of the previous war, and would rather spare him the trauma. A-

Atlanta, Season 4: Seen: some of the first season, none since. Donald Glover's riff on aspiring rappers. Didn't stick (or I didn't stick with it).

Barry, Season 4: Seen: all. Third season could have sufficed, as it ended with Barry arrested, facing the rest of his life in jail, so fourth season always seemed superfluous. First three episodes have him in jail, and are dead-ass boring, until a few brilliant moments of botched assassination turned into escape. Then they jump ahead eight years, revealing him in a desert hideaway ith Sally Reed, who evidently had nothing better to do, and their young son. That episode was boring, too. Then events shook Barry out of his torpor, leading to a final reckoning, and a reprise as folklore. Ends about as well as it could. B

Big Sky, Season 3: Seen: first season, and not sure we got all of it. Set in Montana, about a highway patrol cop and a trucker who pick up prostitutes and sell them to traffickers. The trucker gets mad at a couple teens and snatches them, and things go bad from there. False start with the ostensible hero, a PI named Cody, getting killed in the first episode, leaving his wife and his partner-lover to carry on. By the end of what we've seen, the cop is dead, and the trucker has slipped away. [*]

Bloodlands, Season 2: Seen: not sure about Season 1. Police drama set in Northern Ireland, where a DCI goes bad initially to cover up something he did during the "troubles" period, but it's really the gold. B [*]

The Brokenwood Mysteries, Season 9: Seen: all. Mystery set in northern New Zealand, built around idiosyncratic Detective Mike Shepherd and his local crew (most dependably his Sergeant Kristin Sims, and most eccentrically a Russian medical examiner). This season he seemed more distracted than usual -- one problem being the meeting of his ex- and would-be future wives, which turns out badly. A long-time favorite. A- [*]

The Conners, Season 5: Seen: Hit and miss, but not so much lately. The family from Roseanne, rebooted without the matriarch, the vacuum more than filled by now-adult daughters, Darlene and Becky. [*]

The Consultant: Seen: one episode. Christoph Waltz plays a creepy corporate "fixer" in a high-tech world he doesn't particularly relate to (but, I'm guessing, he does understand a thing or two about capitalism and/or crime).

Cunk on Earth: Seen: one episode. Pseudo-documentary, Diane Morgan (Cunk) goes around interviewing and misunderstanding experts while regularly cycling back to a refrain of "Pump Up the Jam."

Dalgliesh, Season 2: Seen: all. British murder mysteries, based on novels by PD James, with Bertie Carvel playing the titular character. Fairly classic. B+ [*]

Deadloch: Seen: working on it (6/8). Murder mystery set in Tasmania, with two mismatched women detectives, a preponderance of lesbians, a peculiar sense of humor, and a series of ill-fated prime suspects. So far: A-

Death in Paradise, Season 12: Seen: all. A long-time favorite, set in the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie, where brilliant but odd British DI's are sent to solve a regular series of murders, each with a set of visiting suspects, the perpetrator deduced in a final scene each week. A- [*]

The Diplomat: Seen: all. The political angle is completely implausible, and the war game scenario is scarcely any better, but at least it's not Madame Secretary. The power marriage between the Wylers also strains credibility. The acting, on the other hand, is superb, as is the flow, and the various mismatches add a gratifying dimension of comedy. Also, the comedy doesn't come at the expense of competency (unlike, say, Veep, where incompetency is the point). Season ends prematurely, with the story only half-baked, keying up a second season. It's not like we shy away from genius detective shows because they're nothing like real world cops. A-

Endeavour, Season 9: Seen: working on it (2 episodes down, of 3); all previous, plus most of the 1987-2000 Morse this is a prequel to, and the later Lewis spinoff. Classic British detective series, set 1965-72. A few new cases, more or less tied to old cases (many too old to recall), trying to wrap up the series, so the next/last episode will be crucial. Probably: A-

Father Brown, Season 10: Seen: All earlier, working on this season. Slightly ridiculous crime sleuthing drama, where the priest of a village that seems to be all Catholic has a knack for figuring out crimes, even with the interference of a series of hapless inspectors. Fairly major supporting cast shake up this season, as Sorcha Cusack's fussy parish secretary has been replaced by a suitably odd pair, and Tom Chambers is back as Inspector Sullivan, exiled from Scotland Yard and more aggravating than ever. Of course, we love it. B+ [*]

Godfather of Harlem, Season 3: Seen: Some of first season. Forest Whitaker plays a fictional Harlem mob boss, fresh out of prison in the early 1960s. Much of the interest is in the intersection with historical characters like Adam Clayton Powell Jr and Malcolm X. [*]

The Great, Season 3: Seen: two seasons. An "occasionally true" but comedic portrayal of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia 1762-1796, got stuck in 1762 as Nicholas Hoult's portrayal of Peter III saved him from the death that is prerequisite to Catherine's greatness, leaving us with a highly entertaining royal court opera. Laura wasn't interested in this one, so I've only just found out about it. I'll get to it in due course. Hopefully, the third time will be the charm.

Happy Valley, Season 3: Seen: all. British ex-detective-turned-beat-cop wrapped up in nearly unbearable psychodrama. Laura was annoyed enough to drop it, but I insisted on slogging through, and the payoff at the end is satisfying. The lead, played to Sarah Lancaster, is bitter, bottled up, and threatening to explode, mostly due to a villain so psychotic I've finally gotten past remembering the very nice vicar he played in Grantchester. Happy enough with the ending that I might wind up remembering it better, but it's been a rough road getting there. B+

History of the World, Part II: Seen: first episode). Sketch comedy jumping around history, same as with Brooks' 1981 film.

Hunters, Season 2: Seen: first season only. Conspiracy series starting in 1977, with a group of Nazi hunters who ultimately discover a hidden Fourth Reich, led by Eva Braun, with a geriatric but still living Hitler. Some choice acting, headlined by Al Pacino, with Dylan Baker playing a Nazi secret agent who kills everyone present, including his family, when he is recognized at a barbecue he is hosting. I wasn't aware of a second season, but the first ended with the reveal of Braun and Hitler. [*]

Love and Death: Seen: one episode. Set in small town Texas from 1978, church choir singers turn to adultery and wind up with murder. Supposedly based on a true crime. Don't see much point to it.

The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Season 5: Seen: all. Portrait of a Jewish comedian who isn't Lenny Bruce, but keeps bumping into him. I've loved all of this, but Laura dropped out for the middle seasons, and heckled parts of this one. (The Jewish schtick is laid on very thick, but she also dislikes the stand up.) Problem here is that it tries to wrap up the long story after her big break, while holding the break off until the last episode, so suffers lots of time jumps, many into a rather dubious future. On the other hand, the first four seasons struggled with throttling her brilliance with setbacks delaying her success, probably suspecting that once it hit it'd be as boring as it turned out. B+

Miss Scarlet and the Duke, Season 3: Seen. Set in Victorian England, Eliza Scarlet is the daughter of a PI, determined to continue her late father's business, despite much prejudice to the contrary. In this she is reluctantly aided by Scotland Yard DI William Wellington, and a Jamaican underworld figure named Moses Valentine. B+ [*]

Mrs. Davis: Seen: one episode. Too scattered, but if I had to watch more, I probably would. Supposedly has something to do with AI.

The Murdoch Mysteries, Season 16: Seen: caught up through season 15; haven't found new one yet. Police drama set in Toronto c. 1900, the title character a brilliant innovator, his doctor-wife even more modern, his sergeant given to flights of fancy that often foreshadow the future, his superintendent helps keep the rest grounded. Livened up with guest cameos for numerous historical figures. Great fun.

NCIS, Season 20: Seen: all of this, and several recent seasons, probably going back to season 11, when Ziva David left and Eleanor Bishop joined. Laura watched it from much further back, but quit during or after season 18. Requires considerable suspension of one's critical facilities, but has redeeming features, including expert teamwork, and a general sense of honor and decency (even if it's sappy soft on the military; at least every episode starts with a dead Marine or Sailor, and the cases usually reflect corruption both within and beyond the ranks -- everyone else, of course, is impeccably disciplined). I don't miss Gibbs, whose replacement is more an amiable chaperone than a psychotic leader. Also nice not to have any Afghanistan story arcs, although I'm afraid Russian nemesis is on the rise. As for the spinoffs, we watched NCIS: New Orleans for a while, but quit before they canceled it. I've missed out on the occasional overlapping story lines, but probably haven't missed much. B [*]

Party Down, Season 3: Seen: one or two episodes, rebooted from two seasons 2009-10 I've never seen. Comedy series about would-be actors working for a catering firm, played by actors recognizable enough this feels like slumming. Funny enough.

Perry Mason, Season 2: Seen: all. Radical prequel which cannot possibly evolve into the famous TV show, making me wonder whether the source books have any relationship to either. But this works as grimy Los Angeles noir, with the familiar names recast as black, gay, or (for Mason himself) as a seedy PTSD drunk. One case per season, hopeless until miraculously saved (but not half so miraculous as most weeks of the TV show). B+

Poker Face Seen: all. Natasha Lyonne plays a lady whose uncanny ability to spot lies gets her into and out of lots of trouble, solving murders Columbo-style but being on the lam herself not having the authority of most detectives. (A symbiotic relationship with an FBI agent developed late helps.) Episodes are structured oddly, with one thread up to a murder, then a step back in time that integrates Lyonne's character, allowing her to do her thing. Fun enough. Sets up a second season, with a new nemesis replacing the (now deceased) old one. B+

Rabbit Hole: Seen. Mega conspiracy plot starring Kiefer Sutherland as a corporate spy facing a global conspiracy based on the idea that whoever controls big data can run the world, but the specific mechanism seems to be to find and use blackmail, which turns people like security guards into automatons doing the conspiracy's bidding. Many flashbacks and, worse, hallucinations acting as false flags -- most immediately recalled, but some leave you confused (e.g., did Miles Valence survive his skyscraper jump, adding to a long list of characters who faked their deaths?). Entertaining as long as you're amused. B [*]

Ridley Seen: working on it (just one episode so far). British crime drama, Adrian Dunbar plays a retired DI brought in to consult on something possibly related to one of his cold cases.

The Righteous Gemstones, Season 2: Seen: bits (Laura's watching). Danny McBride comedy about a megachurch dynasty, has some good actors. Review touts: "outlandish set pieces, absurd but gripping action sequences, awkward invective and clumsy love." From what I've seen (or sometimes just heard), that seems plausible.

Sanditon, Season 3: Seen. Unfinished Jane Austen novel, set as the tides were changing from landed aristocracy to rising bourgeoisie, and as the young heroines aren't in quite as much hurry to get married. More rough spots this time than I would have liked, but it does all come to an agreeable end. A-

Shrinking: Seen: couple episodes. Therapists, a genre I've never warmed to. (I totally skipped In Treatment, which Laura loved.) I took a quick dislike for the main character, a depressed widower played by Jason Segel, but there's little appeal elsewhere, aside from straight man Harrison Ford.

Sister Boniface Mysteries, Season 2: Seen: all. A spinoff from Father Brown, one major difference being that the Sister gets encouragement from her Inspector, who hires her as a consultant, and generally steps back while she solves the cases. Also, unlike Father Brown, she's pays little attention to saving souls, and she's a lot funnier -- a delight, as are the rest of the cast, even the Reverend Mother. A- [*]

Somebody Somewhere, Season 2: Seen: all this year, most of season one. Comedy, set in a part of Kansas I've never set foot in, with people I scarcely recognize (although I'm not sure my late sister wouldn't have known them all). B

A Spy Among Friends Seen. Kim Philby's defection to the Soviet Union, with flashbacks to his time, going back to the 1930s, as a double agent, revolving around his close friendship with fellow agent Nicholas Elliott (played by Damian Lewis). B+ [*]

Stonehouse: Seen. Matthew Macfayden plays a 1970s British MP who fakes his own death to dodge an inadvertent scandal, going from bad to worse. B

Succession, Season 4 Seen: all. There have never been any sympathetic characters here, let alone rooting interests in the contest of heirs. But it's been quite watchable for three seasons, mostly as an exposé of the lush and damaged lives of the ultra-rich. But, I'm almost reluctant to admit, it finally got good in this year, not least because of how brutal and harrowing it turned once stakes turned real. A

Ted Lasso, Season 3: Seen: all. Jason Sudeikis plays a folksy football coach from Wichita rebounding from a broken marriage. He goes to England as the butt of a joke, which his good humor turns around. As ingratiating as he is, the best characters are all around him, and the balance between the coaches, the players, and the business end (somehow, "management" doesn't feel right here). The final season feels a bit rushed, and Lasso's final return to his wife doesn't make much more sense than his departure. A-

The Tower, Season 2: Seen. Police drama, set in London, the first series about two people (a cop and a young girl) who fell to their deaths from Portland Tower, where two witnesses (one a cop) prove less than helpful -- while the police have their own problems. Second season picks up the police, running them through another wrenching case. Seems like it ends abruptly, after setting up a second story line about an undercover shot at a gangster. B+ [*]

Vienna Blood, Season 3: Seen. Mystery series set in 1900s Vienna, where detective Oskar Reinhardt draws on young psychologist Max Liebermann to solve the usual run of murder cases. They make an engaging pair. B+ [*]

White House Plumbers: Seen. Early WWII novels aimed for realism, but over time they became increasingly surreal, at least through Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse Five. Something like that is happening with Watergate art, moving from the very straightforward All the President's Men up through last year's Gaslight, and now this, which aims for laughs by focusing on the "third-rate burglars." John Dean is the common denominator in the last two, which helps you calibrate the shift. So do the wives and children, largely unheard of before. B+ [*]

Seems like there must be more, but I'm hard pressed to recall at the moment -- hence the dependency on lists. Of course, we're still catching up on 2022, and sometimes older items as we stumble across them. The Nordic Murders (a German series, originally titled Der Usedom-Krimi) is one we particularly liked. We are, of course, at the mercy of our various streaming sources, which offer a lot of stuff we have little interest in, but seem to miss (or delay) much that we do.

These are additional series that appeared in the best-of lists. I haven't seen any of them (except perhaps a trailer).

• 100 Foot Wave, Season 2
• American Auto
• American Born Chinese
• Angel City
• The Bear, Season 2
• The Beautiful Things
• Beef
• Black Mirror, Season 6
• Black Ops
• Blue Lights
• Bupkis
• Call the Midwife, Season 12
• Class of '07
• Colin From Accounts
• Daisy Jones and the Six
• Dave, Season 3
• Dead Ringers
• Dear Edward
• Django
• Dreamland
• Drive to Survive, Season 5
• Extraordinary
• Fatal Attraction
• Fauda, Season 4
• Firefly Lane, Season 2, Part 2
• Fleishman Is in Trouble
• Frankie Boyle's Farewell to the Monarchy
• Freeridge
• Funny Woman
• The Gallows Pole
• Game Changer, Season 5
• Ganglands, Season 2
• Gen V
• Ghosts, Season 2
• The Glory, Part 2
• Grand Crew, Season 2
• Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies
• Great Expectations
• High Desert
• Hijack
• I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson
• I'm a Virgo
• The Idol
• Jerk
• Jury Duty
• Kids
• The Last of Us
• The Last Thing He Told Me
• The Legend of Vox Machina, Season 2
• Lockwood & Co.
• Love Is Blind, Season 4
• Lucky Hank
• The Lying Life of Adults
• The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House
• The Mandalorian, Season 3
• Manifest, Season 4: Part 2
• The Muppets Mayhem
• Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland
• The Other Two, Season 3
• The Owl House, Season 3
• Paul T. Goodman
• Physical 100
• Platonic
• The Power
• Primo
• Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story
• Race Across the World
• Rain Dogs
• The Reluctant Traveler
• Schmigadoon!, Season 2
• School Spirits
• Secret Invasion
• Servant, Season 4
• Shadow and Bone, Season 2
• Silo
• A Small Light
• Snowfall, Season 6
• Star Trek: Picard, Season 3
• Steeltown Murders
• Superman & Lois, Season 3
• Swarm
• Sweet Tooth, Season 2
• Taste the Nation With Padma Lakshmi
• Top Chef, Season 20
• A Town Called Malice
• The Traitors [U.S.]
• Transatlantic
• Unicorn: Warriors Eternal
• Vanderpump Rules
• Wild Isles
• Will Trent
• Willow
• XO, Kitty
• Yellowjackets, Season 2
• You, Season 4

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 26, 2023

June archive (final).

Tweet: Music Week: 40 albums, 4 A-list,

Music: Current count 40476 [40436] rated (+40), 9 [12] unrated (-3).

