Weekend Roundup

Here in Wichita it's rained every day for a week with more coming tonight, tomorrow, the day after. We're up to 11.96 inches this month (2nd wettest May ever; annual average is 34 inches). Many rivers in southeastern Kansas have flooded -- my recent trip to Oklahoma was detoured when the Kansas State Turnpike went under water. Wichita used to flood regularly, and my home would surely be under water but for "the big ditch" -- a flood control project built in 1950-59. (See Beccy Tanner: 'Big Ditch Mitch' saved Wichita many times; also, David Guilliams: The Big Ditch: The Wichita-Valley Center Flood Control Project [PDF].) I've been reading up on this, not least because I haven't seen the rivers this high since 1966, when the Ditch spared Wichita (barely) an epochal flood that wiped out the Arkansas River dam in Lamar, CO, and flooded every other town on the river's path into Oklahoma and Arkansas. Reading Guilliams' history reminds me that we had politicians in the 1940s who were as short-sighted as the ones we have today, but I'll always be thankful they got outvoted. That Ditch was the best investment Wichita ever made. Without it I wouldn't be able to get around to this week's other stories.

Some scattered links this week:

• Nancy Altman: Donald Trump's sneak attack on social security.

• Phyllis Bennis: Foreign aid that costs an arm and a leg -- literally: "The US-funded Israeli military is shooting so many unarmed Palestinians that the UN is warning of an amputation crisis in Gaza."

• Alexia Fernández Campbell: How Trump's new immigration plan could hurt the economy.

• John Cassidy:

  • The political logic behind Nancy Pelosi's go-slow strategy on impeachment.

  • The Trump administration is selling out hundreds of millioms of cell-phone users.

• Jonathan Chait:

  • Laugh at Trump, sure -- but also watch what he's doing.

  • The new socialism panic is the right's trick to justify supporting Trump.

• Dave DeCamp:

  • US Army unpleasantly surprised after asking veterans about impact of serving. E.g.:

    Michael J Neel replied, "26 brothers dead. Only 8 in theater. Psyche ward myself after 3 attempts. Everything we accomplished in Mosul was wasted. Every life we gave was spat on. That's how serving impacted me." Veteran Drew Turner said, "Let's see. Lost the functional use of a hand, developed a rare movement disorder and cancer both likely from burn pit exposure, enjoy sleeping 3 to 4 hours most nights due to nightmares and during the day random anxiety attacks all due to PTSD, 7 herniated discs, arthritis . . ."

    Former Army Chaplain Bill Cork replied, "Given me memories of twelve soldiers who chose suicide, three killed in preventable rollovers, another dozen sexually assaulted, and lots of people and families broken by immoral acts in a war that won't end."

  • Pence promises combat to West Point class.

• Gaby Del Valle: The Harriet Tubman $20 bill was supposed to be unveiled in 2020. Now it might be delayed by almost a decade.

• Tom Engelhardt: Russia's election meddling is despicable, but don't forget our own.

• Dexter Filkins: John Bolton on the Warpath: One of America's more gullible war reporters, which lets him take Bolton more seriously than I would, offering a useful, respectful profile which nonetheless makes him even more disgusting than you imagined. Of particular interest are the details of how Bolton has made millions of dollars recently trying to stir up multiple wars.

• Lisa Friedman: EPA plans to get thousands of pollution deaths off the books by changing its math.

• David Frum: Trump's cover-up accelerates: "President Trump can only escalate. He cannot help it."

• Tara Golshan:

  • What Rep. Justin Amash's call for Trump's impeachment showed about the Republican Party. Related: Elaina Plott: How Trump broke the Freedom Caucus.

  • Congress's high-stakes budget fight to avert an economic crisis, explained: about budget caps and the debt limit, again.

• Ryan Goodman: Trump's position on the Mueller Report is legally ridiculous -- and dangerous.

• David A Graham:

  • A single scandal sums up all of Trump's failures: "The president has been intervening in the process of producing a border wall, on behalf of a favored firm."

  • Trump's impeachment finger trap: "With each stonewall and demand that Democrats drop investigations, the president is making it more likely that Congress will feel compelled to act."

• Maggie Haberman/Annie Karni: A would-be Trump aide's demands: a jet on call, a future cabinet post and more: Give him lots of perks and Kris Kobach would be willing to serve Trump as "immigration czar" (for a while).

• Umair Irfan: One of the largest environmental protests ever is underway. It's led by children. Most famously, Greta Thunberg, but she's not alone. I've seen sub-teens on Jimmy Kimmel explain the science better than most Democratic politicians, let alone Republicans (who don't try to explain anything). In an effort to reassert his relevance, Bill McKibben responded: It's not entirely up to the school students to save the world.

• Kalpana Jain: Indian PM Narendra Modi and his party just swept India's elections. Some more pieces on India's election:

  • Jonah Blank: How Hinduism became a political weapon in India.

  • Isaac Chotiner: An Indian political theorist on the triumph of Narenda Modi's Hindu nationalism.

  • Basav Sen: The terrifying implications of India's elections for people and the planet.

• Quinta Jurecic: Impeachment is a refusal to accept the unacceptable.

• Ed Kilgore:

  • Does Trump want to be impeached? That very thought has occurred to me. Bill Clinton actually got a bump in the polls out of being impeached. I don't recall anything similar with John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, or Richard Nixon, which is the company Trump will be joining. He may even think that in the Us-vs-Them world he imagines himself thriving in, that not getting impeached could be taken as not trying hard enough. Equally important, in taunting the Democratic House leadership, he may hope to show them up as weak and ineffective to their voter base. He's been campaigning hard since inauguration day. It seems to be the only thing he really cares about, so why not bet the farm? Maybe he even thinks there's a further endgame after the election. After all, I've also been wondering whether Erdogan wanted the failed coup that allowed him to purge his enemies in the military and the courts and consolidate his grip on power. It would be harder to pull that off in the US, but Trump's already broken numerous so-called "norms" as he's mocked and degraded our past notions of democracy.

  • Trump continues drive to protect religious-based discrimination.

• Jen Kirby:

  • Trump is sending 1,500 troops to the Middle East as the standoff with Iran continues.

  • Breit has finally brought down Theresa May. Well, not so fast: she will step aside as Conservative Party leader on June 7, but will stay as prime minister "until her successor is selected . . . without the need for a general election."

  • WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange indicted on 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act. Related: Masha Gessen: Charging Julian Assange under the Espionage Act is an attack on the first amendment; also Fred Kaplan: The charges against Julian Assange are appalling (even if you despise him); also this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial: Amend the Espionage Act: Public interest defenses must be allowed.

• Eric Kleefeld: Lindsey Graham proposes invading Venezuela to oust Maduro. He's citing Reagan's 1983 invasion of Grenada as a precedent, now (as then) citing Cuban influence as a cassus belli. On the other hand, whereas Grenada "had a population of less than 100,000 . . . Venezuela, on the other hand, has a population of a little over 28 million people, is lager than Texas, and has roughly 160,000 troops in its military." Graham also wants to send more troops to the Middle East, where he's up in arms against Iran. Warmongers like Graham and Bolton readily group Iran and Venezuela without ever mentioning the one thing they obviously have in common: before US sanctions crippled them, both were major oil exporters. The effect of taking their oil off the world market is to push prices (and oil company profits) up, or at least to keep those profits from falling as global demand shifts to renewables.

• Paul Krugman:

  • After Draghi (wonkish): On the economic situation in the Eurozone since 2008, or more positively since Mario Draghi became president of the European Central Bank.

  • Trump tantrums the Dems out of a trap.

• Claire Lampen: Trump v Pelosi: anatomy of a feud.

• Jill Lepore: Confessions of a presidential candidate: "How the political memoir evolved."

• Eric Levitz: Moderate Democrats' delusions of 'prudence' will kill us all. This is in response to an op-ed by "moderate Democrat" Greg Weiner: It's not always the end of the world ("political prudence isn't in vogue, but it should be"). I can see both sides of this debate, but that's mostly because both are illuminated by the raging wildfires deliberately set by the Republican far-right. Right now, I think the balance of evidence favors Levitz, on two counts: the sheer amount of destruction caused by Republicans in power, and the lack of positive results from recent efforts by prudent Democrats (e.g., Obama).

• Dylan Matthews: The Fed's bad predictions are hurting us.

• Ella Nilsen:

  • Democrats in Congress are getting things done. Trump and Republicans are just ignoring them.

  • Trump wants everyone to know he is extremely calm and Pelosi is the "crazy" one: "Trump called himself a 'very stable genius,' after Pelosi suggested his family or staff should have an 'intervention'."

• Anna North:

  • Missouri governor signs 8-week abortion ban: "The law, which is likely to be challenged in court, contains no exceptions for rape or incest."

  • Alabama's abortion ban is being challenged in court by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.

  • This is what it was like to perform abortions before Roe.

• Robert O'Harrow Jr/Shawn Boburg: A conservative activist's behind-the-scenes campaign to remake the nation's courts: "Leonard Leo helped conservative nonprofits raise $250 million from mostly undisclosed donors in recent years to promote conservative judges and causes."

• Nicole Perlroth/Scott Shane: In Baltimore and beyond, a stolen NSA tool wreaks havoc. With David E Sanger, the authors also reported: How Chinese spies got the NSA's hacking tools, and used them for attacks; also: Security breach and spilled secrets have shaken the NSA to its core: gives them more credit for conscience than they deserve. America's cyberwarriors aren't the first to fail to appreciate what happens when other "warriors" learn to do what they do.

• Katha Pollitt: How the right to legal abortion changed the arc of all women's lives.

• John Quiggin: Australia isn't doing its part for the global climate. Sooner or later we'll have to pay our share. Last week's elections kicked this can further down the road. Quiggin has a new book out, Economics in Two Lessons, explaining where markets work, and where they don't.

• Robert Reich: Trump's wrecking ball assaults American government. Luckily, it is strongly built. I think a big part of Reagan's popularity came from the fact that he couldn't do much short-term damage, even though that was plainly the intent of his program. Democrats controlled Congress most of the time, and liberals dominated the courts. Reagan indulged many people's prejudices, saying things that flattered his base and riled them up against supposed enemies, yet the real consequences of his presidency -- the destruction of the labor movement, the major shift toward ever-greater inequality, undermining civil rights while ramping up mass incarceration, the embrace of militarism and the withdrawal from international cooperation, the end of equal time and the takeover of politics by big money -- only gradually became evident (not that they explicit about their goals, but because most people didn't take the threat seriously). Of course, it became harder to overlook the cumulative effect of Reagan and later waves of conservative activism under the Bushes and Trump. Reich is probably right that the US political system still moderates the extremism of Republican presidents -- although it's been much more effective at neutering reformist impulses by Democrats -- yet clearly we are losing ground.

• Brian Resnick: Trump's hasty plan to get Americans back on the moon by 2020, explained. Worth noting that there is more at stake than just Trumpian ego. See Rivka Galchen: The race to develop the moon.

• Aaron Rupar:

  • Trump's interest in pardoning troops accused of war crimes, explained: "The military doesn't want these pardons. But Fox News does." Of course, the number of US troops who have been prosecuted for war crimes is a sad little joke, but the military brass still defends what they did because they need to maintain at least some discipline within the ranks. For more on this, see Ed Kilgore: Military brass warn Trump against Memorial Day pardons for war criminals.

  • Attorney General William Barr dining at the Trump hotel is a bad look: "Barr was photographed at the Trump International on a night when it hosted a pro-Trump Super PAC."

  • Trump's bizarre Rose Garden news conference on impeachment, explained.

• Michael S Schmidt/Julian E Barnes: Trump's targeting of intelligence agencies gains a harder edge. Trump directed Attorney General William Barr to investigate anyone who thought that the Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia in 2016, starting with the FBI and potentially going deeper into the CIA and the broader "intelligence community," and he's given Barr authority to declassify any secret documents he finds along the way (see: Trump gives Barr power to declassify US secrets in review of Russia probe). This extraordinary politicization of the Justice Department is obviously disturbing, but thus far most of the pushback has come from the intelligence agencies, who prefer to operate in secret, with little or no oversight -- e.g., Chuck Ross: Ex-CIA officials fume about declassification order, ignoring previous leaks of secret sources and methods. Also see: Natasha Bertrand: Trump puts DOJ on crash course with intelligence agencies.

• Dylan Scott: Congress wants to stop surprise medical bills. But they have one big problem left to solve.

• Mark Joseph Stern: The Trump administration releases its plan to let health care providers refuse to treat transgender people: This is getting real petty. Nor is this all. See: Camille Baker: The Trump administration wants to make it harder for transgender people to access homeless shelters.

• Matt Taibbi:

  • Avenatti, Wohl and the Krassensteins prove political media is a huckster's paradise.

  • We've hit a new low in campaign hit pieces: "Recent efforts to sandbag Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard are crude repeats of behaviors that helped elect Trump in 2016." Takes particular exception to a piece titled "Tulsi Gabbard is the top candidate of traitors."

• Alex Ward:

  • The US may use a loophole to sell billions in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

  • The Pentagon's plan to send up to 10,000 troops to the Middle East is about Iran.

  • "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh's controversial release from prison, explained. I recall thinking that his original 20-year sentence was a gross miscarriage of justice, enabled by a whipped-up war hysteria, which evidently hasn't gone away -- just calcified into prejudice. But my view was based more on what I know about the US than the virtually nothing I know about Lindh. For more on him, see: Graeme Wood: I wrote to John Walker Lindh. He wrote back.

  • Democrats are accusing Trump officials of inflating the Iran threat.

• Robin Wright: Does trump have an off-ramp on Iran? i doubt he even wants one, nor is he likely to show any interest on wright's history lesson. it looks to me like the conflict with iran is nothing more than a favor to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE -- all of which know how to push his buttons and stroke him with gifts. Moreover, he is incapable of seeing potential downsides, or even risk. Challenging him, or calling his bluff, would be unthinkable. He might even say suicidal.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • The controversy over WeWork's $47 billion valuation and impending IPO, explained.

  • Holding Trump accountable is a pocketbook issue: After reviewing Trump's own history of cheating his contractors, note this:

    Trump, as president, is acting in line with his own predilection for alleged corporate criminals.

    • While Obama's Environmental Protection Agency sought a $4.8 million fine from Syngenta Seeds for poisoning workers with pesticides, Trump's EPA settled for $150,000.
    • Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined a man $1 for allegedly swindling veterans out of their pensions -- also extracting from him a promise not to do it again.
    • In February 2018, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission settled with three major banks that had engaged in illegal market manipulation -- charging them a financial penalty but requiring no admission of wrongdoing and waiving "bad actor" penalties that would have impaired their ability to do business in the future.

    The specific dynamics of each agency and each industry are, of course, unique.

    But the basic pattern is the same -- under lax enforcement, crime basically pays. You might not get caught, and even if you do get caught, the monetary penalties will not create a meaningful deterrent to future misconduct. . . . The overall problem, in other words, is much larger in scope than Trump. But Trump is part of the problem. Not only is he emblematic, as a business leader, of the cost of inadequate enforcement, but he's also someone who clearly favors inadequate enforcement as a matter of principle and appoints regulators who make the problem worse.

  • What we know so far about Trump's tax returns, explained.

  • Men and women have similar views on abortion.

  Yglesias also has a piece called Daenerys was right: King's Landing had to burn, which goes to great lengths to try to rationalize the indiscriminate fire-bombing of the capitol of Westeros. I understand the impulse to try to take a contrary view, especially counter to those who casually impose their contemporary political prejudices on such a fantasy landscape, but Yglesias overlooks some pretty obvious clues (like the Daenerys speech to her troops where she vows to conquer/liberate all of Westeros and Essos -- a speech that the actress claims she studied Hitler for, but which sounded more to me like Napoleon), as well as a couple of much more fundamental problems. What always turned me off in Game of Thrones was its unquestioned bedrock belief in hereditary aristocracy, and its correlative commitment to war. Without having read the books, I gather that Martin is completely opposed to both, but rather than constructing cardboard characters for us to root for (in the vain hope that good will ultimately triumph over evil), he exposes the foundations by showing how every character is corrupted and disgraced by inequality and violence. That Yglesias winds up rooting for a strong and fearsome ruler shows how much he's willing to compromise.

• Gary Younge: Shocked by the rise of the right? Then you weren't paying attention. Young blames "endemic racism and unfairness" -- I take the latter to mean inequality and the business practices that increase it.

• Li Zhou:

  • One House Republican is holding up $19 billion in disaster aid funding.

  • The Senate finally approved a disaster aid package with $1.4 billion for Puerto Rico: "Trump has been a big reason for the delay in disaster relief . . . The fallout of this delay is staggering.".

  • Poll: Most Americans disapprove of the Alabama abortion ban.

Daily Log

From Greg Tate, on Facebook, comment reply to Allen Lowe question about Gary Davis:

A friend who speaks six languages fluently (including Arabic and Polish) told that in her mind its all one language. The Black American creative tradition is by necessity that of the auto-didact but on a deeper level its also one of people who couldn't afford to only be great at one thing or the luxury of compartmentalizing the world. The major innovators seem to be more inter-dimensional than the rest of us in mind body and spirit--You get the sense that All of Life is one language to them. Which is to say they are more West African than Cartesian how they integrate the world outside with the world inside. Nothing exemplifies this more to me than Davis saying he thought he heard a brass band the first time he heard a guitar. Which suggests his artistic high bar when he started playing wasn't mere competency but to make people feel like they too were experiencing a marching band projecting out of a guitar. Methinks we do a disservice to these innovative artists when we think they were only trying to work out mechanics--they were acquiring complex technique to reproduce MAGIC.

Susan Brown posted this on Facebook, crediting Gary Moss. It may be the single most horrific thing I've read all year:

i wish everyone would read this

94 yr old Kissinger takes on Trump

Recently, Henry Kissinger did an interview and said vary amazing things regarding President Trump. He starts with: "Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen before"! The former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gives us a new understanding of President Donald Trump's foreign policy and predicts its success:

"Liberals and all those who favor (Hillary) Clinton will never admit it. They will never admit that he is the one true leader. The man is doing changes like never before and does all of it for the sake of this nation's people. After eight years of tyranny, we finally see a difference."

Kissinger knows it and he continues with:

."Every country now has to consider two things: One, their perception that the previous president, or the outgoing president, basically withdrew America from international politics, so that they had to make their own assessments of their necessities.

And secondly, that there is a new president who's asking a lot of unfamiliar questions. And because of the combination of the partial vacuum and the new questions, one could imagine that something remarkable and new emerges out of it.

Then Kissinger puts it bluntly:

"Trump puts America and its people first. This is why people love him and this is why he will remain in charge for so long. There is not a single thing wrong with him and people need to open their eyes." When he boasts that he has a "bigger red button" than Kim Jung Un does, he so transcends the mealy-mouthed rhetoric of the past, thereby forcing a new recognition of American power.

Kissinger once wrote:

"The weak grow strong by effrontery - The strong grow weak through inhibition!" No sentence better captures the U.S.-North Korea relationship.

Trump is discarding the inhibitions and calling the bluff on North Korea's effrontery: His point is that the contrast of American retreat under Obama and its new assertion of power under Trump creates a new dynamic that every one of our allies and of our enemies must consider.

Our allies grew complacent with Obama's passivity and now are fearful due to Trump's activism. And they must balance the two in developing their policies:

They realize that the old assumptions, catalyzed by Bush 43's preoccupation with Iraq and Obama's refusal to lead are obsolete. So, Trump is forcing a new calculus with a new power behind American interests. Those - here and abroad - who rode the old apple cart worry about its being toppled.

But, as Kissinger so boldly stated: "Trump is the one true leader in world affairs and he is forcing policy changes that put America first!"

This is the most accurate statement of what the American Citizens who live outside of the swamp want and expect from their government.

I like the list of 13 things that I, as a senior American citizen, want. Trump is at least talking about issues that most Americans are concerned about.

My mantra about Trump is this: Truthfully, We are in agreement with most of what he says. We are getting older and our tickers aren't what they used to be, but what matters is that he covers most of the 13 things we as seniors want, at least I do for sure

1. Hillary: held accountable for her previous wrongs!
2. Put "GOD" back in America!
3. Borders: Closed or tightly guarded!
4. Congress: On the same retirement & healthcare plans as everybody else
5. Congress: Obey its own laws NOW!
6. Language: English!
7. Culture: Constitution and the Bill of Rights!
8. Drug-Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before & during Welfare!
9. Freebies: NONE to Non-Citizens
10. Budget: Balanced
11. Foreign Countries: Stop giving them our money! Charge them for our help! We need it here.
12. Term limits for congress
13. "RESPECT OUR MILITARY AND OUR FLAG!" And our law enforcement. DRAIN THE SWAMP!

Further down, Susan offered this meme:

First Lady Melania Trump has sent out a request for prayers for our president. Let us be a shield for him as he fights for us.

Further down, she links to an AP News piece on Alabama's "near-total abortion ban," presumably favorably. But a commenter picked up another tweet, from Stephanie Wittels Wachs, which is on target:

Make no mistake - a state that criminalizes abortion but ranks 50th in public education doesn't give a shit about children.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, May archive (in progress).

Music: current count 31518 [31498] rated (+20), 252 [249] unrated (+3).

Rated count well down this week. Wednesday through Friday got totally wiped out, starting with a dental appointment, then shopping for dinner on Friday, then marathon cooking. Zhanna Pataki and I made a blini feast. I found a Russian grocery store in Tulsa the previous week, and picked up a pound of salmon caviar ("Alaskan rubies") and three whole schmaltz herring. The latter went, one each, into sour cream sauce, mustard sauce, and Estonian potato salad (with golden beets, apple, and ham (actually, Canadian bacon). Other side salads: poached cod with horseradish sauce, cucumbers in sour cream, green bean and walnut, carrot and garlic. I got a couple of salmon filets and salted them. I made two loaves of rye bread (only disappointment: came out dense and dry, probably because the dough was, or maybe I just don't know how to properly knead bread; anyway, the expensive Breville food processor wasn't up to the task). For dessert, I made a light sponge cake, and topped it with strawberries and whipped cream (recipe called for smetana, but I didn't allow myself enough time to make my own -- probably should have bought some in Tulsa, when I had the chance). I just now realized that I had brought a jar of eggplant caviar back from Tulsa but failed to serve it. Dinner was spectacular, and exhausting.

