Streamnotes (October 2018)

Pick up text here.

Music Week

Music: current count 30524 [30499] rated (+25), 293 [287] unrated (+6).

Despite the late posting, cutoff was Monday afternoon (including Monday's incoming mail). Count is low mostly because I took time off to shop for and cook Birthday Dinner last week. Went with French, mostly dishes from the South country, definitely nothing gourmet or nouvelle cuisine-ish. Made a terrific cassoulet with duck, an even better veal marengo, a slightly inferior boeuf bourguinon, my usual ratatouille, and a simply divine gratin dauphinois, as well as a few spreadables (chicken liver, duck rillettes, salmon rillettes, herbed cheese, tapenade), and a pretty yummy flourless chocolate cake. Took three solid days: one shopping, two cooking. More extensive notes in the notebook.

During that time, I listened to golden oldies, including all of Rhino's The R&B Box. Before (and slightly after) I got stuck in Will Friedland's The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums, playing things he liked that I hadn't heard, and other things by artists listed that I thought might be worthwhile (mostly Frank Sinatra's Capitols). When I first picked up the book at the library, I had heard 19 of 57 listed albums (33.3%). Now I've raised that to 51 (89.4%), unable to find albums by Bobby Troup (Sings Johnny Mercer), Lena Horne (At the Waldorf Astoria), Barb Jungr (Every Grain of Sand), Carmen McRae (As Time Goes By), Jimmy Scott (Lost and Found), and Jo Stafford (Sings American Folk Songs). I don't have time to figure out a grade spread, but safe to say we don't agree on very many of these.

One thing I like to do when I'm doing these dives into old music is to knock off U-rated albums in my database, but I had trouble locating (much less finding time for) unrated boxes of Sinatra and Mel Tormé. (I also have an unrated Bing Crosby box somewhere. In fact, I should spend some time with Crosby, but as it happened I had heard Friedland's two Crosby selections, so I skipped over him.) Maybe someday I'll write my own vocals list. It should be very different, as only 13 albums on Friedland's list did A- or better for me.

Streamnotes due October 31. Need to get cracking on that. I should also note that Robert Christgau's new essay collection, Is It Still Good to Ya? Fifty Years of Rock Criticism 1967-2017 came out last week.

New records rated this week:

• Danny Bacher: Still Happy (2018, Whaling City Sound): [cd]: B+(*)
• Ernesto Cervini's Turboprop: Abundance (2013-16 [2018], Anzic): [cd]: B+(**)
• Colin Edwin & Lorenzo Feliciati: Twinscapes Vol. 2: A Modern Approach to the Dancefloor (2018, RareNoise): [cdr]: B+(**)
• Fat Tony: 10,000 Hours (2018, self-released): [bc]: B+(**)
• The Marie Goudy 12tet featuring Jocelyn Barth: The Bitter Suite (2018, self-released): [cd]: B
• Robyn: Honey (2018, Konichawa/Interscope): [r]: B+(**)

Old music rated this week:

• Robyn: Robyn Is Here (1995 [1997], RCA): [r]: B+(*)
• Robyn: My Truth (1999, RCA): [r]: B+(**)
• Robyn: Body Talk, Pt. 3 (2010, Konichiwa, EP): [r]: B+(***)
• Frank Sinatra: Songs for Young Lovers (1954, Capitol, EP): [r]: B+(***)
• Frank Sinatra: Swing Easy! (1954, Capitol, EP): [r]: A
• Frank Sinatra: In the Wee Small Hours (1954-55 [1955], Capitol): [r]: A-
• Frank Sinatra: Close to You (1957, Capitol): [r]: B+(*)
• Frank Sinatra: Come Fly With Me (1957 [1958], Capitol): [r]: B+(**)
• Frank Sinatra: Come Dance With Me! (1958 [1959], Capitol): [r]: B+(***)
• Frank Sinatra: No One Cares (1959, Capitol): [r]: B-
• Frank Sinatra: Nice 'n' Easy (1960, Capitol): [r]: B+(***)
Frank Sinatra: Sinatra's Swingin' Session (1960 [1961], Capitol): [r]: A-
• Mr. Tophat Feat. Robyn: Trust Me (2016 [2017], Smalltown Supersound, EP): [r]: B+(**)
• Mel Tormé With the Marty Paich Dek-Tette: Lulu's Back in Town (1956, Bethlehem): [r]: B+(***)
• Mel Tormé With the Marty Paich Dek-Tette: Mel Tormé Sings Fred Astaire (1956, Bethlehem): [r]: A-
• Mel Tormé: Tormé (1958 [1959], Verve): [r]: B+(**)
• Mel Tormé: I Dig the Duke/I Dig the Count (1961, Verve): [r]: B+(***)
• Mel Tormé: Compact Jazz: Mel Tormé (1958-61 [1987], Verve): [r]: B+(***)
• Mel Tormé: The Best of Mel Tormé [20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection] (1958-61 [2005], UME): [r]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• François Carrier/Michel Lambert/John Edwards: Elements (FMR)
• Annie Chen Octet: Secret Treetop (Shanghai Audio & Video): November 9
• Coyote Poets of the Universe: Strange Lullaby (Square Shaped, 2CD)
• Jake Ehrenreich: A Treasury of Jewish Christmas Songs (self-released)
• Christopher Hollyday: Telepathy (Jazzbeat Productions)
• Adam Hopkins: Crickets (Out of Your Head)
• Jason Kao Hwang Burning Bridge: Blood (True Sound)
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis: Una Noche Con Rubén Blades (Blue Engine)
• Lawful Citizen: Internal Combustion (self-released): November 9
• Carol Liebowitz/Birgitta Flick: Malita-Malika (Leo)
• Jack Mouse Group: Intimate Adversary (Tall Grass): January 1
• Jorge Nila: Tenor Time (Tribute to the Tenor Masters) (Ninjazz): January 4
• Chris Pasin: Ornettiquette (Piano Arts)
• The David Ullman Group: Sometime (Little Sky)
• David Virelles: Igbó Alákorin (The Singer's Groove) Vol I & II (Pi)
• Way North: Fearless and Kind (self-released): November 2
• Kenny Werner: The Space (Pirouet): November 2

Weekend Roundup

I haven't written much about the elections this year. Partly, I don't care for the horserace-style reporting, or the focus on polls as a proxy for actual news. FiveThirtyEight currently forecasts that the Democrats have a "1 in 6" chance of gaining control of the Senate, and a "6 in 7" chance of winning the House. The main difference there is that Democrats have a huge structural disadvantage in the Senate: only one third of the seats are up, and Republicans have a large margin among the carryover seats; most of the seats that are contested this year are Democratic, so the Democrats have many more opportunities to lose than to win; and the Senate isn't anywhere near close to uniformly representative of the general population. The House itself has been severely rigged against the Democrats, so much so that in recent years Democrats have won the national popular vote for the House yet Republicans won most of the seats (same as with the 2016 presidential election). Despite those odds, it seems likely that the Democrats will get a larger share of the nationwide Senate vote than the House vote. I'm not sure what the best thinking is on this, but it seems likely to me that the Democrats will have to win the nationwide House vote by 4% or more just to break even. The break-even point in the Senate is probably more like +10%, so a Democratic wave of +6-7% will give you those forecast odds.