Another big Speaking of Which yesterday: 6163 words, 98 links. I started on Thursday, so the Prigozhin putsch drive caught me midstream. Upon reflection, the critical detail that's rarely reported is that Putin had moved to force Wagner back under Russian military command, so the revolt was a reaction to an existential threat. Anti-Russian pundits enjoyed themselves immensely this weekend by taunting Putin as weak, but at several critical junctures it was Prigozhin whose hand was forced. Also, it was rather clever of Putin to allow Prigozhin an exit ramp to Belarus.

The big question now is how much of the Wagner army will join Prigozhin in Belarus. My guess is that it won't be much, so the net effect will be equivalent to house arrest. There Prigozhin will still remain as a potential political threat to Putin, but he's given up on being a military one. And while Putin is often regarded as a front man for the oligarchs, it's worth remembering that Prigozhin's not the first one Putin forced to heel. None of this strikes me weakness. Sure, the war is still a disastrous miscalculation, and Putin is likely to be judged for that mistake eventually. But not yet.

Looking around this morning, one link worth adding is Heather Digby Parton: Trump's messianic appeal can't be replicated. One thing I've never understood about these "Revelations" scholars is why none of them recognize Trump (or, before him, GW Bush) as the Antichrist. As one who doesn't believe in that crap, this isn't a point I'm inclined to belabor, but given the assumptions, doesn't it seem pretty obvious?

Parton also gets into a story I didn't bother with, which is how Moms for Liberty got caught quoting Hitler, then had to beat a retreat. Pro tip: you're much less likely to make this mistake if you don't believe in the same things Hitler believed in. Parton quotes "Ryan Helfenbein @ the Faith & Freedom Coalition Gala": "If you don't control education, you can't control the future. Stalin knew that. Mao knew it. Hitler knew it. We have to get that back for conservative values."

The problem with this isn't that he aligned conservatism with bad examples. The problem is thinking that the future is purely a creation of will, and as such subject to thought control (or more precisely, by keeping people from thinking for themselves). One of the most important truths about the world today is that we need lots of people who are capable of thinking critically and creatively when faced with new problems, because they're coming all the time. That's way up there with we have to learn to accept and respect people different from ourselves, because we can't afford to fight all the time.

It's not that conservatives have no good ideas -- some traditional values should be honored, and some change should be resisted -- but their inability to grasp such fundamental concepts, along with their defense and promotion of greater social and economic hierarchy, has made them not just wrong but dangerously so.

I've been pretty bummed about lack of progress, even on previously simple home projects. But while writing on book projects has been hard to get into, cranking out the weekly Speaking of Which still comes easy, and almost seems therapeutic. Same could be said for Music Week, but I'm more anxious to get it out of the way, thinking that will open up a new week of opportunity.

Those frustrations, along with trouble finding things to listen to, led me to start off the last couple days with something old from the cases (leading to a couple tweets). That threatened to suppress the ratings count, but turns out not by much. Peter Brötzmann died last week, at 82, ending a 56-year career that literally spans the entire German (and for that matter, European) avant-garde. I've often had trouble with his exuberant cacophony -- his Penguin Guide crown album, 1968's Machine Gun, is a mere B+(**) in my list -- but I've occasionally found items to A-list, including this year's set with Majid Bekkas and Hamid Drake, Catching Ghosts, and, to pick an example where the noise is transcendent, 2009's Hairy Bones. Chris Monsen got me going when he linked to Sprawl.

Among new releases, I've never cared much for Jason Isbell, and had the new one wrapped up at B+(***), until I gave it a couple more plays. Also benefiting from extra attention was Mother Earth, a side trip after checking out the latest Tracy Nelson album. I remembered having at least one of their albums, but hadn't filed a grade.

Jeffrey Callahan posted a request for mid-year lists on Expert Witness. Few returns as yet, but Clifford Ocheltree identified "only three items strike me as durable":

• Black Gospel Ladies: I Walked Out Jesus Name (Narro-Way)
• The War & Treaty: Lover's Game (Mercury Nashville)
• Hermanos Gutierrez: El Bueno Y El Malo ('22)

I suppose you can derive my list from here, but I wouldn't put much stock in the order, which reflects initial slotting but little sorting.

Last Monday in the month, so I've opened a new monthly Streamnotes archive for July. But indexing for June will have to wait -- no need holding this post up for a bunch of busy work. I'll also do a post of notes on television shows, probably tomorrow. Diminishing returns have me given up on mid-year music lists, but similar lists exist for television (and probably movies, which I've lost all interest in). Not on any list so far is Deadloch, a mystery series set in Tasmania that still has a couple episodes to come. Body count is too high to really call it a comedy, but it often is very funny.

New records reviewed this week:

Charlie Apicella & Iron City Meet The Griots Speak: Destiny Calling (2022 [2023], OA2): Guitarist, eighth album, usually plays groove-oriented fusion/soul jazz (his 2019 album was called Groove Machine), surprises here by hooking up with "legends of the 1960s NYC loft scene": Daniel Carter (saxes, flute, clarinet, trumpet, piano), William Parker (bass, doson ngoni), and Juma Sultan (congas, percussion). He means 1970s (Sultan was born in 1942, Carter 1945, Parker 1952). B+(***) [cd]

Asake: Work of Art (2023, YBNL Nation): Nigerian singer-songwriter Ahmed Ololade, stage name is his mother's, second album. B+(**) [sp]

Atmosphere: So Many Other Realities Exist Simultaneously (2023, Rhymesayers Entertainment): Underground hip-hop duo from Minnesota, Sean Daley (Slug) and Anthony Davis (ANT), many albums since 1997. B+(***) [sp]

Blue Cranes: My Only Secret (2022 [2023], Jealous Butcher/Beacon Sound): Quintet from Portland: two saxes, keyboards, bass, and drums. Eighth album supposedly moves in new directions, but fusion that only intermittently passes as jazz has trouble sustaining interest. B [cd] [08-11]

Chris Byars Quartet: Look Ahead (2023, SteepleChase): Tenor saxophonist, largely invented what we might call "retro-bop," which he is likely to extend into a career comparable to what Scott Hamilton did with "retro-swing." Quartet with Pasquale Grasso (guitar), Ari Roland (bass), and Keith Balla (drums). Not as explicit as many of his albums, just comfortable in his secure worldview. B+(***) [sp]

The Ekphrastics: Special Delivery (2023, Harriet): Indie band picks obscure name, writes pleasant songs I don't quite get. B+(*) [sp]

Amanda Fields: What, When and Without (2023, Are and Be): Country singer-songwriter, first album, likes them slow and sweet, although it's not quite that simple. B+(**) [sp]

Béla Fleck/Zakir Hussain/Edgar Meyer: As We Speak (2023, Thirty Tigers): Banjo player, born in New York, debut 1979, expanded beyond bluegrass to jazz and world music. Second album with Hussain (tabla) and Meyer (bass), joined by (featuring credit on cover) Rakesh Chaurasia (bansuri, an Indian bamboo flute). B+(*) [sp]

Caesar Frazier: Tenacity (As We Speak) (2022, TrackMerchant): Organ player, from Indianapolis, recorded three albums 1972-78, then nothing until 2018. Gets a shot here with mainstreamers Eric Alexander (tenor sax), Peter Bernstein (guitar), and Vince Ector (drums). B+(*) [sp]

Caesar Frazier: Live at Jazzcup (2023, Stunt): The organ player goes to Sweden, where his pickup group includes Johannes Wamberg (guitar), Kresten Osgood (drums), and Jonas Kullhammar (tenor sax), whose extra edge is critical. B+(**) [sp]

Noah Haidu: Standards (2023, Sunnyside): Pianist, from New York, sixth album since 2011, last one was dedicated to Keith Jarrett, now this one is keyed to the 40th anniversary of Jarrett's Standards Trio. With bass (Buster Williams or Peter Washington) and drums (Lewis Nash), plus Steve Wilson (sax, but back cover says drums) on four tracks. B+(**) [cd]

Ben Howard: Is It? (2023, Island): British singer-songwriter, branded folk but leaning into electronics, which is more electropop than techno. B+(*) [sp]

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: Weathervanes (2023, Southeastern): Singer-songwriter, started in Drive-By Truckers, went solo in 2007 and started co-crediting his band in 2009. Reputation precedes him, but I've never had the patience to figure out whether it's deserved. But he's singing as passionately as ever, and for once the sound is ingratiating enough to invite further inspection. For instance, consider: "I thank God you weren't brought up like me, with all that shame and certainty." A- [sp]

Christine Jensen: Day Moon (2023, Justin Time): Alto/soprano saxophonist, from Canada. Quartet with Steve Amirault (piano), Adrian Vedady (bass), Jim Doxas (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Stephen Jones & Ben Haugland: Road to No-Where (2021 [2023], OA2): Saxophone (soprano/tenor) and piano duets, plus trumpet/flugelhorn (Kevin Whalen) on two tracks. Originals divided 2-3 in favor of the pianist, with four standards. Opens with a lovely "Without a Song." B+(**) [cd]

Kaisa's Machine: Taking Shape (2022 [2023], Greenleaf Music): Finnish bassist Kaisa Mäensivu, second album, with new group members Tivon Pennicott (tenor sax on 5 tracks), Max Light (guitar), Sasha Berliner (vibes on 2), Eden Ladin (piano), and Joe Peri (drums). Postbop with spirit and edge. B+(**) [cd] [07-07]

Ryan Keberle's Collectiv Do Brasil: Considerando (2023, Alternate Side): Trombone player, from Indiana, based in New York, albums since 2007, second Collectiv Do Brasil album, this one recorded in São Paulo with Felipe Silveira (piano), Felipe Brisola (bass), and Paulinho Vicente (drums). Brazilian tilt is subtle. B+(**) [cd] [07-14]

Kill Bill: The Rapper: Fullmetal Kaiju (2023, Exociety): Rapper Dennis Nettles, half-dozen previous albums since 2014. Underground, with slack beats and sly jokes, and a bit of weirdness that hasn't fully registered yet. B+(**) [sp]

Gordon Lee Quartet: How Can It Be? (2022 [2023], PJCE): Pianist, based in Portland, been around a bit, with a 1990 Quartet album and his 2004 GLeeful Big Band. With Renato Caranto (tenor sax), Dennis Caiazza (bass), and Gary Hobbs (drums). B+(**) [cd]

Bill Lowe and the Signifyin' Natives Ensemble: Sweet Cane: Suites and Other Pedagogical Prompts (2021 [2023], Mandorla Music): Plays bass trombone and tuba, not much under his own name but side-credits back to 1975, played with Frank Foster early on, Henry Threadgill, Darrell Katz, has been a regular in the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. Group here has vocalist Naledi Masilo and a fairly stellar lineup: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet/flugelhorn), Hafez Modirzadeh (alto sax/hoof-seed rattle/b'kongofon), Kevin Harris (piano), Ken Filiano (bass), and Luther Gray (drums). B+(***) [bc]

Greg Mendez: Greg Mendez (2023, Forged Artifacts, EP): Singer-songwriter from Philadelphia, third "album," I see him being compared to Alex G, which doesn't do much for me. Eight songs, 23:08. B- [sp]

Tracy Nelson: Life Don't Miss Nobody (2023, BMG): Started in the rock group Mother Earth (1967-71), aside from the 1980-93 stretch has recorded regularly since, slotted variously as folk, country, and/or blues without evolving much. Credibly covers some obvious songs, along with a couple of her own. And for a guest spot, Willie Nelson takes her "Honky Tonkin'." B+(**) [sp]

Linda May Han Oh: The Glass Hours (2023, Biophilia): Bassist, born in Malaysia, raised in Australia, based in New York, sings some but it's mostly Sara Serpa's scat here, crowding out Mark Turner's tenor sax, with Fabian Amalzan (piano + electronics) and Obed Calvaire (bass). B [sp]

Jacques Schwarz-Bart: The Harlem Suite (2021 [2023], Ropeadope): Saxophonist from Guadeloupe, parents were writers and family traveled widely; he studied at Berklee, but always worked elements from the French Caribbean into his music. Debut 1999. B+(*) [sp]

Dave Scott: Song for Alice (2022 [2023], SteepleChase): Trumpet player, debug 1996, sixth album on this label since 2007, a quintet with Rich Perry (tenor sax), Gary Versace (piano), Johannes Weidenmueller (bass), and Mark Ferber (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Don Toliver: Love Sick (2023, Cactus Jack/Atlantic): Second-generation rapper-singer from Houston, third album. Falls off when he sings. B [sp]

Ray Vega & Thomas Marriott: East West Trumpet Summit: Coast to Coast (2021 [2023], Origin): Trumpet players, long on the label but from opposite coasts, backed by Orrin Evans on piano, plus bass and drums. Three Marriott originals, the rest jazz standards, including Mingus and Cherry, although my favorite is their "Girl Talk." B+(***) [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Dave Douglas and Elan Mehler: If There Are Mountains (2019 [2023], Greenleaf Music): Mehler's a pianist, based in New York, several albums back to 2007, split the compositions here with the trumpet player, many songs with lyrics sung by Dominique Eade. Group also includes John Gunther (sax, clarinet, bass clarinet), bass, and drums. Originally released on vinyl-only Newvelle in 2020. B+(*) [sp]

Johnny Hodges Septet: In Concert: Falkoner Central, Copenhagen, March 17, 1961 (1961 [2023], SteepleChase): The alto sax great, leading a septet of Ellington veterans -- Ray Nance, Lawrence Brown, Harry Carney, Al Williams, Aaron Bell, Sam Woodyard -- through his usual songbook. One treat is Nance singing "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" and "Just Squeeze Me," and playing violin on the closer. B+(***) [sp]

Muddy Waters Blue Band Featuring Otis Spann: Live Paris 1968 (1968 [2023], Lantower): Live set from La Salle Pleyel (39:38), originally released on France's Concert in 1988. Spann, of course, is the pianist. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

Peter Brötzmann/Alexander von Schlippenbach/Sven-Åke Johansson: Up and Down the Lion-Revised (1979 [2010], Olof Bright): Avant-sax with piano and drums, Johansson also opening on accordion, five improv pieces (57:13). The pianist is a big help here, inspiring some of Brötzmann's most thoughtful playing. A- [bc]

Peter Brötzmann/Maleem Mahmoud Gania/Hamid Drake: The Wels Concert (1996 [1997], Okka Disk): Recorded in Austria. Gania is a Moroccan guembri master, also sings, and Drake plays drums, tablas, and frame drum, with the alto/tenor saxophonist also playing tarogato and e-flat clarinet. B+(***) [bc]

Peter Brötzmann: Sprawl (1996 [1997], Trost): Discogs has artist name as Sprawl, based on no other print on the cover, but it's a one-shot quintet, and the Bandcamp page credits the German saxophonist, over Alex Buess (reeds/electronics), Stephen Wittwer (guitar), William Parker (bass), and Michael Wertmüller (drums). Brötzmann just died at 82, leaving a huge body of work, and this one was singled out by fans. I've often had trouble when he simply blasted away, but this one conveys its power through subtler means. A- [bc]

Peter Brötzmann/Peeter Uuskyla/Peter Friis Nielsen: Noise of Wings (1999-2001 [2009], Jazzwerkstatt): Tenor sax, drums, bass, the leader also playing tarogato and clarinet, which softens his screech just enough. B+(***) [sp]

Peter Brötzmann/William Parker/Hamid Drake: Never Too Late but Always Too Early: Dedicated to Peter Kowald (2001 [2003], Eremite, 2CD): Dedicated to the late German bassist (1944-2002), but recorded a year earlier, so subtitle is most likely an afterthought (but Brötzmann had a long association with Kowald, and Parker seems to have also developed a close relationship). Two long multipart pieces, and two extras, total 114:48. Good example of what they do. B+(***) [sp]

Peter Brötzmann/Michiyo Yagi/Paal Nilssen-Love: Head On (2007 [2008], Idiolect): Yagi plays koto, a Japanese string instrument, which moderates the alto/tenor sax, albeit only a little, and rarely when he charges ahead. The drummer helps out. B+(**) [bc]

Rory Gallagher: Big Guns: The Very Best of Rory Gallagher (1970-90 [2005], Capo, 2CD): Irish rocker (1948-95), started in blues-rock power trio called Taste, went solo in 1971, recorded eleven studio albums, released three live albums during his life, many more since. I never paid him any heed, and sat on this set until I scratched my last old unrateds from the database, but decided to give it a spin when I found it shelved. Nice package, with an ample booklet, and more music than anyone needs. Not bad, but nothing I'd pull out ahead of Stevie Ray Vaughan, or Cream. B+(*) [cd]

Mother Earth: Living With the Animals (1968, Mercury): Blues-rock band from California, first album, group name from the Memphis Slim song, title song (and a couple more) by R. Powell St. John, Jr., who sings some but is upstaged by Tracy Nelson. B+(*) [sp]

Mother Earth: Make a Joyful Noise (1969, Mercury): Second album, prophetic title, divided into a "City Side" and a "Country Side," Tracy Nelson shares lead vocals with three guys, the backups divided between Earthmen and Earthettes, the band including pedal steel guitar and a horn section. In short, they want to have it every which way. But oddly enough, they all work, even if this seems a bit heavier and more dated than some of their contemporary roots-rockers. A- [sp]

Mother Earth: Satisfied (1970, Mercury): Third album, Tracy Nelson fully in charge of the vocals, which I count as a plus. B+(***) [sp]

Mother Earth: Bring Me Home (1971, Reprise): Fourth album, singer stronger than ever, songs not so much. B+(*) [yt]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• The Sofia Goodman Group: Secrets of the Shore (Joyous) [07-14]
• Daniel Hersog Jazz Orchestra: Open Spaces: Folk Songs Reimagined (Cellar) [06-23]
• Gabriela Martina: Homage to Grämilis (self-released) [07-14]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, June 25, 2023

The Washington Post Editorial Board headline today is actually rather sensible (and hopefully sobering): Putin's humiliation means new dangers for Russia -- and the world. Still, given the dangers, maybe "humiliation" isn't the word we should be using. While the odds that Putin would resort nuclear weapons were never very high, it should be understood that they do go up with every humiliation, with every time he gets pushed back into a corner. The only way out of this trap is a negotiated settlement based not on the balance of power but on generally recognized principles, notably self-determination. And to bring that about, we still need a stable Russia. Blowing it up and replacing Putin with even crazier leaders isn't the way.