A couple weeks ago I learned that Ani DiFranco has written a memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream. She grew up in Buffalo, and was close to my cousin's family there, so I have some kind of personal interest in her story, and I've been aware of her musical career from near the beginning. Then last week I noticed her No Walls: Mixtape on Napster, so delved a bit deeper. I read what I could from Google's excerpt, while listening to Mixtape -- unplugged remakes of 25+ years of remarkable songs -- and a couple other items I had missed that I found on her Bandcamp. Stopped short of the bootlegs, although one of my favorites (and one of the best places to start with her) is the live Living in Clip. I was especially pleased that after panning most of her recent albums with Todd Sickafoose I enjoyed Red Letter Year so much. I wrote about her in [The New] Rolling Stone Album Guide. A current grade list is here.

Robert Christgau reviewed Epic Beard Men this week, along with two records by Quelle Chris that I had already reviewed. I gave Guns another spin, enjoyed it, but left my grade at B+(***). For whatever it's worth, I've graded A- all four of Strut's Nigeria 70 compilations. I couldn't begin to rank them, other than to note that I have the CDs to the first, and played one out of my travel case while cooking last week. I doubt any are as good as the best King Sunny Adé albums, or the second edition of The Rough Guide to Highlife, but the new one hits the exact same pleasure centers, and that was good enough for me.

The Ray Charles comp was the one I skipped when reviewing his Atlantics last week. It's the one you'd most likely buy if you're reluctant to get the entire 3-CD box (The Birth of Soul). Not sure why I didn't grade it as high as the box or two of the source albums, other than that I didn't give it a lot of time. I'm still bothered that we don't have the ABC albums available for streaming. And I will note that one problem with virtually every "greatest hit" collection from that period is the mandatory inclusion of two hideous Beatles covers. Compilers don't always pick the best songs, so that may be what's slightly off about the Rhino Atlantic Best Of.

Best jazz album of the week was the first 2019 Clean Feed release I've found on Napster. They've sometimes been hard to search out, but until this year all of their releases have been available for streaming, which lately has saved me the hassle of downloading. Not everything that's come out is available yet, but I'm glad to get what I can. I'll try to catch up in coming weeks. (There are a couple more on this week's list, as well as one where the musician sent me the CD -- thanks for that favor.)

New records reviewed this week:

• Charlie Apicella & Iron City: Groove Machine (2018 [2019], OA2): [cd]: B+(*)
• Camp Cope: How to Socialise & Make Friends (2018, Run for Cover): [r]: B+(***)
• Ani DiFranco: No Walls: Mixtape (2019, Righteous Babe): [r]: A-
• Epic Beard Men: Season 1 (2018, Strange Famous): [r]: B+(**)
• Epic Beard Men: This Was Supposed to Be Fun (2019, Strange Famous): [r]: A-
• The Fictive Five: Anything Is Possible (2018 [2019], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(**)
• John Hart: Crop Circles (2017 [2019], SteepleChase): [r]: B+(**)
• Fred Hersch & the WDR Big Band: Begin Again (2019, Palmetto): [cd]: B+(*)
• Jørgen Mathisen's Instant Light: Mayhall's Object (2018 [2019], Clean Feed): [r]: A-
• The Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: Along for the Ride (2018 [2019], Summit): [cd]: B
• Yoko Miwa Trio: Keep Talkin' (2019, Ocean Blue Tear Music): [cd]: B+(***)
• Priests: The Seduction of Kansas (2019, Sister Polygon): [r]: B+(***)
• Scheen Jazzorkester & Thomas Johansson: «As We See It . . . » (2019, Clean Feed): [cd]: B+(***)
• The Selva: Canicula Rosa (2018 [2019], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(**)
• Senyawa: Sujud (2018, Sublime Frequencies): [bc]: B+(***)
• Marcus Shelby Orchestra: Transitions (2017 [2019], MSO): [cd]:B+(*)
• Rodney Whitaker: Common Ground: The Music of Gregg Hill (2017 [2019], Origin): [cd]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Nigeria 70: No Wahala: Highlife, Afro-Funk & Juju 1973-1987 (1973-87 [2019], Strut): [bc]: A-

Old music:

• Ray Charles: The Best of Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years (1951-59 [1994], Rhino): [r]: A-
• Ani DiFranco: Red Letter Year (2008, Righteous Babe): [bc]: A-
• Ani DiFranco: Binary (2017, Righteous Babe): [r]: B+(*)
• Larry Ochs: The Fictive Five (2015, Tzadik): [bc]: B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Luke Gillespie: Moving Mists (Patois)
• Ryan Keberle & Catharsis: The Hope I Hold (Greenleaf Music): June 28
• Doug MacDonald: Califournia Quartet (self-released)
• Matt Mitchell: Phalanx Ambassadors (Pi)
• Samo Salamon & Freequestra: Free Sessions, Vol. 2: Freequestra (Sazas/Klopotec)
• Samo Salamon/Szilárd Mezei/Jaka Berger: Swirling Blind Unstilled (Klopotec)
• The Dave Wilson Quartet: One Night at Chris' (self-released): May 27

Weekend Roundup

Ran a day late on this one, partly because I went long on the intro, but also because I found so many links in my early trawl through the usual sources I wasn't able to finish my rounds, then found even more when I tried to wrap up. I'm sure it's always the case that an extra day or two to let the words settle and go back and restructure would be useful, but I've rarely felt that more than this week.

Abortion became a much hotter political issue last week, with the passage and signing of a law in Alabama which criminalizes abortion in all cases except when it is necessary to save the life of the woman, with doctors risking prison terms of up to 99 years if their call on life-saving is disputed. Much focus on this particular law centers on the lack of any exclusion for rape and incest, which most people agree would be reasonable grounds for abortion. (As Phil Freeman tweeted: "Your first mistake was assuming old white men in Alabama were against rape and incest.") But the Alabama law is just one of many state laws Republicans have been pushing lately, all aimed at relitigating Roe v. Wade in the Trump-packed Supreme Court. (E.g., The "heartbeat" bills that could ban almost all abortions, passed in four states including Ohio and Georgia, and coming soon in Missouri; still more draconian bills are in the works, such as A Texas bill would allow the death penalty for patients who get abortions.)

I'll start this off by quoting from a Facebook post by a relative of mine in Arkansas, Marianne Cowan Pyeatt, offering an unvarnished glimpse of what anti-abortion Republicans are telling themselves:

All of a sudden we are supposed to believe that millions and millions of aborted babies are the result of rape and not just a lack of responsibility to use birth control or face the consequences if you can't even be adult enough to take precautions. We all know that the reason they can't make exceptions for rape is because every women would lie and claim to be raped to get an abortion. There are morning after pills for real rape victims or they can give the child away. No one says they have to keep them. And the fact that this is even being debated is because all the people who did very little for decades when they could forget what was going on in those clinics are suddenly facing a world where full-term babies can be murdered at birth. YOU stupid liberals have taken it SO FAR that no decent person can ignore it any longer. And we aren't so stupid as to believe that only abortion of a baby could "save the mother's life" in medical emergencies . . . we know delivery is many, many times faster. At that point, if it dies, at least you tried and the mother is "saved" from her life-threatening condition with no murder involved. I find it hilarious that in insisting on that last frontier of killing babies right up to birth has finally given people the resolve to take a stand and right a wrong.

One thing this shows is that the fight over abortion rights is being fought at the margins, with both sides seeking maximalist positions, although there is nothing symmetrical about the conflict. There is only one fanatical side to this issue: those who, like Marianne here, want to ban all abortions. No one on the opposite side -- and I am about as opposite as anyone gets -- wants to terminate all pregnancies. Rather, we understand that pregnancy is a complicated issue that affects women in many different ways, and that there are some circumstances where some women feel they would be better off with an abortion. We believe that this should be a free and responsible choice, and to make this a real choice for all women requires that we isolate it from the encumbrances of government regulation and economic pressure.

I've long thought that conservatives and libertarians should be strong supporters of abortion rights. Libertarians cherish freedom, and freedom is the ability to make free choices -- among which one of the most important is whether to bear and raise children. Not everyone who wants children is able to have them, but safe abortion at least makes it possible to choose not to have children. As for conservatives, they always stress the responsibilities parenthood infers. It would be perverse if they did not allow those who felt themselves unable to assume the responsibility of raising children the option of not having them. Indeed, in the past have sometimes wanted to impose limits on the fertility of those they deemed unfit to raise children (e.g., the forced sterilization of the eugenics movement). Consequently, the hard turn of Republicans against free access to abortion and birth control has always struck me as bad faith: a political ploy, initially to capture votes of Catholics and Southern Baptists, who had traditionally voted Democratic. I first noticed this in Bob Dole's 1972 Senate campaign, and I never forgave him for politicizing the issue. (He was being challenged by William Roy, a ob/gyn who had occasionally performed abortions, which were legal in Kansas well before Roe v. Wade. Until that time Kansas Democrats were more likely to be anti-abortion than Republicans. Using abortion as a partisan tactic may have started with Nixon's 1972 "silent majority"/"southern strategy." It was especially successful in Missouri. See How abortion became a partisan issue in America.)

Abortion rights are desirable if there are any circumstances where abortion is a reasonable choice. Most people recognize rape and incest as valid reasons, as well as the health of the woman and/or the fetus. Beyond that there arise lots of possible economic and psychological concerns, which can only really be answered by the woman (with the advice of anyone she chooses to consult). We generally, if not always consistently, recognize that our freedom is rooted in a right to privacy. Since a decision to terminate has no broader repercussions, there is no good reason for the government to get involved. (One might argue that a decision not to terminate might concern the state, in that it would wind up paying for the child's education and health care, but no one who supports abortion rights is seeking that sort of oversight. China's "one child" policy is an example, but no one here is arguing for the state to enforce such a thing.)

Regardless of how cynical Republican leaders were when they jumped on the anti-abortion bandwagon, they learned to love it because it dovetailed with the prejudices and fears they exploited (Jason Stanley has a handy list, in his recent book, How Fascism Works), while doing little to detract from their main objective: making the rich richer, and building a political machine to keep the riches coming. (Thomas Frank, in his 2004 book What's the Matter With Kansas?, tried to expose their two-faced cynicism, but he wound up only agitating the anti-abortion mobsters into demanding more results for their votes.) Marianne's post is full of such prejudices, even while she tries to paper over others. But while the first line refers to the Alabama law, she'd rather turn the tables by accusing "stupid liberals" of wanting to kill babies the instant before birth. That would be a symmetrically opposite point of view, but even if legal it's not a real something anyone would do.

Some links on the Alabama law and the assault on abortion rights:

• Zeeshan Aleem: Trump and top Republicans distance themselves from Alabama's controversial abortion law. I take this as evidence it's polling very badly. Trump has never put much thought into abortion, and probably doesn't care, as strange as that seems given how much impact he has had on the issue. Back in 2016, he was asked whether women who sought abortions should be prosecuted, and he guessed they should. That was one of the very few instances where he took back a statement -- something he never did when criticized for sympathizing with Nazis and other racists, or spouting his own racist slurs on immigrants and "shithole countries." Those are things he has deep convictions about. Anti-abortion is just something he has to play along with because the base expects it.

• Jane Coaston: Why some anti-abortion conservatives think Alabama's abortion law goes too far.

• Elizabeth Dias/Sabrina Tavernise/Alan Blinder: 'This is a wave': inside the network of anti-abortion activists winning across the country.

• Ruth Graham: Why the anti-abortion movement stopped making allowances for rape and incest.

• Sarah Jones: Abortion is morally good:

  Were I still Evangelical, and still longed to end abortion, I'd have many reasons to celebrate. When your enemies pick up your arguments and tolerate your allies in their midst, you can be relatively confident that you've achieved the social and political dominance that you've worked toward for years. Milano and the DCCC have walked directly into a trap that abortion opponents set for them, and they don't even seem to realize what they've done. Anything less but the prioritization of women over the pregnancies they carry cedes ground the left cannot afford to lose.

• Katherine Kelaidis: I'm an anti-abortion Christian. But Alabama's ban will do more harm than good.

• Lili Loofbourow: The GOP has its final anti-abortion victory in sight: "Stripping voter rights. Rigging the Supreme Court. Dull procedural tricks. It's all paying off at once."

• Anna North, who also wrote the three articles linked above:

  • Elizabeth Warren just announced her abortion platform. It's aggressive. This is all good, and I can think of a few more details. Abortion is a civil right, and it's long been recognized that it is the prerogative of federal law to protect the people against state and local laws that undermine civil rights. Beyond that, I'd like to see the Veterans Administration offer abortions at their facilities everywhere. I also think that it should be understood that anyone who claims "abortion is murder" is practicing hate speech. I don't see any way to ban that, but it should be disparaged.

  • Abortion in America, explained in 10 facts.

  • Abortion is still legal in America.

  • Alabama just passed a near-total ban on abortion: "Though likely to be challenged in court, it's the strictest anti-abortion law in the country."

• Renee Bracey Sherman: Recent abortion bans will impact poor people and people of color most.

• Rickie Solinger: Alabama's near-total abortion ban is the ultimate elevation of the "unborn" over women.

• Jeffrey Toobin: The abortion fight and the pretense of precedent.

• Rachel Withers: Most Alabama voters don't support their state's exemption-free abortion ban.

Some scattered links this week:

• Alexia Fernández Campbell: Farmers are losing patience with Trump's trade war.

• John Cassidy:

  • More questions than answers about Boeing, the 737 Max, and the FAA: "Boeing bears a lot of responsibility for the two recent 737 Max plane crashes, and it is now facing numerous inquiries, but the Federal Aviation Administration is also culpable."

  • The stock market intrudes on the alternate reality of Trump's trade war. Not that the stock market, which basically measures corporate profits, is a useful guide to how this affects American consumers, let alone workers.

• Patrick Cockburn: Trump is making the same US mistake in the Middle East yet again.

• Helene Cooper/Edward Wong: Skeptical US allies resist Trump's new claims of threats from Iran. Meanwhile, the lame-brains in the Trump administration get carried away: see Eric Schmitt/Julian E Barnes: White House reviews military plans against Iran, in echoes of Iraq War. They're talking about deploying 120,000 troops, which seems like a lot but is actually the same number they used in 2003 to do such a bang-up job in Iraq -- a country about one-third the size of Iran (both in area and in population). For more details, see Fred Kaplan: War with Iran wouldn't be like Iraq: "It would be worse."

• Chas Danner:

  • Justin Amash becomes first GOP lawmaker to say Trump should be impeached, and will probably be the only one for a long time (although sometimes I wonder if Trump isn't just baiting the Democrats to impeach him, thinking he'll get a re-election bounce like Clinton did). PS: David Beavers: Romney: GOP congressman's call for impeachment 'a courageous statement', although Romney stopped short of exhibiting any courage of his own.

  • Trump wants to make war criminals great again. Also: Ed Kilgore reminds us that Nixon pardoned Lt. William Calley, the officer in charge of the My Lai massacre: Will Trump go Nixonian with clemency for war criminals? On the other hand, then and now the real war criminals never even get charged. They go on to have lucrative careers, like Henry Kissinger did. Also: Dave Phillips: Trump may be preparing pardons for servicemen accused of war crimes.

• David Dayen: The secret vote that could wipe away consumer rights.

• Isabel Debre/Raphael Satter: Facebook busts Israel-based campaign to disrupt elections.

• Sydney Ember: 'I did my best to stop American foreign policy': Bernie Sanders on the 1980s.

• Nicholas Fandos/Maggie Haberman: House panel investigates obstruction claims against Trump lawyers.

• David A Farenthold/Jonathan O'Connell: Trump's prized Doral resort is in steep decline, according to company documents, showing his business problems are mounting.

• John Feffer: Bolton in Wonderland: "The only upside to Bolton's dangerous aggression toward Iran is that it may put him too far out in front of Trump."

• Elaine Frantz: America's long, rich history of pretending systemic racism doesn't exist.

• Conor Friedersdorf: America needs a permanent anti-war movement: "Public apathy toward relatively small-scale military actions makes war with Iran more likely." Actually, most cities have anti-war organizations, but they don't get enough support, especially as we're swamped with domestic crises and more attention is paid to conventional politics (because Republicans are so bad more people in their desperation support Democrats).

• Tara Golshan: Elizabeth Warren's new policy rollout targets Pentagon corruption.

• Umair Irfan: Fossil fuels are underpriced by a whopping $5.2 trillion: "We can't take on climate change without properly pricing coal, oil, and natural gas. But it's a huge political challenge."

• Matthew Karnitschnig: Austrian government collapses over Russia scandal.

• Ezra Klein: Countervailing powers: the forgotten economic idea Democrats need to rediscover. Klein is right that hardly anyone uses the term these days, but I grew up with it, and still refer to it often. I'm not sure where I got the idea, but Klein starts with John Kenneth Galbraith's 1952 book, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power. The idea is to build up multiple sources of power to work against the abuses that follow from concentrations of wealth and power. (The maxim I learned alongside this was "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.") Klein also cites a recent book, Tim Wu's The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.

• Andy Kroll: Springtime for autocrats: "How Trump just legitimized one of Europe's most anti-democratic leaders." Hungary's Viktor Orbán visits the White House.

• Anatoly Kurmanev: Venezuela's collapse is the worst outside of war in decades, economists say.

• Mark Landler/Maggie Haberman/Eric Schmitt: Trump tells Pentagon chief he does not want war with Iran. This was the story which led Steven Colbert to exclaim, "I hope this doesn't get taken out of context, but thank God Donald Trump is president." Before I give Trump any credit on this score, I want to see him fire John Bolton, and tweet about how Bolton's been subverting his efforts to get along peacefully with the world. Even then, the fact that he hired Bolton never boded well.

• Eric Levitz:

  • EPA science said Trump's coal rule would kill 1,400. So the EPA ditched science.

  • Trump: E-Verify would make it too hard to hire undocumented workers.

• German Lopez: The House just passed a sweeping LGBTQ rights bill.

• Madeline Marshall: Why prescription drugs cost more in America: Video. Also a link to Sarah Kliff: The true story of America's sky-high prescription drug prices.

• Barbara McQuade: William Barr delivers chilling message to FBI for Trump. "If you come at the king, you best not miss"?

• David Miliband: On refugees, the Trump administration is competent and malevolent.

• Rani Molla: President Trump's new immigration proposal would be terrible for tech.

• Casey Newton: Trump's social media bias reporting project is a data collection tool in disguise: "Instead of cracking down on violent extremism, the government is collecting email addresses."

• James Petras: United States and Venezuela: a historical background.

• Thomas Powers: The fog of ambition: Review of George Packer: Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.

• Robert Reich: The Trump economy is hurting most Americans. Statistics won't fool voters.

• Joe Romm: Bezos offers absurd and hypocritical reason for his massive space plan: He thinks we have to sustain economic growth indefinitely, even beyond the carrying capacity of Earth, which can only be done by escaping into space. Which I suppose means he can't imagine post-capitalism, even though there are dozens of books on the subject, and dozens more on sustainable economies. Maybe he should drop in on a local book store? His scheme would be deemed so crackpot he could never get funding from government let alone banks, but seeing as he's on track to become Earth's first trillionaire, we're tempted to take him seriously. That is an irony of capitalism: sometimes a blessing, sometimes a farce.

• Brian M Rosenthal: 'They were conned': how reckless loans devastated a generation of taxi drivers. Or what happens when you allow a secondary market for a limited number of licenses.

• Aaron Rupar:

  • Trump gives up the game he's playing with Congress during Fox News interview: "Trump admits he's relying on the courts -- not Congress -- to change policy."

  • Trump's reckless "treason" accusation against the FBI, explained.

  • Trump pardons billionaire fraudster who wrote glowing book about him: Conrad Black, "a former media mogul and business partner," convicted for fraud and obstruction of justice, author of a 2016 piece "Trump is the good guy," the pardon citing his "tremendous contributions to business, as well as to political and historical thought." Also pardoned at the same time, Patrick Nolan. (See Aaron Blake: The very political pattern of Trump's pardons.) The latter article has a number of examples, notably Dinesh D'Souza, convicted for campaign finance fraud, author of a number of awful books and films, inventor of the "angry Kenyan" Obama theory.

• Richard Silverstein:

  • US-Iran standoff: Iran 1-US 0.

  • Ignore the propaganda: A US war against Iran would be a costly mistake.

  • Bolton sounds drumbeat of war based on tenuous Israeli claim of Iran threat.

• Matt Taibbi: The liberal embrace of war: "American interventionists learned a lesson from Iraq: pre-empt the debate. Now everyone is for regime change." He seems to have jumped the gun here, for while the liberal media heads he cites (e.g., Rachel Maddow) readily echoed the Bolton line on Venezuela and Iran, actual Democratic politicians have been less eager to topple foreign regimes. Jonathan Chait points this out: Taibbi's 'liberal embrace of war' screed cites zero liberals embracing war. I'd score that one for Chait, although I don't fault Taibbi's worries about Democrats enabling Republican warmongering. As for the "liberal" media, also see: James North: US mainstream media is contributing to rising risk of war with Iran. Nor is Chait above concocting his own shady, twisted titles: Bernie Sanders wants to destroy the best schools poor urban kids have. He means charter schools, which only succeed (relatively) in places where public schools have been grossly neglected (partly by politicians moving funds to charter schools). For more on Sanders' plan, see Dylan Scott: Bernie Sanders rolls out education plan that cracks down on charter schools; also Nikhil Goyal: Bernie's plan to save public schools.

• Alex Ward:

  • 9 questions about the scary US-Iran standoff you were too embarrassed to ask.

  • Trump vows to bring about "the official end of Iran" if it threatens the US again.

  • Trump's crackdown on China's Huawei is escalating the trade war.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • An expert's 7 principles for solving America's housing crisis.

  • The raging controversy over Ronald Sullivan, Harvey Weinstein, and Harvard, explained.

  • Bernie Sanders and AOC's plan to crack down on high-interest loans, explained: They call it the Stop Loan Sharks Act, by capping interest on things like credit cards at 15% (still sounds high to me).

  • Trump's puzzling trade war with China, sort of explained: Useful survey of Trump's side of the tariff war, credits Trump with more smarts than the evidence suggests: "Precisely because the trade war is an inherently lose-lose situation, any possible resolution of it is a win." But that assumes that the trade war will end some day, and that everyone will have forgotten about the costs of starting it.