Of course, one reason for not obsessing over the polls and odds is that Republicans have tended to do better than expected pretty much every election since the Democratic gains in 2006-08. I don't really understand why this has been the case, aside from the hard work Republicans have done to intimidate and suppress voters (but I doubt that's all there is to it). Early this year, I thought a bit about writing up a little book on political eras and strategy, but never got past the obvious era divisions: 1800, 1860, 1932, 1980; 2020 would be about right, especially since Trump has more in common with the dead-end presidents (Adams, Buchanan, Hoover, Carter) than the era-shifters (Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and, ugh, Reagan). Maybe I'll return to that after the election, with some more data to crunch.

Of course, the real meat of such a book would be a dissection of the Republican political machine: how it works, why it works, who pulls the levers, and why do so many otherwise decent people fall for it. (I don't see much value delving into the so-called deplorables, although two of them snapped and made the biggest news this week -- more on that below.) This should be easier now than it was just weeks or months ago, as Republican campaign pitches have become even more fraudulent and inflammatory as the day of reckoning approaches. Still, I'm not sure I'm up to this task. It's so easy to caricature Trump that most of his critics have failed to notice how completely, and even more surprisingly how deftly, he has merged his party and himself into a single, homogeneous force.

On the other hand, the Democrats are still very much the party of Will Rogers, when he famously proclaimed: "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." Despite the recent polarization of political parties -- mostly accomplished by Republican efforts to detach Southern and suburban racists from their previous Democratic Party nests -- Democrats still range over virtually the entire spectrum of American political thought, at least those who generally accept that we live in a complex open society, one that accepts and respects differences within a framework of equal rights and countervailing powers. This contrasts starkly with the Republican Party, which has been captured by a few hundred billionaires, who have bankrolled a media empire which expertly exploits the fears and prejudices of an often-adequate segment of voters to support their agenda of enriching and aggrandizing their class, with scant regard for the consequences.

We see the consequences of unchecked Republican power every day, at least since the last general election delivered the presidency to Donald Trump, and allowed the confirmation of two more extreme right-wing Supreme Court Justices and many more lesser judges -- indeed, my Weekend Roundups for the last two years, including the one below, barely scratch that surface. But for all the talk of polarization, the practical situation today is not a stark choice between two dogmatic and opposed political extremes, but between one such party, and another that reflects the often flawed but still idealistic American tradition of progressive equality, an open and free society, and a mixed but fair economy: the traits of a democracy, because they are ideals that nearly all of us can believe in and agree on.

So despite the billions of dollars being spent to persuade you, the choice is ultimately stark and simple. Either you vote for a party that has proven itself determined to make America a cruder, harsher, less welcoming, less fair, more arrogant, more violent, and more rigidly hierarchical place, or you vote for Democrats, who may or may not be good people, who may or may not have good ideas, but who at least are open to discussing real problems and realistic solutions to those problems, who recognize that a wide range of people have interests, and who seek to balance them in ways that are practical and broadly beneficial. Republicans only seek to consolidate their power, and that means stripping away anything that gives you the option of standing up to them: pretty much everything from casting a ballot to joining a union. On the other hand, voting for Democrats may not guarantee democracy, but it will at least slow and possibly start to reverse the descent into totalitarianism the Republicans have plotted out.

This choice sounds so obvious I'm almost embarrassed to have to bring it up, but so many people are prey to Republican pitches that the races remain close and uncertain. Nor am I worried here just about the polls. I see evidence of how gullible otherwise upstanding people can be every time I look at Facebook. The main reason I bother with Facebook is to keep tabs on my family and close friends. While I have little cause for concern among the latter, my family offers a pretty fair cross-section of, well, white America. So every day now I see disturbing right-wing memes -- most common ones this week were efforts to paint alleged pipe-bomber Cesar Sayoc as a closet Democrat (one also argued that he isn't white). A couple weeks ago it was mostly misleading memes defending Brett Kavanaugh. It's very rare to find these accompanied by even a cursory personal argument. Rather, they seem to be just token gesture of political allegiance.

Probably the most important stories of the week were two acts of not-quite-random violence: one (mailed pipe bombs to a number of prominent Democratic Party politicians and supporters) seems to be a simple case of a Trump supporter acting on violent fantasies fanned by the president's reckless rhetoric; the other (a mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh) erupts from a much older strain of anti-semitism, one that was much more fashionable back in the 1930s when Trump's father was attending pro-Nazi rallies in New York. Republicans, including Trump, were quick to condemn these acts of violence (although, as noted above, there has been a bizarre strain of denialism with regard to the pipe-bomber).

I have no doubt that these are the isolated acts of profoundly disturbed individuals. Of course, that's what politicians always say when their supporters get carried away and cross the bounds of law and decency. Still, I think there are cases where political figures set up an environment where it becomes almost inevitable that someone will act criminally. Two fairly convincing examples of this are the murders of Yitzhak Rabin in Israel (called for by prominent rabbis) and of George Tiller here in Wichita (killed on the second assassination attempt after years of being demonized by anti-abortion activists). I don't think either of this week's acts rises to that standard, but the fact is that violence against blacks, Jews, and others vilified by right-wing propagandists spiked shortly after Obama was elected president, and Trump deliberately tapped into that anger during and after the 2016 election. Indeed, right-wing rage has been a feature of American politics at least since it was summoned up by GW Bush in response to the 9/11 attacks, deliberately to put America onto a permanent war footing, something that seventeen years of further war has only increased. That random Americans have increasingly attempted to impose their political will through guns and bombs is no coincidence, given that their government has done just that -- and virtually nothing else but that -- for most of our lives.

Some scattered links this week:

• Matthew Yglesias: The hack gap: how and why conservative nonsense dominates American politics: This at least starts to explain why, for instance, when Hillary Clinton referred to half of Trump's supporters as "a basket of deplorables" the comment was repeated ad nauseum along with the horrified reactions from both halves of the Trump party, but when Trump says "Anybody who votes for a Democrat now is crazy" hardly anyone ever hears of it:

  The reason is something I've dubbed "the hack gap" over the years, and it's one of the most fundamental asymmetries shaping American politics. While conservatives obsess over the (accurate) observation that the average straight news reporter has policy views that are closer to the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, the hack gap fundamentally does more to structure political discourse.