The Washington Post Editorial Board also wrote another piece that should be sobering but probably isn't: [06-24] Is there enough money to rebuild Ukraine? In it, they fantasize about getting Russia to pay for the rebuilding, which may be "an unarguable moral case" but is also a total non-starter. (Remember when LBJ promised to pay for rebuilding Vietnam?) Meanwhile, the fact that Americans are asking these questions suggests that they don't intend to pay either.

One problem is probably that the Post editors are reading their own war propagandists, like David Ignatius: [06-24] Putin looked into the abyss Saturday -- and blinked. From what I can gather, it looked like Prigozhin was the one who took the easy way out. But then the former Iraq War apologist has been writing pieces like this all along: [06-06] D-Day dawns for Ukraine.

As usual, it's impossible to get to everything. I do hope this is the last time I ever devote a whole section to Hunter Biden. Even with this much, I doubt I really got adequately into the Republican reaction, or their continuing obsession with him. Sure, he could serve as an example of why nepotism and influence-peddling are wrong, but that's not a point Republicans are going to make. Tax cheating and gun buying are things they normally celebrate.

Top story threads:

Trump:

• Adam Goldman/Traci Angel: [06-21] Former FBI analyst goes to prison for taking classified documents: "Like former President Trump, the former analyst was accused of violating the Espionage Act, taking home hundreds of classified documents and being unhelpful." Kendra Kingsbury was sentenced to 46 months jail for fewer charges than Trump is facing. Republicans like to say that if they can come for Trump, they can come for anyone. Looks like they got the order backwards.

• Margaret Hartmann:

  • [06-21] Trump pretends Jared and Ivanka didn't quit, he fired them.

  • [06-22] Kari Lake auditions to be Trump's next Pence and/or Melania: The latter is the more amusing prospect, but unlikely, given that Lake is actually older than Melania (by a few months; both are 53).

• Fred Kaplan: [06-23] When Trump promises to end the Ukraine War, here's what he really means. I initially filed this under Ukraine, but Trump has no plan as such. Rather, all he has is tremendous faith in his genius as a dealmaker, which is supported by absolutely nothing from his previous term as president. Kaplan cites Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China as examples. One problem with those cases is that his closest advisers (e.g., Pompeo and Bolton) didn't want deals, so they sandbagged every prospect, leaving him with nothing. Not mentioned are a couple cases where Trump's people did negotiate deals, which Trump agreed to but really didn't have any direction over. The first is a minor revision of NAFTA, fulfilling a campaign promise. He got a new name, plus a couple of trivial concessions he could tout as a victory. The other was the deal with the Taliban for a ceasefire and withdrawal of US forces. The Taliban was still free to attack Afghan forces. More effectively, they recruited so the moment the US left, Afghanistan fell into their hands. By that point the US was helpless, having put all its faith into an army and government who by then worked for the other side. What would have been much better was to negotiate an orderly transition, with promises of future support in exchange for protections (including a right to exile) of Afghans who had worked for the US-backed regime). But no American, least of all "strongman" Trump, could admit to such a defeat, so they concocted this charade that the Afghans would be able to survive on their own.

• Ed Kilgore: [06-20] Trump's Fox News interview exposed his real weakness: He "does not come across as a cunning predator avoiding the snares of his fearful liberal prey and plotting his revenge. He's more like a weak, confused old man worried about grubby law-enforcement personnel touching his golf clothes."

• Eric Lipton: [06-20] Trump real estate deal in Oman underscores ethics concerns.

• Ben Mathis-Lilley: [06-21] Donald Trump continues to twist what it means to be "conservative" into total incoherence: Good for him, too, because clear and lucid explications of "conservatism" are not just unappealing but repugnant to most people. However slipshod Trump might be on policy, he gets the appeal right: for him and his followers, conservativm is simply a matter of worshipping certain totems -- like God and country -- and hating people they deem unworthy. And while all conservatives agree with that much, no one else delivers hatred as unvarnished as Trump.

• Greg Sargent: [06-21] Trump's confession on Fox News should prompt Democrats to step up. Contrasts this with Hunter Biden case.

• Asawin Suebsaeng/Adam Rawnsley: [06-20] Team Trump suspects his former Chief of Staff is a 'rat': They're wondering what Mark Meadows is up to?

• Li Zhou: [06-20] Trump's Fox News interview was a defense attorney's nightmare.

DeSantis, and other Republican lowlifes:

• Ed Kilgore:

  • [06-21] House GOP forges ahead on wildly unpopular national abortion ban.

  • [06-22] Will Hurd bets GOP presidential voters want anti-Trump Texan: Former three-term Congressman, has proven appeal to center-Democrats, no chance with Republicans.

  • [06-23] Freedom Caucus mulls ejecting MTG for loyalty to Kevin McCarthy: I can imagine her hearing the news and breaking out in song: probably "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina."

• Ben Mathis-Lilley: [06-22] House Republican strategy of elevating unstable clown people reveals itself to have downsides.

• Catherine Rampell: [06-25] It's almost like the House GOP never cared about deficits after all: Almost?

• Beth Reinhard/Josh Dawsey: [06-20] Gov. Ron DeSantis used secretive panel to flip state Supreme Court.

• Maegan Vazquez/Marianna Sotomayor: [06-22] House votes to send articles of impeachment against Biden to committees: Introduced by Lauren Boebert, citing "dereliction of duty" and "abuse of power" over Biden's handling of the Mexico border, vote was 219-208, although some see this as a compromise among Republicans, where some are less gung-ho than Boebert to advance impeachment, and some just don't like her.

• Li Zhou: [06-22] Why Republicans are censuring Adam Schiff: After a first draft of this censure resolution failed last week, a Facebook Friend echoed Trump's directive that the 20 Republicans who voted against should be fired (primaried and purged from the GOP). My reaction was: "Not my party, but fire away." But I also wondered whether they realized what a favor their censure is doing for Schiff, who is by far the most conservative Democrat running for California's Senate seat in 2024. Certainly, testimony that Republicans hate him will get him more votes than his 2003 vote for Bush's Iraq War. [PS: See Ed Kilgore: [06-22] House Republicans' 'sham' censure was a gift to Adam Schiff.]

Hunter Biden: The president's son agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and admitted to the facts of a rather dubious gun charge. The plea deal would give him three years of probation, plus a diversion on the gun charge, so it is expected that he will not go to jail. This should bring to a close one of the sillier outrages of the "lock her up" era, but Republicans have invested so much in it they can't bear the idea of letting go. Besides, what else to they have to run on? Certainly not policy ideas. On the other hand, it's hard to have much sympathy for him, even if you buy that he was railroaded. His influence-peddling schemes may not have been illegal, but probably should have been. (Had they been, that would wipe out a large swathe of Washington's upper crust, and good riddance to them.) And as a person, he seems to offer little to respect much less admire. But that, too, is hardly grounds for prosecution, and if it were, I can think of lots to put in line ahead of him.

• Andrew Prokop: [06-20] Hunter Biden's plea deal, explained: "The president's son will plead guilty to two tax charges and admit unlawfully buying a gun. Naturally, the right is furious -- that he wasn't charged with more."

• Norman Eisen: [06-22] Who wins in the Hunter Biden plea deal: Eisen sees it as a good deal for both sides. The prosecution gets a conviction that might have been hard to win in court, in what would certainly have been seen as a politically-driven vendetta. (Sure, Biden hasn't belabored that point as much as Trump has, but his case is at least as solid.) Biden gets a punishment he can live with, as well as some degree of closure (although the investigation of other possible crimes is still quite pointedly open).

• Matt Ford: [06-20] Republicans are smearing the Bidens like they did Hillary Clinton: It's like the old joke about lawyers: if you have the law, pound the law; if you have the facts, pound the facts; if you have neither, pound the table. The question is what sticks, and the Clintons looked much shiftier than Bidens ever did. On the other hand, the only ones who deserve to be grouped as a "crime family" are the Trumps.

• Ryan J Reilly: [06-20] Legal experts say the charges against Hunter Biden are rarely brought: "The federal statute making it unlawful for a drug addict to possess a gun faces court challenges. The misdemeanor tax charges also rarely result in jail time."

• Matt Stieb:

  • [06-21] Hunter Biden is tying off his legal loose ends.

  • [06-23] IRS whistleblower: Hunter Biden used dad's name in business deals: This is (a) disgusting, and (b) utterly unsurprising, given that it was pretty much his whole business plan. How this relates to the case isn't clear. Perhaps Henry Zhao can sue Hunter Biden for fraud?

• Tatyana Tandanpolie: [06-21] Experts say Hunter Biden deal is actually "harsh" -- and question when Trump will face tax charges.

Law and the courts: The Alito scandal broke last week, under Li Zhou below. It's beginning to look like Leonard Leo not only grooms conservatives for the Supreme Court, he hooks them up with billionaire patrons to keep them on the straight and narrow. And, let's face it, no one in recent history has been more narrowly partisan than Alito.

• Samuel G Freedman: [06-21] The DOJ barely scratched the surface of Minneapolis police thuggery. If the US had a sensible president at the time of the George Floyd murder, one easy step would have been to appoint a commission to provide an in-depth investigation of police prejudice and flouting of authority leading to such murders. Instead, Trump tried imposing martial law to suppress (and inflame) the demonstrations. (I've been thinking about this, while reading Karen J Greenberg's Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy From the War on Terror to Donald Trump, which dedicates a chapter to this episode.) While a commission report would go nationwide, this case study is a big part of what needs to be understood, and corrected.

• Kerry Howley: [06-21] Ginni and Clarence: A love story.

• Dahlia Lithwick/Michael Podhorzer: [06-21] Our major American misunderstanding: "It's been a long time since most Americans shared a values system. Maybe it's time to accept that." I'd say there's never been such a time -- it's not like you can reconcile slavery and abolition, which predates the Constitution, and you certainly can't deny that they represent different value systems. Although I will grant that the liberal consensus in the 1950s did an effective job of marginalizing the left, until the Vietnam War brought us back, not that right-wingers were going to let that consensus stand anyway. Of course, the authors have something narrower in mind: whether the DOJ stands for law and justice, or simply works for the president to help crush his political enemies. The latter is Trump's view, while Democrats -- at times to their own discomfort -- still believe in the former. Of course, we on the left always knew DOJ was out to get us, and blamed liberals for helping them along.

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [06-20] One of America's top abortion rights lawyers was just confirmed as a federal judge: "Julie Rikelman, the abortion rights movement's top Supreme Court litigator, will serve on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit."

  • [06-21] The Fifth Circuit comes for the First Amendment right to protest: "A rogue federal court has spent years harassing a prominent civil rights advocate."

  • [06-22] The Supreme Court's latest opinion means innocent people must remain in prison.

  • [06-23] The Supreme Court may be running out of patience for Trump's worst judges: "The Court's decision in United States v. Texas stops rogue judges from seizing control of law enforcement."

• Li Zhou: [06-21] The Supreme Court has an ethics problem. Justice Alito's fishing trip is the latest proof. For quite some time, conservatives have fretted over Republican appointees to the Court drifting leftward. One way to keep that from happening is to keep the Justices closely bound to their sponsors. So no big surprise that Alito has his own version of the Scalia and Thomas scandals. Back in May, Zhou wrote: [05-05] The many ethics scandals of Clarence and Ginni Thomas, briefly explained. The report and other links follow:

  • Justin Elliott/Joshua Kaplan/Alex Mierjeski: [06-20] Justice Samuel Alito took luxury fishing vacation with GOP billionaire who later had cases before the Court.

  • Jonathan Chait: [06-21] Samuel Alito's ethics defense is even less persuasive than his legal rulings.

  • Jeet Heer: [06-23] Matchmaker Leonard Leo helps unite billionaires with Supreme Court justices.

  • Adam Liptak: [06-21] Justice Alito defends private jet travel to luxury fishing trip.

  • Dahlia Lithwick: [06-22] Justice Samuel Alito IS the salmon: "Calling this an ethics scandal misses the point."

  • Amanda Marcotte: [06-23] Samuel Alito scandal shows why conservative justices on the Supreme Court are so whiny.

Environment:

• Rachel DuRose: [06-22] How America solved its first air pollution crisis -- and why solving the next one will be harder.

• Evan Halper: [06-24] Heat is battering Texas's power grid. Are giant batteries the answer? "Texas is uniquely vulnerable to power failures because it cannot draw electricity from neighbors in a crisis. It is the only state in the contiguous United States disconnected from the national grid, a deliberate move to avoid federal regulation."

• Ian Livingston/Jason Samenow: [06-23] Rare pair of June tropical storms churn across record-warm Atlantic: "Bret and Cindy are the first pair of named storms to develop east of the Caribbean on record during June."

• Dan Stillman: [06-23] Texas heat wave is so bad, meteorologists are apologizing for it: "Dangerous heat expected to continue for at least another week, and possibly longer.

• Daniel Wu: [06-22] Meteorologist resigns, citing PTSD from threats over climate change coverage. Tempted to file this under Republicans, since you know who the threats are coming from.

Ukraine War: High hopes for Ukraine's counteroffensive have precluded any interest in diplomacy, but so far: [06-23] Early stages of Ukrainian counteroffensive 'not meeting expectations,' Western officials tell CNN. On the other hand, the head Wagner Group, a mercenary outfit Russia has employed especially at Bakhmut, has "declared war" on Russia's military command, which may signal a rebellion or even a coup against Putin. I cited this piece last week, by Anatol Lieven and George Beebe, which now looks prophetic. This is very much a developing situation. I'm citing some articles as it develops, but (as with the "counteroffensive") note that nobody knows very much. One thing that does seem clear is that Prigozhin's beef with the Russian command (and Putin?) isn't over whether to continue the war, but how to fight it more effectively. Lieven and Beebe ended their piece with: "however bad things are in Russia, they can always get worse."

PS: As of Sunday afternoon, the key events are: Wagner occupied Rostov (Russia's "southern command" center), and started to march on Moscow; Putin condemned them harshly ("Those behind the mutiny will pay"), then Belarus president Lukashenko negotiated a stand down, which will allow Prigozhin and those who revolted with him to relocate to Belarus.

• Connor Echols: [06-23] Diplomacy Watch: Brinksmanship on grain deal could frustrate Russia's friends.