  • Joe Biden's surprisingly controversial claim that Trump is an aberration, explained. Cites some critiques:

    • Peter Beinart: Unlike his rivals, Biden sees Trump as an aberration.

    • Mehdi Hasan: Joe Biden won't blame the Republicans for Trump. That should disqualify him.

    • Jamil Smith: We need a disunity ticket: "No, a Biden-Romney union would not bring this country together."

    • Michael Tomasky: Someone tell Joe Biden it's not 1973 anymore, the Republican Party now belongs to Trump.

  There's an interesting chart here showing that only a quarter of Clinton's ads primarily centered on policy, "a much lower number than any previous 21st-century campaign." That slack was made up by attacking Trump personally, trying to isolate him from the Republican Party, which not only didn't do Clinton much good, it also didn't help Democrats down ticket. Compare that to 2018, when Democrats focused on policy issues (like health care).

• Li Zhou:

  • Kamala Harris wants public defenders to get paid as much as prosecutors.

  • The disaster aid fight shows just how unprepared Congress is to deal with the effects of climate change. As an engineer, one of my core beliefs is that it's much cheaper and much more effective to prevent faults than to repair and compensate for disasters. But despite the title, that isn't the core problem here. (Even if it were, some natural disasters are way beyond our power to prevent. And while there is no doubt that climate change increases the number and severity of disasters, there is no quick and easy solution to that, either.) The immediate problem is that at the same time we're being hit with more and more disasters, Republicans have decided they don't want to pay for disaster relief, largely because it runs counter to their belief that government shouldn't involve itself in helping people (at least not Puerto Ricans).

Daily Log

Disconnected red speaker posts at 4:06 PM, then turned amplifier back on.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, May archive (in progress).

Music: current count 31498 [31469] rated (+29), 249 [248] unrated (+1).

Weird how these weekly totals keep landing on 29 (6th time so far this year). Should have been less, given that I drove to the Tulsa area on Wednesday, returning Friday evening. Took my travel cases for the car, nothing remotely new in them. Packed the Chromebook, but inadvertently left it at home. Supposedly I can check email and web on phone, plus a million apps including Napster, but I've never got the hang of that. My second cousin down there swears she does everything with Siri, and I could see how that might be better than trying to type on a clumsy and error-prone touch screen. As a confirmed Apple-phobe, that isn't even an option I'd consider, but I gather Samsung has something along those lines (bixby?). I suppose I should look into that. Meanwhile, I seem to be the only person I know who can go 3-4 days between charges, so I take comfort in that.

I wanted to visit my cousin Duan, second son of my mother's oldest sister, Lola. I hadn't been down there since his older brother, Harold, passed several years ago, and he's up to 92 now. He's lived in/around Bristow as long as I can remember -- we went to visit Aunt Lola every couple months when I was young, and by then Harold and Duan had their families, my second cousins just a couple years younger than I was, so we were fairly close. Harold and Duan were drafted into WWII, and Duan got called back for the Korean War. That seems to have qualified him for living in the Veterans Center in Claremore, where he moved a few months ago. Probably a good place for him at this stage, but not one I'd ever look forward to (not a prospect with my 4F). Can't say as we had good talks, but was good to see him.

I saw live music twice in Oklahoma, although nothing I can recommend. The first was a free concert at the Veterans Center, with a c&w singer who called himself Cowboy, and who toured with a dwarf pony in tow -- something the vets seemed to appreciate. He mostly played Merle Haggard songs (and nothing as obvious as "Okie From Muskogee"; more like "Silver Wings"). One bizarre moment: he had a little girl bring him up a disguise designed to make him look like Elvis Presley, then launched into a medley of three r&b songs ("Lawdy Miss Clawdy," "See See Rider," don't recall the third), suggesting not only that even today black music was only acceptable if dressed up as white. He then played a fourth Elvis song, something late and not black, and didn't bother with the disguise for that. Blackface has gone out of fashion, but whiteface still works in Oklahoma. (There were a few black residents at the Center, but they were a tiny minority, and I don't recall any at the show.)

Second live music experience was attending a recital at the Coweta High School of their various band ensembles, starting with 6th grade. All three of my second-cousin's granddaughters played there, among at least a hundred others. No strings, but lots of flutes and clarinets -- I counted 12 and 18 in the high school band -- a few saxophones, the odd oboe or bassoon, a fair amount of brass, and a pretty substantial investment in percussion (including a featured percussion ensemble). Best was a pair of Cuban tunes. More typical were the Andrew Lloyd Weber medleys. Lasted over two hours, which was exhausting for all (huge crowd, by the way). They made passing reference to also having a jazz ensemble, but nothing I heard fit that bill.

Given that hole in my week, the only way I got to 29 was by streaming oldies. I started by looking for Betty Carter's album with Ray Charles. Napster didn't have it, or for that matter much of anything else after Charles left Atlantic for ABC. I mostly know his Atlantics through the 1991 Rhino 3-CD box, The Birth of Soul (my grade: A), but since the individual albums were available, I worked through them, yielding most of this week's pick hits. That also got me Ray Charles Presents David 'Fathead' Newman, and I followed that up with a few more of Newman's records (especially his early HighNotes). I didn't go very deep there, as I've never found him to be especially remarkable.

After I got back from Oklahoma, I played the new Greg Abate record, so I took a look at his back catalog. He's a mainstream saxophonist, more rooted in bebop than swing, and I especially liked his 2014 album Motif, so I was more hopeful there. I skipped a few things like his samba album, but got a fairly good sense of where he's come from. Several very nice albums, the best being one with Alan Barnes. The next logical step would be to see what else I can find by Barnes. My database lists six of his albums, all Penguin Guide ***(*)-rated, but I haven't heard any of them yet. Surprised I've missed him, although I have rated records he shared but I've filed under other names: Tony Coe, Scott Hamilton, Warren Vaché.

Revisited the latest Coathangers album this week, after Robert Christgau gave it an A-. As I recall, Michael Tatum also likes the album. I gave it a B+(***) on one or two plays back in March, and found that my review didn't need much tweaking. I played his other pick, Priests' The Seduction of Kansas, after the break, so next week for it and Camp Cope's How to Socialise & Make Friends -- both good, high B+ records.

New records reviewed this week:

• Greg Abate with the Tim Ray Trio: Gratitude: Stage Door Live @ The Z (2019, Whaling City Sound): [cd]: B+(***)
• Rebecca DuMaine and the Dave Miller Combo: Chez Nous (2018 [2019], Summit): [cd]: B+(**)
• Peter Jensen & DR Big Band: Stand on Your Feet and Fight: Voices of the Danish West Indies (2018 [2019], ILK): [cd]: B+(*)
• Ellynne Rey: The Birdsong Project (2019, self-released): [cd]: B
• Gwilym Simcock: Near and Now (2018 [2019], ACT): [r]: B
• Aki Takase Japanic: Thema Prima (2018 [2019], BMC): [r]: B+(***)
• The United States Air Force Band: The Jazz Heritage Series: 2019 Radio Broadcasts (2019, self-released, 4CD): [cd]: C-
• Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet: The Rhythm of Invention (2019, Patois): [cd]: B+(*)

Old music:

• Greg Abate Quartet: Bop City: Live at Birdland (1991, Candid): [r]: B+(***)
• Greg Abate: Straight Ahead (1992 [1993], Candid): [r]: B+(**)
• Greg Abate Quintet: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1995, Candid): [r]: B+(*)
• Greg Abate Quintet: Bop Lives! (1996, Blue Chip JAzz): [r]: B+(**)
• Greg Abate: Evolution (2002, 1201 Music): [r]: B+(***)
• Greg Abate/Alan Barnes: Birds of a Feather (2007 [2008], Woodville): [r]: A-
• Ray Charles: Ray Charles (1953-56 [1957], Atlantic): [r]: A
• Ray Charles: The Great Ray Charles (1956 [1957], Atlantic): [r]: B+(**)
• Ray Charles: The Genius After Hours (1956-57 [1961], Atlantic): [r]: B+(**)
• Ray Charles: Yes Indeed! (1952-58 [1958], Atlantic): [r]: A-
• Ray Charles: What'd I Say (1952-59 [1959], Atlantic): [r]: A
• Ray Charles: The Genius of Ray Charles (1959, Atlantic): [r]: B+(**)
• Ray Charles: Ray Charles in Person (1959 [1960], Atlantic): [r]: B+(*)
• Ray Charles: Ray Charles Live (1958-59 [1987], Atlantic): [r]: B+(***)
• Ray Charles: The Genius Sings the Blues (1952-60 [1961], Atlantic): [r]: B+(***)
• David "Fathead" Newman: Fathead: Ray Charles Presents David 'Fathead' Newman (1958 [1960], Atlantic): [r]: B+(*)
• David Newman: Fire! At the Village Vanguard (1988 [1989], Atlantic): [r]: B+(**)
• David "Fathead" Newman: Chillin' (1998 [1999], HighNote): [r]: B+(*)
• David "Fathead" Newman: Keep the Spirits Singing (2000 [2001], HighNote): [r]: B+(*)
• David "Fathead" Newman: The Gift (2002 [2003], HighNote): [r]: B+(*)
• David "Fathead" Newman: Song for the New Man (2004, HighNote): [r]: B+(***)

Grade (or other) changes:

• The Coathangers: The Devil You Know (2019, Suicide Squeeze): [r]: [was B+(***)] A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Charlie Apicella & Iron City: Groove Machine (OA2): May 17
• Fred Hersch & the WDR Big Band: Begin Again (Palmetto): June 7
• The Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: Along for the Ride (Summit): June 7
• Scheen Jazzorkester & Thomas Johansson: As We See It . . . (Clean Feed)
• Marcus Shelby Orchestra: Transitions (MSO): June 7
• Rodney Whitaker: Common Ground: The Music of Gregg Hill (Origin): May 17

Weekend Roundup

I spent much of the week in Oklahoma, visiting my 92-year-old cousin, his two daughters, and various other family. I packed my Chromebook, then forgot it, so went a few days without my usual news sources -- not that anything much changed while I was away. Trying to catch up here, including a few links that seem possibly useful for future reference.

Looks pretty obvious from my "recent reading" sidebar that I'm in a gloomy mood about the viability of democracy in this nation. The odd book out is subtitled "On the Writing Process" -- thought that might inspire me to write about it, and it has made me a bit more self-conscious in my writing. The one I recommend most is Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. I lumped it into a list in my recent Book Reports, but it's well thought out and clear, with a fair smattering of historical examples but more focused on here and now: things you will recognize. I rather wish there was a more generic word than "fascism": one with less specific historical baggage, one that can be used in general discourse without tripping off unnecessary alarms. On the other hand, as a leftist, I've always had a keen nose for generic fascism, so the word suits my purposes just fine. I have, in fact, been using it since the 1970s, which is one reason the modern American conservative movement always seems to coherent and predictable.

Some scattered links this week:

• Christine Ahn: More US pressure on North Korea is not the path to denuclearization.

• Matt Apuzzo/Adam Satariano: Russia is targeting Europe's elections. So are far-right copycats. I don't doubt Russia's capacity for spreading cyber-havoc, but isn't it more likely that Russia is the copycat, echoing and amplifying the far-right?

• Andrew J Bacevich: Why did we fight the Iraq War? Review of Michael J Mazarr's book, Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy.

• Lily Batchelder: Trump is a bad businessman. Is he a tax cheat, too?

• John Cassidy:

  • Donald Trump's business failures were very real.

  • As a businessman, Trump was the bigest loser of all.

• Joel Clement: Once again, the US embarrasses itself on climate change.

• Juan Cole: It will be very hot and very wet -- we've exceeded 415ppm of carbon dioxide for the first time since the pliocene.

• Matthew Cole: The Complete Mercenary: "How Erik Prince used the rise of Trump to make an improbable comeback."

• Tim Dickinson: US fossil fuel subsidies exceed Pentagon spending: "according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund."

• Timothy Egan: Revenge of the coastal elites: "How California, Oregon and Washington are winning the fight against Trump's hateful policies."

• Neil Eggleston/Joshua A Geitzer: The court handling Trump's lawsuit must move at breakneck speed: "The president deserves his day in court. But the American people deserve that day to come quickly."

• John Feffer:

  • A farewell to arms control? "With Trump and Bolton at the helm, the international arms control regime is effectively dead."

  • What's behind Bolton's attacks on the 'troika of tyranny'? "Bolton's broadsides against Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela hint at ambitions for much more dangerous geopolitical conflict -- and nothing short of a new Cold War." You might think this impossible with the Soviet Union gone, and Russia more focused on promoting right-wing extremism, but the real enemy the US faced in the Cold War was always the workers and peasants oppressed by capitalists and their oligarchic allies, and that's an "enemy" that still exists.

• Niall Ferguson/Eyck Freymann: The coming generation war: "The Democrats are rapidly becoming the party of the young -- and the consequences could be profound." There are few scholars I hold in lower regard than Ferguson, but there are enough charts and numbers here to let you think. I still think that class matters more than age, probably other demographic factors as well, but I wouldn't be surprised that age skews as advertised in all categories. Maybe you could object that class rises with age -- as successful people accumulate wealth, the poor die off younger -- but the rich are such a slim slice of the population even a big skew is unlikely to amount to much.

• Ben Fountain: O billionaires!: Review of Michael R Bloomberg: Bloomberg by Bloomberg and Howard Schultz/Joanne Gordon: From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America. One thing about these political wannabes: they'll never be accused of being traitors to their class.

• Masha Gessen: Putin and Trump's ominous nostalgia for the Second World War.

• Todd Gitlin: The roots of Trumpian agitprop.

• Tara Golshan: Bernie Sanders's political revolution on foreign policy, explained. Related: Zack Beauchamp: What should a left foreign policy look like? An Elizabeth Warren adviser offers his vision. An interview with Ganesh Sitaraman, whose piece is: The emergence of progressive foreign policy. I still find parts of this disturbing, like the insistence on maintaining military alliances like NATO, as opposed to negotiating demilitarization and de-escalating conflicts through more even-handed institutions like the United Nations. Also, the shift in focus needs to be clearer: for a long time US foreign policy has mostly been dictated by the needs of multinational corporations, with little if any concern for economic justice, either for the majority of Americans or for people around the world.

• Ryan Grim: The Democratic counterrevolution has a self-appointed leader: Josh Gottheimer.

• James Hamblin: Has Trump actually done anything about drug prices?

• William Hartung/Mandy Smithberger: A dollar-by-dollar tour of the national security state: How a "base budget" of $554.1 billion adds up to $1.2542 trillion.

• Chris Hedges: Creeping toward tyranny: I haven't read Hedges for a few years now, so it hadn't quite sunk in how his principled hypersensitivity has decayed into an all-consuming pessimism (of the intellect, but also of the will):

  Capitalists, throughout history, have backed fascism to thwart even the most tepid forms of socialism. All the pieces are in place. The hollowing out of our democratic institutions, which cannot be blamed on Trump, makes tyranny inevitable.

  Bad timing to exempt Trump from any blame right now, as his defiance of Congressional subpoenas, his rejection (veto) of resolutions ending his border "state of emergency" and Yemen War support, and his unilateral sabre rattling over Venezuela and Iran are unprecedented. Still, he's right that the signs anticipated and enabled Trump. Indeed, we're likely to look back on his Bush-era books and accord him the honor of being our first major "premature anti-fascist" (as Americans who fought against the Fascists in Spain were labelled after the US declared war on Germany and Italy). The only real problem with his 2007 American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America was in focusing on gullible Christians rather than their secular manipulators. The last book I read by him was The Death of the Liberal Class (2010), which anticipated Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal (2016), his broadside on mainstream Democrats. But when I checked out Hedges' latest book, America: The Farewell Tour, I couldn't get into it. I'm past needing to learn how bad it can get.

• Murtaza Hussain: Right-wing Israeli author writes "The Virtue of Nationalism" -- and accidentally exposes its pitfalls: On Yoram Hazony. Pull quote: "Alongside Israel, there are two other countries Hazony claims have been similarly victimized by the shaming campaigns of liberals and globalists: apartheid South Africa and Serbia under the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic."

• Sean Illing:

  • How golf explains Trump. Seriously. Interview with Rick Reilly, author of Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, who says, "this guy cheats like a mafia accountant."

  • What's wrong with America? I debate Ben Shapiro. Wish he was better at it. Shapiro is a right-wing apologist/ideologue, whose latest book is The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great. Related: Nesrin Malik: Seeing Ben Shapiro flounder might be fun, but far-right celebrities are no joke.

• Jake Johnson: Juan Guaidó makes open plea for US military coordination in Venezuela.

• Fred Kaplan:

  • The US accepted more than 1 million refugees after Vietnam. What changed about us? Recounts a story from George Packer's new book, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century. Kaplan doesn't really answer the question, other than that "there are no Holbrookes or Mondales in positions of power to change that."

  • John Bolton is leading Donald Trump (and the rest of us) into conflicts in Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea. Alternate title: "John Bolton's dream world." Pull quote: "Bolton's ambitions -- which play well to Trump's mix of xenophobia and narcissism -- are, finally, getting us in a lot of trouble."

• Greg Kaufmann: Trump has a new solution for poverty: pretend poor people don't exist: "A proposal to redefine 'poverty' would throw potentially millions of low-income people out of government-assistance programs."

• E Tammy Kim: Do corporations like Amazon and Foxconn need public assistance?

• Jen Kirby: US-China trade talks end with no deal -- and more tariffs.

• Ezra Klein:

  • Facebook is a capitalism problem, not a Mark Zuckerberg problem. Response to Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes's op-ed: It's time to break up Facebook.

  • Democrats need a power agenda, not just a policy agenda: "Concentration of power is the problem, so redistribution of power is the policy."

• Sarah Kliff: Trump to Congress: pass legislation to end surprise medical bills: "The president has a good idea on health care -- and one that could actually pass."

• Elizabeth Kolbert: Climate change and the new age of extinction: Until now, or maybe I just mean recently, this hasn't had much to do with climate.

  To keep nearly eight billion people fed, not to mention housed, clothed, and hooked on YouTube, humans have transformed most of the earth's surface. Seventy-five per cent of the land is "significantly altered," the I.P.B.E.S. noted in a summary of its report, which was released last week in Paris. In addition, "66 per cent of the ocean area is experiencing increasing cumulative impacts, and over 85 per cent of wetlands (area) has been lost." Approximately half the world's coral cover is gone. In the past ten years alone, at least seventy-five million acres of "primary or recovering forest" have been destroyed.

  Habitat destruction and overfishing are, for now, the main causes of biodiversity declines, according to the I.P.B.E.S., but climate change is emerging as a "direct driver" and is "increasingly exacerbating the impact of other drivers." Its effects, the report notes, "are accelerating." Watson wrote last week, in the Guardian, that "we cannot solve the threats of human-induced climate change and loss of biodiversity in isolation. We either solve both or we solve neither."

  Related: Brad Plumer: Humans are speeding extinction and altering the natural world at an 'unprecedented' pace. Also: Robert Watson: Loss of biodiversity is just as catastrophic as climate change; Jonathan Watts: Human society under urgent threat from loss of Earth's natural life; Damian Carrington: What is biodiversity and why does it matter to us?.

• Mike Konczal: Want to expand Medicare? Then answer the $5 trillion questions. "If you think the fight with insurance companies is tough, just wait until single-payer advocates have to go head-to-head with doctors." Admits that switching to "Medicare for All" could save overall health care costs ($2.1 trillion is the number given), but that assumes cost cuts, only 20% of which come from eliminating the insurance companies, with 70% expected to come from paying doctors and hospitals less. I don't see much of a problem here, although as usual the devil is in the details. Big chunks of that 70% can be recovered without hitting the wages of doctors, nurses, and other essential personnel. I also see reason to cap top earners, but that's something that should be done not just with doctors and administrators -- inequality is a problem everywhere. On the other hand, why not just focus on easy wins like cutting the private insurance companies out?

• Paul Krugman:

  • Killing the Pax Americana: "Trump's trade war is about more than economics."

  • Trump is terrible for rural America: "His biggest supporters are his biggest victims."

  • The economics of Donald J Keynes: "Austerity for Democrats, stimulus for Republicans."

  • The sabotage years: "What we now know about GOP economics."

  • The zombie style in American politics: "Why bad ideas just won't stay dead."

• Michael Kruse: Beto's long history of failing upward: I've tended to resist citing links on candidates, but this one is fairly deep. O'Rourke is one I don't have much enthusiasm for, but while this is sharply critical, it doesn't really lower my estimation of him.

• Talia Lavin: A reporter's long, strange trip into the darkest parts of the American mind: Review of Anna Merlan's new book, Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power. With a picture of Alex Jones.

• Charles Leerhsen: Trump, the billion-dollar loser -- I was his ghostwriter and saw it happen.

• Ariel Levy: Who owns South Africa?: "A fiercely debated program of land reform could address racial injustice -- or cause chaos."

• Dahlia Lithwick: Are we in a constitutional crisis? "This is how democracy ends: not with a bang, but with a long and technical debate over whether we're using the right words."

• PR Lockhart: 65 years after Brown v Board of Education, school segregation is getting worse.

• German Lopez: North Dakota quietly decriminalized marijuana.

• Ella Nilsen:

  • The tense negotiations over whether Robert Mueller can testify before Congress, explained.

  • The House Judiciary vote on contempt of Congress and what it means for William Barr, explained.

• David Owen: Is noise pollution the next big public-health crisis? Owen has a book coming out this fall: Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World.

• Gareth Porter: Bolton is spinning Israeli 'intelligence' to push for war against Iran. Related: Sharmini Peries: The Trump Administration is manufacturing an Iran crisis.

• Gabriela Resto-Montero:

  • Trump asked Don McGahn to publicly state he didn't obstruct justice. McGahn refused.

  • Rudy Giuliani cancels Ukraine trip amid criticism he's courting election interference. Related: Robert Mackey: A Republican conspiracy theory about a Biden-in-Ukraine scandal has gone mainstream. But it is not true.

• Alex Ward: Over 4 months after Mattis quit, Trump picks Patrick Shanahan as defense secretary.

• James Reston Jr.: Trump's other impeachable offense: "As Nixon learned, Congress will not abide a president who defies its subpoenas."