  The hack gap explains why Clinton's email server received more television news coverage than all policy issues combined in the 2016 election. It explains why Republicans can hope to get away with dishonest spin about preexisting conditions. It's why Democrats are terrified that Elizabeth Warren's past statements about Native American heritage could be general election poison in 2020, and it's why an internecine debate about civility has been roiling progressive circles for nearly two years even while the president of the United States openly praises assaulting journalists. . . .

  Since there are exactly two significant political parties in the United States, it's natural to think of them as essentially mirror images of each other.

  But they're not, and one critical difference is that the Republican Party benefits from the operation of mass-market propaganda broadcasts that completely abjure the principles of journalism.

  Back in the 19th century, most newspapers in America were highly partisan, but around 1900 they gave way to mainstream papers which strived to establish clear facts that could inform all readers. As broadcast media developed, it was licensed by the government and required to serve the public interest and provide equal time on matters of controversy. This pretty much ended when Reagan's FCC got rid of the equal time rule. Right-wingers were quick to buy up newly unregulated media and turn them into pure propaganda outlets. The left might have wanted to follow suit, but none (by definition) could afford to buy up the formerly "free press," while liberals and centrists were generally content to stick with the mainstream media, even as its fact-bias tilted to the right to encompass the "reality" of the propagandists. This continuous rebalancing has had the effect of allowing the right to define much of the terrain of what counts as news. A prime example of this has been the nearly continuous mainstream press reporting on an endless series of Clinton "scandals" -- even when the reporting shows the charges to be false, the act of taking them seriously feeds the fears and doubts of many uncommitted voters, in some cases (like 2016) tilting elections:

  And yet elections are swung, almost by definition, not by the majority of people who correctly see the scope of the differences and pick a side but by the minority of people for whom the important divisions in US partisan politics aren't decisive. Consequently, the issues that matter most electorally are the ones that matter least to partisans. Things like email protocol compliance that neither liberals nor conservatives care about even slightly can be a powerful electoral tool because the decisive voters are the ones who don't care about the epic ideological clash of left and right.

  But journalists take their cues about what's important from partisan media outlets and partisan social media.

  Thus, the frenzies of partisan attention around "deplorables" and "lock her up" served to focus on controversies that, while not objectively significant. are perhaps particularly resonant to people who don't have firm ideological convictions.

  Meanwhile, similar policy-neutral issues like Trump's insecure cellphone, his preposterous claim to be too busy to visit the troops, or even his apparent track record of tax fraud don't get progressives worked into a lather in the same way.

  This is a natural tactical advantage that, moreover, serves a particular strategic advantage given the Republican Party's devotion to plutocratic principles on taxation and health insurance that have only a very meager constituency among the mass public.

  Yglesias cites some interesting research on the effect of Fox News and other cogs in the right-wing propaganda machine, showing that the margin of nearly all Republican victories "since the 1980s" can be chalked up to this "hack gap." One effect of this is that by being able to stay extreme and still win, Republicans have never had to adjust their policy mix to gain moderate voters. Indeed, they probably realize that extreme negative attitudes are, if anything, more effective in motivating their "base," although that also leads to them taking ever greater liberties with the truth.

  Other Yglesias pieces from the last two weeks:

  • The case for amnesty.

  • Democratic priorities for 2021: what's most important? Given all the people who are likely running for president in 2020, what do they hope to accomplish?

    In my view, the most important things to tackle right now are climate change, the state of American democracy, and the millions of long-term resident undocumented immigrants in the country.

  • Democrats need to learn to name villains rather than vaguely decrying "division": Yglesias doesn't get very specific either, but that's because what he says about Republicans fits damn near every one of them:

    But there is also a very specific thing happening in the current American political environment that is driving the elevated level of concern. And that thing is not just a nameless force of "division."

    It's a deliberate political strategy enacted by the Republican Party, its allies in partisan media, and its donors to foster a political debate that is centered on divisive questions of personal identity rather than on potentially unifying themes of concrete material interests. It's a strategy whose downside is that it tends to push American society to the breaking point, but whose upside is that it facilitates the enacting of policies that serve the concrete material interests of a wealthy minority rather than those of the majority.

    That's what's going on, and it's time to say so.

    Here in Kansas, Kris Kobach is running for governor, and his adds try to turn him into a normal "family man," while attacking his opponent, Democrat Laura Kelly, as "far left." I don't know the guy personally, so I merely suspect, based on his public behavior and manifest ignorance of law, that the former is a bald-faced lie. The charge against Kelly is no less than rabid McCarthy-ite slander: not that it would bother me if it were true, but she's about as staidly conservative as any non-Republican in Kansas can be. Meanwhile, Ron Estes' ads for the House stress how hard he's is fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare -- something there's no evidence of in his voting record. No mention of the real hard work he does in Washington, carrying water for the Kochs, Boeing, and the hometown Petroleum Club.

    Biden is right, of course, that the upshot of that divisiveness is deplorable and bad for the country. It would be much healthier for American society to have a calmer, kinder, more rational political dialogue more focused on addressing the concrete problems of the majority of the country. But while society overall would be healthier with that kind of politics, Donald Trump personally would not be better off. Nor would the hyper-wealthy individuals who benefit personally from the Republican Party's relentless advocacy of unpopular regressive tax schemes.

    The American people were not crying out for the Trump administration to legalize a pesticide that damages children's brains and then follow it up with a ruling to let power plants poison children's brains, but the people who own the pesticide factories and power plants are sure glad that we're screaming about a caravan of migrants hundreds of miles away rather than the plutocrats next door.

    Combating this strategy of demagoguery and nonsense is difficult, but the first step is to correctly identify it rather than spouting vague pieties about togetherness.

  • An extended discussion of the US-Saudi alliance shows Trump still has no idea what he's talking about.

  • After playing nice for one afternoon, Trump wakes to blame the media for bombings.

  • Trump's middle-class tax cut is a fairy tale that distracts from the real midterm stakes:

    There is a kind of entertaining randomness to the things Trump says and does. The president decides it would be smart to start pretending that he's working on a middle-class tax cut, so he just blurts it out with no preparation. Everyone else in the Republican Party politics knows that when Trump starts lying about something, their job is to start covering for him.

    But because Trump is disorganized, and most people aren't as shameless as Trump is, it usually takes a few days for the ducks to get in a row. The ensuing chaos is kind of funny.