• Isaac Chotiner: [06-15] Ukraine's counter-offensive, and what comes after. Interview with Marina Miron, a "postdoctoral researcher at the war-studies department, in King's College London." Not much detail here, but I'm not sure that details are that important. They key thing to understand is that this year's war is different from last year's war. Last year Russia was on offense, and Ukraine defense. Russia's blitz against Kyiv and Kharkiv failed, foiling Putin's hopes for a quick coup, leading to a strategic retreat. On the other hand, Russia's offensive from Crimea was fairly successful, including the hard-fought battle for Mariupol, securing a land corridor to Crimea (which otherwise is being supplied over the Kerch Bridge). This year, all Russia has to do is to defend against the much hyped Ukrainian offensive, and in doing so they have a fairly wide buffer territory they can afford to lose before Ukrainian forces approach the ethnically Russian enclaves that broke off from Ukraine in 2014. Most Ukrainians have fled this buffer zone, so the remaining inhabitants should be more favorable to Russia, as are the Donbas and Crimean zones. And most importantly, as Ukraine showed last year, it is easier to defend and disrupt than it is to attack. The prolonged battle of Bakhmut, where Russia prevailed, offers little hope that Ukraine will make major gains elsewhere.

  Zelensky has spent the winter promising NATO that if they give him enough weapons, Ukraine will win back all of the pre-2014 territory. That seems unlikely to happen, but few in the west were willing to sound a note of caution, least of all about the capabilities of their pricey weapons. The result is that the war will continue as long as the political orders on both sides remain entrenched, which could be a long time. Miron's main contribution here is to point out that even if Ukraine recovers territory, it will be nearly impossible to rebuild as long as hostilities ensue, and Russians would likely resort to some kind of guerrilla insurgency even if regular troops are withdrawn. Once again, the only solution is negotiation.

• Chas Danner: [06-24] Wagner's Prigozhin backs off after marching on Moscow.

• Valerie Hopkins: [06-25] One big winner of Kremlin-Wagner clash? The dictator next door. Don't bet on that. The last thing any dictator needs is an alien army with no one else to fight. (I imagine there are numerous examples, but the Vandals are the first to leap to mind.) Of course, it's also possible that Putin orchestrated the deal, and Lukashenko is just the patsy we always figured. Either way, he has little reason to sleep soundly, much less to gloat.

• Ellen Ioanes: [06-25] Russia's wild last 24 hours and the Wagner group's march to Moscow, explained.

• Jen Kirby:

  • [03-21] The Wagner Group, Russia's maybe-private army in Ukraine, explained: Background.

  • [06-24] Prigozhin's coup attempt unleashes chaos on Russia.

• Anatol Lieven/George Beebe:

  • w/George Beebe: [05-31] Prigozhin erupts: Has a Russian succession struggle begun? "The Wagner chief's furious attack on elites and the war could portend turmoil with potential to extend well beyond Moscow." Last line: "As an old Russian joke about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist should remind us, however bad things are in Russia, they can always get worse." [Cited last week, even more prophetic this week.]

  • w/George Beebe: [06-21] Rampant Russophobia takes us down a dangerous path: "Demonizing Russian culture and people only makes peace in Ukraine harder to achieve and plays into Putin's propaganda."

  • [06-25] Putin: Disastrous but indispensable for the system he created? "The Wagner insurrection has raised serious questions about not only the durability of Putin's role, but also that of the regime that he has built."

• David Remnick: [06-24] Putin's weakness unmasked: "How Yevgeny Prigozhin's rebellion exposed the Russian President." Well, not exactly. He draws on conversations with Mikhail Zygar, who wrote the 2016 book All the Kremlin's Men ("a best-seller in Russia and a well-sourced examination of Putin's rule and the inner dynamics of his ruling circle"), and has a forthcoming book, War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine, which is fast becoming obsolete. It's worth remembering that the word "dictator" implies much more autonomy at the top than is often the case. (Biden's recent slur on Xi Jinping and the furor it aroused should be another reminder.)

• Anton Troianovski: [06-25] Prigozhin revolt raises searing question: Did it harm Putin's staying power? Certainly the first question on the mind of American hawks dreaming of regime change, but way too early to answer. It looks to me like it does two things: one is that it immediately reduces Russian troops in Ukraine, at a time when Ukraine's "counteroffensive" is ramping up; the other is that it should shortly bring an end to the acrominiously divided Russian forces command. Any student of war will tell you that divided command is a recipe for disaster, so Russia may emerge in better shape -- though much still depends on whether Russian command is really as bad as Prigozhin alleged. My guess is that in the short term Putin can rally support, but the stakes of losing Ukraine are growing more severe.

• Joshua Yaffa: [06-24] The Wagner Group is a crisis of Putin's own making.

Sunday morning, Max Blumenthal tweeted: "Everything we said about Russia yesterday was an insane lie or completely wrong, now check us out on the White House ex-propaganda minister's show today." He's referring to "Inside with Jen Psaki," where the guests constitute a war council: Michael McFaul (former Ambassador to Russia), James Stavridis (Admiral), Anne Applebaum, Elissa Slotkin (Representative), and Nancy Pelosi (House Speaker Emerata). So the "we" isn't meant to include Blumenthal, but most likely it applies to him as well -- he has spent the last year attacking Ukraine and military support from US/NATO so exhaustively it's hard to draw a line between his stand against the US-led empire and his willingness to repeat Russian propaganda. But it's easy to imagine these five going gaga over the prospect of a revolution against Putin, even from the right -- something they have little conception of, despite the fact that Putin's harshest critics have always come from that direction -- then their disappointment when Prigozhin called the whole thing off. Whiplash is a risk of cheerleaders for politicians who can spin on a dime. I'm always reminded of the poor Communists who woke up one day finding they had to defend the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

[1] Blumenthal quotes Applebaum as saying: "Yet even the worst successor imaginable, even the bloodiest general or most rabid propagandist, will immediately be preferable to Putin, because he will be weaker than Putin." Weaker, but still armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.

Around the world: Indian president Narenda Modi visited Washington last week, which occasioned much agonizing over India's human rights record, and Biden's willingness to overlook it. That actually strikes me as respect due to leader of another nation -- respect that the US, with its compulsion to divided the world up between friends and foes -- rarely shows. Which doesn't mean that the parties weren't up to no good.

• Ben Burgis: [06-22] Israelism is a powerful indictment of pro-apartheid indoctrination. Quotes a critic of the film complaining, "There is no mention, for instance, of the UN role in the creation of Israel, Arab aggression at the birth of the state," blah, blah, blah. True that the UN passed one resolution approving of the partition of the British protectorate of Palestine, but there is no reason to treat that as some sort of immaculate conception. While Israelis lobbied for the resolution, and cited it in their Declaration of Independence, they immediately discarded its borders, and moved to claim Jerusalem (an international zone per the resolution), as well as expelling Arabs from Jaffa (a Palestinian enclave surrounded by Israel). Then Israelis murdered the UN mediator. The UN never sanctioned the explusions that Palestinians know as the Nakba. The UN Security Council passed resolutions after the 1967 and 1973 wars that Israel gave lip-service to but never honored (although Egypt and Jordan eventually did, and Syria negotiated a peace deal that Israel ultimately rejected). The "peace offers" that Palestinians supposedly rejected were never made in good faith, but the Oslo Accords, which Arafat did accept, were wrecked by Israel. Still, I doubt the film dwells on all that history, when the case against Israel's denial of basic human and civic rights to Palestinians today is so clear cut, and really so shameless.

• Melvin Goodman: [06-23] Netanyahu takes aim at US diplomacy again: Over the last several weeks, I've seen reports that Biden is close to an agreement with Iran to restore the JCPOA deal that Obama negotiated and Trump scuttled. I haven't bothered reporting them because they're meaningless until announced, and the likelihood of that happening is slim given that Israel remains opposed -- it beggars belief why, suggesting that Israel would much rather prop up Iran as a mortal enemy (something that has never been true, either under the Shah or the Ayatollahs) than see its stated concerns actually addressed -- and Israel exerts such influence over American politics that it's unlikely that Biden would dare. The thing is, while Israel can afford pricking at Iran, the US actually does have good reason for negotiating friendlier terms. Non-proliferation matters, but more immediately pressing is Iran's ability to block oil traffic through the Straits of Hormuz. There's also the matter of Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, which Israel periodically attacks, and could hit back at American troops there. Biden must also realize that pushing Iran into the embrace of Russia and China isn't helping. He also must realize that after the US military failed so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan, a military threat against Iran would be several steps beyond stupid. But to move forward Biden would have to reassert the importance of American interests over Israel's.

• Jonathan Guyer: [06-23] Why the US is selling India so many weapons: "Prime Minister Modi visits the White House, and arms deals follow." It's almost like the sole determinant of US foreign policy is arms sales. India has most often bought arms from Russia, which is part of the reason India has refused to support US sanctions against Russia. But one can see the thinking as more than an immediate cash grab. But arms sales may be a lever both to divide India from Russia and to align India against China.

• Ellen Ioanes: [06-25] Guatemala's elections can't undo years of government corruption: Not to mention coups, most directed or at least sanctioned by the US.

• Achal Prabhala/Vitor Ido: [06-01] Next pandemic, let Cuba vaccinate the world. Uh, you think this pandemic is done yet? We're going to be taking boosters indefinitely. There's still plenty of world demand, especially if affordable. And Cuba's developments should remind us that we don't need billionaire patents to motivate people to develop life-saving pharmaceuticals. Even if the US companies shut down today, we could ride free on the rest of the world's research and development. Also the world could free ride on Cuba's investment. The embargo, which remains stupid and cruel, wouldn't stop others from manufacturing Cuban vaccines, assuming they got developed in the first place.

Other stories:

Dean Baker: [06-25] Why the RFK Jr., Rogan, Musk outrage machine doesn't bother Big Pharma. Also see Sarah Jones, below.

Tim Dickinson: [06-15] Is America already in a civil war? Interview with Bradley Onishi, author of Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism -- and What Comes Next. I have to admit that my eyes glaze over when I read these pieces about the Christian Right, given that my own faith is so lapsed that they seem to be from a completely different planet. The idea that anyone, much less than 30% of all Americans, believe in predispensationalism just boggles my mind -- even though I now realize that one of my more memorable conversations with my grandfather (1895-1965) was about exactly that. I never took him to be insane, but in that moment he was.

Andrea González-Ramirez: [06-23] One year without Roe: "All the ways abortion bans have affected pregnant people, providers, and clinics, by the numbers and in their own words." Also:

• Megan Carpentier: [06-23] The deadly silence since Dobbs.

• Grace Segers: [06-23] The end of Roe created two unequal Americas.

• Tessa Stuart: [06-22] Republicans are torching democracy to deny women abortions.

• Li Zhou: [06-23] The end of Roe, one year later: "The devastating impact of Dobbs, by the numbers."

Constance Grady: [06-22] When you can't separate art from artist: Interview with Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma, a meditation on how to feel about art produced by people who turned out to have committed other reprehensible acts. (Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, and Bill Cosby are among the first-named, along with Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Roman Polanski.) I'm only bringing this up because my wife read the book, so it came up in conversations I never really answered. But I do have two core reactions: one is that I believe that works of art stand on their own the moment they are released (you might argue that copyrights and residuals argue differently, but I've never cared much for boycotts either); the other is that people are complicated but only turn monstrous when they take or are given power over others. So this isn't a dilemma I often engage in. I won't deny that some works of art embody their creator's damaged psyches in ways that merit little or no respect (e.g., Ayn Rand's novels). But the problem there is the art, not the artist (not that Rand, herself, wasn't quite some piece of work).

Greg Grandin: [06-21] Cormac McCarthy's unforgiving parables of American empire.

Sarah Jones: [06-24] Anti-vaxxers don't want a debate; they want a spectacle. Image here, with a mask reduced to the space of a Hitler moustache grafted onto a picture of Anthony Fauci, and the caption: "Stop! Faucism," is one way of saying, I'm so dumb, no point arguing with me! One of the most disturbing things about the Republicans (and one of the most Republican things about RFK Jr) is how completely, based on nothing but symbolism and bile, anti-vaxxers have taken over the collective consciousness of the GOP.

Naomi Klein: [05-08] AI machines aren't 'hallucinating'. But their makers are. Too broad a subject to simply endorse her take, although the core idea that AI will serve the powers that control it, which means that in a system of rapacious capitalism, that's what it will mostly be used for. The details are messier. The word "theft" gets thrown around a lot, which needs to be squared with a stiff critique of so-called "intellectual property" rights.

Eric Levitz: [06-23] The recession that didn't happen: Well, didn't happen yet -- Jerome Powell is still promising further rate increases, his pause explained by worry over failing more banks (the health and wealth of banks, after all, being the Fed's true raison d'être).

Nicole Narea: [06-22] What happens now that the Titanic submersible search has ended in tragedy. Not that you need more, but:

• Molly Osberg: [06-22] Who wants to die on vacation?

• Alex Shephard: [06-20 The media cares more about the Titanic sub than drowned migrants. E.g., [06-19] Up to 600 people drown off Pylos, Greece; [04-28] More than 200 refugees die off Tunisia coast in 10 days; [06-21] Dozens of people drown after dinghy sinks near Canary Islands; [02-26] Dozens of migrants found drowned off Italian coast. The contrast is further explained by Francois Furstenberg: [06-23] A tale of two disasters.

• Chas Danner: [06-23] What we've learned from the Titanic sub disaster.

Joseph O'Neill: [03-21] One man's foray into the heartland of the far right: Review of Jeff Sharlet's The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War.

Alex Park: [06-16] 'Freakonomics' was neoliberal bullshit: "A look back at the bestselling book franchise that taught people to 'think like economists,' by which it meant 'think cynically and amorally.'" The bestseller was written by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner, and published in 2005, and sold over four million copies, spawning a sequel and other exploitations. I never read it, but I've read several other think-like-an-economist books (the most disturbing being Steven Landsburg's Armchair Economist, which left me haunted by "the principle of indifference"). I don't know about neoliberal, but I've been reading John Quiggin's Economics in Two Lessons, and I have little doubt that Freakonomics qualifies as what Quiggin calls "Lesson One economics": if it looks "cynical and amoral," that's because the theory doesn't allow for anything else.

Heidi Przybyla/Shia Kapos: [06-23] No Labels declines to reveal just who is funding its third party bid. I don't think I've mentioned this "centrist" group, with its plot to offer the distraction of a presidential candidate not aligned with either major party. I've had plenty of opportunities from Democrats who have been whining about third-party candidates on the left since Nader in 2000. This year their pet peeve is Cornell West -- for some reason they assume that they should pocket the votes of everyone on the left, even if they offer nothing in return. But this year, they're even more worried about No Labels siphoning away center votes they do bend over backwards to woo. After all, Biden in 2024 is the only possible protection against Trump (or some equally vicious MAGA maniac), and everyone should be willing to put up with a lot of waffling and compromise to keep that from happening. The fact that the money behind the operation is secret just adds to the air of conspiracy. As does the flirtation with conservative Democrats like Manchin and Sinema, which makes it look like they are prioritizing capturing Democratic votes. I suspect that, like most third party efforts, it won't ultimately amount to much, and is likely to serve as a protest outlet for more disaffected Republicans than Democrats, so may even help Biden. But in any case, the answer isn't to whine. It's to come up with a better campaign, and win so big the third parties are irrelevant.

Tweets:

Dr. David A. Lustig @drdave1999:

Ron DeSantis continues to drop in the polls, as Americans reject the chance to "make America more like Florida."

DeSantis miscalculated badly in believing that voters were looking for an authoritarian strongman with the social skills of a rabid wolverine.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 19, 2023

June archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 40436 [40392] rated (+44), 12 [16] unrated (-4).

I published another fairly long (5592 words, 96 links) Speaking of Which last night. Lots of important points there.

I noticed a few more mid-year album lists:

• AV Club
• Dig!
• Humanizing the Vacuum
• Northern Transmissions
• Nylon
• Our Culture
• Paste
• Rolling Stone
• Whiskeyriff
• Why Now

A few more, like Boston Globe and Times of London, were paywalled, and others no doubt missed Google's net. I doubt if they change the listings I presented last week very much. They drove much of my listening this week, as did Robert Christgau's June Consumer Guide -- although in the latter case it mostly got me to relisten to albums that I possibly had shortchanged previously. Two of them I bumped up a couple notches, although even now I'm wondering if one might have been more correct. The rest I left as is, with Wednesday's Rat Saw God headed for a lower grade before the last couple cuts showed some promise. It's one of the five or so best-regarded albums of the year, which leaves me feeling wildly out of synch with current music trends.

Pretty out of synch with his Consumer Guide, too, although I will note that the África Negra compilation got an A- from me back in May 2022.