• Jason Rezaian: Are we watching John Bolton's last stand? "Is John Bolton about to get the Iran war he's always wanted, or is he on the verge of losing his job?" I don't credit Trump with much insight or diligence on foreign policy, but even so he must suspect that Bolton was a remarkably poor pick as National Security Adviser. In particular, Bolton has his own agenda, and has no scruples about contravening and undermining Trump's own stated objectives. So it would make a lot of sense for Trump to fire Bolton (and Pompeo, who is an only slightly less egregious hawk, as well). Indeed, if I thought I'd get into the president's ear, I'd write an op-ed taunting Trump to do just that, justifying it as key to his 2020 re-election prospects. I'm still convinced that a major reason Trump beat Clinton in 2016 was her "commander-in-chief test," where she came off as the more dangerous hawk. Hiring Bolton undoes much of Trump's edge there, even if he doesn't trick Trump into much bigger wars.

• Corey Robin: Eric Hobsbawm, the communist who explained history: Review of Richard Evans' biography, Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History, referring back to Hobsbawm's own memoir, Interesting Times, and various of his books like The Age of Extremes (on the 20th century).

• Joe Romm: A new brain study shows a better way to engage voters on climate change: Call it "climate crisis."

• Aaron Rupar: Trump turns shooting migrants into a punchline at Florida rally.

• Rebecca Solnit: Unconscious bias is running for president: "On Elizabeth Warren and the false problem of "likeability." Recommended by a Facebook friend, this is a bit more than half right, but suffers from an as-yet-unnamed form of specious argument related to the "mansplaining" that Solnit has written extensively about. I don't doubt that the prejudices she decries are real, but the "privileges" she seeks to overthrow have never struck me as worth much. On the other hand, note that Warren's response to these prejudices hasn't been to whine about them. She's talking to the so-called privileged, and seems to be winning them over: Alex Thompson: Trump backers applaud Warren in heart of MAGA country.

• Emily Stewart: Trump lost $1 billion over 10 years, New York Times report shows: "So much for Trump's brand as a savvy, self-made business leader."

• Matt Taibbi: On the trail with Bernie Sanders 2.0.

• Astra Taylor: Time's up for capitalism. But what comes next? "Every day, we help decide how the future will unfold. But how do we cast ballots for a democracy that doesn't yet exist?" Adapted from her forthcoming book, Democracy May Not Exist but We'll Miss It When It's Gone. I've long meant to read her previous book, The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (2014), recommended by a friend.

• Laura Tillem: Let's hit the pause button on more space for prosecutors: op-ed on prison overcrowding here in Wichita.

• Jeffrey Toobin: The constitutional system is not build to resist Trump's defiance of Congress.

• Anton Troianovski:

  • On a Russian outpost in the Pacific, fear and fantasies of a Japanese future: Aren't we accustomed to thinking of Russia as revanchist, seeking to regain territories of the former Russian/Soviet empire, but it looks here like Japan is the one with the stronger bent.

  • w/Josh Dawsey/Paul Sonne: Trump's interest in stirring Ukraine investigations sows confusion in Kiev.

• Alex Ward: Trump's Iran policy is making war more likely.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • Pay Congress more.

  • The battle over Trump's tax returns, explained.

  • The Trump tweets that sent the stock market tumbling, explained.

  • The 20-year-argument between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren over bankruptcy, explained. Related: Annie Linskey: Elizabeth Warren reshaped our view of the middle class. But some see an angle.

• Matt Zapotosky: Trump would have been charged with obstruction were he not president, hundreds of former federal prosecutors assert.

I don't have much to say about Game of Thrones, but I was struck by this ratiocination by Zack Beauchamp: "But it's one thing for Daenerys to act like Bush, and another for her to act like Hitler." He's talking about the indiscriminate fire-bombing of cities full of innocent civilians, but while Bush criminally started wars, lied about his reasoning, rounded up and tortured supposed enemies, disrupted the lives of millions doing irreparable harm, just to show the world that it's more important to fear his "shock and awe" than to respect his self-proclaimed beneficence, and while Hitler did those same things on an even more epic scale, the most comparable historical example of a leader laying waste to entire cities was Harry Truman -- who we generally recall as an exceptionally decent and modest president.

You can say that war does that, even to otherwise decent people. You can say that Hitler and Bush were worse than Truman because they started wars whereas Truman was simply trying to end one he had inherited. (This is not the place to get into how he escalated the Cold War and the Korean War, which in many ways I find more troubling than his "final solution" to WWII.) You can say that Hitler was worse than Bush because his desire for war was more deeply rooted in the uncritical imperialism and racism of the era, which made him even more vindictive and bloodthirsty. But I'd also note that Truman was not above the prejudices of Hitler's era, and that Bush (while less racist than Truman let alone Hitler) was, like all conservatives ever, fully committed to traditional hierarchies of wealth and power, which made it easy for him to run roughshod over all the others.

I have no idea where Daenerys fits among this trio, as she is a fictional character in an imaginary world. Even if she reflects the world of her creators, she does so haphazardly and inconsistently.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, May archive (in progress).

Music: current count 31469 [31440] rated (+29), 248 [255] unrated (-7).

Had a low energy period after posting April Streamnotes last Monday, so I'm not surprised that the rated count dropped. If anything, I'm surprised it's as high as it is, but that was mostly from streaming back catalog of artists recently reviewed.

I speculated last week that Walt Weiskopf's Worldwide is his best yet, but I had missed most of his 1990s albums, so I had to hedge. There are still a couple things I haven't heard, but nothing old came close to the new one -- best of the albums below is probably Siren (1999). When I gave Betty Carter's The Music Never Stops an A- a few weeks back, I noted lots of holes in my database. Scratching my head for something to listen to, I remembered that, and plugged a few of them (while being unable to find others). The new Teodross Avery album also sent me back. No great finds from any of those excursions.

I also tried looking up the album Carter and Ray Charles did together in 1961, but couldn't find it. I noticed then I had an unrated Charles record, and wondered whether I could build a playlist to duplicate it (as opposed to having to dig up my physical copy). Turns out there's damn few of Charles' ABC records on Napster, but I still got 17/20 songs from Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, while the other three were easy to find on YouTube. Not quite an equivalent listening experience, but close enough, I figured (especially given that I recalled hearing nearly everything). I'll do a few more Ray Charles albums next week, starting with the early Atlantics.

On the other hand, this week's two new A- records are ones I hadn't read a thing about before they showed up. After months of second guessing other folks' picks, I feel like I've done my job.

I'll be posting a new XgauSez overnight (link always points to the latest Q&A).

New records reviewed this week:

• Teodross Avery: After the Rain: A Night for Coltrane (2019, Tompkins Square): [bc]: B+(***)
• The Campfire Flies: Sparks Like Litle Stars (2019, OverPop Music): [cd]: A-
• Mark Dresser Seven: Ain't Nothing but a Cyber Coup & You (2018 [2019], Clean Feed): [cd]: B+(**)
• Satoko Fujii: Solo Piano: Stone (2018 [2019], Libra): [cd]: B+(**)
• The Invisible Party: Shumankind (2017 [2018], Chant): [cd]: A-
• Jon Lipscomb Quartet: Fodder (2016 [2018], self-released): [bc]: B+(**)
• Rent Romus' Life's Blood Ensemble: Side Three: New Work (2018 [2019], Edgetone): [cd]: B+(***)
• The Richard Shulman Trio: Waltzing out of Town (2019, RichHeart Music): [cd]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Kinloch Nelson: Partly on Time: Recordings 1968-1970 (1968-70 [2019], Tompkins Square): [bc]: B+(*)

Old music:

• The Teodross Avery Quartet: In Other Words (1994, GRP): [r]: B+(**)
• Teodross Avery & the 5th Power: New Day, New Groove (1998 [2001], 5th Power): [r]: B+(*)
• Teodross Avery: Bridging the Gap: Hop-Hop Jazz (2008, BTG Music): [r]: B-
• Betty Carter/Ray Bryant: Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant (1955-56 [1996], Columbia): [r]: B+(*)
• Betty Carter: The Modern Sound of Betty Carter (1960, ABC): [r]: B+(*)
• Betty Carter: Inside Betty Carter (1964-65 [1993], Capitol Jazz): [r]: B+(*)
• Betty Carter: Finally, Betty Carter (1969 [1975], Roulette): [r]: B+(*)
• Betty Carter: At the Village Vanguard (1970 [1993], Verve): [r]: B+(**)
• Betty Carter: The Betty Carter Album (1976 [1988], Verve): [r]: B
• Ray Charles: Greatest Country and Western Hits (1962-66 [1988], DCC): [r]: A-
• Jon Lipscomb: Solo Guitar Improvisations Vol. 1 (2016, self-released): [bc]: B+(*)
• Walt Weiskopf: Night Lights (1995, Double Time): [r]: B+(**)
• Walt Weiskopf: Song for My Mother (1995 [1996], Criss Cross): [r]: B+(***)
• Walt Weiskopf: Sleepless Nights (1996 [1998], Criss Cross): [r]: B+(***)
• Walt Weiskopf: Anytown (1998, Criss Cross): [r]: B+(**)
• Walt Weiskopf: Siren (1999, Criss Cross): [r]: B+(***)
• Walt Weiskopf: Man of Many Colors (2001 [2002], Criss Cross): [r]: B+(***)
• Walt Weiskopf: Open Road (2014 [2015], Posi-Tone): [r]: B+(***)
• Walt Weiskopf: Fountain of Youth (2016 [2017], Posi-Tone): [r]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Yoko Miwa Trio: Keep Talkin' (Ocean Blue Tear Music)

Weekend Roundup

No time to work on this, as I spent Sunday trying to break in a new Mexican cookbook. Much of Saturday too, and more of Friday -- not that I had even started then. The one story that dominated the interest of the liberal media was Attorney General William Barr's Senate testimony and his failure to appear before the House. I was tempted to tweet when I looked at Talking Points Memo and they had devoted their entire front page to Barr (aside from one bit on the implosion of Stephen Moore's Fed nomination).

Actually, this should have been a banner week for the media to pick apart Trump's increasingly manic and deranged foreign policy. The US hasn't been taken such a nakedly imperial stance toward Latin America since FDR traded in his cousin's penchant for Gunboat Diplomacy for the sunny promise of a Good Neighbor Policy. I didn't link to anything below on Trump's phone call to Putin, mostly because no one seems to know enough about it to write intelligently. But there were also fairly major stories that could have been reported about Korea, China, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, and Israel/Palestine (where Netanyahu celebrated his election victory by launching the heaviest assault on Gaza since 2014).

Some scattered links this week:

• Alexia Fernández Campbell:

  • Americans are working harder these days. Their paychecks don't show it.

  • April jobs report: tons of new jobs and teeny-tiny pay raises.

• Jason Del Ray: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most successful and devastating membership program.

• Jason Ditz: Venezuela's Guaido 'consering asking US to invade. That'll really convince the Venezuelan people he has their best interests at heart.

• David Enrich: Trump wants to block Deutsche Bank from sharing his financial records.

• Matt Gertz/Rob Savillo: Major media outlets' Twitter accounts amplify false Trump claims on average 19 times a day.

• Masha Gessen: Under Trump, the language we use to create political reality is crumbling:

  One of the most frightening things I've witnessed in recent months was a very polite conversation in a well-lit room in the Ronald Reagan Building, in Washington, D.C., on Monday. The director of policy planning at the State Department, Kiron Skinner, was interviewed onstage by a woman who used to hold her job: Anne-Marie Slaughter, who is now the head of the New America Foundation (where I am a fellow this year). . . .

  I have heard talk like this before, in Russia. A government official once told me that he "carried out emanations": not policies, laws, or even orders but signals akin to what Skinner called "hunches and instincts." It's what officials do in countries that are led by a combination of ignorance and corruption.

• Kathy Gilsinan:

  • A boom time for US sanctions: "The explosive growth in their use has prompted questionjs about how much is too much.

  • Pay attention to what the US is doing to Iran. Related: Krishnadev Calamur: Trump goes from threatening Iran to threatening the world.

• David A Graham: Why Stephen Moore's Fed bid failed.

• Sean Illing: Bill McKibben has been sounding the climate alarm for decades. Here's his best advice. Interview with McKibben, whose new book is Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?.

• Quinta Jurecic: All of the impeachable offenses: "Focusing on the Mueller report alone risks leaving out the obvious.

• Jen Kirby: Trump has nominated Kelly Craft to be the next UN ambassador. Here's who she is.

• Sonali Kolhatkar: Trump's abortion lies are going to get somebody killed.

• PR Lockhart: Tennessee passed a law that could make it harder to register voters.

• James North: Once again, 'NYT' distorts the news, dishonestly making Gazans the aggressor and Israel the victim.

• Molly Olmstead: John Kelly joines board of company that detains migrant children.

• Joshua Partlow/David A Fahrenthold: At Trump golf course, undocumented employees said they were sometimes told to work extra hours without pay.

• Susan E Rice: The real Trump foreign policy: stoking the GOP base: "Why else would he pursue so many policies in Latin America that do not serve the national interest?" What about the economic interests of his donors? Or their more general hatred of popular rule (aka democracy)?

• Charlie Savage/Eric Schmitt/Maggie Haberman: Trump pushes to designate Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group. Paul Woodward, in linking to this, also linked to a background piece from Jan. 27, 2017: William McCants/Benjamin Wittes: Should the Muslim Brotherhood be designated a terrorist organization?

• Adam Serwer: The dangerous ideas of Bill Barr: "The attorney general's theory of executive power places presidents above the law."

• Danny Sjursen: The left needs to stop crushing on the generals. I'd respond that the left I know doesn't, but when you write for American Conservative your perspective might be distorted enough to include some "leftists" I wouldn't.

• Alex Ward:

  • Why North Korea's "projectiles" launch isn't a cause for concern -- yet.

  • The Trump administration's Venezuela policy is failing.

• Benjamin Wittes:

  • The catastrophic performance of Bill Barr.

  • Five things I learned from the Mueller report.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • The push to break up Big Tech, explained.

  • Stephen Moore's failed Federal Reserve Board nomination, explained.

  • Medicare for Kids, a cheap step toward single-payer health care, explained.

For the record, tonight's Cinco de Mayo menu, nearly all from The Best Mexican Recipes (America's Test Kitchen):

• Chicken adobo
• Braised short ribs with peppers and onion
• Cheese enchiladas
• Classic Mexican rice
• Skillet street corn
• Restaurant-style black beans
• Shrimp and lime ceviche
• Mango, jicama, and orange salad
• Cherry tomato and avocado salad
• Key lime pie
• Duce de leche cheesecake

I generally cut the hot peppers back by 50%. I made the beef and the desserts the night before. Started around noon, aiming at 6pm dinner, but it wound up closer to 7pm, putting a couple guests to work. Used a gluten-free shell for the key lime pie, but made cheesecake crust from scratch, using a box of caramel and sea salt cookies plus some graham crackers. Used store-bought yellow corn tortillas, which were the weak link in the enchiladas (otherwise pretty great). Ten people, so the table was pretty crowded. Kitchen was a colossal mess, but got it straightened out by bedtime.

I've never been a big fan of Mexican food, but figured I should give it a try, especially given access to specialty grocers here. But when I bought my first Mexican cookbook, I found it impenetrable. This one is intentionally simplified, which helped get me started. This cookbook didn't have any desserts, so I scrounged around the web, not finding much that interested me. (I've made flan and rice pudding many times before, but didn't want to do them here. And while I'm partial to cake, tres leches isn't a favorite.) On the other hand, lime figures large in the meal, and I had the pie shell on the shelf. The cheesecake was a second thought, and turned out to be a nice complement.

Daily Log

Replied to a twitter thread. It seems to have started with Dave Weigel, who wrote:

To understand Bidenmentum, you've got to have some of the conversations I had yesterday: Middle-aged women explaining that 2016 showed that voters won't elect a female president, so they've got to be strategic.

Kathleen Geier wrote:

This is so depressing. Countries like Argentina, Chile, Liberia, and Taiwan have elected women presidents. Are those countries less sexist than the US? Just because Hillary Clinton was a weak candidate who ran a lousy campaign doesn't mean another woman can't win.

I responded:

Only reason I can think of why significant numbers of voters reject any woman candidate is that the US has been on a constant war footing since 1948, and that's seeped deep into our pores; ironically, overcompensating hawks like H Clinton scare more voters than they win over.

---

Wrote this up as a proposal for Mike and Ram:

Been kicking around various ideas, and thought this one might be worth sharing. I've spent a lot of time thinking about a political book, built around the idea that US history breaks neatly into four eras: 1800-1860, 1860-1932, 1932-1980, and 1980-2020. Each begins with a legendary president (Jefferson, Lincoln, FD Roosevelt, Reagan) and ends with a tragically inept one-termer (Buchanan, Hoover, Carter, and Trump). (In this regard, one could also cite 1788-1800, Washington-to-Adams, but that doesn't seem quite long enough to count. Each era was dominated by a single political party, although each had two minor breaks for presidents from the other party -- in three cases two for two terms each (Cleveland and Wilson, Eisenhower and Nixon, Clinton and Obama); in the 1800-1860 period the Whig party managed to win two elections with former generals (Harrison and Taylor), but they both died in office and were succeeded by exceptionally unpopular VPs (Tyler and Fillmore). Within each era, not only was one party dominant, but the other party tended to mimic the dominant party: most obviously, how Eisenhower and Nixon supported and extended New Deal reforms, while Clinton and Obama willingly gave ground to the pro-market, small-government Republican agenda. (The earlier eras are more mixed, partly because the dominant party was itself evolving. Cleveland, for instance, was more conservative than the most pro-business Republican of his day, while Wilson was relatively progressive, admittedly with certain blinders, most notoriously race.)

The Reagan-to-Trump era differs from the others in several respects. The first three eras started with major shifts to the left: the spread of democracy under Jefferson and Jackson; the end of slavery with Lincoln; Roosevelt's New Deal. Reagan led a backlash, aimed at making Americans less equal, at reducing democracy, and at limiting the rights of most Americans. Although Republicans captured the levers of power and dominated the public agenda, their program was never very popular, their winning margins (aside from Reagan's two elections) slim (twice, at least by actual votes, negative). The eras subdivide, this one breaking down into three waves as presidential power (Reagan, Bush, Trump) did their damage, separated by breaks which allowed the economy to recover (from the first Bush recession of 1992 and the much larger Bush recession of 2008), and the Republicans to recharge (taking control of Congress in 1994 and 2010, kneecapping the Democrats from making changes).

My original idea was to start with this framework, then expand on how Democrats should view 2020 as an epochal, era-ending election, an opportunity not just to reverse the Reagan-to-Trump tide but to build a new paradigm for decades to come. A lot of good things fall out of that perspective. I'm thinking now that I should dial back the ambition from book to essay length, crank out the essay, try to get it published somewhere respectable, and see if there's any further demand. But along the way, I thought of how either of you might help, then came up with something slightly different. That is to look at the Reagan-to-Trump era reactionary movement in the broader context of fascist movements around the world. Also, to lessen my load, and give this a better chance of actually happening, I propose that you two do it as a graphic book (Mike writing, Ram illustrating). Maybe I can contribute some rough ideas, a website, some online notes, like that.

The immediate trigger for the thought was reading Benjamin Carter Hett's "The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic." Some descriptions of Hitler can easily be recast for Trump. Some cannot, but the essential point is that both are public faces of crazed mass movements which were handed power by arch-conservative power brokers (the Kochs and Mercers as much as Hindenburg and his business backers), in both cases understanding that their privileges can only be sustained if they can hide behind a political movement preoccupied with hating others. It's taken some countries much longer to mount a successful fascist movement than others. Germany in the 1920s could look back on its humiliating defeat in the Great War and rail against both internal traitors and the insults of reparations, while imagining that the extraordinary will of someone like Hitler could triumph, restoring Germany's greatness among nations. Fascists could build on lesser grounds, as Mussolini did in Italy. Even in England and France, small groups felt cheated and spawned lesser fascist movements.

It was even harder to get a fascist movement started in the US, but in the 1930s there was a clique of conservatives who harbored the fantasy, and they started to build as the Cold War lent their anti-union politics an air of respectability. As Robert Paxton argues in "The Anatomy of Fascism," fascists start out as the public face of oligarchic powers frustrated by having to deal with democracy. That turns out to be a pretty apt description of Trump. And it's worth noting that GW Bush made his own fortune working as the front man for the oil magnates who owned the Texas Rangers. Also that as Reagan's acting career washed up, he made his living as a shill for General Electric (see Kim Phillips-Fein's "Invisible Hands" for more on GE's hardcore opposition to FDR's New Deal). The difference between Hitler and America's leading fascists is that Hitler moved beyond being a front, seizing power and pursuing his own delusions, driving Germany to utter ruin, whereas the damage wrought by the American troika have yet to rebound against their masters.

Thinking along these lines, I was reminded of Marx's quip about Napoleon III in 1848: "history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce." That seems about right for contrasting Trump to Hitler and Mussolini, although one might not want to tempt fate given that the full bill for electing Trump has yet to be paid. Also one doesn't want to make light of the many terrible things that Trump as already done. Still, I see no reason why we can't present him as a buffoon as well as vile. Indeed, that's likely to be where the graphic form is most effective. Nor should we refrain from treating Hitler and Mussolini as farcical characters. Maybe if people had realized then how ridiculous they were, they might have been stopped before they could devastate so much of the world. Stopping Trump is still an option.

Monday, April 29, 2019

Music Week

Expanded blog post, April archive.

Music: current count 31440 [31400] rated (+40), 255 [256] unrated (-1).

Last Monday of the month, so time to unveil April Streamnotes, including this week's subset below. Five Mondays this month, so the totals are up handsomely from the two previous four-Monday months. Weekly rated count is up a bit, but that's partly because I found five records I failed to record grades for recently. Some of those bookkeeping errors probably caused me to log 29-album weeks (four so far this year) instead of 30, long my standard for a productive week.

Worth noting that all three of this week's new non-jazz A-list albums here also placed high on Phil Overeem's latest list (numbers 4, 6, and 20). For what little it's worth, I wrote those before seeing Overeem's list, but not before Dan Weiss praised them on Facebook (although I think I first heard of Billie Eilish from Christgau).

Those tips help make up for the frustration of declining awareness I've been feeling. Although I still keep a music tracking file, I've stopped making any systematic effort to find and list prospects, leaving me with little concept of what to search out next. As a result, I veer off on arbitrary tangents, as when I found a piece called A Guide to Drexciya's Futuristic Electro. I really liked Drexciya's Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller, Vol. I back in 2012, so that seemed worth pursuing. But it certainly fell far short of a plan.