    But there's actually nothing funny about tricking millions of people about matters with substantial concrete consequences for them and their families. And that's what's happening here. Trump is lying about taxes -- and about health care and many other things -- because he will benefit personally in concrete ways if the electorate is misinformed about the real stakes in the election.

  • Ebola was incredibly important to TV news until Republicans decided it shouldn't be.

  • California's Proposition 10, explained: This has to do with rent control. Yglesias once wrote a book called The Rent Is Too Damn High, so this is something he cares a lot about -- certainly a lot more than I do, although I sure remember the pain of getting price gouged by greedy landlords. Yglesias mostly wants to see more building, which would put pressure to bring prices down.

  • To defend journalism, we need to defend the truth and not just journalists:

    Trump is a bigot and a demagogue, but he is first and foremost a scammer.

    When Trump fans wanted to learn the secrets of his business success, he bilked them out of money for classes at his fake university. When Trump fans wanted to invest in his publicly traded company, they lost all their money while he tunneled funds out of the enterprise and into his pockets.

    He riles up social division by lying about minority groups to set up the premise that he's the champion of the majority, and then lies to the majority about what he's doing for them.

    He can't get away with it if people know the truth, so he attacks -- rhetorically, and at times even physically -- people whose job it is is to tell the truth. To push back, we in journalism can't just push back on the attacks. We need to push back on the underlying lies more clearly and more vigorously than we have.

  • Reconsidering the US-Saudi relationship: Argues that a US-Saudi alliance made sense during the Cold War, and that hostility between the Saudis and Iran makes sense now (the sanctions keep Iran from putting its oil on the market and depressing the price of Saudi oil), but points out that while the Saudis benefit from keeping the US and Iran at loggerheads, the US doesn't get much out of it. That Trump has fallen for the Saudi bait just shows how little he understands anything about the region (and more generally about the world).

  • The biggest lie Trump tells is that he's kept his promises: Well, obviously, "a raft of populist pledges have been left on the cutting room floor," starting with "great health care . . . much less expensive and much better." Also the idea of Mexico paying for "the wall." Here's a longer laundry list:

    There's a lot more where that came from:

    • As a candidate, Trump promised to raise taxes on the rich; as president, he promised tax changes that at a minimum wouldn't benefit the rich.
    • Trump promised to break up America's largest banks by reinstated old Glass-Steagall regulations that prevented financial conglomerates from operating in multiple lines of business.
    • Trump promised price controls on prescription drugs.
    • Trump promised to "take the oil" from Iraq to reduce the financial burden of US military policy.
    • Trump promised many times that he would release his tax returns and promised to put his wealth into a blind trust.
    • Trump vowed rollback of climate change regulations but said he was committed to upholding clean air and clean water goals.
    • Trump promised a $1 trillion infrastructure package.

    The larger betrayal is that Trump portrayed himself as a self-financed candidate (which wasn't true) who was willing to take stances on domestic and economic issues that his donor-backed opponents wouldn't. In terms of position-taking, that was true.

    I see less grounds for faulting Trump on this score. For one thing, I never heard or felt him as a populist -- so half of the above, as well as such vague and impossible promises as better/cheaper health care, never registered as campaign promises. A pretty good indication of my expectations was how sick-to-my-stomach I was on election night. What Trump's done since taking office is very consistent with what I expected that night. In fact, I would say that he's been much more successful at fulfilling his campaign promises than Obama was after taking office in 2009, or Clinton in 1993. This is especially striking given that both Clinton in 1993 and Obama in 2009 had strong Democratic majorities in Congress, which they pissed away in bipartisan gestures. Trump had much less to work with, and had to awkwardly merge his agenda into that of the harder right Congressional Republicans, but he's gotten quite a bit through Congress, and gone way beyond his mandate with his executive orders. Moreover, things that he hasn't fully delivered, like his wall, wrecking universal health care, and resetting international trade regulations, he's made a good show of showing he still cares for those issues. Of course, he lies a lot about what he's doing, and what his acts will actually accomplish. And nearly everything he's done and wants to do will eventually blow back and hurt the nation and most of its people. But as politicians go, you can't fault him for delivering. You have to focus on what those deliveries mean, because history will show that Trump's much worse than a liar and a blowhard.

  • How to make the economy great again: raise pay.

  • The Great Recession was awful. And we don't have a plan to stop the next one. A couple of interesting charts here, comparing actual to potential output, as estimated over time since the 2008 recession started. Not only did the recession cause a lot of immediate pain, it's clear now that it has reduced future prospects well past when we technically recovered from the recession.

  • Progressives have nothing to learn from "nationalist" backlash politics: "Nativism is the social democracy of fools." Cites an op-ed by Jefferson Cowie: Reclaiming Patriotism for the Left.

  • Proportional representation could save America: Maybe, but it won't happen, mostly because no one with the power to make changes to make it easier for independents and third parties to share power will see any advantage in doing so. I once wondered why after 2008 no one in the Democratic Party lifted a finger to restrict or limit the role of money in elections, but the obvious reason was that even though a vast majority of rank-and-file Democrats (and probably a thinner majority of Republican voters) favored such limits, the actual Democrats (and Republicans) in power were by definition proven winners at raising money, making them the only people with good self-interested reasons for continuing the present system.

• Jon Lee Anderson: Jair Bolsonaro's Victory Echoes Donald Trump's, With Key Differences: For the worse, he means. Actually, he's sounding more like Pinochet, or Franco, or you-know-who:

  Bolsonaro himself has promised retribution against his political foes, swearing that he will see Lula "rot" in prison and will eventually put Haddad behind bars, too. He has also pledged to go after the land-reform activists of the M.S.T. -- the Movimento Sem Terra -- the Landless Worker's Movement, whom he has referred to as "terrorists."

  In a speech last week, Bolsonaro called Brazil's leftists "red outlaws" and said that they needed to leave the country or else go to jail. "These red outlaws will be banished from our homeland," he said. "It will be a cleanup the likes of which has never been seen in Brazilian history." Later, referring to his supporters, he said, "We are the majority. We are the true Brazil. Together with this Brazilian people, we will make a new nation."

  Also see: Greg Grandin: Brazil's Bolsonaro Has Supercharged Right-Wing Cultural Politics; also Vijay Prashad: Bolsonaro of Brazil: Slayer of the Amazon; and Noam Chomsky: I just visited Lula, the world's most prominent political prisoner. A "soft coup" in Brazil's election will have global consequences..