I updated the Consumer Guide database at Robert Christgau's website. It had gotten considerably in arrears, although the practice of withholding reviews nine months to give his Substack subscribers some exclusivity makes it seem more like a bookkeeping exercise. Still, something I should be doing more regularly, if only to keep from having to rediscover how to do it.

I've been playing the original Hairspray soundtrack a lot. While the dance songs are as great as I remembered, the real earworm is the slow dance number, Gene Pitney's Town Without Pity. The lyrics still resonate: "How can we keep love alive/ how can anything survive/ when these little minds tear you in two." Indeed, the "little minds" the film sends up in the early 1960s have returned to hector us, even more stunted and deformed than before.

New records reviewed this week:

Gracie Abrams: Good Riddance (2023, Interscope): Singer-songwriter from Los Angeles, first album, soft-spoken and very steady. Trails off a bit toward the end. B+(***) [sp]

Amaarae: Fountain Baby (2023, Interscope): R&B singer, Ama Genfi, born in New York, raised in Atlanta and Ghana, where she is based now. Second album. Interesting in various subtle ways until the punk "Sex, Violence, Suicide" erupts, which makes one wonder about the rest. A- [sp]

Roxana Amed/Frank Carlberg: Los Trabajos Y Las Noches (2022 [2023], Sony Music Latin): Argentinian singer, albums since 2004, has developed some jazz cred of late, which the pianist and a group that includes Adam Kolker (clarinets/tenor sax), Simon Willson (bass), and Michael Sarin (drums) adds to. Still goes slow, laden down with art song. B+(*) [cd]

Kelsea Ballerini: Rolling Up the Welcome Mat (2023, Black River, EP): Singer-songwriter, slotted as country but doesn't quite have the sound (Lana Del Rey is more her archetype). Dropped this on Valentine's Day, thinking about her recent divorce, which helps add some gravitas. Six songs, 15:54. B+(**) [sp]

Bar Italia: Tracey Denim (2023, Matador): British lo-fi group, third album, Italian-born Nina Cristante the main singer. Grows on me but no clear idea why. B+(***) [sp]

Michael Bisio/Timothy Hill: Inside Voice/Outside Voice (2022 [2023], Origin): Bassist, mostly associated with avant-garde, here in a rather spare duo with the guitarist-singer. Centerpiece is "I Fall in Love Too Easily," which isn't easy at all. B+(*) [cd]

Robert Sarazin Blake: One Summer Night: Live at the 2018 Subdued Stringband Jamboree (2023, Same Room): Folkie singer-songwriter, more than a dozen albums since 1996. B+(**) [sp]

Blondshell: Blondshell (2023, Partisan): Singer-songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum, father a hedge fund mogul, recorded an EP and some singles as BAUM, first album under this alias. Wikipedia has a long section on "Personal Life," which I read as read as "rich people are fucked up too, but can afford fancier labels." B+(*) [sp]

Eddie Chacon: Sundown (2023, Stones Throw): Half of the 1990s neo-soul duo Charles & Eddie -- with Charles Pettigrew (1963-2001) -- returned to music with a 2020 album, now this one, an understated quiet storm. B+(*) [sp]

Davido: Timeless (2023, DMW/Columbia): Nigerian afropop star, David Adeleke, actually born in Atlanta, grew up in Lagos, studied business in Alabama, returned to launch his career -- no doubt helps that his father is one of the richest people in Nigeria. Fourth album. B+(**) [sp]

Indigo De Souza: All of This Will End (2023, Saddle Creek): Singer-songwriter, from North Carolina, father "a Brazilian guitarist who was absent during much of her childhood," third album. Half impressed me, scales up poorly. B+(*) [sp]

Jeremy Dutton: Anyone Is Better Than Here (2023, self-released): Drummer-composer, first album, side credits back to 2018 with James Francies (piano here) and Joel Ross (vibes). Also draws on spot help from Ben Wendel (sax on 8/12 tracks), Mike Moreno (guitar on 7), and Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet on 2), plus bass (Matt Brewer or Daryl Johns). B+(**) [cd]

En Attendant Ana: Principia (2023, Trouble in Mind): French group, third album, songs in English, Margaux Bouchaudon the singer. Reminds me a bit of Belle & Sebastian, but doesn't connect as readily. B [sp]

Alexander Hawkins Trio: Carnival Celestial (2022 [2023], Intakt): British pianist, cover notes "with" Neil Charles (bass) and Stephen Davis (drums). B+(*) [sp]

Phil Haynes/Drew Gress/David Liebman: Coda(s): No Fast Food III (2022 [2023], Corner Store Jazz, 2CD): Drummer, from Oregon, album credits since 1984, often with the late Paul Smoker. Released the first No Fast Food album, with Gress (bass) and Liebman (sax, usually soprano), in 2014. Nice free jazz play, the discs short enough they could have been combined (31 and 35 minutes). B+(***) [cd]

Keigo Hirakawa: Pixel (2022 [2023], Origin): Pianist, born in Japan, raised in Ohio, has at least one previous album. Postbop quintet with Rafael Statin (reeds), guitar, bass, and drums. Fast, with some particularly hot spots. B+(**) [cd]

Javon Jackson: With Peter Bradley: Soundtrack and Original Score (2021-22 [2023], Solid Jackson): Tenor saxophonist, nominally a soundtrack for a documentary on the painter/sculptor (b. 1940), but sounds like a fairly tight group set, with Greg Glassman (trumpet) on most tracks, backed by plain (Jeremy Manasia), bass (David Williams), and drums (Charles Goold or McClenty Hunter). B+(***) [cd]

JustVibez + Negro Justice: Art of the Craft (2023, self-released): Nashville hip-hop duo, Negro Justice the rapper, Justvibez the producer. B+(**) [bc]

Killer Mike: Michael (2023, Loma Vista): Atlanta rapper Michael Render, five albums 2003-12, since then has focused on his duo with El-P, Run the Jewels. Looks back here, with gospel effects. B+(**) [sp]

Larkin Poe: Blood Harmony (2022, Tricki-Woo): Southern roots-rock band, principally sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell, originally from north Georgia but based in Nashville, regular albums since 2011. Guitars aplenty. B+(*) [sp]

Model/Actriz: Dogsbody (2023, True Panther Sounds): New York band, first album after several singles (first in 2017), Cole Haden the singer/auteur, his angst rising from sonic depths -- I wouldn't call it noise, but it does remind me of where that rose from in the early 1980s. B+(***) [sp]

Meshell Ndegeocello: The Omnichord Real Book (2023, Blue Note): Singer-songwriter, originally Michelle Lynn Johnson, adopted name (from Swahili) has been streamlined over the years. Thirteenth album since 1993, her credit "instrumentation, vocals, liner notes," with fifteen other musicians credited on one or two songs each. B+(*) [sp]

Pony: Velveteen (2023, Take This to Heart): Jangle-pop band fronted by Sam Bielanski, songs co-written with Matty Morand; second album. B+(*) [sp]

Smokey Robinson: Gasms (2023, TLR): Now 83, early Motown songwriter, fronted the Miracles, went solo in 1973, couple dozen albums since, this the first set of new material since 2009. Title refers to moments of pleasure, a concept that includes but extends beyond sex, not that he's lost interest in such things. B+(**) [sp]

Rust Dust: Twere but It Were so Simple (2023, Omad): Singer-songwriter Jason Stutts, based in Brooklyn, plays guitar, second album, contemplating the cosmos. B+(**) [sp]

Samia: Honey (2023, Grand Jury): Singer-songwriter from New York, last name Finnerty, second album. B+(*) [sp]

Shalom: Sublimation (2023, Saddle Creek): Singer-songwriter, raised in South Africa, based in Brooklyn, exotic credentials at odds with the very straightforward (but far from boring) rock framework. That lifts the introspection up enough to be notable, even a bit fun. B+(***) [sp]

Edward Simon: Femeninas: Songs of Latin American Women (2023, ArtistShare): Venezuelan pianist, moved to US when he was ten, studied in New York, based in San Francisco, couple dozen albums since 1994. Featuring credit for Mexican singer Magos Herrera, with the band also listed on the cover: Adam Cruz (drums), Reuben Rogers (bass), and Luis Quintero (percussion). Includes a three-part piece by Simon (lyrics by Herrera), plus eight songs as advertised (two from Brazil also feature guitar by Romero Lubambo). B+(*) [cdr]

Son Volt: Day of the Doug: The Songs of Doug Sahm (2023, Transmit Sound): Country-rock band led by Jay Farrer, after Uncle Tupelo broke up. Eleventh album since 1995. B+(*) [sp]

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives: Altitude (2023, Snakefarm): Country singer, debut 1978, never a big star but had some success in the 1990s, as he started to build his reputation for bluegrass. Dubbed this band in 2003, this his ninth album under the name. Slow start, recovers toward the end. B [sp]

Stuck: Freak Frequency (2023, Born Yesterday): Postpunk band from Chicago, second album, Greg Obis the lead singer. What marks it as "post" is that the instrumentals get more energetic. B+(**) [sp]

Uncle Waffles: Asylum (2023, Kreativekornerr): South African amapiano dj, born in Eswatini (Swaziland for you old-timers), second album, reportedly a viral breakout. Beats. Lots of beats. B+(**) [sp]

Rufus Wainwright: Folkocracy (2023, BMG): Famous parents (Kate McGarrigle, Loudin Wainwright III), immortalized as a baby in one of the latter's more memorable songs, debut album 1998, ten albums later, a collection of covers (five traditional folk songs, one of his own, one by Schubert, others eclectic), most joined by guest singers, produced by Mitchell Froom. Has a few moments. B [sp]

Youth Lagoon: Heaven Is a Junkyard (2023, Fat Possum): Alias for Trevor Powers, three albums 2011-15, this is his fourth. [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Roger Bekono: Roger Bekono (1989 [2023], Awesome Tapes From Africa): From Cameroon (1954-2016), played guitar and sang, Discogs only lists one more album beyond this minor four song, 30:15 gem. B+(**) [sp]

Ernesto Djédjé: Roi Du Ziglibithy (1978-82 [2022], Analog Africa): Singer from Côte D'Ivoire (1947-83), recorded from 1970 up to his "mysterious" death (Discogs lists six albums). Dates not given, but the four songs (25:52) can be tracked back to four albums. B+(**) [sp]

Sonny Rollins With Heikki Sarmanto Trio: Live at Finlandia Hall, Helsinki 1972 (1972 [2023], Svart): Live set with a pickup band, although the keyboardist (playing Fender Rhodes here) is a pretty big deal in Finland, with Pekka Sarmanto (bass) and Esko Rosnell (drums). After a spoken intro, they expand greatly on "Night and Day," "My One and Only Love," and "St. Thomas." It's impossible to hear the latter and not smile wide. A- [sp]

Nkono Teles: Love Vibration (1982-84 [2023], Soundway): From Cameroon (d. 2011), based in Nigeria, "one of a small handful of pioneers of the Nigerian electronic music scene in the 1980s." Six tracks (33:02), three from 1982-84 albums, which seems to have been his peak period. Would slot nicely into one of those Nigerian disco compilations. B+(**) [sp]

Ali Farka Touré: Voyageur (1991-2004 [2023], World Circuit): Legendary guitarist-singer from Mali (1939-2006), unveils nine previously unreleased jam tracks, as charming as ever. B+(***) [sp]

Neil Young and the Santa Monica Flyers: Somewhere Under the Rainbow: Nov. 5, 1973 (1973 [2023], Reprise, 2CD): First disc features Tonight's the Night, recorded earlier that year but unreleased until 1975. But note there's another -- if memory serves, better sounding -- live version, from Sept. 20-22 with the same band (Nils Lofgren, Ben Keith, Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina), released in 2018 as Roxy: Tonight's the Night Live. I've liked many of Young's live albums, but this one seems especially unnecessary. B [r]

Old music:

Big Joanie: Sistahs (2018, Daydream Library Series): Afro-British g-b-d trio, Stephanie Phillips the singer, first album (a second came out in 2022), advertised as postpunk but I don't really hear it -- did help get them opening slots for Sleater-Kinney and Parquet Courts and a label co-owned by Thurston Moore. B+(***) [sp]

Fokn Bois: Coz Ov Moni (2010, Pidgen Music): Hip-hop duo from Ghana, names given as M3NSA and Wanlov the Kubolor -- ok, Bondzie Mensa Ansah and Emmanuel Owusu Bonsu. First album, soundtrack to "the first pidgen musical film in the world." B+(**)

Fokn Bois: Fokn Wit Ewe (2012, Pidgen Music): Second album, more accessible in English. They get on track with a chant thanking God they're not Nigerians, then admitting that Liberians are even worse. Later they beg Somalians to "Help America," and luxuriate in extraterrestial sex. I take these, and not just the skits, to be jokes, like the title. A- [sp]

Fokn Bois: Coz Ov Moni 2 (Fokn Revenge) (2014, Pidgen Music): Another soundtrack, presumably a sequel to the original "pidgen musical" film. More jokes, no doubt, as they even permeate the music. B+(**) [sp]

Fokn Bois: Fokn Ode to Ghana (2016, Hobo Truffels/Yoyo Tinz): Effectively a remix of a various artists instrumental album Ode to Ghana (2014, Hobo Truffels), with the raps added and the original artists billed as producers. A mixed bag. One sobering piece claims Obama for Kenya and goes: "Thank God we're not an African-American." B+(**) [sp]

Grade (or other) changes:

Taj Mahal: Savoy (2023, Stony Plain): Eclectic roots bluesman Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, started in 1965 in a group with Ry Cooder called Rising Sons, reunited last year in a Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee tribute. Goes back even earlier here, reminiscing about Chick Webb in the Savoy Ballroom (some years before he was born in 1942). He sticks to top shelf songs here, risking comparison to Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, Louis Jordan, Jimmy Rushing -- even the sureshot Maria Muldaur duet, "Baby, It's Cold Outside." Of course, he has his own take, but I wonder how useful this really is. [was: B+(**)] A- [sp]

Water From Your Eyes: Everyone's Crushed (2023, Matador): New York duo, Nate Amos and Rachel Brown, specify pronouns but not instruments, several albums since 2017, although this is the first one to get any real notice. Disjointed, which seems to be the sound of the year -- one that makes me despair of ever being hip again, but much here that I do appreciate. [was: B+(**)] A- [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• JoVia Armstrong & Eunoia Society: Inception (Black Earth Music) [06-30]
• Will Bernard & Beth Custer: Sky (Dreck to Disk) [09-05]
• The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Harvesters (Aerophonic) [07-18]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Calling time on this, 10 PM Sunday evening. The most obviously missing story is something on the heat waves in Asia and Texas. Also, note that while the non-Trump Republican section is short, it's pretty ominous, and even worse things are lurking down in the miscellaneous section.

Top story threads:

Trump: He was arrested on Tuesday, pled innocent, and was allowed to leave. Republicans are so sure he's guilty they're already talking about pardoning him. Some "law and order" party they are!

• Ryan Bort: [06-16] Trump says his hand-picked chief of staff was 'born with a very small brain': If that doesn't narrow it down enough for you, I'll save you the jump and point out it's John Kelly, who "pretended to be a 'tough guy,' but was actually weak and ineffective." Trump also added: "In the end he was a 'mummy' who sat in his office and stared at the ceiling" -- actually, a pretty fair description of Kelly's photos from the period.

• Chris Cameron: [06-18] Barr says documents case against Trump is 'entirely of his own making'. Barr "also attacked his character in extraordinary language."

• Margaret Carlson: [06-13] Miami Nice: The Trump document plea deal we need. Anyone else would be looking for a deal here, but Trump seems to feel that his persecution is a political asset -- at least until the case goes to trial, and the risks start to become tangible. Whether Smith would give up a deal that would escape jail time -- about the best he could hope for -- is another story, especially because Smith can still file more charges. Plus Trump has his New York case, and probably one in Georgia. So I don't see this happening soon, unless Trump decides to punt on 2024, which has a slim but non-zero chance.

• Ed Kilgore: [06-13] Ramaswamy puts rivals on spot with Trump pardon pledge: So no cant about everyone being equal before the law. [PS: For Trump's response, see Adam Rawnsley/Asawin Suebsaeng: [06-15] Trump demands GOP rivals pledge to pardon him . . . or else. Pence still thinks such talk is "premature," but Nikki Haley spun around and declared herself "inclined in favor."]

• Eric Levitz: [06-13] The DOJ went easy on Trump for political reasons.