Finally, a link that makes more sense to list here than in yesterday's Weekend Roundup: Rachel Syme: Vince Aletti's Obsessive Collection of Seminal Fashion Magazinse. Vince was one of the first people I met when I moved to New York City in 1977, so it's good to see him again, even older, as we all are.

---

New records reviewed this week:

• Kevin Abstract: Arizona Baby (2019, Question Everything/RCA): [r]: B+(**)
• Juan Álamo & Marimjazzia: Ruta Panoramica (2016 [2019], Summit): [cd]: B+(**)
• Anderson .Paak: Ventura (2019, Aftermath/12 Tone Music): [r]: B+(***)
• Brittany Anjou: Enamigo Reciprokataj (2015-16 [2019], Origin): [cd]: B+(**)
• Seamus Blake: Guardians of the Heart Machine (2017 [2019], Whirlwind): [r]: B+(***)
• Club D'Elf: Night Sparkles (Live) (2011 [2019], Face Pelt): [r]: B+(***)
• Control Top: Covert Contracts (2019, Get Better): [r]: A-
• Cooper Moore/Stephen Gauci: Studio Sessions Vol. 1 (2019, Gaucimusic): [bc]: B+(***)
• Ronnie Cuber: Straight Street (2010 [2019], SteepleChase): [r]: B+(***)
• Billy Eilish: When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019, Darkroom/Interscope): [r]: A-
• Anat Fort Trio: Colour (2019, Sunnyside): [r]: B+(**)
• Four: There You Go Thinking Again (2018 [2019], Jazz Hang): [cd]: B
• Bill Frisell/Thomas Morgan: Epistrophy (2016 [2019], ECM): [r]: B+(*)
• Stephen Gauci/Sandy Ewan/Adam Lane/Kevin Shea: Live at the Bushwick Series (2019, Gaucimusic): [bc]: B+(*)
• Lizzo: Cuz I Love You (2019, Nice Life/Atlantic): [r]: A-
• Lisa Maxwell's Jazz Orchestra: Shiny! (2018 [2019], Uncle Marvin Music): [cd]: B+(*)
• Bennett Paster: Indivisible (2018 [2019], self-released): [cd]: B+(*)
• Andrew Rathbun: Character Study (2017 [2018], SteepleChase): [r]: B+(**)
• Eric Reed: Everybody Gets the Blues (2019, Smoke Sessions): [r]: B+(**)
• Steph Richards: Take the Neon Lights (2019, Birdwatcher): [r]: B+(***)
• Dave Scott: In Search of Hipness (2018 [2019], SteepleChase): [r]: B+(*)
• Swindle: No More Normal (2019, Brownswood): [r]: B-
• Trapper Keaper: Meets Tim Berne & Aurora Nealand (2019, Ears & Eyes/Caligola): [cd]: B+(***)
• Cory Weeds Quintet: Live at Frankie's Jazz Club (2019, Cellar Live): [r]: B+(*)
• Walt Weiskopf European Quartet: Worldwide (2019, Orenda): [cd]: A-

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Afro-Blue Persuasion: Live at Haight Levels: Volume One (1967 [2019], Tramp): [r]: B+(**)
• Afro-Blue Persuasion: Live at Haight Levels: Volume Two (1967 [2019], Tramp): [r]: B+(**)
• Elecktrokids: Elektroworld (1995 [2019], Clone Classic Cuts): [bc]: B+(**)
• Mark Turner/Gary Foster: Mark Turner Meets Gary Foster (2003 [2019], Capri, 2CD): [cd]: B+(***)

Old music:

• Bill Cunliffe/Gary Foster: It's About Love (2003, Torii): [r]: B+(***)
• Drexciya: Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller III (1992-97 [2013], Clone Classic Cuts): [bc]: A-
• Drexciya: Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller IV (1992-97 [2013], Clone Classic Cubs): [bc]: B+(***)
• Drexciya: Neptune's Lair (1999, Tresor): [r]: B+(***)
• Drexciya: Grava 4 (2002, Clone): [r]: B+(**)
• Billie Eilish: Don't Smile at Me (2017, Darkroom/Interscope, EP): [r]: B+(***)

---

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Greg Abate with the Tim Ray Trio: Gratitude: Stage Door Live @ The Z (Whaling City Sound)
• Brittany Anjou: Enamigo Reciprokataj (Origin)
• Rebecca DuMaine and the Dave Miller Combo: Chez Nous (Summit): June 7
• Satoko Fujii: Stone (Libra): June 7
• The Invisible Party: Shumankind (Chant -18)
• Peter Jensen & DR Big Band: Stand on Your Feet and Fight: Voices of the Danish West Indies (ILK)
• Ellynne Rey: The Birdsong Project (self-released): May 1
• Rent Romus' Life's Blood Ensemble: Side Three: New Work (Edgetone)
• The Richard Shulman Trio: Waltzing out of Town (RichHeart Music): May 11
• Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet: The Rhythm of Invention (Patois): June 7
• Walt Weiskopf European Quartet: Worldwide (Orenda): May 3

Purchases:

• Cardi B: Invasion of Privacy (2018 [2019], Atlantic) [A-]
• Todd Snider: Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 (2019, Aimless) [A-]

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Weekend Roundup

Started early and still running late. Having recently read Benjamin Carter Hett's The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic, I woke up this morning with the idea of writing something about Trump, Republicans, and Fascism for today's introduction. Never got close to that. Hett's book is pretty straight history, but you can find a page here or there where you could easily gloss in Trump's name for Hitler's. Then you move onto other pages where Trump fails any comparison, usually by being too dumb or too lazy. There are also big differences between the Nazis and the Republicans, although differences on race, foreigners, unions, and military muscle are insignificant. The biggest one is that the Nazis actually had their own goon squad that could go out and physically attack their suspected enemies, whereas Republicans only wish they could do that. Still, the key point about Germany in 1932 was supposedly sober conservatives were so desperate to squash the left -- indeed, any trace of popular government, of democracy -- that they were willing to hand power over to a psycho like Hitler and his vicious gang of followers. Republicans seem happy to do the same thing here in America, for the same reasons, and with the same obliviousness to consequences.

I should note somewhere that former Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) died last week. Back in the 1980s he was the model of how a Republican politician could straddle moderate urban politics (he was mayor of Indianapolis) and the Reagan reaction, which for a time helped make the latter seem more innocuous and palatable. He was finally devoured by the right, purged in a primary by an opponent so extreme that the Democrats were able to (temporarily) pick up the seat. I never felt any particular fondness for Lugar, but I could understand why people respected him. Even his breed of Republican is now a thing of the past.

Also noted that historian David Brion Davis has died. His 1967 book The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture greatly affected the way pretty much everyone understood the history of slavery in the Americas. I've often thought I should check out his later books, especially the ones that extended his study into the 19th century. I learned of his death from a cranky Corey Robin note, which I decided not to bother with below. Here's a more useful (and generous) obituary.

---

Anyhow, this is what the week has to show for itself:

• Greg Asner: To solve climate change and biodiversity loss, we need a Global Deal for Nature.

• Nicholson Baker: My brain on cable news: "Tuning into TV's battle to the death."

  What's actually on cable these days is a bizarre legalistic death battle. Cohen, Manafort, Flynn, Butina, Mueller, Giuliani, et al. We aren't debating whether Trump has been responsible for the deaths of innocents, because everyone knows that he is -- presidents and collateral damage go hand in hand. If Trump goes to prison, it will not be for child murder, but for distributing hush money to silence former mistresses and for taking bribes and for engaging in back channel machinations with Russia. Whatever it takes, I suppose, but I have to agree with my cable guy: there's something unseemly about the means employed.

  Fox News is addictive and awful: choirboys gone to seed and women's dresses with weird portholes at the shoulders or at the cleavage. The anchors jeer smilingly at ideas that any sensible person of generous mind can see make sense. Quick clips of closed-circuit footage of humans with darker skin doing bad things are injected into the river of commentary -- mug shots included -- to create little mental firecracker pops of righteous wrath among the pickup-truck crowd, along with "funny" attacks on progressive causes by rightist comedians who love steak and country music. Fox & Friends is a hot mess of clean living and white-right American self-deception, and I can't watch it for very long without feeling queasy. But it's an easy mark.

• Jane Coaston: Trump's new defense of his Charlottesville comments is incredibly false. Related: Allegra Kirkland: Whitewash: Trump takes new approach to sanitizing Charlottesville protests.

• Helena Cobban: The UAE's seedy influence operations are a footnote to the Mueller report.

• Bryce Covert: Hedge-fund ownership cost Sears workers their jobs. Now they're fighting back. Seems like lots (damn near all of ) the companies you read about in bankruptcy first passed through a phase where private equity operators first bought the company with its own debt than stripped assets and paid themselves "management fees." Maybe if they were lucky they'd be able to sell the carcass off, but current bankruptcy law favors creditors over employees and customers, finishing the liquidation while leaving the public worse off. Our think tanks need to think about this situation, and come up with new bankruptcy laws that allow companies to survive such malign ownership, preferably under employee ownership, with debt loads reduced to levels which allow the companies to carry on. Other regulations could help, but just changing bankruptcy law would shift the incentives dramatically.

• Alex Emmons: Coalition airstrikes in Raqqa killed at least 1,600 civilians, more than 10 times US tally, report finds.

• Tom Engelhardt: Publisher and introduction writer at TomDispatch:

  • Collusion, hell, yeah!: "Suicide watch on planet Earth: as the flames began to rise, the arsonists appeared."

  • A "ridiculous" war: "American war is off the charts: how the US military feeds at the terror trough."

  • Allegra Harpootlian/Emily Manna: The AI Wars: "The end of war is just a beginning. Will technology stamp a 'forever' on America's wars?"

  • Jen Marlowe: Running for the Right to Thrive: "The Palestinian marathon: a window into occupation and survival in a less than holy land."

  • Nick Turse: No need to whisper, AFRICOM isn't listening in: "AFRICOM calls for my 'elimination' (from their daily media reports)."

  • Belle Chesler: Defunding children, a national crisis of the soul: "Making American schools less great again: a lesson in educational nihilism on a grand scale."

  • Arnold R Isaacs: The 100-year-old echoes of 2019: "Looking back at 1919: immigration, race, and women's rights, then and now."

  • Ann Jones: Our Veblen moment: "The man who saw Trump coming a century ago: a reader's guide for the distraught."

  • Alfred McCoy: America's self-inflicted wound: "Decriminalizing the drug war? Calculating the damage from a century of drug prohibition."

• Todd Gitlin: The roots of Trumpian agitprop: Hint: article namechecks Leni Riefenstahl, as well as Susan Sontag writing about Riefenstahl.

• Patrick Greenfield: Spain election: socialist party PSOE declared winner: live update blog; PSOE is expected to be able to form a coalition with the further leftist party Podemos; the far-right party Vox surged, but only wound up with 24 MPs (6.8%), at the expense of more mainstream conservatives (PP is down from 137 to 66).

• Sue Halpern: The terrifying potential of the 5G network: "The future of wireless technology holds the promise of total connectivity. But it will also be especially susceptible to cyberattacks and surveillance." Guess who else is selling snooping gear? Richard Silverstein: Israel and the selling of the surveillance state.

• Murtaza Hussain: Our enemies are the same people: San Diego synagogue shooter inspired by New Zealand anti-Muslim massacre.

• Sean Illing: White identity politics is about more than racism: Interview with Ashley Jardina, author of White Identity Politics..

• Christopher Ingraham: Rich guys are most likely to have no idea what they're talking about, study suggests.

• Greg Jaffe: Capitalism in crisis: US billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich.

• Sam Knight: The uncanny power of Greta Thunberg's climate-change rhetoric.

  The climate-change movement feels powerful today because it is politicians -- not the people gluing themselves to trucks -- who seem deluded about reality. Thunberg says that all she wants is for adults to behave like adults, and to act on the terrifying information that is all around us.

  Related: Stewart Lee: Why Greta Thunberg is now my go-to girl.

• Paul Krugman:

  • Armpits, white ghettos and contempt: "Who really despises the American heartland?" Opens with a sidebar on Stephen Moore (Trump's Fed pick), noting:

    Moore is an indefensible choice on many grounds. Even if he hadn't shown himself to be extraordinarily misogynistic and have an ugly personal history, his track record on economics -- always wrong, never admitting error or learning from it -- is utterly disqualifying.

  • Survival of the wrongest: "Evidence has a well-known liberal bias." Much more on Stephen Moore.

  • The great Republican abdication: "A party that no longer believes in American values." Wait! Aren't greed, hubris, and desperate schemes to rig every contest the ultimate American values? Those are clearly the hallmarks of the recent Republican Party, and those are traits one can question and denounce. But calling them un-American misses a big part of their appeal.

• Bill McKibben: To stop global catastrophe, we must believe in humans again: "We have the technology to prevent climate crisis. But now we need to unleash mass resistance too -- because collective action does work." Edited extract from his new book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?. He also pleaded for mass resistance recently in Glaciers and Arctic ice are vanishing. Time to get radical before it's too late.

• Paul Mozur/Jonah M Kessel/Melissa Chan: Made in China, exported to the world: the surveillance state.

• Anna North: Trump's Fed pick wrote that women should be banned from March Madness: Well, actually he's written and said a lot of stupid things, not least on matters more germane to his appointment -- not that whether he's an asshole is irrelevant. As for Trump's other pick of a political hack for a Fed seat, see: Li Zhou: It's official: Herman Cain is not going to be on the Fed. Zhou also wrote: Young voters want more action on climate change -- even if it hurts the economy.

• Gabby Orr/Andrew Restuccia: How Stephen Miller made immigration personal.

• Andrew Prokop:

  • How to get away with obstructing justice.

  • What Donald Trump actually did in 2016, according to the Mueller report.

• Ben Protess/William K Rashbaum/Maggie Haberman: How Michael Cohen turned against President Trump.

• Eric Rauchway: Obama's original sin: "A new insider account reveals how the Obamas administration's botched bailout deal not only reinforced neoliberal Clintonism, but also foreshadowed an ongoing failure to fulfill campaign promises." Review of Reed Hundt: A Crisis Wasted: Barack Obama's Defining Decisions. Reminds me that perhaps the first of those decisions was letting Clinton factotum John Podesta run the transition team, which initially penciled in such pivotal figures as Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers.

• Gabriela Resto-Montero: Most Americans believe Trump lied to them, but think impeachment is a bad idea. Related: Ella Nilsen: Democrats' impeachment dilemma, explained.

• James Risen: Unanswered questions in the Mueller report point to a sprawling Russian spy game.

• David Roberts:

  • Don't bother waiting for conservatives to come around on climate change. One sample quote:

    We know that personality traits can be pretty deeply embedded by early childhood, but we also know that which traits and dispositions are brought to the fore, individually and collectively, depends on circumstances. Crudely speaking, when people feel safe and cared for, they will be more open to extending the circle of care (that is, more liberal). When they feel anxious or threatened, they will be more inclined to draw the circle of care inward, i.e., to become more conservative.

    Right-wing media is a machine for scaring older white people -- i.e., for making them more conservative. A whole generation of young people has lost parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles to the Fox machine. It has dragged the political center to the right and slowed progressive reforms (like universal health care) that have been in place in other developed democracies for years. It will fight climate progress to its last breath.

  • Fox News has united the right against the Green New Deal. The left remains divided.

• Aaron Rupar:

  • "This was a coup": Trump escalates his authoritarian rhetoric. Trump goes on: "This was an attempted overthrow of the United States government." The unstated premise to that could only be, "L'état, c'est moi." Actually, the Mueller investigation was launched by Trump's own administration to rescue Trump from the appearance of having obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey, whose job involved investigating the lies and possible corruption of several Trump appointees, notably Michael Flynn.

  • Why Trump's tweets about Don McGahn and the Mueller report could backfire.

  • Trump's tweets are getting more unhinged.

  • Polling shows Fox News has been amazingly effective at shaping opinion on the Mueller report. Self self-selection as well: Fox viewers think that Mueller's report exonerates Trump by a 83-10 margin; MSNBC viewers break even harder the other direction, 7-90, while CNN is a bit less extreme, 17-71.

• Darren Samuelsohn/Andrew Desiderio/Kyle Cheney: 'This is risky': Trump's thirst for Mueller revenge could land him in trouble. Related: Andrew Restuccia: Mueller report exposes diminishing power of Trump denials: "The report has reignited a media debate about how seriously to take the White House's statements of fact."

• Eric Schmitt/David E Sanger/Maggie Haberman: In push for 2020 election security, top official was warned: don't tell Trump.

• Ben Schwartz: The trigger presidency: "How shock jock comedy gave way to Donald Trump's Republican Party.

• Dylan Scott: Trump's high-stakes subpoena battle with House Democrats, explained.

• Matt Shuham: Trump lets loose stunning falsehood that doctors, mothers 'execute' babies.

• Ben Taub:

  • How the War on Terror is being written: Starts on Guantánamo, ends with a long list of links to source documents. Midway, Taub notes:

    The year after [James] Mitchell published his memoir [Enhanced Interrogation], it was cited in a lengthy report by Physicians for Human Rights, which argues that the interrogation program represented "one of the gravest breaches of medical ethics" since the Nazi medical experiments during the Second World War.

    These documents -- along with contemporaneous reports and books by investigative journalists, academics, lawyers, and human-rights advocates -- make up an evolving draft of post-9/11 history. With each passing year, more details surface in memoirs, lawsuits, and military commissions, and the historical record comes into sharper focus. Millions of pages have come to light, and millions more remain classified. But, seventeen years into the war on terror, a core, uncomfortable fact remains: people on the receiving end of classified security programs -- from drone strikes to renditions and interrogations -- become aware of the outlines of secret U.S. national-security laws and practices long before American citizens have any clarity or say about what is being done in their name.

  • Guantánamo's darkest secret.

• Murray Waas: Mueller prosecutors: Trump did obstruct justice.

• Alex Ward:

  • Democrats want to challenge Trump's foreign policy in 2020. They're still working out how. Surprisingly little here, or maybe not given how readily Democrats have lined up behind the common consensus policies in place since shortly after WWII. Consider "the four main pillars of a progressive foreign policy (so far)":

    1. Confront climate change
    2. Democracy promotion and anti-corruption
    3. Strengthening alliances
    4. Rebuilding America

    I would have started off with negotiated demilitarization: securing treaties all around the world that resolve conflicts and reduce the military posture of all nations (especially the US). My second point would be to expand "democracy promotion and anti-corruption" to lean left, to support more power for workers and for women, while accepting that capital rights need to be limited and regulated. On trade, I'd work to limit (or in many cases eliminate) rents based on intellectual property. This in turn should lead to greater sharing of best practices in science and technology, which would help with problems like climate change, loss of biodiversity, etc. I'd also like to see some sort of international framework for dealing with migration. Democrats have done a miserable job of formulating foreign policy due to the old colonial mentality where they've never seen the rest of the world's peoples as our equals, and never recognized that our welfare is co-dependent on the world's. Another piece on trying to change Democratic strategy: David Klion: When will Washington end the Forever War?.

  • Sri Lanka suffered from decades of violence before the Easter Sunday bombings. Related: Samanth Subramanian: After the Easter bombings, Sri Lanka grapples with its history of violence.

• Robin Wright:

  • Trump's strange, tense campaign against Iran.

  • ISIS still has global reach, despite the Caliphate's collapse.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • We're not hearing enough from 2020 candidates about things they could do as president.

  • Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020: "Americans want outsiders, reformers, and fresh faces, not politicians with decades of baggage." Pretty much all you need to know about Biden in 2020, but not the only thing written this week. E.g.:

    • Moira Donegan: Anita Hill deserves a real apology. Why couldn't Joe Biden offer one?

    • Jill Filipovic: Joe Biden's policies are as troubling as his inappropriate touching.

    • German Lopez: Joe Biden's long record supporting the war on drugs and mass incarceration, explained.

    • Arwa Mahdawi: Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020 -- and it won't end well this time either.

    • Jane Mayer: What Joe Biden hasn't owned up to about Anita Hill.

    • Jim Newell: The 2020 candidates smell blood: "The reason so many Democrats are running is they think Biden won't survive."

      The field in 2016 was so small not because politicians with national aspirations didn't exist, but because they thought Clinton -- with her name recognition, financial resources, party relationships, high early polling numbers, and general next-in-line aura -- was inevitable. She cleared the field of most competition because other mainstream candidates knew she would win (and non-mainstream Bernie figured she would too).

      Biden is something more like a 2016 Jeb Bush: a weak establishment favorite whose time might be past and -- should voters deprioritize his top perceived strength, electability -- who could soon face the wolves.

      Newell also wrote: Biden has successfullyl goaded Trump, which is exactly what he needs to do. One thing many Democrats will be looking for in primary season is the candidate who most effectively articulates their rage over Trump, and one of the best ways to do that is to get under his thin skin.

    • Nate Silver: How Joe Biden could win the 2020 Democratic Primary: Put a lot of weight on his initial poll lead, and hope nothing goes wrong.

    • Matt Taibbi: Is Joe Biden 'electable' or not? Thank God, nobody seems to know.

  • The Democratic establishment should chill out about Bernie Sanders.

    As Sanders continues to rate highly in national polls, many longtime party stalwarts are palpably agitated over a blend of personal grievances and overblown political and policy concerns. . . .

    As a personal matter, the establishment's response is understandable. Sanders, an independent Vermont senator, tends to portray the institutional Democratic Party as corrupt and relentlessly sows suspicion about the motives and integrity of everyone who disagrees with him. He treats the catastrophe of the 2016 election as a deserved rebuke to party leaders. And he brushes aside mountains of practical realities that others have spent years dealing with.

    But blowing up over this makes no sense. The whole point of a party establishment is to be cynical, detached, practical-minded, and realistic. If they assess Sanders's actual track record -- rather than his personally insulting rhetoric -- they'd discover a fairly unremarkable blue-state liberal who's good at winning elections and has extensive experience with the disappointing realities of the legislative process.