• Peter Beinart: The Special Kind of Hate That Drove Pittsburgh Shooter -- and Trump. In many respects the shooter is a classic anti-semite, but he specifically singled out the Pittsburgh synagogue for its support for immigrants, including Muslims. For more on this, see: Masha Gessen: Why the Tree of Life shooter was fixated on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Also of interest: Abigail Hauslohner/Abby Ohlheiser: Some neo-Nazis lament the Pittsburgh massacre: It derails their efforts to be mainstream.

• Tara Isabella Burton: The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting comes amid a years-long rise in anti-Semitism; also: Why extremists keep attacking places of worship; also German Lopez: Trump's responses to mass shootings are a giant lie by omission, and The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting is another example of America's gun problem, to which I'd add "war problem."

• John Cassidy: Donald Trump Launches Operation Midterms Diversion: Who wants to talk about pipe bombs sent to political enemies and mass shootings in synagogues (or in grocery stores) when you can send troops to the Mexican border to brace against the migrant hordes? Cassidy also wrote: The Dangerously Thin Line Between Political Incitement and Political Violence, Why Donald Trump Can't Stop Attacking the Media Over the Pipe-Bomb Packages, and American Democracy Is Malfunctioning in Tragic Fashion.

• Michael D'Antonio: Cesar Sayocs can be found almost anywhere in America. Presidents should take heed:

  Trump campaigned using taunts and suggestions that all the Cesar Sayocs could have heard as calls to violent action. When a protester interrupted a rally, Trump announced that he would "like to punch him in the face" and waxed sentimental about the days when protesters would be "carried out on stretchers."

  He referenced a "Second Amendment" response to Hillary Clinton's possible election and offered to pay the legal bills for those who assault his protesters. . . .

  As president, Trump never pivoted from his destructive campaign mode to become a leader of all the American people. Just weeks ago, he praised fellow Republican Greg Gianforte for assaulting a reporter who had asked him a question. "Any guy that can do a body slam, he's my kind of . . . He was my guy," said Trump.

  The President's encouragement of violence, combined with rhetoric about the press being "enemies of the people" and political opponents being un-American, are green lights for those who are vulnerable to suggestion. Worse, when you think about the President's impact on fevered minds, is his penchant for conspiracy theories. With no evidence, he recently suggested terrorists were among immigrants now marching toward the United States.

  Previously, Trump has said that the hurricane death toll in Puerto Rico was inflated to hurt him politically, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered, climate change is a "hoax" and millions of people voted illegally in 2016. Keep in mind, this is the President of the United States we're talking about, and though they are favored on the fringes of the internet, none of these ideas is supported by facts.

  Taken together, Trump's paranoid rants encourage people to believe that almost anything can be true. Can't find actual facts to support your belief that some conspiracy is afoot? Well, the absence of facts proves that the media is in on the game. An election doesn't go your way? As the President says, the system is "rigged."

  Consider Trump's paranoid blather from the perspective of a man who may already feel alienated, angry and afraid. You hear the President of the United States repeatedly assert that the dishonest press is hiding the real truth. He implies that his enemies are out to hurt him and he needs the help of ordinary citizens. Add the way that Trump encourages violence and seems to thrill at the prospect, and is it any wonder that someone would act? The real wonder is why it doesn't happen more often.

  I wouldn't have committed to that last sentence, but the rest of the quote is pretty spot on. I can think of lots of reasons why this doesn't happen more often. For starters, few people (even few Trump voters) take politics as personally as Sayoc and Trump do. Even among those who do, and are as disaffected as Sayoc, hardly any are ready to throw their lives away to indulge Trump's whims. It might even occur to them that if Trump really wanted to order hits on his "enemies," he'd be much more able to foot the bill himself. (He'd probably even have contacts with Russians willing to do the job.) But Trump himself doesn't do things like that: he's not that deranged, or maybe he just has a rational fear that it might blow up on him (cf. Mohammad Bin Salman, or for that matter Vladimir Putin). I think it's pretty clear that Trump attacks the media because he's afraid not of satire (the former meaning of "fake news") or opinion, but of the corruption, deceit, and dysfunction that media might eventually get around to reporting (if they ever tire of his tweets and gaffes). By turning his supporters against the media, he hopes to create doubt should they ever get serious about the damage he's causing.

  A second point that should be stressed is that you don't have to be president to incite someone like Sayoc to violence. Indeed, incited violence most often reflects a loss or lack of power. It is, after all, a tactic of desperation (a point Gilles Kepel made about 9/11 in an afterword to his essential book Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam). I fully expect we'll see an uptick in right-wing violence only after Trump leaves office -- much like the one following the Republican loss in 2008, but probably much worse given the personal animus Trump has been spouting. (Of course, Republicans who argued last week that Trump is being unfairly blamed because no one blamed Obama for a Charleston church massacre that occurred "on his watch" will spare Trump any responsibility.)

  For more on Sayoc, see: Dan Paquette/Lori Rozsa/Matt Zapotosky: 'He felt that somebody was finally talking to him': How the package-bomb suspect found inspiration in Trump.

• Madison Dapcevich: EPA Announces It Will Discontinue Science Panel That Reviews Air Pollution Safety.

• Garrett Epps: The Citizenship Clause Means What It Says: Adding to the last-minute campaign confusion, Trump's talking about using his executive powers to override the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. Also see: Aziz Huq: Trump's birthright citizenship proposal, explained by a law professor.

• J Lester Feder: Bernie Sanders Is Partnering With a Greek Progressive to Build a New Leftist Movement: The guy who didn't get his name in the headline is Yanis Varoufakis, who left his post as an economic professor in Texas to become Greece's finance minister under the Syriza government, and left that post when Syriza caved in to the EU's austerity demands. Since then he's written several books: And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future, and Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism. The article sees this as a response to Steve Bannon's efforts to forge an international alliance of far-right parties, normally separated by their respective nationalisms. Reminds me more of the pre-Bolshevik Internationale, but maybe we shouldn't talk about that? But globalism is so clearly dominated by capital that resistance and constructive alternatives emerging from anywhere help us all.

• Umair Irfan: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke might face a criminal investigation: Although they're going to have to come up with something more substantial than "He also compared Martin Luther King Jr. to Robert E. Lee" (the subhed -- why even mention that?).

• German Lopez: The Kentucky Kroger shooting may have been a racist attack: I don't see much need for "may" here, even if the white shooter's "whites don't kill whites" quote is just hearsay.

• Robinson Meyer: The Trump Administration Flunked Its Math Homework: On automobile mileage standards.

• Dana Milbank: The latest lesson in Trumponomics 101:

  Tuesday morning brought a textbook illustration of Trumponomics.

  Under this economic theory -- defined roughly as "when it's sunny, credit me; when it rains, blame them" -- President Trump has been claiming sole responsibility for a bull market that began nearly eight years before his presidency.