• Ian Millhiser: [06-13] Aileen Cannon, the Trump judge assigned to oversee his trial, explained. Cannon has a history of making rulings favorable to Trump that have been overturned on appeal, so it seems like a gamble to bring the case forward in her court. Also see: Tatyana Tandanpolie: [06-14] Jack Smith has a "backup plan" if Judge Aileen Cannon issues "Trump-friendly rulings": He could bring further documents charges in New Jersey, where Trump also kept secret documents. That doesn't sound like much of a plan to me. Regarding this, see Josh Kovensky: [06-14] The mystery of the Bedminster documents.

• Nicole Narea:

  • [06-13] Trump's post-indictment speech was a master class in alternative facts and false victim narratives.

  • [06-14] Why the Biden, Clinton, and Pence document cases don't compare to Trump's.

• James Risen: [] Trump is a predator who feeds on lackeys; and [] How many indictments does it take to bring down a cult leader?

• Nathan J Robinson: [06-12] Nobody can come up with a good defense of Donald Trump.

• Jon Schwarz: [] The special counsel who indicted Trump is no Democrat. They never are. Also: Chauncey DeVega: [06-17] Jack Smith is no hero: "The special prosecutor is a professional doing his job."

• Areeba Shah: [06-17] "DOJ really had no choice": Experts say non-lawyer Tom Fitton's advice horribly backfired on Trump: "Trump could have avoided charges if he listened to his lawyers. He trusted Judicial Watch activist instead." Trump's instincts are always political, and within limits he's pretty good at that.

• Alex Shephard: [06-16] Trump was begging to be indicted: "He passed on opportunities to bury his classified documents scandal, and now he's paying for the mistake."

• Matthew Stevenson: [06-16] Will Trump hang? Note that the death penalty is written into the law Trump violated (see St Clair, below, on how this was applied to the Rosenbergs), as well as long prison sentences -- which have been given for less egregious offenses than Trump is charged with.

• Jonathan Swan/Charlie Savage/Maggie Haberman: [06-15] The radical strategy behind Trump's promise to 'go after' Biden: "Conservatives with close ties to Donald J. Trump are laying out a 'paradigm-shifting' legal rationale to erase the Justice Department's independence from the president." Also note that DeSantis "rejects the norm that the Justice Department should be independent."

• Joshua Zeitz: [06-16] What Aaron Burr and Jefferson Davis tell us about the Trump indictments: Never say "unprecedented" to a historian.

DeSantis, and other Republican scum:

• Brakkton Booker: [06-18] DeSantis takes aim at Trump's signature criminal justice reform law. If all you're interested in is rhetoric, there's always room to pass on the right.

• Jonathan Chait: [06-16] Ron DeSantis wants more honoring Confederates, less funding for black history.

• Ed Kilgore: [06-15] Trump and DeSantis are on a mission to destroy the civil service: They believe that everyone who draws a paycheck from the government should be a loyal political operative. If someone isn't into them, they'll find someone who will carry their water. What they're pushing isn't just the return of the spoils system; it's the end of the very idea of public service.

• Kenny Stancil: [06-16] Republicans just annihilated local democracy in Texas: Gov. Abbott signed a bill "that drastically limits the ability of cities to enact progressive policies."

• Li Zhou: [06-15] The Republican attempt to censure Adam Schiff was a flop. The motion was tabled 225-196, with 20 Republicans shying away. [PS: Now Trump weighs in: Kelly McClure: [06-17] Trump calls for replacement of 20 Republicans who voted to block censure of Adam Schiff.]

Climate and environment, disastrous and new-normal:

• Ryan Cooper: [06-15] The climate home insurance apocalypse is nigh: Now "Farmers Insurance Group and AIG are halting home policy sales in Florida." One more reason to fear DeSantis's "make Florida America" vow.

• Umair Irfan: [06-16] The world's oceans are extremely hot. We're about to find out what happens next. Unprecedented heating in the Atlantic, and the return of El Niño.

• Norimitsu Onishi: [06-17] 'The fires here are unstoppable': "The first foreign firefighters to reach Quebec amid Canada's worst wildfire season on record said that some of the blazes were 100 times bigger than any they had ever seen."

• Lily Sánchez: [06-08] Air quality has long been overlooked, but it's a major environmental justice and public health issue.

Courts and the law:

• Adam Freelander: [06-15] Why the Supreme Court made this map illegal: The Republican gerrymander in Alabama and what's left of the Voting Rights Act.

• Ruben J Garcia: [06-08] The Supreme Court's latest ruling against unions is really aimed at the New Deal.

• Constance Grady/Anna North: [06-16] A damning new DOJ report accuses the Minneapolis Police Department of civil rights abuses.

• Evan Mandery: [06-16] How White people stole affirmative action -- and ensured its demise: "If elite colleges owned up to their racism, the Supreme Court might rule differently." What he's suggesting is that elite colleges should consider reparations. I'm not generally a fan, but I can see that making sense.

• Ian Millhiser: [06-15] The Supreme Court is doing something out of character: Obeying precedents: "A landmark statute protecting Indian tribes from cultural genocide is upheld."

• Nia Prater: [06-14] Grand jury indicts Daniel Penny in Jordan Neely's death: The charge is second-degree manslaughter. Sounds more like second-degree murder to me.

• Dylan Scott: [06-16] Big Pharma's legal fight to stop cheaper Medicare drugs, explained.

Ukraine War: The "counteroffensive" has officially started, but there's little reporting on it -- the best the cheerleaders of the New York Times can muster is: [06-18] Ukraine appears to make a small gain in the south as counteroffensive continues.

• Blaise Malley: [06-16] Diplomacy Watch: Roiling disagreements over Ukraine path at NATO: There hasn't been much diplomacy to watch for at least six months, as Ukraine has been arming for its counteroffensive, in the expectation that gains on the ground will offer leverage when they finally start negotiating. Meanwhile, pressing for NATO membership just confirms Putin's gravest fears and shores up Russia's resolve.

• Masha Gessen: [06-15] Putin's war hits close to home: "Russia has faced a series of recent attacks, but, in the absence of public space, military losses are personal tragedies, not collective experiences." More pointedly, attacks in Russian territory are more likely to rally support for Putin than to cause people to doubt his leadership. Includes some quotes from Jade McGlynn, author of the new book Russia's War.

• James Glanz, et al: [06-16] An inside job: "The evidence suggests Russia blew it up from within." I was inclined to keep an open mind on the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, but this presents a reasonably convincing case that Russia blew up the dam, causing extensive flooding along the lower Dnipro, and denying Ukraine a large hydroelectric power plant. In doing so, Russia sacrificed the power plant, the major water source for Crimea, and its occupied territory along the east bank of the river. The destruction is fairly described as an ecological disaster, and as a war crime -- one more in a war full of them. [PS: Robert Wright, who's followed this war more carefully than most, tweeted: "I'm calling bullshit on this Times piece. It makes no sense for Russia to have blown that dam."]

• Lev Golinkin: [06-13] The western media is whitewashing the Azov battalion: "Before Russia invaded Ukraine, these fighters were neo-Nazis. They still are." Not clear to me what "whitewashing" Nazis means, but this is an old story, one that got picked up by Putin as part of his rationale for invading, which is no more excuse for invasion than any of his others. It's much more accurate to say they're Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, which have practically everything in common with the Russian ultra-nationalists who fervently support Putin's war, except that they hate each other, going back to WWII, where the Russians fought the Nazis, and a faction of Ukrainians, Lithuanians, etc., saw Germany as their liberator from Russian rule. As long as Russia is fighting in Ukraine, I don't see any problem with them fighting for Ukraine. After the war, of course, they could be a problem, like the German Freikorps. Even in the run up to the war, Ukrainian nationalists made it harder to reach any sort of accommodation with the ethnic Russian minority, and thus helped trigger the invasion. After the war, they're likely to be a malign political force -- as ultra-nationalists are everywhere, but Ukraine is likely to emerge with a very powerful warrior caste.

• Greg Lane: [06-16] The real reason why Putin put Russian nukes in Belarus: I'm afraid that the "real reason" isn't very clear here. Has Belarus offered itself up as a Russian hostage? Is Putin hinting at nuclear aggression without blowing anything up? Is he setting Belarus up to demonstrate use of a tactical weapon while preserving a slim thread of deniability?

• Anatol Lieven: [06-14] Ukraine's paradoxical lessons for the future of warfare: Hard for me to comment on the technical military aspects Lieven focuses on, particularly "a kind of belated vindication of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA) of the 1980s." (Fred Kaplan wrote about RMA in Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, published in 2008.) I think it's too early -- Ukraine's gains to date can just as easily be seen as strategic retreats by Russia -- to enthuse about the superiority of American weapons and methods. I have no doubt that Ukrainian soldiers are more motivated than Russian soldiers, but wonder whether that advantage will hold up when/if Ukraine enters ethnic Russian strongholds in Donbas and Crimea. Meanwhile, the territory between the front lines and the strongholds could easily change hands, as it's of little value to Russia (but also few Ukrainians remain there to welcome liberation). Lieven doesn't bother with what I think of as the bigger lessons: the strategy of deterrence has completely failed; the threat of sanctions has had little effect on Russia; and while European unity against Russia has never been stronger, few beyond the US and Europe share that instinct (suggesting that the US and Europe aren't widely trusted as sympathetic powers).

• Branko Marcetic: [06-13] Is the US military more intent on ending Ukraine war than US diplomats? I think it probably is true that top military brass is more acutely aware of the limits of military power than the jingoistic neocons Biden has chosen to stock his State Department with.

• Alfred McCoy: [06-15] Is China the only way for peace to come to Ukraine? "It's beginning to look as though Beijing has the means, motivation, and ultimate self-interest to end the war." [Originally on TomDispatch.]

• David Sacks: [06-16] Will upcoming NATO summit launch forever war in Europe? "Pressure is mounting to make some sort of formal declaration over Ukraine's membership at meetings in Vilnius next month."

Around the world:

• Jonathan Guyer: [06-15] Why are there still American troops in Syria? Guyer calls it "classic forever war." My first riposte was: to give Iran target practice. Really, I think we're just too embarrassed to admit that Assad won, and is now the only ticket for peace and any kind of future. The mission was always doomed, in large part because it was always schizophrenic, which is what you get when your so-called allies are primarily at war with each other.

• Keren Landman: [06-16] Uganda's anti-gay law will hurt all Ugandans: "When identity gets criminalized, everyone gets hurt."

• Dana Priest: [06-16] Khashoggi's widow sues Israeli firm over spyware she says ruined her life.

• Sina Toossi: [06-14] Iran's Supreme Leader opens space for possible nuclear deal.

• Nick Turse: [] Climate change and conflict are wreaking havoc in Somalia.

Other stories:

Dean Baker:

• [06-07] Owning up to mistakes and pandemic deaths: As noted, the embargo of Cuba since 1962 has been an all-around failure. That it continues to hamper worldwide distribution of Cuba's affordable Covid-19 vaccines is one more problem, one that contrasts starkly with the massive subsidies the US has lavished on Moderna's pricey patents.

• [06-15] Biden's restrictions on oil drilling have pushed prices back up to where they were in the Bush administration: Irony alert (what "restrictions"?), but look at the chart: oil prices reached their absolute peak late in the Bush administration, before the economy cratered and took the oil market with it. I've long maintained that the dip had more to do with the financial collapse killing futures speculation than with unemployment reducing demand. Same thing happened with the pandemic in 2020, and since the Fed started increasing interest rates in 2022.

• [06-16] Will Biden's industrial policy create a lot more Moderna billionaires? It will unless it also addresses the gross inequality in power between companies and workers (unions would help; so would codetermination, which gives workers board representation; my favorite is worker-owned companies, which doesn't just tip the scales but blows them up).

Niccolo Barca/Tommaso Grossi: [06-15] The damage Silvio Berlusconi (1936-2023) leaves behind: "The notorious tycoon and former Italian prime minister is gone, but his toxic legacy remains." Before Trump, there was another billionaire who sought office to flamboyantly flount his ego. With his death (and his neo-fascist successor), I'm surprised not to see more on their analogies, including a stretch out of office before coming back, and various skirmishes with the law.

Ok, found one:

• Marina Catucci: [06-18] Was Silvio Berlusconi the "Trump before Trump"? Only in some ways -- but they're disturbing.

Zack Beauchamp: [06-15] What a new conservative call for "regime change" in America reveals about the culture war: Review of Patrick J Deneen's new book, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future. Deneen, a political science professor at Notre Dame, previously wrote Why Liberalism Failed in 2018. I grew up reading fairly radical critiques of liberalism, and only softened my view as liberals lost power and prestige and stopped being the ones chiefly responsible for American imperialism and instead became fair-weather defenders of people with little power that conservatives like to pick on. So I can imagine writing books with titles like these, but not this crap, which boils down to a program of seizing power for self-appointed right people and using that power to marginalize or suppress everyone else, resulting in a well-ordered utopia of well-behaved automatons. One problem with liberals is they cut fascists too much slack.

Frederick Clarkson: [06-17] "Unfriending" America: The Christian right is coming for the enemies of God -- like you and me. Inside the "New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement at the cutting edge of Pentecostal and Charismatic evangelicism, which is now the second largest Christian faction in the world after the Roman Catholic Church and the largest growth sector in American and global Christianity."

Fabiola Cineas: [06-17] The "anti-intellectual attack" on higher ed will take years to undo: Interview with Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), noting more than 50 bills in 23 states aimed at "chilling academic freedom." Could have filed this under DeSantis.

David Cohen: [06-16] Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the truth behind the Vietnam War, dies at 92. "Some called Ellsberg a hero and others branded him a traitor." Count me in the hero camp. As far as I know, there has never been any "top secret" document more in need of exposure than the deep history of mistruths and bad faith exposed in The Pentagon Papers. More on Ellsberg:

• Spencer Ackerman: [06-16] Daniel Ellsberg's heroism began with listening to the anti-war left.

• Ben Bradlee Jr: [06-16] Daniel Ellsberg's life beyond the Pentagon Papers: "After revealing the government's lies about Vietnam, Ellsberg spent six decades as an anti-nuclear activist, getting arrested as many as ninety times in civil-disobedience protests."

• Chip Gibbons: [06-16] Daniel Ellsberg, American hero.

• Morton H Halperin: [06-17] My reflections on Dan Ellsberg, a man who helped end a tragic war.

• Seymour Hersh: [03-08] My fifty years with Dan Ellsberg.

• Michael Hirsh: [06-04] Daniel Ellsberg is dying. And he has some final things to say. "The iconic whistleblower reflects on the urgent need for others to follow in his footsteps."

• Charlie Savage: [06-18] Why the Pentagon Papers leaker tried to get prosecuted near his life's end: "When Daniel Ellsberg was 42, a judge threw out Espionage Act charges against him. At 90, he sought such charges again in hope of challenging their constitutionality."

• Norman Solomon: [06-16] Daniel Ellsberg wanted Americans to see the truth about war: "In an interview before his death, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower urged the media and the government to be more honest about America's bombing of civilians."

Michael Hiltzik: [06-13] A farewell to James G Watt, environmental vandal and proto-Trumpian: Reagan's infamous Interior Secretary (1981-83) has died, at 85. His most Trumpian attribute was a loose tongue that repeatedly offended everyone but mining company executives, although it's worth noting that eventually he was (per Wikipedia) "indicted on 18 counts of felony perjury and obstruction of justice and accused of making false statements before a federal grand jury investigating influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development," which was settled when he "pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of withholding documents." More:

• Liza Featherstone: [06-16] Good riddance to the architect of the GOP's environmental culture wars.

Sarah Jones: [06-15] What the censors want. Same question raised by Jane Smiley: [05-30] What are the book banners afraid of? It's not just that they want to hermetically seal young people in a cocoon that celebrates the conservative order. "They are afraid of readers -- especially young readers -- learning the truth about humans, about American history, about, perhaps, their own lives." They talked less about banning books in my day, because it was effectively done before any schools could get their hands on contraband. My reaction was to seek out anything else I could find, and, well, look how I turned out.

Jay Caspian Kang: [06-13] What was Nate Silver's data revolution? I've sometimes wondered whether I should read Silver's book (The Signal and the Noise, 2014). I avoided statistics when I was a sociology major (much to my regret), but I've picked up a general understanding since then; even if I still lack technical skill, I have an interest in and feel for data. But scanning through the book sample on Amazon doesn't reveal much I don't already know. Nor is this piece especially enlightening, least of all about Silver's recent defenestration from FiveThirtyEight. On the other hand, it does highlight a new stats/gambling competitor, Split Ticket. Their Initial 2024 Presidential Ratings are almost exactly what you'd expect.