    Relevant here: Peter Daou: I was Bernie's biggest critic in 2016 -- I've changed my mind: "It would be an epic act of self-destruction for Democrats to try to hobble his campaign." Let's see if I can explain this in simple terms. During the Reagan-to-Trump era, Democrats have been preoccupied with raising money (cultivating donor support). Some, like Obama and the Clintons, have even done a good job of this, largely by promising that they'd do an even better job for business than the Republicans would -- something the stats clearly support. Meanwhile, the Democrats have let their base go to hell, and found their support eroding, even as Republicans have even less to offer. What Sanders is doing is rebuilding the Democratic Party base, by appealing to the people Democrats have been screwing for decades now. Attacking Sanders risks driving this base away, if not to the Republicans then to a third party or nothing. Sanders is doing the party a huge favor by not running as an independent. The party needs to reciprocate by welcoming him and his voters. They might even find, like Daou, that they'll learn something.

• Gary Younge: Brexit is not just a tragedy for Britain.

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Daily Log

Fixed dinner for four last night. Wasn't planned, except iasmuch as I bought a pound of hamburger thinking I'd make meatloaf, then postponed it after my wife stuck the meat in the freezer. I already had a pound of ground lamb there, and keep everything else I would need as staples. So when I announced I'd fix it Friday, my wife invited a couple of friends over. I don't normally make any extra dishes for just the two of us -- the meatloaf baked with some root vegetables, so makes a nice comforty meal-for-two, with leftovers for sandwiches. But with two more guests, I figured I should add a little something. I decided to limit myself to things I could fix without shopping. Came up with this:

• Meatloaf (beef + lamb, with onion, green bell pepper, garlic, a can of tomatoes, two eggs, parmesan cheese, some spices) with coarsely chopped root vegetables (yukon potatoes, parsnip, a sweet potato).
• Baked beans topped with bacon (two cans of Van Camps, flavored with mustard, catsup, worcestshire, brown sugar, maple syrup, also threw in a bit of Chinese bean sauce).
• Cut green beans (a frozen bag), microwaved and added to a skillet with butter, shallots (two chopped), ham (two slices, diced fine), roasted garlic, a chopped scallion, sliced almonds, and a splash of sesame oil. (Thought about adding parmesan, but don't think I did.)
• Roaster butternut squash soup.
• Chocolate mousse for dessert.

I made the soup several days before. I thought it was pretty tasty, but I mostly make soups for Laura, and she didn't seem much interested in it. The other choices were mostly dictated by trying to get rid of things from the freezer and the pantry. I first tried another bag of cut green beans, but after I screwed up and boiled the pot dry, I decided they weren't worth saving, and grabbed another bag. The canned beans were old too: we threw out several ancient cans last week, so that got me thinking I should use what I had left. The bacon was OK, but running out of time. I meant to include carrots, but had to throw the few I had out (as well as most of the rest of the produce drawer).

The first two were old family recipes (the beans from my first wife) that I had fiddled with over the years. The green beans was pure improv. Earlier I had the idea of making creamed corn, but gave that up when I only found small packages of corn in the freezer. (The recipe, of course, frowned on using frozen corn, but I think I've used it before.) The cream got me to thinking about chocolate mousse, as one of the few really good desserts I could whip up in just a few minutes.

The chocolate mousse was a last-minute idea, started just before the guests arrived. I had several opened packages of chocolate in the fridge, and found 4 oz. of 70% bittersweet there. I had a guest whisk the melted chocolate/butter and egg yolks, and they wound up lumpy. I didn't pay enough attention to whipping either the egg yolks or the cream, and both came out less airy than ideal. The result was kind of lumpy and soupy, although the taste was there. It's just that you had to chew it to break the lumps open, but that turned out to be surprisingly satisfying.

Monday, April 22, 2019

Music Week

Expanded blog post, April archive (in progress).

Music: current count 31400 [31371] rated (+29), 256 [252] unrated (+4).

Seems like pretty much everything is a struggle these days. My most common complaint is that I'm getting sick and tired of not being able to do things right. A typical example was trying to repair a screen door lock. A nylon washer disappeared, and has proven impossible to replace. I bought some things I thought I might be able to use, then lost them. Bought some more, and turned out they were too thick, and hole was too small. I tried drilling out the hole, and destroyed the washer. Finally reassembled the door handle without the washer. The set screw is hard to get a grip on. It will no doubt fall apart again in a matter of days, at best a couple weeks. I have a bunch of other things that are falling apart, many because I didn't do a good enough job building them in the first place.

On the other hand, I have gotten a few things done. The new pantry shelf unit is painted and bolted in place, although we haven't really put it to use yet. That's waiting a second pantry improvement. I built a rather neat storage unit, then screwed up hanging the door so it never closed correctly (or at least easily). It finally dawned on me that if I could shave a quarter inch off the bottom surface, it should close without having to change the hinges. All that's left to do there is to rehang the door, and see whether the theory worked. Tomorrow.

At least I finally got my computers moved, making my workspace much more comfortable. Still haven't done the next step, which is to set up virtual web servers on the secondary machine, so I can start redesigning the Robert Christgau and Carola Dibbell websites. I should at least know what I'm doing there.

Meanwhile, another routine week of music discoveries. Hard part for me is deciding what to search out. This seems like a typical week with two weeks of Christgau picks, further search down Phil Overeem's list, and the first Michael Tatum Downloader's Diary in quite a while. Unfortunately, I found myself coming up short with their well-considered picks. Instead, I went with the new Chemical Brothers album (I think someone on the Expert Witness Facebook group raved about it, but don't recall who), and a 1979 jazz album reissue that probably showed up in a Bandcamp Daily list (which I started using a couple weeks back when I couldn't play Napster).

Also, two rare regrades to from B+(***) to A-, originally reviewed by streaming but given a few more changes after CDs arrived. People shouldn't get the idea that all they have to do to get higher grades is to send me CDs, but they do help in cases where I've held a grade back due to some minor reservations.

April Streamnotes should be released with next Music Week, on April 29. Currently have 113 records in the draft file, so I'll probably wind up with 140-150.

---

New records reviewed this week:

• Art Ensemble of Chicago: We Are on the Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration (2018 [2019], Pi, 2CD): [cd]: B+(**)
• The Chemical Brothers: No Geography (2019, Virgin EMI): [r]: A-
• Martin Frawley: Undone at 31 (2019, Merge): [r]: B+(***)
• Ahmed Ag Kaedy: Akaline Kidal (2019, Sahel Sounds): [r]: B+(**)
• Salif Keita: Un Autre Blanc (2018 [2019], Naive): [r]: B+(***)
• Khalid: Suncity (2018, RCA, EP): [r]: B+(*)
• Khalid: Free Spirit (2019, RCA): [r]: B+(***)
• Larry Koonse: New Jazz Standards Vol. 4 (2019, Summit): [cd]: B
• Joachim Kühn: Melodic Ornette Coleman: Piano Works XIII (2018 [2019], ACT): [r]: B+(*)
• Russ Lossing: Changes (2018 [2019], SteepleChase): [r]: B+(***)
• Russ Lossing: Motian Music (2019, Sunnyside): [r]: B+(**)
• Reba McEntire: Stronger Than the Truth (2019, Big Machine): [r]: B+(*)
• Sam Ospovat: Ride Angles (2018 [2019], Skirl): [cd]: B+(**)
• Hama Sankare: Ballébé: Calling All Africans (2018, Clermont Music): [r]: B+(***)
• Hama Sankare: Niafunke (2019, Clermont Music): [r]: B+(***)
• Silk Road Assassins: State of Ruin (2019, Planet Mu): [r]: B+(*)
• Marcos Silva: Brasil: From Head to Toe (2019, Green Egg): [cd]: B
• Solange: When I Get Home (2019, Saint/Columbia): [r]: B+(*)
• Spellling: Mazy Fly (2019, Sacred Bones): [r]: B+(**)
• Sunflower Bean: King of the Dudes (2019, Mom + Pop, EP): [r]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Infinite Spirit Music: Live Without Fear (1979 [2019], Jazzman): [r]: A-
• Live at Raul's (1979 [2019], Steady Boy): [r]: B+(*)
• Onda De Amor: Synthesized Brazilian Hits That Never Were (1984-94) (1984-94 [2018], Soundway): [bc]: B+(**)
• Weaponize Your Sound (2019, Optimo Music): [bc]: B+(**)

Old music:

• Salif Keita: The Mansa of Mali: A Retrospective (1978-94 [1994], Mango): [r]: B+(***)
• Russ Lossing: Dreamer (2000, Double Time): [r]: B+(**)
• Russ Lossing/Ed Schuller/Paul Motian: As It Grows (2002 [2004], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Russ Lossing: All Things Arise (2005 [2006], Hatology): [r]: B+(**)
• Timosaurus: I Love You More Than Yesterday (2011, self-released): [bc]: B+(**)

---

Grade (or other) changes:

• Hiljaisuus: Kuzu (2017 [2019], Astral Spirits/Aerophonic): [cd]: was: B+(***) A-
• Matthew Shipp Trio: Signature (2018 [2019], ESP-Disk): [cd]: was B+(***) A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• The Campfire Flies: Sparks Like Litle Stars (OverPop Music)
• Mark Dresser Seven: Ain't Nothing but a Cyber Coup & You (Clean Feed): May 10
• Four: There You Go Thinking Again (Jazz Hang)
• Bennett Paster: Indivisible (self-released): May 3
• Trapper Keeper: Meets Tim Berne & Aurora Nealand (Ears & Eyes)
• Mark Turner/Gary Foster: Mark Turner Meets Gary Foster (Capri): May 17
• The United States Air Force Band: The Jazz Heritage Series: 2019 Radio Broadcasts (self-released)

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Weekend Roundup

Let's start off with a range of reactions to the release (with extensive redactions) of the final report of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller:

• Alex Ward: The Mueller report, explained in 500 words: Fair to start with this executive summary of the report itself, but this falls far short of its intent ("everything you wanted to know . . . but detailed as briefly as possible"), mostly by not examining the context or process. One thing I've long wondered about was to what extent low-level operatives in Trump's (and his PAC allies') cyber operations were aware of let alone had contacts with the Russian operatives who worked on Trump's behalf. Even if they didn't explicitly coordinate, they very likely built on and reinforced each other's work. Mueller seems to have taken a top-down approach, looking at a few suspicious meetings, but it's not clear that he did any investigation of the campaign staff most competent to actually collude (not just with the Russians but with other foreign or nominally independent organizations). Mueller may have had narrow legal reasons for limiting his focus, but it would have been helpful to spell them out. One big problem with the American political system is that a lot of what campaigns -- both raising money and spending it -- do may not technically be illegal but stikes me (and probably most people) as profoundly corrupt.

• Scott R Anderson, et al. (long list of contributors at Lawfare): What Mueller found on Russia and on obstruction: a first analysis. Also at Lawfare:

  • Quinta Jurecic: Obstruction of justice in the Mueller report: a heat map.

  • Samuel Moyn: The Mueller report is a challenge for democracy to solve.

  • Alina Polyakova: What the Mueller report tells us about Russian influence operations.

  • Paul Rosenzweig: Some questions for Attorney General Barr.

  • Benjamin Wittes: Notes on reading the Mueller report: a reading diary.

• Anne Applebaum: Why was Trump so afraid of the Mueller investigation? We may never know. Indeed. Maybe, as the author implies, he had things to hide that Mueller didn't uncover. Maybe he just couldn't stand the pressure of being picked apart by investigators whose ambitions and/or biases could result in him being framed? Trump knows as well as anyone how the system can be rigged. The only thing you can be sure of is that Trump's word on what happened is worthless.

• Bill Blum: Five critical takeaways from the Mueller report.

• Zack Beauchamp:

  • The Mueller report's collusion section is much worse than you think: "The contacts with Russians documented in the report amount to a devastating indictment of Trump's approach to politics."

  • The attorney general just pre-spun the Mueller report for Trump.

• Ryan Bort: Trump will be attacking the 'Crazy Mueller Report' for the rest of his life.

• Alvin Chang/Javier Zarracina: The Mueller report redactions, explaind in 4 charts: Total redacted content: 7.25%. Most heavily redacted were Russian "Active Measures" Social Media Campaign (46%), Russian Hacking (23%), and Prosecution and Declination Decisions (31%).

• Isaac Chotiner: Neal Katyal on whether the Mueller report went far enough: Interview with a law professor who helped "draft the special-counsel regulations" after Ken Starr's protracted effort to crucify Bill Clinton. Katyal says:

  I would say three people's colors have been revealed by this report. We have learned Mueller's reputation is real. We have learned Trump's disregard for the truth and the rule of law is real. And we have learned Barr has become a total Trumpian Attorney General.

• Jane Coaston: The Seth Rich conspiracy theory needs to end now: "The Mueller report confirms that the late DNC staffer had absolutely nothing to do with leaked emails later shared by WikiLeaks."

• George T Conway III: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him.

• EJ Dionne Jr: Mueller's report is the beginning, not the end.

• Masha Gessen: The hustlers and swindlers of the Mueller report.

• Susan B Glasser: The Mueller report won't end Trump's presidency, but it sure makes him look bad.

• Glenn Greenwald: Robert Mueller did not merely reject the Trump-Russia conspiracy theories. He obliterated them.

• Katie Halper: 9 ways the media blew it in its 'Russiagate' coverage.

• Sean Illing: Does the Mueller report exonerate Trump? I asked 12 legal experts.

• Jen Kirby: Confused about who's who in the Mueller report? Start here.

• Ezra Klein:

  • The best defense of Trump is still a damning indictment: "The Mueller report's defense of Trump: exculpatory incompetence, misplaced rage."

  • The problem with impeachment. Despite the nesting, let's put the impeachment eggs in this one basket:

    • Yoni Appelbaum: The Mueller report is an impeachment referral.

    • Max Boot: The Mueller report reads like an impeachment referral, and To impeach or not to impeach? That is now the question.

    • Jonathan Chait: Congress should impeach William Barr.

      This is probably as good a place as any to hang: Ryan Goodman: Barr's playbook: he misled Congress when omitting parts of Justice Dep't memo in 1989.

    • Donna F Edwards: Why impeachment is imperative.

    • Randall D Eliason: The Mueller report is not an impeachment referral.

    • Quinta Jurecic/Susan Hennessey: The Mueller report demands an impeachment inquiry.

    • Eric Levitz: If impeaching Trump is pointless, then bipartisanship is worthless.

    • Jennifer Rubin: Pelosi's right. Forget about impeachment. Unless . . . Republicans decide to make impeachment a bipartisan project.

    • Greg Sargent: Nancy Pelosi just blew it on impeachment. Here's how to get it right.

    • Karen Tumulty: Impeachment would be a terrible thing for our country. We have another option. She prefers that one (or both) chambers of Congress vote to censure Trump (as they last did Andrew Jackson).

    • John Yoo: It's now impeachment or bust. As it should be.

    I skipped over the stories of various politicians calling for impeachment (or not). I basically agree with Rubin (and Pelosi): as long as impeachment is a partisan divide, there's no way to do it, and trying detracts from other efforts to expose Trump. Still, it doesn't hurt to rattle that sword now and then, especially as its futility is really an indictment of the Republicans protecting Trump. In the long run, people need to think about better ways of limiting abuse of presidential power. I think it should be possible for Congress to overturn arbitrary Trump orders like his border emergency and Yemen War support, to pick two recent examples, without having to muster enough support to also override his veto -- especially given that we have an electoral system which lets someone win a 4-year term with as little support as Trump had in 2016.

  • Dara Lind: 7 times the Mueller report caught Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders lying to press.

  • Renato Mariotti: The obstruction case against Trump that Barr tried to hide.

  • Jane Mayer: In the Mueller report, Erik Prince funds a covert effort to obtain Clinton's e-mails from a foreign state.

  • Ella Nilsen: It's official: House Democrats subpoena the full, unredacted Mueller report.

  • Andrew Prokop: The Mueller report's biggest mystery: "What did Mueller find out about Trump associates and email leaks?"

  • James Risen/Robert Mackey/Trevor Aaronson: Annotating special counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report.

  • Jennifer Rubin: Five questions that still need to be answered in the Mueller report.

  • Aaron Rupar:

    • Sarah Sanders keeps digging herself in deeper after Mueller showed she lied.

    • Trump liked the Mueller report when it looked good for him. Today he called it "total bullshit."

  • Charlie Savage: How Barr's excerpts compare to the Mueller report's findings.

  • Khushbu Shah: Mitt Romney is "sickened" by the Trump administration's "dishonesty" after reading Mueller report.

  • Danny Sjursen: Liberals sold their souls to the war machine on Russia.

  • Jennifer Taub: Don McGahn not listening to Donald Trump doesn't absolve the President of a crime.

  • Peter Van Buren: Mueller's investigation is missing one thing: a crime:

    Almost everything Mueller has, the perjury and lying cases, are crimes he created through the process of investigating. He's Schrodinger's Box: the infractions only exist when he tries to look at them.

    On the other hand, a lot of things that aren't really prosecutable crimes look and smell bad. Politicians lie about them because they know this, and are trying to avoid exposing their faults.

  I originally figured I'd try to write up my take on this, but at this point I'm too exhausted (not to mention disgusted).

  ---

  Some scattered links this week:

  • Peter Beinart: Nobody knows anything about 'electability': Article runs with Biden's picture up top, since pundits would much rather talk about his "electability" than his policy views or track record, but touches on others, noting that "they're making lots of dubious assumptions."

    All this glib talk about electability has a cost. It leads commentators, often implicitly, to give "electable" candidates a pass when their policy views are fuzzy or flat-out wrong. So what should journalists do? It's simple: Spend less time discussing which candidates can win the presidency and more time discussing what they'd do if they actually won.

  • Jonathan Blitzer: The unlawful ambitions of Donald Trump's immigration policy.

  • Lee Camp: Nearly 100,000 Pentagon whistleblower complaints have been silenced.

  • Jane Coaston: Andrew Yang's plan to take on opioids: decriminalize heroin and fentanyl.

  • Marjorie Cohn: America's coup efforts in Venezuela enter a frightening new phase.

  • Coral Davenport: Interior Dept. opens ethics investigation of its new chief, David Bernhardt. That didn't take long, although few things could be less surprising.

  • Karen DeYoung: Trump administration announces new measures against Cuba. Especially clever is the line about Cuba expanding "its malign influence and ideological imperialism across the region." Another example of the recent fashion of attacking the left by using the same language the left has traditionally used about the right. Also: Gregory Weeks: The US is thinking of invading Venezuela. That's unlikely to lead to democracy. And: Francisco Toro: Pompeo reaches the dead end of Trump's Venezuela policy, and With US military action, Venezuela could become the Libya of the Caribbean. Related: Alex Horton: Trump soured relations in Latin America. China and Russia have welcomed the chaos.

  • Rob Evans: Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population. Next up: Peter Hetherington: So 1% of the people own half of England. Inheritance tax reform could fix that.

  • Masha Gessen: The dangerous bullying of Ilhan Omar. Related: Ilhan Omar's deeply American message.

  • Tara Golshan:

    • The logic of Bernie Sanders's continuing war against Clintonworld. Related: Adam Johnson: What if rich liberals just hate Bernie because they're rich? Also: Matt Taibbi: Bernie Sanders and the science of smears: "The media's focus on personality is designed to shift attention away from dangerous ideas."

    • Trump vetoes Congress's directive to end US involvement in bloody Saudi-led war in Yemen.

  • Jen Kirby: An art historian explains the tough decisions in rebuilding Notre Dame.

  • David D Kirkpatrick: Trump endorses an aspiring Libyan strongman, reversing policy. Maybe when he saw the memo he just misread the name (Khalifa Hifter)?

  • Sarah Kliff: CBO: over 1 million Americans have become uninsured since 2016.

  • Paul Krugman:

    • Bernie Sanders and the myth of the 1 percent.

    • Republicans are the real extremists.

  • Dara Lind: Bernie Sanders's Fox News town hall wasn't a debate. Bernie won anyway.

  • German Lopez: Marijuana legalization is very popular.

  • Andrew Prokop: 7 winners from the first big presidential fundraising reports: After sections on Sanders, Harris, and Buttagieg: "Donald Trump is set to raise tons of cash while Democrats battle each other." No self-funding this time around. He's back to cash in.

  • Sigal Samuel: The false choice between helping Notre Dame and helping poor people.

  • Khushbu Shah: Republican strategist Karl Rove says Bernie Sanders could beat Trump in 2020: Much of this is based on Sanders' performance in facing a Fox-hosted town hall, warning his fellow right-wing activists that "beating Sanders by attacking his democratic socialist views 'won't be as easy as Republicans may think.'" Still, he's trying:

    However, the Republican strategist wasn't completely glowing in his analysis of the Democrat, arguing in his Wall Street Journal piece, "Such platitudes go only so far in masking what drives Mr. Sanders' philosophy: resentment, grievance, and a desire to take from those who have and redistribute the wealth, all to expand government. He may describe socialism in benign terms, but he regularly drops his guard, opening himself up to devastating counterpunches."

    I started to compile a list of recent right-wing books, noticing a trend of trying to paint Democrats as resentful, embittered, and vindictive -- traits that sure sound to me like the hate mongering that has bent the right-wing base so far out of shape and elected demagogues like Trump. Some examples, to give you a flavor of how desperate right-wing propagandists have become: Noah Rothman's Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America; Derek Hunter's Outrage, Inc.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood, and Arthur C Brooks' Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt. Those titles (with minor tweaks) could easily have been used for books critiquing the right. That right-wingers have adopted them shows that they recognize that their credibility has worn out.

  • Danny Sjursen:

    • Who are the real terrorists in the Mideast?

    • American history for Truthdiggers: Vietnam, a US tragedy: Number 29 in the author's series recapping American history, starting in 1607 with Original sin. I've always found this history interesting, both for what it tells us about where we came from, and why we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, but I've never felt like beating myself up over the sins of my ancestors. On the other hand, having grown up and lived through Vietnam, I feel no sympathy whatsoever for anyone who refuses to acknowledge that the American War in Vietnam was anything less than a colossal mistake. Still:

      It is the war that never dies. Vietnam, the very word shrouded with extraordinary meaning in the American lexicon. For some it represents failure; for others guilt; for still more, anger that the war could have and should have been won. Americans are still arguing about this war, once the nation's longest. For those who lived through it -- the last war the U.S. fought partly with draftees -- it was almost impossible not to take sides; to be pro-war or anti-war became a social and political identity unto itself. This tribal split even reached into the ranks of military veterans, as some joined antiwar movements and others remained vociferously sure that the war needed to be fought through to victory. Indeed, today, even the active-duty U.S. military officer corps is rent over assessment of the Vietnam legacy.