  But this month, wild swings in the market threaten to erase the year's gains, and on Tuesday, Trump offered an explanation: The Democrats did it! The market "is now taking a little pause -- people want to see what happens with the Midterms," he tweeted. "If you want your Stocks to go down, I strongly suggest voting Democrat."

  Most attribute the swoon to higher tariffs set off by Trump's trade war and higher interest rates aggravated by Trump's tax cut. But Trumponomics holds otherwise. . . .

  When you start from a place of intellectual dishonesty, there is no telling where you'll end up. That is the very foundation of Trumponomics.

  For something a little deeper on Trumponomics, see: Matt Taibbi: Three Colliding Problems Leading to a New Economic Disaster.

• Bruce Murphy: Wisconsin's $4.1 billion Foxconn boondoggle: "The total Foxconn subsidy hit $4.1 billion, a stunning $1,774 per household in Wisconsin." Article also notes that $4.1 billion is about $315,000 per job promised.

• Andrew Prokop: The incredibly shoddy plot to smear Robert Mueller, explained. Read this if you're curious. Significant subheds here are "This was an embarrassingly thin scam" and "If this was just trolling, then it sort of worked." All I want to add that I thought Seth Meyers' take on this story was especially disgusting, but I could say that for all of his "looks like . . ." bits.

• Catherine Rampell: Republicans are mischaracterizing nearly all their major policies. Why?

  Republicans have mischaracterized just about every major policy on their agenda. The question is why. If they genuinely believe their policies are correct, why not defend them on the merits? . . .

  [Long list of examples, most of which you already know]

  You might wonder if maybe Republican politicians are mischaracterizing so many of their own positions because they don't fully understand them. But given that Republican leaders have occasionally blurted out their true motives -- on taxes, immigration and, yes, even health care -- this explanation seems a little too charitable.

  Republican politicians aren't too dumb to know what their policies do. But clearly they think the rest of us are.

• Brian Resnick: Super Typhoon Yutu, the strongest storm of the year, just hit US territories: That would be islands in the West Pacific, Tinian and Saipan, with sustained winds of 180 mph, gusting to 219 mph, a 20 foot storm surge, waves cresting at 52 feet. Just my impression, but this year has been an especially fierce one for tropical cyclones in the Pacific, including two that improbably hit Hawaii. Any year when you get to 'Y' is pretty huge.

• David Roberts: Why conservatives keep gaslighting the nation about climate change: I've run across the term several times recently, and sort of thought I knew what it meant, but decided to look it up to be sure:

  Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.

  I guess that makes it the word of the week. As the article points out, the tactics have changed as climate change has become more and more undeniable, but the goal -- not doing anything about it that might impact the bottom line of the carbon extraction companies -- has held steady (although maybe they'll come around to spend money on "adaptation," given the equation: "nationalism + graft = that's the right-wing sweet spot").

• Alex Ward: Saudi Arabia admits Khashoggi's murder was "premeditated". Ward also wrote The US is sending 5,000 troops to the border. Here's what they can and can't do. Ward cites Dara Lind, explaining:

  It is completely legal for anyone on US soil to seek asylum, regardless of whether or not they have papers. People who present themselves for asylum at a port of entry -- an official border crossing -- break no US law.

  Ward also wrote: Trump may soon kill a US-Russia arms control deal. It might be a good idea. Uh, no, it's not. Even if you buy the argument that Russia has been "cheating" -- during a period when the US expanded NATO all the way to Russia's border -- the solution is more arms control, not less, and certainly not a new round of arms race. Tempting, of course, to blame this on John Bolton, who's built his entire career on promoting nuclear arms races. By the way, Fred Kaplan has argued Trump Is Rewarding Putin for His Bad Behavior by Pulling Out of a Key Missile Treaty.

• Paul Woodward: Loneliness in America: Could have filed this under any of the shooters above (specifically refers to Pittsburgh shooter Robert Bowers), but obviously this is more more widespread, with much more complex consequences.

Also, saved for future study:

• Mike Davis on the Crimes of Socialism and Capitalism: an interview, "discusses Stalin, Mao, and the staggering holocausts of capitalism's nineteenth-century heyday." Reminds me I still have a copy of his Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (2001) unread on my bookshelf. His latest book is Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx's Lost Theory. He was very prolific in the decade up to 2007, but hasn't written much since then.

• Brian Resnick: Animal populations have declined an astonishing 60 percent since 1970. On the other hand: Ed Yong: Wait, Have We Really Wiped Out 60 Percent of Animals? "Why nitpick in the face of catastrophe? . . . Characterizing the problem, and its scope, correctly matters. If accuracy can be ignored for the sake of a gut punch, we might as well pull random numbers out of the ether."

PS: Although I started this back on Saturday, in anticipation of posting late Sunday evening. Actually got the introduction written on Sunday, but the miscellaneous links just dragged on and on and on -- finally cut them off on Wednesday, October 31. After which I still had a Music Week post due on the intervening Monday, and a Streamnotes wrap up by the end of the month (i.e., today). Of course, it's my prerogative to backdate if I wish. But while I didn't make an effort to pick up late stories, inevitably a few snuck in here. So pretend I just had a long weekend. Feels like one.

Daily Log

Started this, but found it was chewing up too much time for too little value:

I was going to say that I've never seen any of these things accompanied by a coherent personal argument, but I found one today (from a cousin-in-law):

Please quit using the word IMMIGRANT to describe people trying to force their way into our country illegally. It is an insult to my mother and the millions of other law abiding CITIZENS who studied hard and followed all the rules of our country to become legitimate Immigrants. They learned English and swore to uphold our country and its laws and to support themselves and be productive citizens. We aren't "afraid" of immigrants, we aren't "racists," we simply can distinguish right from wrong which makes us rational adults.

Some things I would disagree with here, and some I'm simply unclear on. America has lots of immigrants who aren't naturalized citizens but have all the necessary documentation (e.g., "green cards") so aren't "illegal" (an unfairly charged term that most often refers to someone who simply didn't have the foresight to negotiate the proper bureaucracy). Before 1924, such paperwork didn't even exist, so none of my ancestors ever had visas or work permits, and few were officially naturalized (although I know that a great-great-grandfather from Sweden was). I should also point out that the much-reported "caravan" of refugees from Central America haven't done anything illegal (at least in the US). They actually have a legal right to present themselves to US border officials and apply for refugee (or other immigrant) status.

Another fragment I gave up on:

I mentioned above how obnoxious right-wing memes are, but I saw a centrist one yesterday that was every bit as wrong-headed. It posed as a "memorandum from the American people": "You are no longer allowed to talk about your opponent in any way, form or fashion. You are only allowed to tell us why YOU are right for this position and NOT why your opponent is not." . . .