Ed Kilgore: [06-16] Why do so many Americans think Biden is doing a bad job? That's a good question. I'm afraid it boils down to Republicans never missed a beat in trashing Biden, Democrats rarely fighting back, and the media's predilection for bad news and/or controversy, and their lack of interest in context or complexity. It also hurts that Biden's not much good at speaking for himself. Context matters, because most of our current problems have been developing for decades, making change hard, especially given entrenched Republican power centers. Climate change is probably the clearest example, but workers have been losing ground since the 1980s, inequality has been increasing, the military has been growing (to no good effect), diversity has been increasing (along with a more virulent backlash). The net effect is a sense of decline, which Republicans rail against, blame and exacerbate, while Democrats craft weak reforms and try to exude confidence (without much conviction).

The easiest response here is to list the many ways Democrats are not as bad as Republicans, while glossing over the cases where there isn't much difference (foreign policy, especially the Ukraine War; support for the military; policing immigration; bailing out banks). Even there, it's possible to hope that Democrats will improve. But even where Biden has fallen short, the solution isn't to throw him out -- the only hope is to elect more Democrats. Related:

• Bill Scher: [06-15]l Republicans say inflation, crime, and immigration are out of control. The numbers disagree. Sure, but which story sounds more convincing? Even if you do understand that Democrats have done better, isn't there still room for improvement?

Ezra Klein: [06-18] 'What the hell happened to the California of the '50s and '60s?': Talks with California Gov. Gavin Newsom about permitting problems, especially environmental impact studies that are slowing down and often killing decarbonization projects needed to save the environment. While consideration of environmental impacts is important, it shouldn't be crippling, as is often the case. Republicans have made "permitting reform" a hot-button issue, with a view to pipelines and mines that are being held up, but it's also obstructing "green energy." Reading this, two thoughts came to mind: one is that California wouldn't exist as we know it had the water projects of the early 1900s had to pass environmental impact studies (one can argue whether that would be good or bad, but it's certainly big). The other is that the first principle of the New Deal was "do something." One looks back at the 1930s and marvels at how much they did, how fast and cheap it was. And sure, much of what they did was build dams, but they changed people's lives, mostly for the better. A progressive movement that can't do that is going to have a hard time surviving, much less flourishing.

Naomi Klein: [06-14] Beware: we ignore Robert F Kennedy Jr's candidacy at our peril: Useful if you're considering giving him a second thought. I read his 2005 book Crimes Against Nature: How George W Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy, which seemed solid enough, but in retrospect was an easy target. He dedicated that book to his then-wife ("the real environmentalist in the family"). He filed for divorce in 2012, and four days later she killed herself. He moved to Los Angeles, married an actress, and within months was railing against vaccines. As Klein documents, he went crackers after that, including his hate book (The Real Anthony Fauci, published by right-wing Skyhorse Publishing). One more point I'd like to add is that I really hate the idea of dynastic politics (and more generally the whole nepotism dynamic, and for that matter inherited wealth -- which better describes Trump than entrepreneur, not that new money can't be obnoxious either). Also on Kennedy:

• Lily Sánchez/Nathan J Robinson: [05-18] Robert F Kennedy Jr is a lying crank posing as a progressive alternative to Biden.

Eric Levitz: [06-14] Larry Summers was wrong about inflation. He argued that "we need two years of 7.5 percent unemployment or five years of 6 percent unemployment or one year of 10 percent unemployment" to contain inflation. Of course, he'd argue that it's still not contained, even if levels have dropped significantly. But the problem isn't just that Summers is often wrong. It's the ways in which he's wrong, and his obliviousness to the human toll that he argues for.

Jaclyn Peiser: [06-17] How Instant Pot went from coveted appliance to bankruptcy: Regardless of "post-pandemic trends," the real culprit is private equity, which robbed the company (Instant Brands) blind while saddling it with excessive debt.

Thomas Piketty: [06-15] The wealth of (some) nations: French economist, author of major works Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) and Capital and Ideology (2020) as well as more pointedly political collections of essays, interviewed by Felicia Wong and Michael Tomasky.

Kelsey Piper: [06-14] Four different ways of understanding AI -- and its risks: I'm surprised this isn't illustrated with a simple four quadrant chart, where one axis is how important AI will be (really big to fairly minor) and the other is how useful or troubling it will be. The piece does mention four quadrants, but only focuses on the "big and good" corner.

I think the more important questions are whether access to AI will be restricted to enhance corporate profits, and whether the AI itself will be engineered to further corporate interests. Of course, the same thing can be said about software in general, and the line between crude deterministic software and AI is already rather blurry (e.g., in shopping for an electric toothbrush I found models that advertise AI, which almost certainly is far short of I). There are also questions of whether AI is subordinate to human decision making or autonomous, and whether it is able to command mechanical power (self-driving cars are a case in point), and therefore how fast it can act, or how hard it is to halt. The author's "four quadrants" depend a lot on these questions. Related:

• Faiz Siddiqui/Jeremy B Merrill: [06-10] 17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla's Autopilot.

Alex Shephard: [06-12] The rise of independent voters is a myth: Well, it feels better to think of yourself as an independent, as opposed to someone who blindly follows party choices you have little or no control over. Also, both parties share one major negative: both spend much of their time chasing donors, offering to do their bidding. And both parties are bound to the military and the residues of imperialism, even though we have nothing but sorrow to show for their last twenty (or, hell, seventy-five) years of belligerence. Democrats have the extra burden of having repeatedly ignored and undercut the interests of most of their voters. Republicans have the extra burden of nearly everything they try backfiring. So it's easy to see why many people prefer to distance themselves from such a dysfunctional system. But the self-proclaimed centrists rarely offer any sort of alternative. Rather, they embrace the worst of both parties, a muddle of clichés.

Alex Skopic: [06-13] How the lottery became a substitute for hope: I knew a guy who signed all his email with a definition of lottery: "a tax on stupidity." My quick take was that it's a tax on hopelessness. It offers people an extremely small chance of becoming rich, which could be seen as a good deal if your actual real life chances were even slimmer. But it also depends on people believing that becoming rich is the answer to their problems.

Jeffrey St Clair: [06-16] Roaming Charges: All the girls around him say he had it coming. Starts with a quote from the late Cormac McCarthy: "Life is brief and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it." Then he mentions Trump, but just to point out he's no whistleblower (his counterexample is Julian Assange, who Trump's DOJ prosecuted, and Biden's is still after). Then: "When I think about the many victims of the Espionage Act, my thoughts immediately go to Ethel Rosenberg," who was convicted and executed not for treason but for "being engaged in a conspiracy to 'commit espionage.'" A crucial figure in that execution was Trump's old mentor, Roy Cohn, who personally lobbied the judge to sign the death warrant.

Trump fancies himself as the victim of a "witch hunt," but while he's earned a desire among many for vengeance, he doesn't grasp the most basic principle of actual witch hunts, which is less to punish the initial target than to smoke out more witches. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible to point out how much McCarthyism had in common with the Salem witch trials -- two episodes in American paranoid thought that are now widely regretted (if not fully: one can imagine DeSantis setting up tribunals to interrogate witnesses -- "are you now or have you ever been woke?" -- and demand that they name names; and while none of the recent laws criminalizing aid and advice on getting an abortion specifically mention witches, the history there runs pretty deep; by the way, later down there's a Pat Robertson quote about the "feminist agenda" which lists "practice witchcraft" among other evils, like "leave their husbands" and "destroy capitalism").

St Clair shows a meme, where Trump says "In reality, they're not after me . . They're after you. I'm just in the way." But where was Trump when "the feds came for crack users, welfare mothers, immigrant families, striking workers, jaywalkers, whistleblowers, and medical pot users"? He was mostly cheering them on. "There are 2 million people currently incarcerated in US prisons and jails. There are 5 million formerly incarcerated people in the US. 20 million people have been convicted of felonies. 80 million have some kind of criminal record. They've already come for and gotten almost all the rest of us."

Then there's a quote from DeSantis vowing "We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of congress." St Clair:

Who knew the war on corporations would finally be launched because they sold t-shirts and beer to gay and trans people and not because they gouged prices, poisoned your drinking water, evicted you from your home, killed the Gulf of Mexico, made life-saving drugs too expensive to buy and turned the atmosphere into an air fryer?

Colin Woodard: [06-16] The geography of gun violence: Most likely interesting for the map, which was the subject of Woodard's 2011 book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. But the differences in gun deaths are striking (3.5 and 3.8 at the bottom, 12.2 in the Far West and 15.6 in the Deep South, and a few outliers even higher).

Notable tweet, from Dean Baker (linked to a Washington Post editorial you can chase down yourself):

Trump was completely right. He can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and the Washington Post would say that indicting him for murder endangered democracy.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 12, 2023

June archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 54 albums, 2 A-list,

Music: Current count 40392 [40338] rated (+54), 16 [16] unrated (-0).

I wrote another long Speaking of Which (5822 words, 105 links). Started early to capture the tweets at the bottom, then had to restructure twice after Trump was indicted. Even pulling the Trump pieces out, I still had more pieces in the section on other Republicans. Anyone who fancies that DeSantis might be less bad than Trump should read the Ezra Klein piece.

The environment section is a bit skimpy, especially in my comments, but the pieces (and even the titles) speak for themselves. The Ukraine stories drew me out more, but I still never got around to making the most obvious point, which is that this week's horrible stories are the natural consequence of not negotiating an end to the war a year ago, and not preventing it two-to-eight years ago.

Further down, the Irin Carmon and Sarah Jones interviews remind us of the real world impacts of Republicans' obsession with controlling pregnancy. The Dean Baker and Ryan Cooper pieces remind us that Pharma profits are rigged by policy choices that can be changed. The James Galbraith piece works as a tombstone over the debt fiasco. As I recall, he wrote a similarly belated piece on the 2008-09 bank bailouts, which argued that we should have let the banks fail, and put the public money into helping those who got hurt, as opposed to those who were responsible for the recession. Given how little progress we've made on getting the banks to work for the general good, it's hard to say he's wrong. And the Zachary Carter piece points out current myths about inflation, and points to better solutions than the classic Volcker recession. (And yes, let's call it that, unless you can convince me that it's really Milton Friedman's fault -- not implausible, given his contribution to NAIRU.)

Lots of good-but-not-great records below. Stereogram seems to have been first out of the gate with a "best of 2023 so far" list. At least, that's the first one I saw. By the time I counted, I had heard 33 (of 50) albums on the list (probably closer to 40 now, but I've lost track). Then I started looking for more, and found the following:

• British GQ
• Complex
• Consequence of Sound
• Esquire
• Exclaim
• Guardian
• Hip Hop DX
• Mixmag
• Pitchfork
• Saving Country Music
• Spin
• Stereogum
• Treblezine
• Uproxx
• Vulture

I did a partial tabulation (probably 10 of 13 lists, skipping the last three added -- if memory serves, Mixmag, Pitchfork, and Saving Country Music). This gives the following frequency of mentions (almost none of the lists were ranked, so no point trying to weight them). The following records appeared three or more times (numbered by count; my grades in brackets):

9. Lana Del Rey: Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (Interscope/Polydor) [B+(**)]
8. Billy Woods & Kenny Segal: Maps (Backwoodz Studioz) [A-]
7. JPEGMafia & Danny Brown: Scaring the Hoes (AWAL) [B+(*)]
   Kelela: Raven (Warp) [B+(**)]
   Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You (Perpetual Novice) [B+(*)]
   Jessie Ware: That! Feels Good! (PMR/EMI) [A-]
   Wednesday: Rat Saw God (Dead Oceans) [B+(*)]
6. Boygenius: The Record (Interscope) [B]
   Paramore: This Is Why (Atlantic) [B+(*)]
   Yves Tumor: Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) (Warp) [B+(**)]
   Yo La Tengo: This Stupid World (Matador) [A-]
5. Yaeji: With a Hammer (XL) [B+(*)
4. Lil Yachty: Let's Start Here (Quality Control Music/UMG) [B+(*)]
   Kali Uchis: Red Moon in Venus (Interscope) [B+(**)]
3. Black Country, New Road: Live at Bush Hall (Ninja Tune) [B+(*)]
   El Michels Affair & Black Thought: Glorious Game (Big Crown) [A-]
   Feist: Multitudes (Polydor) [B+(*)]
   Fever Ray: Radical Romantics (Rabid/Mute) [B+(**)]
   Debby Friday: Good Luck (Sub Pop) [A-]
   Boldy James/Rich Gains: Indiana Jones (self-released) [B+(**)]
   Kaytraminé [Amine/Kaytranada]: Kaytraminé (Venice Music) [B+(***)]
   Metallica: 72 Seasons (Blackened) []
   Model/Actriz: Dogsbody (True Panther Sounds) []
   Arlo Parks: My Soft Machine (Transgressive) [A-]
   Water From Your Eyes: Everyone's Crushed (Matador) [B+(**)]

I have six A- records there. Christgau has just two so far, and his (JPEGMafia and Boygenius, both full A) aren't in my six. Two I haven't heard yet. I'll probably fix that, but given that the only Metallica album I've heard so far landed at C-, it's hard to see much point.

This probably skews a bit more toward hip-hop than my recent EOY aggregates, but I count that as a plus. On the other hand, virtually no country (even "Americana") or jazz made the lists. I don't know of anyone who's done a "best jazz so far" list, but I can copy one out from my always-changing scratch list:

1. Art Ensemble of Chicago: The Sixth Decade From Paris to Paris: Live at Sons D'Hiver (RogueArt, 2CD)
2. George Coleman: Live at Smalls Jazz Club (Cellar)
3. Mark Feldman/Dave Rempis/Tim Daisy: Sirocco (Aerophonic)
4. Lakecia Benjamin: Phoenix (Whirlwind)
5. Ivo Perelman/Ray Anderson/Joe Morris/Reggie Nicholson: Molten Gold (Fundacja Sluchaj) **
6. Javier Red's Imagery Converter: Life & Umbrella (Desafio Candente)
7. Jason Moran: From the Dancehall to the Battlefield (Yes) **
8. Floy Krouchi/James Brandon Lewis/Benjamin Sanz: Cliffs (Off '22)
9. Ivo Perelman/Joe Morris: Elliptic Time (Mahakala Music '22) **
10. Wadada Leo Smith and Orange Wave Electric: Fire Illuminations (Kabell) **
11. Peter Brötzmann/Majid Bekkas/Hamid Drake: Catching Ghosts (ACT) **
12. Jim Black & the Schrimps: Ain't No Saint (Intakt) **
13. Ivo Perelman/Dave Burrell/Bobby Kapp: Trichotomy (Mahakala Music) **
14. Christian McBride's New Jawn: Prime (Mack Avenue) **
15. Natural Information Society: Since Time Is Gravity (Aguirre/Eremite) **
16. Das Kondensat: Andere Planeten (WhyPlayJazz)
17. Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra: In the Dark (ESP-Disk, 3CD)
18. Dave Rempis/Elisabeth Harnik/Fred Lonberg-Holm/Tim Daisy: Earscratcher (Aerophonic) **
19. Margherita Fava: Tatatu (self-released)
20. Ivo Perelman/Elliott Sharp: Artificial Intelligence (Mahakala Music) **
21. The Mark Lomax Trio: Tapestry (CFG Multimedia) **
22. Anthony Branker & Imagine: What Place Can Be for Us? A Suite in Ten Movements (Origin)
23. Henry Threadgill Ensemble: The Other One (Pi)
24. Kaze & Ikue Mori: Crustal Movement (Libra)
25. Daniel Bingert: Ariba (Moserobie)
26. James Brandon Lewis Trio: Eye of I (Anti-) **
27. Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra: America: The Rough Cut (ESP-Disk)
28. Jo Lawry: Acrobats (Whirlwind)

Don't put much stock in the order: this has been haphazardly assembled since January and I haven't done any editing, let alone rechecking. Not that it makes much difference these days, but ** indicates streamed or downloaded, with the rest on CD (pretty sure there's no vinyl here. Of this list, the only albums I'm more than 50:50 confident will end up in the top ten in year-end critics polls are McBride, Threadgill, and Lewis (on Anti-), although AEC, Benjamin, Moran, Smith, and/or Lowe could surprise; NIS is a real left field prospect. In most of these cases, the artists are sufficiently well-known, but the labels have little if any track record at getting the music out to critics.

PS: Three more links: The Week; Subjective Sounds; i-D.