      I've been reading recently about how the reaction against Germany's defeat (most notoriously the "stab-in-the-back" myth) in 1918 fueled the rise of Nazism in Germany. The same thing has happened with the US right and Vietnam, leading conservatives (dedicated as ever to keeping a social order which raises the rich up and beats the poor down) more often than not to wrap themselves up in militarist myths of past and future martial glory. Nor is Vietnam the only war that those invested in "America's war machine" refuse to learn from. See: William J Astore: America's generals haven't learned anything from Iraq.

    • We are all complicit in America's war machine.

    • Who will be the last to die for a lie? The Afghan War drags on.

    • With friends like these: abusive frenemies and American Mideast policy.

  • Mike Spies: Secrecy, self-dealing, and greed at the NRA.

  • Joseph E Stiglitz: Progressive capitalism is not an oxymoron: This is real basic:

    Standards of living began to improve in the late 18th century for two reasons: the development of science (we learned how to learn about nature and used that knowledge to increase productivity and longevity) and developments in social organization (as a society, we learned how to work together, through institutions like the rule of law, and democracies with checks and balances).

    Key to both were systems of assessing and verifying the truth. The real and long-lasting danger of the Trump presidency is the risk it poses to these pillars of our economy and society, its attack on the very idea of knowledge and expertise, and its hostility to institutions that help us discover and assess the truth.

    There is a broader social compact that allows a society to work and prosper together, and that, too, has been fraying. America created the first truly middle-class society; now, a middle-class life is increasingly out of reach for its citizens.

    America arrived at this sorry state of affairs because we forgot that the true source of the wealth of a nation is the creativity and innovation of its people. One can get rich either by adding to the nation's economic pie or by grabbing a larger share of the pie by exploiting others -- abusing, for instance, market power or informational advantages. We confused the hard work of wealth creation with wealth-grabbing (or, as economists call it, rent-seeking), and too many of our talented young people followed the siren call of getting rich quickly.

    Also see Andrew Ross Sorkin's interview with Stiglitz: Socialist! Capitalist! Economic systems as weapons in a war of words. Stiglitz has a new book: People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent (WW Norton).

  • Simon Tisdall: Trump's veto over Yemen is a scandalous abuse of presidential power.

  • Alexia Underwood: The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is dead. An expert explains why. Interview with Khaled Elgindy, author of Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians From Balfour to Trump. Some more links on Israel and last week's election:

    • Khulood Badawi: The Israeli election put the bigotry of its political class front and center.

    • Phyllis Bennis: Trump's embrace of Netanyahu will haunt the Middle East for years.

    • Fawaz A Gerges: Netanyahu means war.

    • David M Halbfinger/Miriam Berger: For Palestinian families, 'no light at the end of the tunnel'.

    • Yousef Jabareen: With the Israeli election, the plight of Palestinians has gotten even worse.

    • Fred Kaplan: Trump as only two goals in the Middle East: crush Iran and make Bibi happy. Doesn't that reduce to just one goal? Slate has more descriptive links than the actual titles on the pages they link to, so I prefer the former. However, subhed: "Egypt's decision to quit Trump's anti-Iran coalition shows that the administration's grand plans for the Middle East have descended into farce." Still, Trump and Pompeo are doubling down. See: Josh Rogin: No more waivers: The United States will try to force Iranian oil exports to zero.

  • Alex Ward:

    • Iran labels all US troops in the Middle East "terrorists": It's a response to America's similar designation of Iranian troops the day before." Actually, both designations raise into question the self-conception (and conceits) of the designator. On the other hand, US troops have killed a lot more people over the last two decades, so there's something to the charges. See Danny Sjursen, above, for more details.

    • This is how Bernie Sanders thinks about foreign policy: "The senator wants to create a global democratic movement to end oligarchy and authoritarianism." That would be a major change from US policy under both parties ever since the start of the cold war, which was to support and extend capitalist property rights everywhere, while to undermine labor and anti-colonial political movements, and very often to support local oligarchs and authoritarians against their people.

  • Matthew Yglesias: What Pete Buttigieg learned from Donald Trump: "In a crowded field, it pays off to say 'yes' to everything and get attention."

  Monday, April 15, 2019

  Music Week

  Expanded blog post, April archive (incomplete).

  Music: current count 31371 [31344] rated (+27), 252 [251] unrated (+1).

  May just be seasonal allergies, but feeling too lousy to even take a stab at writing an introduction. I still have XgauSez to edit and post before I go to bed tonight, so need to get onto that while I can.

  A couple of notes, though. I've been talking about moving computers around for a month or more. I finally got that done this week. Best thing so far is that I have two relatively uncluttered desks to work on, instead of one hopelessly messy one. Also I moved the speakers above the desk, where they sound better and I can access the controls. (Also, now both computers have speakers. Subwoofers are still under the desk, where they should be, and that space is less cluttered than before. No website work yet, but I should get to that soon.

  Delighted to see Michael Tatum's A Downloader's Diary (49) finally posted. I checked out a couple of his recommendations below (also found a new live Pet Shop Boys he didn't mention). Also continuing to pick albums off from Phil Overeem's 25% through the briar patch list.

  Finally, I finally did manage to cast a Downbeat Critics Poll ballot, a day past the deadline, but seems likely to be counted (not that I could ever tell from the results). I didn't do a very good job of collecting notes this time, but here is what I have.

  ---

  New records reviewed this week:

  • Charlotte Adigery: Zandoli (2019, Deewee, EP): [r]: B+(**)
  • Etienne Charles: Carnival: The Sound of a People Vol. 1 (2019, Culture Shock Music): [r]: B+(**)
  • Ben Lamar Gay: Confetti in the Sky Like Fireworks [This Is Bate Bola OST] (2018 [2019], International Anthem): [r]: B
  • Ariana Grande: Thank U, Next (2019, Republic): [r]: B+(**)
  • William Hooker: Cycle of Restoration (2018 [2019], FPE): [r]: B+(*)
  • Amber Mark: Conexão (2018, Virgin EMI, EP): [r]: B+(**)
  • Wynton Marsalis: Bolden: Music From the Original Soundtrack (2019, Blue Engine): [cd]: B+(***)
  • Xose Miguélez: Ontology (2018 [2019], Origin): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Billy Mohler: Focus! (2019, Make): [cd]: A-
  • OGJB Quartet [Oliver Lake/Graham Haynes/Joe Fonda/Barry Altschul]: Bamako (2016 [2019], TUM): [cd]: B+(***)
  • Nicki Parrott: From New York to Paris (2019, Arbors): [r]: B+(**)
  • Jeremy Pelt: Jeremy Pelt the Artist (2018 [2019], HighNote): [r]: B+(*)
  • Pet Shop Boys: Agenda (2019, X2, EP): [r]: B+(**)
  • Pet Shop Boys: Inner Sanctum (2018 [2019], X2): [r]: A-
  • Joshua Redman Quartet: Come What May (2018 [2019], Nonesuch): [r]: B+(***)
  • Ruby Rushton: Ironside (2018 [2019], 22a): [r]: B
  • Jim Snidero: Waves of Calm (2019, Savant): [r]: B+(***)
  • Dave Stryker: Eight Track III (2019, Strikezone): [cd]: B+(**)
  • James Suggs: You're Gonna Hear From Me (2018, Arbors): [r]: B+(**)
  • Fumi Tomita: The Elephant Vanishes (2018 [2019], OA2): [cd]: B
  • Warren Vaché: Songs Our Fathers Taught Us (2019, Arbors): [r]: B+(***)
  • Dann Zinn: Day of Reckoning (2018 [2019], Origin): [cd]: B+(***)

  Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

  • Louis Armstrong: Sparks, Nevada 1964! (1964 [2018], Dot Time): [r]: A-
  • Imamu Amiri Baraka: It's Nation Time: African Visionary Music (1972 [2018], Motown): [r]: B+(***)
  • Duke Ellington: In Coventry, 1966 (1966 [2018], Storyville): [r]: B
  • Ben Lamar Gay: 500 Chains (2013-14 [2018], International Anthem): [r]: B+(***)
  • Ben Lamar Gay: Grapes (2013-14 [2018], International Anthem): [r]: B+(*)
  • Ben Lamar Gay/Edinho Gerber: Benjamin E Edinho (2011-13 [2018], International Anthem, EP): [r]: B+(*)
  • Joanne Grauer: Introducing Lorraine Feather (1978 [2018], MPS): [r]: B+(*)
  • Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environental and New Age Music 1980-1990 (1980-90 [2019], Light in the Attic): [r]: A-

  ---

  Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Juan Álamo & Marimjazzia: Ruta Panoramica (Summit)
  • Larry Koonse: New Jazz Standards Vol. 4 (Summit)
  • Lisa Maxwell's Jazz Orchestra: Shiny! (Uncle Marvin Music): May 17
  • Sam Ospovat: Ride Angles (Skirl)
  • Marcos Silva: Brasil: From Head to Toe (Green Egg): May 3

  Sunday, April 14, 2019

  Weekend Roundup

  I don't feel up to writing much about Julian Assange, but following his arrest in London, I anticipate that I'll find a bunch of links this week and should collect them together. Assange is an Australian, a computer programmer who came up with Wikileaks, a system to collect and publish anonymously submitted documents. That's always seemed like a noble endeavor, an aid in exposing how the rich and powerful conspire in private to manipulate and profit, and for a while he seemed to be doing just that. He quickly ran afoul of those powers, most notably the US government, which set out to charge him with various crimes, and quite possibly orchestrated a broader smear campaign against him. Assange, in turn, sought asylum from criminal charges, and since 2012 has been sheltered by the Ecuadorean embassy in London. I don't know how much Assange has had to do with Wikileaks since 2012 (or how much freedom he has had to do anything), but his brand name wound up playing a role in Trump's 2016 campaign when it framed the release of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign. One effect of the DNC dump was to expand the Democratic side of bipartisan outrage against Assange, especially as Clinton's drones tried to paint him as a Putin accomplice.

  I don't have strong opinions about Assange one way or the other, but I did welcome his release of leaked documents on the Iraq War and the US State Department. (See my September 2, 2010 entry, Troops, on the "Collateral Murder" video, anti-war vet Ethan McCord, and a related speech by Barak Obama -- what I said then is still pretty relevant today.) Releasing the DNC emails didn't particularly bother me either, although the timing was suspicious (immediately after the release of Trump's Access Hollywood tape, allowing the media to spin scandal on top of scandal), as was the lack of any RNC/Trump campaign emails to balance the picture.

  Anyhow, the Assange links:

  • James Ball: You don't have to like Julian Assange to defend him.

  • Nicholas Casey/Jo Becker: As Ecuador harbored Assange, it was subjected to threats and leaks.

  • John Cassidy: The indictment of Julian Assange is a threat to journalism.

  • Patrick Cockburn: Accusing Assange of being a 'narcissist' misses the point.

  • Jonathan Cook: After 7 years of deceptions about Assange, the US readies for its first media rendition.

  • Glenn Greenwald/Micah Lee: The US government's indictment of Julian Assange poses grave threats to press freedom.

  • Colin Lecher: Read the United States' indictment against Julian Assange: "One count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion."

  • Anna North: The rape allegation against Julian Assange, explained.

  • Richard Pérez-Peña: Extraditing Assange promises to be a long, difficult process.

  • John Pilger: The Assange arrest is a warning from history.

  • Andrew Prokop: Julian Assange was just arrested and now faces extradition to the United States.

  • Nathan Robinson: Many Democrats and liberals are cheering Assange's arrest. That's foolish.

  • Emily Stewart: The debate over what Julian Assange's arrest means for freedom of the press, explained.

  • Matt Taibbi: Why the Assange arrest should scare reporters.

  Let's also break out multiple links on Israel's elections:

  • Klulood Badawi: The Israeli election put the bigotry of its political class front and center.

  • Zack Beauchamp: Israeli democracy is rotting from the inside: "Tuesday's election results exposed two major threats to Israeli democracy."

  • Patrick Cockburn: Netanyahu's victory tells us who holds power in the Middle East.

  • Jonathan Ofir: Why Israeli election results may have a positive aspect. Well, not really, but anyone who still clung to the notion that the center-left might agree to a two-state deal should realize now that there's no such group left to pin your hopes on (as opposed to the old days when there were groups that seemed willing to consider a deal, even though none actually went through with it).

  • Israel Shamir: The Israeli elections came to naught.

  • Richard Silverstein: Netanyahu wins and will be next Prime Minister of the Judeo-Ethno-State. Not on Israel, but also by Silverstein: Sudan democratic awakening, Libya civil war pose regional threat, invite Saudi meddling: with automatic support from Trump, natch.

  • Kate: Israeli forces shoot 66 Palestinians at Gaza protest, killing 15-year-old boy: Not on the elections, just another routine week of occupation and conflict.

  ---

  Scattered links on other topics this week:

  • Matthew Yglesias:

    • Julian Castro really wants to talk about immigration, but it's most impressive talking about his work.

    • Trump's sister quietly retired in February, and it's actually a big deal: Something here I didn't know: that Trump has a sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, who is a US Court of Appeals judge (appointed, by the way, by Bill Clinton in 1999, although Ronald Reagan appointed her to US District Court in 1983). She retired to escape an investigation into the possibly fraudulent scheme whereby Fred Trump transferred property to his children to evade taxes.

    • Elizabeth Warren's new plan to make sure Amazon (and other big companies) pays corporate tax, explained: "No more claiming big profits to investors while paying nothing to the IRS."

    • Progressives should worry more about the odds that Joe Biden will win: "Liberals are assuming the former vice president will fade on his own, a trap Republicans fell for with Trump." They may both be front-runners, but not many similarities beyond that. Trump campaigned as an outsider, whereas Biden is the most complete insider even considering a run. The most comparable 2016 Republican is Jeb Bush, although I'd give Biden better odds than I gave Bush -- he may not have much of a program or a real following, but at least he's not a laughingstock.

    • Immigration makes America great. This is a good general "explainer" on most of issues related to immigration. I'm more of a moderate (or maybe skeptic?) when it comes to promoting immigration: I'm concerned about the downward pressure on labor markets immigrants pose; I worry that immigration feeds our right-wing tendencies to ignore the needs of impoverished natives; I've noted that many immigrants lean to the political right (in many cases becoming jingoistic -- the Cubans are an obvious case, since US immigration law favors anti-communists). I've noted, for instance, that no less than five (of 16) Republican presidential candidates in 2016 has at least one foreign-born parent (including Trump, who also has a foreign-born wife). Still, I don't doubt the general economic advantages of immigration at present (or slightly elevated) levels. And the problems I've noted would go away if we had a better political atmosphere.

    • Trump's flailing shake-up of the Department of Homeland Security, explained: Key subhed here: "Trump's been in tantrum mode for weeks."

      But Trump is an all-stick, no-carrot kind of guy. His idea of doing a deal with Democrats was to cancel DACA protection for young undocumented immigrants and then offer to reinstate it in exchange for sweeping concessions. And he wants to get Mexico to do favors for him by threatening to hurt both countries' economies unless they do what he wants. This incredibly punitive, wildly ineffective approach to dealmaking has been a hallmark of Trump's approach to the presidency from Day 1, and it appears to be derived from his success as a business executive at using his greater wealth to stiff contractors and shareholders.

      But in the presidency, this kind of bullying doesn't work at all, as you can see from his lack of success in getting border wall money appropriated. A reasonable response to policy failure would be to try to go in a new direction, but Trump seems entirely uninterested in that. So rather than rethink his approach, he's now inclined to burn through administration personnel, even though shuffling the names on an org chart around isn't going to alter any of the fundamentals of the situation.

    • Howard Schultz only has one idea about politics, and it's bad: "Making him president won't fix the problems of partisanship."

    • Trump's possibly illegal designation of a new acting homeland security secretary, explained.

  • Zack Beauchamp: Republicans are taking Ilhan Omar's comments on 9/11 out of context to smear her. Well, when did they ever let context complicate a good smear?

  • David Dayen: Betsy DeVos quietly making it easier for dying for-profit schools to rip off a few more students on the way out.

  • Sean Illing: Why conspiracy theories are getting more absurd and harder to refute: Interview with Nancy L Rosenblum, co-author (with Russell Muirhead) of A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy.

  • Umair Irfan: A brief guide to David Bernhardt, Ryan Zinke's replacement at the Interior Department: "Three things to know about the former oil lobbyist who's just been confirmed as the new Secretary of the Interior."

  • Kalpana Jain: 4 key things to know about India's elections Thursday.

  • Jen Kirby: The new Brexit deadline is October 31.

  • Dara Lind: The post-purge agenda: what the White House wants next on immigration: "Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are pushing for a multi-pronged asylum crackdown."

  • German Lopez:

    • New Zealand Parliament votes 119-1 to ban assault weapons.

    • Most Americans agree Trump has made race relations worse.

  • Ella Nilsen: Why the Senate is blocking a new net neutrality bill, a year after trying to save it. The House passed a bill. McConnell refuses to allow the Senate to consider it. Trump says if passed he will veto it.

  • Anna North: A Texas bill would allow the death penalty for patients who get abortions: "The bill is unlikely to pass, but it's part of a larger trend."

  • Trita Parsi: Trump's Iran terrorist designation is designed to lock in endless enmity. Related: Daniel DePetris/Richard Sokolsky: Bolton and Pompeo are steering Trump toward war with Iran; Robert Mackey: On the eve of Israel's elections, Netanyahu thanks Trump for sanctioning Iran at his request.

  • Andrew Prokop:

    • Former Obama White House counsel indicted in charges stemming from Mueller probe: Greg Craig, "charged with two counts of making false statements in a Justice Department inquiry into whether his law firm Skadden Arps should have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) because of its work for the Ukrainian government." Craig left the Obama administration in 2010. Got involved in Ukrain at Paul Manafort's behest.

    • What does Bill Barr mean when he says he'll review US "spying" on Trump's campaign? "Barr voiced sympathy to some long-running conservative criticisms about the Russia probe's handling."

  • Gabriela Resto-Montero:

    • Democrats unite to condemn Trump tweet linking Ilhan Omar and 9/11.

    • Trump officials say sanctuary city migrant plan under review.

  • Josie Duffy Rice: Jussie Smollett and the impulse to punish. Chicago's outgoing mayor Rahm Emmanuel, cementing his reputation as a grandstanding dickhead, ordered the city to sue Jussie Smollett for the costs of investigating him before dropping charges, some $130,000.

    Given the failures of law enforcement in Chicago, [F.O.P. president Kevin] Graham is not in a strong position to castigate [Cook County states attorney] Foxx. In the first half of 2018, Chicago police made an arrest or identified a suspect in just fifteen per cent of murder cases. Similarly, Emanuel's concern about the costs of the Smollett investigation is misguided at best; in 2018 alone, the city paid a total of a hundred and thirteen million dollars in police-misconduct settlements and related legal fees. . . .

    As Matthew Saniie, the chief data officer for Foxx's office, recently wrote, in Cook County, cases in which the defendant, like Smollett, pleads not guilty to a fourth-degree felony end in a deferred prosecution seventy-five per cent of the time. Foxx runs the second-largest prosecutor's office in the country, responsible for prosecuting crimes in Chicago and a hundred and thirty-four municipalities. Her staff sees almost half a million cases every year. Prosecutorial discretion is one of the pillars of our justice system, and it is her job to discern what deserves her staff's attention, as opposed to what has grabbed the most public attention.

  • Aaron Rupar: Trump promised his sons would keep business out of politics. He's admitting that was a lie. This links to: Elaina Plott: Inside Ivanka's dreamworld: "The 'first daughter' spent years rigorously cultivating her image. But she wasn't prepared for scrutiny."

  • Kirk Semple: Central American farmers head to the US, fleeing climate change.

  • Peter Stone: Trump hotels exempted from ban on foreign payments under new stance.

  • Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Bernie Sanders imagines a progressive new approach to foreign policy: While the rest of the field plays catch up with his 2016 platform, he breaks new ground. But his main break with the bipartisan orthodoxy is thus far limited to sensibility. He's more likely to promote peace and respect than the others because he values them, but he's yet to get down to the specifics it will take to deal with Israel/Palestine, to pick the one case other politicians most fear.

  • Alex Ward:

    • How America's relationship with Turkey fell apart.

    • Trump laments that US troops can't get "rough" with migrants at the border.

    • Trump just tweeted that he wants to put huge tariffs on EU products. Here's why.

  Monday, April 08, 2019

  Music Week

  Expanded blog post, April archive (incomplete).

  Music: current count 31344 [31312] rated (+32), 251 [249] unrated (+2).

  Back in business. I figured all it would take to get Napster working again was a reboot -- it broke following a software update that didn't require one but involved a new Flash module, so I suspected that threw things out of sync. Still, I didn't want to do that for other reaasons, but was forced to when the computer freaked out and gave me a swizzle patterned screen. That suggested something far worse, but the reboot fixed that too.

  Working Napster gave me a chance to catch up with the last couple weeks of Robert Christgau picks -- Stella Donnelly/Sharon Van Etten and Pedro the Lion/Jason Ringenberg -- where only the B+ record didn't disappoint. (Actually, I couldn't find Ringenberg's Stand Tall on Napster, but was able to fish a Soundcloud link from my email trash, so thanks to the publicist.) Guess I'm still missing the Ariana Grande/Amber Mark week -- I had the former's Sweetener way down at B, a grade split matching Mitski's Be the Cowboy, but haven't heard the more recent one.

  Took a dive into George Strait after panning his new one, mostly because I noticed an unheard Christgau A- in the database (Something Special), and it panned out. I had his first Greatest Hits (1985) at A-, so it made sense to check out its source albums (just three of them). I'm not sure that grade holds up, but didn't recheck it. Still, after dismissing most of his songs as unmemorable, I've wound up with "You Look So Good in Love" stuck in my mind all week.

  Other records suggested by various sources, most prolifically Phil Overeem. The tip on Angel-Ho came from breathless hype in The Nation ("Angel-Ho is the future of pop music"). I dug up Petra Van Nuis after she wrote to me (so sometimes that works). Strait and Mandy Barnett just showed up in Napster's featured lists.