Daily Log

Birthday Thursday, 68. Got a fairly good examination by my cardiologist on Wednesday, although in most regards I'm in worsening shape. Mostly aches and pains moving around. Eyesight worse. Allergies as bad as ever. Having trouble getting to bed before 6AM, or sleeping past Noon -- but I do get a pretty solid five hours.

Spent all day cooking for my big Birthday Dinner tomorrow night. This year's theme is French country cooking. I ordered two cookbooks for the occasion: Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table, and Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. The only proper French cookbook I had before this was Julia Child's Volume 1, which I'm should mention I have yet to cook anything out of yet. I have cooked a handful of French dishes in the past, but never made a point of cooking a whole French dinner.

When I came up with the idea, I thought I'd fill up the entire week with cooking, starting with things I could keep around a few days. As it turned out, although I had made a couple of early scouting trips, I didn't do any serious shopping until Wednesday. Even then, my menu was still a rough sketch of possible ideas. What I wound up serving Friday was:

• Ready-to-bake French baguettes, with several spreads:
  • Mme. Maman's chopped liver (Greenspan)
  • Salmon rillettes (Greenspan)
  • Duck rillettes (Peterson)
  • Lyonnaise garlic & herb cheese (Greenspan)
  • Tapenade (Jenkins)
• Cold trout in orange marinade (Hazan)
• Boeuf bourgoinon (Bourdain)
• Veal marengo (Greenspan)
• Whole duck cassoulet (Bittman)
• Ratatouille (Jenkins)
• Gratin dauphinois (Bourdain)
• Bittersweet chocolate-almond cake with amaretti cookie crumbs (Greenspan)

I bought stuff to make several other smaller dishes, but they fell by the wayside. I thought about making my own bread, but ultimately figured it would be too much work and pretty risky. The ready-to-bake loaves seemed like a nice compromise, although they actually turned out not to be very good. Only dish I was even moderately disappointed by was the beef, which barely made the two hours the recipe calls for -- I suspect another 30-45 minutes would have helped, if nothing else to concentrate the sauce. By contrast, I wound up cooking the veal a lot longer than called for, and it was spectacular.

Did pretty much all of the shopping on Wednesday. Thawed the duck out and cut the breast and legs off, reserving them for later use. I then roasted the rest of the duck along with an onion, carrots, and celery for an hour, then dumped them into the stock pot, simmering the stock for another 3-4 hours. I collected the fat for future use. Both steps could have used more time -- not least because I needed more fat. I wound up salvaging the loose boiled meat, and tried slow-frying the skin and any bits of fat I found, like I've done making gribenes. I wound up throwing the skin away, but did get a few more tablespoons of fat.

I also covered four cups of white (great northern) beans with cold water, soaking them overnight rather than following Bittman's recipe and soaking them one hour in boiling water. (Bourdain's recipe called for soaking overnight, and that's what I've usually done.)

Next day, Thursday, I was able to skim a bit more fat from the stock (though not as much as I expected). First thing I did Thursday was to make duck confit from the reserved legs and fat. Didn't quite have enough fat to cover the legs, so I added some from a jar I keep handy: originally started with duck fat, but mostly had bacon drippings added since. Confit cooks in the fat, ideally between 190-200F, for 90 minutes. I monitored this closely, but had a tough time keeping the temperature down. I expected the meat, once cooled, to come out softer than it did, but I'm not expert enough to really judge the results.

I made the spreads on Thursday. I had originally wanted to do Bourdain's pork rillettes recipe, but on re-reading I discovered it called for three days refrigeration before serving, and I didn't start soon enough to do that. Howver, I noticed a duck rillettes recipe in Peterson's book. Sure, it called for starting with confit legs, but I had about a cup of scrap meat (mostly neck and wings, bits from the back, and giblets) so I added some duck fat and spices, and it turned out to be really delicious.

I made the trout and all of the other spreads. Brief notes:

• The trout came from an Italian cookbook (Hazan), but always struck me as a rather French recipe. Sprouts has trout filets, so I'm always tempted to pick them up -- they make a nice little dinner for two. I thought of using them for a main fish dish, but then I remembered the Hazan recipe, and figured it would be better to cook them sooner, and get the dish stored away. Basically: flour and sautee the filets. Make a sauce from olive oil, shallots, orange peel, vermouth, orange and lemon juice. I ran out of vermouth, so filled out the deficit with white wine.
• The salmon rillettes were made from a piece of fresh salmon, poached in wine, and a similar-sized chunk of smoked salmon, all mashed up with butter.
• Mme. Maman's chopped liver is you basic onions and chicken liver mash up. I added a little cognac (not called for in the recipe), two hard-boiled eggs, and blended it in the food processor (recipe seems to want you to chop by hand).
• I made the cheese with whole milk ricotta, drained, with garlic and various chopped herbs (chives, parsley, tarrogon, maybe thyme).
• I used black Greek olives for the tapenade, along with capers and a can of ventresca tuna (albacore belly). The olives didn't pack much taste, but but it got better (and blacker) when I added some Moroccan oil-cured olives.

I decided to only make a half-recipe of ratatouille, although I had bought two eggplant and four red bell peppers for a full recipe. The ratatouille recipe calls for peppers to be roasted and peeled, but the eggplant is simply cut into cubes and brined. I decided I'd roast one eggplant along with the peppers, and possibly make another spread of "eggplant caviar," but in the end didn't use them. Other little things I managed to get done on Thursday include making a couple cups of bread crumbs (from a nice loaf of herb bread), boiling and peeling pearl and cippoline onions for the beef and veal dishes. Finally, I cooked the ratatouille, and baked the cake.

The ratatouille half-recipe calls for the vegetables to be cooked one by one, then collected in a bowl: the red bell peppers roasted and peeled, the onion sliced, the eggplant cubed and fried, the two zucchini chunked and fried, then a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes with a bit of sugar and corriander. When the latter had thickened, I dumped the rest back in, added capers, and let it simmer much longer than called for.

The cake recipe called for an 8-inch round cake pan, but my smaller springform pan was 9-inch, so I did some math and decided to scale the recipe by 25% (close enough that 3 eggs became 4). Exotic ingredient was amaretti cookies, which I found at World Market, ground with almonds in the food processor. Added butter, eggs, cocoa (Hershey's Special Dark), sugar, salt, and 5 oz. bittersweet chocolate (70%). Scraped it into the pan and baked it. Came out with a large bubble raising one-third of the cake, so I pushed that back down with a spatula. Came out thinner and denser than I expected, looking like my recent Prague Cake disaster -- until I cut and served it, I fretted that I had made my second straight cake faux pas. I left the glazing until Friday, and wound up barely getting it done, but by then I had some space in the refrigerator to chill the glaze (2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, 1/4 c heavy cream, 1 tbs sugar, 1 tbs water; I forget now whether I poured the heated cream into the chocolate, as the recipe directed, or vice versa, as recommended by Bakewise). I ground up two more cookies and scattered the crumbs over the glaze before popping it into the refrigerator.