New records reviewed this week:

6lack: Since I Have a Lover (2023, Interscope): Singer-rapper Ricardo Valentine, born in Baltimore but grew up in Atlanta. B+(**) [sp]

Amber Arcades: Barefoot on Diamond Road (2023, Fire): Alias for Dutch singer-songwriter Annelotte de Graaf, third album since 2016, following EPs going back to 2013. B+(*) [sp]

Vicente Archer: Short Stories (2022 [2023], Cellar): Bassist, first album as leader but has 70+ side credits, starting with Donald Harrison in 1999. He wrote three (of ten) pieces here, with pianist Gerald Clayton contributing one and drummer Bill Stewart two. B+(**) [cd]

Nanny Assis: Rovanio: The Music of Nanny Assis (2023, In + Out): Brazilian singer-songwriter, percussionist, has some forty years experience but not much on Discogs. Lines up a notable array of jazz musicians for this career review. B+(**) [cd] [06-23]

Baby Rose: Through and Through (2023, Secretly Canadian): Soul singer, born 1994 in Washington, DC; full name Jasmine Rose Wilson; second album after a mixtape and a couple EPs (one with J Dilla). Her default is a slow ballad, sometimes sultry, occasionally livened up by a guest rapper. B+(*) [sp]

Beach Fossils: Bunny (2023, Bayonet): Indie band from Brooklyn, fourth album since 2010. Fairly mild with a little jangle. [sp]

BigXthaPlug: Amar (2023, United Masters): Texas rapper, poppin' his "shit on a whole other level." B+(*) [sp]

Black Country, New Road: Live at Bush Hall (2023, Ninja Tune): British group, from Cambridgeshire, their first two albums (2021-22) much hyped and highly regarded -- I liked them well enough, but can't say I was much of a fan. Then lead singer Isaac Wood up and quit before the second appeared. The other six members persevered, promoting May Karshaw and Tyler Hyde to lead vocalists, going on the road to sort out a new batch of songs. This is the result, decent enough, though I'm still not much of a fan. B+(*) [sp]

Bully: Lucky for You (2023, Sub Pop): Band alias for singer-songwriter Alicia Bognanno, fourth album, looks back to 1990s grunge. B+(**) [sp]

Gail Caesar: Guitar Woman Blues (2023, Music Maker): From Virginia, b. 1984, probably her first album, an acoustic set singing over guitar. B+(**) [bc]

Conway the Machine: Won't He Do It (2023, Drumwork/Empire): Buffalo rapper, lots of mixtapes from 2014 on, third studio album. B+(**) [sp]

Clarence "Bluesman" Davis: Shake It for Me (2023, Music Maker): Born 1945 in or near Eufala, Alabama, where he still lives. Seems to be his first album, but has a steady sound, with a little extra jangle to the guitar -- reminiscent of the label's 2020 compilation Hanging Tree Guitars. A- [bc]

Ensemble 0: Jojoni [Made to Measure Vol. 49] (2023, Crammed Discs): Minimalist group from France, founded in 2004 and directed by Stéphane Garin and Sylvain Chauveau. Seven pieces here, built around drum machine and jangly percussion. B+(**) [sp]

Feeble Little Horse: Girl With Fish (2023, Saddle Creek): Indie pop band from Pittsburgh, second album, lo-fi and off-kilter and occasionally glitchy, the vocals only approximately in tune, which is close enough. B+(***) [sp]

Feist: Multitudes (2023, Polydor): Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist, sixth studio album since 1999, two of which charted top-20. At her most solemn, sounds a bit like Joni Mitchell, but builds a bit more on top, and is more interesting when she does ("Borrow Trouble"). B+(*) [sp]

Tomas Fujiwara's Triple Double: March On (2019 [2023], self-released): Drummer, assembled this group -- his usual trio with Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet) and Mary Halvorson (guitar), plus a second one with Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Brandon Seabrook (guitar), and Gerald Cleaver (drums) -- for his 2022 album March. This download-only "EP" is an outtake: three tiny slivers of sound, plus the 31:27 title piece. B+(***) [dl]

Jack Harlow: Jackman (2023, Generation Now/Atlantic): Best-selling white rapper from Louisville, never heard of him until I saw him hosting Saturday Night Live, by which time he had two albums out: with this one, his AOTY scores are { 60(4), 48(10), 55(6) }, with tags: corny, overhated, white, mid, pop rap, bad. I'd say underwhelming, but pretty decent. B+(*) [sp]

Heinali: Kyiv Eternal (2023, Injazero): Ukrainian electronica producer Oleg Shpudeiko, over a dozen albums since 2010. Ambient drone, thankfully not interrupted by cruise missiles. B+(*) [sp]

Ian Hunter: Defiance Part 1 (2023, Sun): Some young dudes manage to get old, in this case 83. He hasn't been especially prolific, with this his first studio album since 2014. But he seems in good voice, and rounded up a famous dudes to help out, although not even Ringo Starr or Jeff Beck are older. B+(*) [sp]

Illegal Crowns: Unclosing (2022 [2023], Out of Your Heads): Quartet, major talents, in given order: Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet/flugelhorn), Mary Halvorson (guitar), Benoit Delbecq (piano). Three tracks each except Bynum. Seems like it should be sharper but everyone fits tightly in their chamber jazz concept. B+(**) [cd]

Império Pacifico: Clubs Hit (2023, Variz): Electronica duo from Portugal: Luan Bellussi and Pedro Tavares. Second album, neat beats and blips. Six tracks, 35:56. B+(**) [sp]

Boldy James & Rich Gains: Indiana Jones (2023, self-released): Rapper from Atlanta via Detroit, eleventh album since 2013, co-credited with various producers, this the first with Gains. Low-key delivery, bleak aesthetic, tucked in tight. B+(**) [sp]

Lil Yachty: Let's Start Here (2023, Quality Control Music/UMG): Atlanta rapper Miles McCollum, was barely still 19 when his debut, Teenage Emotions, dropped. Fifth album here, time for a reboot. The cover, with its mismatched face parts, is genuinely disturbing, suggesting AI run amok -- or psychedelic, which seems to be the default music tag, whatever that means (mostly clouds of guitar-and-keyboard wash). He's turned into a singer. Give him a beat and some edges and he might develop into a third-generation Prince. B+(*) [sp]

Mandy, Indiana: I've Seen a Way (2023, Fire Talk): Group from Manchester, UK, with French vocalist Valentine Caulfield and Scott Fair (guitar), with Simon Catling (synth) and Alex MacDougall (drums). Group name a variant on Gary, Indiana, presumably chosen for their post-industrial klang, although the steel industry abandoned Gary long ago. B+(**) [sp]

Gia Margaret: Romantic Piano (2021-22 [2023], Jagjaguwar): Pianist, from Chicago, two previous albums which generally slot as ambient. Twelve short pieces (26:42), most solo but occasionally picks up some help. B+(*) [sp]

Ryan Meagher: AftEarth (2021 [2023], Atroefy): Guitarist, based in Portland, sixth album, quartet with Tim Willcox (sax), Andrew Jones (bass), and Charlie Doggett (drums). Most impressive when they risk a little noise, but they offer a nice mix in any case. Packaged with a 62-page booklet of pen-and-ink drawings by Tina Granzo, themed to the pieces, or vice versa. B+(***) [cd]

Metro Boomin: Heroes & Villains (2022, Boominati/Republic): Hip-hop producer Leland Tyler Wayne, has co-credits with 21 Savage, and a previous album which exposed his superhero theme. This offers one side each way, but I'm more stuck by his steady hand. B+(**) [sp]

Metro Boomin: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse [Soundtrack From & Inspired by the Motion Picture] (2022, Boominati/Republic): Payoff for his superhero obsession, a Marvell soundtrack tie-in, with enough budget for a star-laden guest list. Still, the thirteen pieces are about what you'd expect in the hip-hop producer's third album: the music is a bit more varied, the lyrics every bit as forgettable. Meanwhile, a separate release credited to Daniel Pemberton collects 107 minutes of background score as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse [Original Score]. I'll pass on that one. B+(*) [r]

Janelle Monáe: The Age of Pleasure (2023, Bad Boy): Funk/pop star, from Kansas City (the one in Kansas), dropped last name Robinson, fourth album, a more modest effort than her last couple, clocking in at 31:49, but still a delight. A- [sp]

MSPAINT: Post-American (2023, Convulse): Postpunk band from Hattiesburg, Mississippi; substitutes a synthesizer for the usual guitar, backed by bass and drums, with a singer going as Deedee. B+(**) [sp]

Nakibembe Embaire Group: Nakibembe Embaire Group (2023, Nyege Nyege Tapes): Ugandan group, Nakibembe is their home town, embaire is large wooden xylophone. [sp]

Kevin O'Connell Quartet Featuring Adam Brenner: Hot New York Minutes (2023, Ignoramus Music): Pianist, started with Clifford Jordan in the late 1980s, although he doesn't have much under his own name. Brenner plays sax, the quartet rounded out with bass (Paul Gill) and drums (Mark Taylor). B+(**) [cd]

Oddisee: To What End (2023, Outer Note): DC rapper Amir Mohamed el Khalifa, father from Sudan, tenth album since 2008, underground beats, weaves a half-dozen mostly unknown guests into a tight tapestry. "What does it matter if it's less or more the same?" B+(***) [sp]

Dave Okumu & the Seven Generations: I Come From Love (2023, Transgressive): Singer-songwriter, born in Vienna, moved to UK when he was ten, fronted The Invisible (2009-16), solo album in 2021, also part of London Brew, production credits include Jessie Ware. Rather hard for me to follow, although the spoken word reminds me of Gil Scott-Heron, and the few words I catch reinforce the link. Some (slim) chance I'm massively underrating this. B+(*) [sp]

Panic Shack: Baby Shack (2022, Brace Yourself, EP): Postpunk group from Cardiff, Wales; Sarah Harvey the lead singer. Six songs, 18:20. B+(**) [sp]

P!nk: Trustfall (2023, RCA): Pop singer-songwriter, Alecia Moore, ninth studio album since 2000. A bit more ballad-heavy than I'd prefer. B+(**) [sp]

Shelton Powe: Shelton Powe (2022, Music Maker): Blues singer-guitarist, b. 1957, in the "Piedmont finger-style guitar tradition of his parents and elders." Also has a thing for religious songs, which he sings as casually as "Railroad Bill." B+(**) [bc]

Caroline Rose: The Art of Forgetting (2023, New West): Singer-songwriter from Long Island, tried her hand at folk/country, moved on to more pop/rock, fifth album since 2012. "Only the rich get second chances." And: "come on babe, take all this pain, and learn to love yourself again." B+(*) [sp]

Esther Rose: Safe to Run (2023, New West): Singer-songwriter, originally from Michigan, tried New Orleans before moving to New Mexico; first recorded (2013) with then-husband Luke Winslow-King, fourth solo album since. B+(**) [sp]

Frankie Rose: Love as Projection (2023, Slumberland): Singer-songwriter, was in several bands -- Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls -- before going with her name in Frankie Rose and the Outs in 2010. Sixth solo album since. B [sp]

Jeffrey Scott: Going Down to Georgia on a Hog (2023, Music Maker): Nephew of John Jackson (1924-2002), a Piedmont bluesman who gave up playing in 1949, then got "discovered" in the late 1960s, a readymade classic. Many details about Scott are unclear, but he runs a farm, raises hogs and Texas longhorns, does side work as a mortician and long-haul truck driver, and picks and sings his way through a dozen folk blues, some well known. Voice reminds me of a different Jackson, an even older Memphis songster, Jim Jackson (1876-1933). B+(***) [bc]

Screaming Females: Desire Pathway (2023, Don Giovanni): New Jersey band, eighth album since 2006, Marissa Paternoster the lead screamer and (presumably) only female. B [sp]

Paul Simon: Seven Psalms (2023, Owl/Legacy): Past 80, wrote this "meditation on faith and death" in the middle of the night, flowing out of dream time, then jammed all seven pieces into one 33:02 cut that seems much longer. B [sp]

Skech185 & Jeff Markey: He Left Nothing for the Swim Back (2023, Backwoodz Studioz): Rapper Willie McIntyre Jr. and producer Markey, vocals a harsh growl but the beats keep coming. B+(**) [sp]

Sparks: The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte (2023, Island): Brothers Ron and Russell Mael, brilliantly lampooned their jangly falsetto shtick with their sophomore title (A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing), tempted me with their next two albums, after which I grew annoyed and tuned out. But fifty years later, they're still at it, garnering more praise than ever, but still annoyiong. B- [sp]

Squid: O Monolith (2023, Warp): British band, from Brighton, second album, Ollie Judge the singer and drummer. This is gnarly enough I wonder if they have the potential to be something like Pavement. But I doubt it, and I'm not even sure that would be a good idea. B+(**) [sp]

Superviolet: Infinite Spring (2023, Lame-O): Columbus, Ohio group, first album, principally Steve Ciolek (vocals, guitar, keyboards). B+(*) [sp]

Tinariwen: Amatssou (2023, Wedge): Tuareg (Saharan) group, originally from northern Mali with ties to Algeria and Libya, date back to 1979 but first album available elsewhere didn't appear until 2001. This is their ninth, and least exciting -- not sure if the weariness is theirs or ours. B+(*) [sp]

U.S. Girls: Bless This Mess (2023, 4AD): Toronto-based band led by American expat Meghan Remy, eighth album since 2008. B+(**) [sp]

Water From Your Eyes: Everyone's Crushed (2023, Matador): New York duo, Nate Amos and Rachel Brown, specify pronouns but not instruments, several albums since 2017. B+(**) [sp]

Zulu: A New Tomorrow (2023, Flatspot): Hardcore band from Los Angeles, first album after a couple EPs, fifteen short tracks (28:45). Soul samples and spoken word pounded rough and ragged. B+(*) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Walter Bishop Jr.: Bish at the Bank: Live in Baltimore (1966-67 [2023], Reel to Real): Pianist (1927-98), father was a drummer of some note (played with Jabbo Smith in the 1920s; wrote several songs of note, including "Swing, Brother, Swing" and "Jack You're Dead"), started with Art Blakey in 1948, recorded with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Hank Mobley, and Gene Ammons, leading his own groups from 1961. Quartet here with Harold Vick (tenor/soprano sax, flute), Lou McIntosh (bass), and Dick Berk (drums). Two sets, separated by six months. Vick is especially solid here, at least on tenor. B+(***) [sp]

Alan Braxe/Fred Falke: The Upper Cuts [2023 Edition] (2005 [2023], Smugglers Way): French house pioneers, the famed album originally credited to Alan Braxe & Friends, with Falke sharing most song credits. B+(***) [sp]

Clifford Jordan: Drink Plenty Water (1974 [2023], Harvest Song): "Long-lost vocal jazz session," originally recorded for Strata-East, with Donna Jordan Harris and David Smyrl vocalists (plus three backup singers) and a nine-piece band including Bill Hardman (trumpet), Dick Griffin (trombone), Charlie Rose (tenor sax), and Stanley Cowell (piano), plus cello, drums, and two basses (Bill Lee credited for arrangements). I'm not wild about the more vocalese stuff, but Smyrl's "Talking Blues" is worth a listen, and the instrumental version holds up, too. B+(***) [cd]

RP Boo: Legacy Volume 2 (2002-07 [2023], Planet Mu): Chicago-based footwork producer Kavain Space, follows up his 2013 Legacy (his first album) with a second collection of early rhythm tracks. B+(*) [sp]

Tyler, the Creator: Call Me if You Get Lost: The Estate Sale (2021 [2023], Columbia): Los Angeles rapper Tyler Okonma, debut mixtape 2009, his sixth album Call Me if You Get Lost (2021) a big critical as well as commercial hit. I was surprised to see this pop up on a mid-year list; alternatively, I was surprised I hadn't heard of a new album before. But it turns out this is just a reissue, padded out with eight extra tracks from the same sessions, pushing the length to 77:02. I've never been much of a fan, but gave the original album a B+(***). The extra tracks aren't bad, but the main thing they add is length, so: B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

None.

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Roxana Amed/Frank Carlberg: Los Trabajos Y Las Noches (Sony Music Latin) [06-09]
• Charlie Apicella & Iron City Meet The Griots Speak: Destiny Calling (OA2) [06-16]
• Blue Cranes: My Only Secret (Jealous Butcher/Beacon Sound) [08-11]
• Kaisa's Machine: Taking Shape (Greenleaf Music) [07-07]
• Ryan Keberle's Collectiv Do Brasil: Considerando (Alternate Side) [07-14]
• Kevin O'Connell Quartet Featuring Adam Brenner: Hot New York Minutes (Ignoramus Music) [05-15]

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