  Making fair progress on most projects, although not enough on moving the computer. (Will do that after I post this, I promise.) Biggest one is a new piece of badly-needed pantry shelving, which needs one more coat of paint before I drag it in and bolt it to the wall. I have a couple more projects in that space, ready to roll as soon as the first one is operational. Still, more projects seem to present themselves all the time. Dug up a couple plastic drawers full of CDs today, and my wife argued that I should get rid of them (something about the hoarding being psychotic). I had a plan a couple years back to start donating CDs to a local library, but never followed through on it -- partly because I was working on the Jazz Guide, maybe because they kept naming various buldings after the Kochs. The reason for having a substantial library is to look things up, but I'm fast losing my ability to do so, not to mention my prospects of ever writing anything worthwhile on the subject.

  Still, the project I feel more pressing need for is to come up with a system so I can quickly identify where all my tools (and hardware) are. I'm forever thrashing, trying to find things I know I have somewhere, sometimes even having to buy more tools to replace those I've lost (most recently, a set of hole saws). In fact, thrashing seems to be the word for the week, maybe even the season.

  ---

  New records reviewed this week:

  • Angel-Ho: Death Becomes Her (2019, Hyperdub): [r]: B+(*)
  • Art "Turk" Burton: Ancestral Spirits (2019, T N' T Music): [cd]: A-
  • Romain Collin: Tiny Lights: Genesis (2019, XM): [cd]: B+(**)
  • The Comet Is Coming: Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery (2019, Impulse!): [r]: B+(**)
  • Jordon Dixon: On! (2019, self-released): [cd]: B+(***)
  • Stella Donnelly: Beware of the Dogs (2019, Secretly Canadian): [r]: B+(***)
  • Steve Earle & the Dukes: Guy (2019, New West): [r]: B+(***)
  • Fleurine: Brazilian Dream (2018 [2019], Pure Imagination): [cd]: B+(**)
  • George Freeman: George the Bomb! (2018 [2019], Blujazz/Southport): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Polly Gibbons: All I Can Do (2019, Resonance): [cd]: B
  • Girls on Grass: Dirty Power (2019, self-released): [r]: B+(**)
  • Pablo Lanouguere Quintet: Eclectico (2019, self-released): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Jenny Lewis: On the Line (2019, Warner Bros.): [r]: B+(*)
  • Helado Negro: This Is How You Smile (2019, RVNG Intl): [r]: B+(*)
  • New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Songs: The Music of Allen Toussaint (2018 [2019], Storyville): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Pedro the Lion: Phoenix (2019, Polyvinyl): [r]: B+(*)
  • Jason Ringenberg: Stand Tall (2019, Courageous Chicken): [sc]: A-
  • Royal Trux: White Stuff (2019, Fat Possum): [r]: B+(**)
  • Sir Babygirl: Crush on Me (2019, Father/Daughter, EP): [r]: B+(***)
  • George Strait: Honky Tonk Time Machine (2019, MCA Nashville): [r]: B
  • Terraza Big Band: One Day Wonder (2017 [2019], Outside In Music): [cd]: B+(*)
  • Sharon Van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow (2019, Jagjaguwar): [r]: B+(*)
  • Petra Van Nuis & Dennis Luxion: Because We're Night People (2018, String Damper): [r]: B+(*)
  • Dave Zinno Unisphere: Stories Told (2018 [2019], Whaling City Sound): [cd]: B+(*)

  Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

  • Burnt Sugar/The Arkestra Chamber: Twentieth Anniversary Mixtapes: Groiddest Schnizzits: Volume Two (2001-17 [2019], Trugroid/Avantgroidd): [r]: B+(***)

  Old music:

  • Mandy Barnett: I Can't Stop Loving You: The Songs of Don Gibson (2013, Rounder): [r]: B+(***)
  • The Comet Is Coming: Channel the Spirits (2016, The Leaf Label): [r]: B+(***)
  • George Strait: Strait Country (1981, MCA): [r]: B+(**)
  • George Strait: Strait From the Heart (1982, MCA): [r]: B
  • George Strait: Right or Wrong (1983, MCA): [r]: B+(***)
  • George Strait: Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind (1984, MCA): [r]: B+(**)
  • George Strait: Something Special (1985, MCA): [r]: A-
  • George Strait: The Best of George Strait [20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection] (1983-93 [2002], MCA Nashville): [r]: B+(**)
  • George Strait: 50 Number Ones (1982-2004 [2004], MCA Nashville, 2CD): [r]: B+(***)

  ---

  Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Art Ensemble of Chicago: We Are on the Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration (Pi, 2CD): April 26
  • Art "Turk" Burton: Ancestral Spirits (T N' T Music): May 3
  • George Freeman: George the Bomb! (Blujazz/Southport)
  • Wynton Marsalis: Bolden: Music From the Original Soundtrack (Blue Engine): April 19
  • Xose Miguélez: Ontology (Origin): April 19
  • Billy Mohler: Focus! (Make)
  • New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Songs: The Music of Allen Toussaint (Storyville): April 19
  • OGJB Quartet [Oliver Lake/Graham Haynes/Joe Fonda/Barry Altschul]: Bamako (TUM): May 17
  • Dave Stryker: Eight Track III (Strikezone): May 3
  • Fumi Tomita: The Elephant Vanishes (OA2): April 19
  • Dann Zinn: Day of Reckoning (Origin): April 19

  Sunday, April 07, 2019

  Weekend Roundup

  One of my principles here is not to bother with politician horserace links, especially presidential candidates. One thing I've long held is that a president is only as good as his (or someday her) party, so the big question to ask any presidential candidate is: what are you going to do to get your party elected and make it an effective force? Still, every now and then I have opinions on specific people. When Greg Magarian griped about Tim Ryan and Michael Bennet getting a burst of press attention, as have recent stories about Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg raising great gobs of money, I commented:

  Worth noting that O'Rourke and Buttigieg are principled neoliberals, and are raising money as such. They can do that because their youth and inexperience hasn't saddled them with the sort of baggage the Clinton establishment bears. That's bad news for Biden, who would be the obvious next-in-line for Clinton's donors if they didn't suspect that the brand is ruined. They may also be thinking that running someone young and outside might help crack Sanders' lead among young voters -- something Biden has no prayer of doing.

  The one candidate I've been hearing the most (and most negative) about is Joe Biden. He hasn't announced yet, but evidently the decision has been made, the timing around Easter. Biden has led recent polls, but that can be attributed to his much greater name resolution. I've always figured the decision would turn on whether he's willing to risk his legacy on a very likely loss, but I suppose the decision will turn mostly on whether he can line up sufficient funding. (I had some doubts that Bernie Sanders would run, but when I saw his early funding reports, I immediately realized I was being silly.) Clearly, he didn't run in 2016 because Hillary Clinton had locked up most of his possible funding. That's less obvious this year, but a lot of competitive candidates have jumped in ahead of him.

  Biden isn't awful, but he has a lot of baggage, including a lot of things that wound up hurting Clinton in 2016 (like that Iraq War vote). Some of those things could hurt him in the primaries, especially his rather dodgy record on race and crime, and with women. Other things, like his plagiarism scandal, will hurt him more in the general election. But the big problem there is that he was a Washington insider and party leader for so long that he makes it easy for Republicans to spin this election into a referendum on forty years of Democratic Party failures. Obama was largely able to avoid that in 2008, but Clinton couldn't in 2016.

  Also, there is the nagging suspicion that he isn't really a very good day-to-day candidate. Last time he ran for president he was an also-ran, unable to get more than 1-2% of the vote anywhere. He got the VP nod from Obama after Clinton decided she'd rather be Secretary of State, and one suspects that the Clintons pushed for Biden as VP because they didn't regard him as a serious rival in 2016 (when a sitting VP would normally have the inside track to the nomination). And he's exceptionally prone to gaffes. He managed to avoid any really bad ones running with Obama, but running on his own he'll get a lot more scrutiny and pressure. Nobody thinks he's stupid or evil -- unlike Trump, whose base seems to regard those attributes as virtues -- but nobody is much of a fan either (well, except for the fictional Leslie Knope, which kind of proves the point).

  For more, if you care, see Michelle Goldberg: The wrong time for Joe Biden:

  Beyond gender, on issue after issue, if Biden runs for president he will have to run away from his own record. He -- and by extension, we -- will have to relive the debate over the Iraq war, which he voted to authorize. He'll have to explain his vote to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, which, by lifting regulations on banking, helped create the conditions for the 2008 financial meltdown. (Biden has called that vote one of the biggest regrets of his career.) In 2016, Hillary Clinton was slammed for her previous support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which contributed to mass incarceration. Biden helped write the law, which he called, in 2015, the "1994 Biden crime bill." . . . No one should judge the whole span of Biden's career by the standards of 2019, but if he's going to run for president, it's fair to ask whether he's the right leader for this moment. He is a product of his time, but that time is up.

Other political news last week included the death of Ernest Hollings, the long-time South Carolina senator, at 97. I was, well, shocked to see him referred to in an obituary as a populist -- a thought that had never crossed my mind. I would grant that he was not as bad as the Republicans who served in the Senate alongside him (Strom Thurmond and Lindsey Graham), or his Republican successor (Jim DeMent). Still, those are pretty low standards.

By the way, a couple of non-political links below: subjects I used to follow closely in more carefree times. See if you can pick them out.

---

Some scattered links this week:

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • The Democratic debate over filibuster reform, explained. One way you can tell whether Democratic candidates actually care about implementing their platforms is where they stand on this issue. The strongest position so far is from Elizabeth Warren.

  • Boeing's effort to get the 737 Max approved to fly again, explained.

  • The controversy over Joe Biden's treatment of women explained.

  • The Great Awokening: white Democrats' newfound racial liberalism is transforming politics.

• Jonathan Blitzer: How climate change is fueling the US border crisis: "In the western highlands of Guatemala, the questio is no longer whether someone will leave but when." Two further installments: The epidemic of debt plaguing Central American migrants, and The dream homes of Guatemalan migrants.

• Philip Bump: Nearly everything Trump just said about Puerto Rico is wrong.

• Jane Coaston: FBI director: White nationalist violence is a "persistent, pervasive threat". Related: Weiyi Cai/Simone Landon: Attacks by white extremists are growing. So are their connections.

• Sean Collins: Barack Obama warns against a "circular firing squad" over ideological purity in politics: Sounds like Obama is attacking the left, once again counseling compromises that ultimately prove ineffective, but his centrist-neoliberal allies are every bit as ideological, and if anything have more experience in using their spite against the left to make sure even their lame compromises rarely change anything. I'm reminded how John Lewis refused to purge Communists from the UMW, because he appreciated that they were the union's most passionate and effective organizers. The centrists need to realize that they need the left in order to attain anything significant once they've worked their compromises. And as the article shows, left-leaning polticians aren't actually doing things to undermine party unity -- other than making solid policy proposals and arguing them on their merits. Obama, on the other hand, is showing himself to be irrelevant. Some may feel nostalgic for his basic competence and his devotion to the threadbare pieties of Americanism, but as a politician you have to judge him on his inability to deliver the change he campaigned for and his failure to build a party that could protect, sustain, and extend even his most modest dreams.

• Tara Golshan: Congress passes historic resolution to end US support for Saudi-led war in Yemen.

• David M Halbfinger:

  • An Israel charts a future, color and chaos abound in its election.

  • Netanyahu vows to start annexing West Bank, in bid to rally the right.

  • In Israeli election ads, to stir up the base, anything goes.

  If you've followed Israeli elections, you may have noticed that since the late 1970s, the only time Israeli politics have shifted left was when the Bush I administration made clear its displeasure with Yitzhak Shamir's obstruction of the Madrid Peace Talks. Israeli voters noticed, and voted the more flexible Yitzhak Rabin in, leading to the Oslo Accords, which Clinton allowed Netanyahu and Ehud Barak to turn into a charade. But as Clinton, Bush, Obama, and even more explicitly Trump kowtowed to Israel, Israelis had no reason not to indulge their chauvinist prejudices, with each election pushing the government ever further to the right.

• Sean Illing: How digital technology is destroying our freedom: Interview with Douglas Rushkoff, exploring the theme of his recent Team Human and earlier books like Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation (2009), Program or Be Programmed (2011), Present Shock: When Everything Happes Now (2013), and Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus (2016) -- he's sort of a latter-day Neil Postman. (The one book I've read by him is Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism, where he sees Judaism as an evolutionary step toward atheism. I could make a similar claim for Calvinism, based more on personal history.)

• Sarah Kliff: Trump does have a health care plan. It would cause millions to lose coverage.

• Mike Konczal: Should the Green New Deal repeat the failures of Cap-and-Trade?

• Paul Krugman:

  • Donald Trump is trying to kill you: "Trust the pork producers; fear the wind turbines." I will add this quibble: if you ever find yourself standing under a wind turbine, you'll find that they are very ominous and unpleasant, emitting loud noises as the huge blades screech and whine above your head.

  • Republican health care lying syndrome: "Even Trump supporters don't believe the party's promises."

  • The incredible shrinking Trump boom: "At least corporate accountants are having some fun." I suspect this title could be used for a much broader investigation than this note on the effects of the Trump tax cut.

  • GOP cruelty is a pre-existing condition: "Republicans just won't stop trying to take away health care."

  • Republicans really hate health care: "They've gone beyond cynicism to pathology." Related: Jamelle Bouie: An opening for Democrat: "On health care, this isn't what Trump's voters bargained for." Bouie writes:

    But while Trump's decision to govern for conservatives has netted him high approval ratings with Republicans who remain loyal to him, it has also undermined the coalition that put him in the White House, threatening his prospects for re-election.

    We saw some of this with the midterms. The drive to repeal Obamacare was a major reason Republicans lost their majority in the House of Representatives. The attempt made Trump's approval rating plunge to the mid-30s, lower than that of other presidents at that point in their first term. Large majorities opposed the bill to repeal and replace the health care law, and 60 percent said it was a "good thing" it failed to pass. Forty-two percent of voters named health care as their top issue in the midterms, and 77 percent of them backed Democrats.

    In 2016, Trump ran without the burden of a record. He could be everything to everyone -- he could say what people wanted to hear. And he used that to reach out to working-class whites as a moderate on the economy and a hard-line conservative on race and immigration.

    Now, as president, Trump is a standard-issue Republican with an almost total commitment to conservative economic policy. Those policies are unpopular. And they have created an opening for Democrats to win back some of the voters they've lost.

• Dara Lind:

  • The border shutdown was a reality show threat, but the border slowdown is real.

  • Trump's decision to cut off aid to 3 Central American countries, explained. Related: Kevin Sieff: US officials said aid to El Salvador helped slow migration. How Trump is canceling it.

• German Lopez:

  • Trump is blaming Mexico for the US's drug problem. He should blame a failed war on drugs.

  • Justice Department releases damning report on Alabama's gruesome, violent prisons.

• Jonathan Mahler/Jim Rutenberg: How Rupert Murdoch's empire of influence remade the world: Part 1: Imperial reach, followed by Part 2: Internal divisions, and Part 3: The new Fox weapon.

• Louis Menand: What baseball teaches us about measuring talent: Review of Christopher Phillips' new book Scouting and Scoring: How We Know What We Know About Baseball. Noted because this is a subject I've spent a lot of time on, albeit not very recently.

• Kelsey Piper: Google cancels AI ethics board in response to outcry: I can imagine many angles to this, but the best reported one was opposition to Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James, underscoring the notion that conservatives have no credibility when it comes to ethics -- although Google's inclusion of a "drone company CEO" was even more blatant.

• Douglas Preston: The day the dinosaurs died: "A young paleontologist may have discovered the most significant event in the history of life on Earth."

• Andrew Prokop: Some Mueller team members aren't happy with Barr's description of their findings.

• Aaron Rupar: Trump plans to nominate a second loyalist to the Fed: Herman Cain: You got to give Trump some credit for learning here. When the Fed chair opened up, his staff gave him two options. While he picked the lesser inflation hawk, he still wound up with a guy who repeatedly raised the Fed funds rate, constricting the economy (and especially speculators and scam artists like himself who benefit most from cheap money). No doubt this got him thinking: Why not pick some loyal political hacks instead of letting the bankers limit his choices? Stephen Moore was his test case, and while Cain isn't as much of a hack as Moore, he's even less "qualified" (in normative terms).

• Amanda Sakuma: Trump attacks Rep. Ilhan Omar hours after a supporter was charged with threatening to kill her: Subhed: "He wants to drive a wedge between Jewish voters and the Democratic Party." TPM emphasized the latter in its coverage of Trump's speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition: Zeke Miller: Trump tries to lure Jewish voters: Dems would 'leave Israel out there'. Related: Matt Shuham: American Jewish orgs to Trump: Netanyahu is ot 'our' Prime Minister. On the other hand, Netanyahu is Sheldon Adelson's Prime Minister -- Adelson owns the newspaper in Israel most closely associated with Netanyahu, and Adelson is the Republican Party's most visible Jewish bankroller, so that's probably close enough for Trump.

• Emily Stewart: What's going on with Mar-a-Lago and Chinese spies, explained. Related: Fred Kaplan: Mar-a-Lago is a foreign spy's dream come true.

• Matt Taibbi: The Pentagon wins again: "In an effort to prevent non-defense cuts, House Democrats grant the DOD exactly the raise it wanted."

• Alex Ward:

  • Saudi Arabia is detaining American activists 6 months after Khashoggi's murder: "The Saudi crown prince is cracking down on free speech and torturing activists. The US won't push back."

  • Trump has a strong foreign policy narrative for 2020: Sure, someone smarter might be able to spin this bullet list into an attractive political spiel, the items don't mesh into a coherent strategy, and he's got a lot of unsettled, and therefore risky, affairs. Still, I'm more worried that Democrats will try to counter Trump's chaos by talking stronger and more belligerent, and thereby turn Trump into the anti-war candidate.

• Philip Weiss:

  • The Israeli spring won't happen next week (and that should cause reflection)

  • Trump brags he blew off calls from world leaders to give Adelsons the greatest gift: Jerusalem.

• Sean Wilentz: The "reputational interests" of William Barr. Related: Benjamin Wittes: Bill Barr has promised transparency. He deserves the chance to deliver.

• TomDispatch:

  • Andrew Bacevich: Behind fronds of fakery, here's some real news.

  • Dilip Hiro: India and Pakistan, and a planet in peril.

  • Rajan Menon: Whose money? Not yours.

  • Danny Sjursen: On leaving the U.S. Army.

  • Tom Engelhardt: Donald Trump naked as a jaybird.

Monday, April 01, 2019

Music Week

Expanded blog post, March archive (incomplete).

Music: current count 31312 [31297] rated (+15), 249 [253] unrated (-4).

Rated count way down, about half of what I consider a solid week. When I dropped to 29 last week, I described that as a "lazy week." Could say that again, but the real reason for the drop off is that the Flash plugin on my computer is fucked up, making it impossible to use Napster (or, for that matter, Spotify). That left me with playing CDs (9) and using Bandcamp (6), and I didn't really have much to choose from or look for on either. Unplayed CD queue is currently only 7 deep, and I don't just randomly play unknowns on Bandcamp. On the other hand, the Bandcamps generally got two spins, and the CDs more than that (I'd guess Larry Fuller got 7-8 plays -- not that I needed more than 2, but it made for pretty pleasant background music). All that lead to a couple anomalies. Only one A- is the lowest weekly total in quite some time, and I'm actually not real solid on it -- I've never been much of a Betty Carter fan, and should probably go back and check some of her earlier releases (and re-check The Audience With Betty Carter, which I have at B- even though it wears a Penguin Guide crown). It could be that I promoted it at the last minute because I came up with nothing else.

The other anomaly is the high percentage of B+(***) grades (8/15). Certainly the multiple replays helped out. At this point, I'm pretty sure the jazz records (especially the CDs) have plateaued, but three of the Bandcamps might merit further investigation: Mekons, Quelle Chris, and Mdou Moctar. I think I have those three pegged right, but they're close, and it's worth noting that I have the immediately previous albums by all three at A- (It Is Twice Blessed, Everything's Fine, and Blue Stage Sessions).

Priorities for the coming week will be to reconstruct my crashed tax file, finish (paint) a new pantry shelf, and finally get my computers rearranged and reconnected (hopefully fixing the Napster problem, and allowing me to get onto some website work). Also have my DownBeat Critics Poll invite, so that will be another (pretty much wasted) chunk of time. One website task I did manage to get done last week was to build a book page for Robert Christgau's new essay collection, Book Reports: A Music Critic on His First Love, Which Was Reading, due out from Duke University Press on April 12. Info and various links on that page. Still to be done is the nasty task of embargoing most of the pieces that appear in the book, so this is your last change (for several years) to squirrel away free copies of most of the book.

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New records reviewed this week:

• Laura Antonioli: The Constant Passage of Time (2018 [2019], Origin): [cd]: B+(**)
• Michaël Attias: Ëchos La Nuit (2018 [2019], Out of Your Head): [cd]: B+(**)
• Blu & Oh No: A Long Red Hot Los Angeles Summer Night (2019, Native Sounds): [bc]: B+(**)
• Chord Four: California Avant Garde (2016 [2018], self-released): [cd]: B+(***)
• Larry Fuller: Overjoyed (2018 [2019], Capri): [cd]: B+(***)
• Ross Hammond & Sameer Gupta: Mystery Well (2018, Prescott): [bc]: B+(***)
• Remy Le Boeuf: Light as a Word (2017 [2019], Outside In Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Mekons: Deserted (2019, Bloodshot): [bc]: B+(***)
• Mdou Moctar: Ilana: The Creator (2019, Sahel Sounds): [bc]: B+(***)
• Ivo Perelman/Mat Maneri/Nate Wooley: Strings 3 (2018 [2019], Leo): [cd]: B+(*)
• Ivo Perelman/Mat Maneri/Nate Wooley/Matthew Shipp: Strings 4 (2018 [2019], Leo): [cd]: B+(***)
• Quelle Chris: Guns (2019, Mello Music Group): [bc]: B+(***)
• SOL Development: The SOL of Black Folk (2019, self-released): [bc]: B+(**)
• Tiger Hatchery: Breathing in the Walls (2017 [2018], ESP-Disk): [cd]: B+(***)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Betty Carter: The Music Never Stops (1992 [2019], Blue Engine): [cd]: A-

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Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Romain Collin: Tiny Lights: Genesis (XM): April 12
• Jordon Dixon: On! (self-released): June 7
• Polly Gibbons: All I Can Do (Resonance): April 19
• Pablo Langouguere Quintet: Eclectico (self-released): May 31

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Mar 2001