I got up Friday around noon, with three large pots left on the stove: the beans, the lamb mixture, and the ratatouille. I reheated them. The ratatouille was done, so when it was hot, I scraped it into a serving bowl. I cut the meat into chunks, and got the mandoline out to slice the potatoes (which worked pretty well, for once). I figured my smaller (chicken-sized) roasting pan would suffice for the cassoulet, but before I could assemble it, I had to fry the sausage and warm up the duck stock. A proper cassoulet sausage is thin, pork, with a lot of garlic. I looked at a lot of alternatives, but couldn't find anything uncooked that came close, so I bought a couple of cooked sausage candidates. I wound up going with Silva Bourbon, Uncured Bacon and Black Pepper Sausage, cut into half-inch slices and browned in duck fat. I don't particularly recall them in the finished dish, but they certainly didn't hurt. I assembled the cassoulet, starting with a layer of beans, then sausage and the slab bacon I cooked the beans with, then more beans, then the lamb-duck-tomato mixture, then more beans. I added two cups of duck stock, and covered the top with my bread crumbs.

I tried to work out a chart of when various things had to be done for the four hot dishes to come out at 6:30. The boeuf bourguinon had the longest cooking time (2 hours), and I barely got it on by 4:30. In retrospect, I think it could have used another hour. I also didn't quite believe that the 1 cup of red wine called for was enough, so I doubled that. I also added the pearl onions, which Bourdain didn't call for (but most other recipes do).

There were several things about the veal marengo recipe I didn't like -- especially the part where you put the dish in the oven to cook, as I wanted to do it all on the stove top. I used a large, deep skillet, figuring that was the right geometry. I floured and browned the veal (using inch-thick veal chops, so my cubes were around 1 inch). Set them aside, then sauteed the onions, added the tomatoes and tomato paste, and white wine, returning the meat. I covered it, and let it all cook gently. Meanwhile, I put the sliced potatoes (Yukon gold) into a pot of cream, garlic, and herbs, and simmered them for probably two times the 10 minutes the recipe called for. In another skillet, I tossed the cippoline onions in butter, added some wine, covered and steamed, then added the white mushrooms and boiled the vegetables dry. The recipe also called for boiling potatoes on the side, but I decided to skip that part, figuring them redundant next to the gratin dauphinois. I folded the onions and mushrooms into the veal pan, kept it covered, and let it all slowly cook together. Meanwhile, I put the cassoulet into a 375F oven for 30 minutes. I poured the potatoes and cream (picking out most of the green bits) into another baking dish, and topped with 8 oz. grated gruyere. I lowered the oven to 350F, and put the gratin in next to the cassoulet. Then I sauteed the duck breasts in the pan I had used for the sausage. I cut the duck into crosswise slices, and scraped the pan dripping over the cassoulet. A few minutes before the cassoulet was done, I pulled it out of the oven, tucked the duck breast in, and scattered more parsley on top. The idea was for the breast, sauteed rare, to still be medium rare when the cassoulet came out of the oven.

Finally, I glazed the cake, put it into the refrigerator, and popped the baguettes into the other oven. By then most of the guests had arrived, and things got crazy trying to set the table, round up chairs, arrange the food, and provide drinks, while I finished up. Zhanna brought some bread that was better than my baguettes, and she stopped me from serving the latter underdone. I served the cassoulet and the gratin dauphinois in their hot baking dishes, so people had to reach to get them. I put the beef and veal into serving dishes (only about half of the beef fit, so most of it sat out the meal in the pot).

Having grown up as I did, I always think these meals should be served family style: all the dishes in the middle of the table, with people reaching and/or passing as seems best. However, it does get awkward when you get ten people and more than ten dishes. I doubt there is any good alternative: we don't have a good space to organize a line, and the space is too crowded for people to get up and around. And I've never like the idea of plating the dishes: people should be able to pick and choose, as well as come back for more. (I do tend to plate the desserts, which often leads to issues about portion size.)

Everything turned out good (except perhaps the bread, but that was there mostly as structure under the spreads, although it was also useful for mopping up the plate). As I said, the beef could have benefited from longer cooking, and more reduction of the sauce. Bourdain suggests adding a couple spoonfuls of demi-glace, which I didn't have and couldn't find. (Would be a useful pantry project -- one technique is to freeze it in ice cubes -- but it's pretty hard around here to find the veal bones for the initial stock.) Among the very good dishes, the veal and the potatoes were really exceptional. So was the cassoulet -- I had tried this recipe once before, but was disappointed then; main improvement this time was that I did a much better job of getting the beans fully cooked (although I think I also did a better job handling the duck this time, and the homemade bread crumbs were superior). The only other recipes I had previously made were the trout and the ratatouille.

I served the cake with two pints of Haagen Dasz vanilla bean ice cream. No leftovers of either.

Music Week

Music: current count 30499 [30473] rated (+26), 287 [286] unrated (+1).

Forgot to include the grade for the Myra Melford album reported last week, so I'm running it again here.

I've had a rough week, and it's left me pretty badly shaken. I used to think of myself as fairly handy, and started the week with several seemingly simple projects to do. One was to repair some office chairs. They have a standard gas lift cylinder to adjust the height. Over time, it can leak, causing the chair to sink under weight, often in startling little bursts. I've replaced them before, and never had any problem. The ends are slightly tapered, so the weight of sitting on the chair presses them into the base and seat frames. You can find YouTube videos that show how easy it is to extract the old cylinder and replace it with a new one. Typically, you use a hammer to tap the cylinder out of the base. It took me a few more blows than the video shows, but I did that part was easy enough. Separating the cylinder from the chair is a little more awkward, so they suggest using a pipe wrench. I tried that and failed. It was stuck so completely that my wrench cut deep gouges in the side of the cylinder without budging it. Nor did spraying WD-40 around the interface help.

So I thought, maybe I could tap it out, like the base. I unbolted chair from the metal frame the cylinder was stuck into, so I could hit it from the top. I pulled a clip and moved the handle out of the way. I clamped the unit into a WorkBench. I took a chisel I use for chipping apart masonry that's just a bit smaller than the top of the cylinder, centered it over the cylinder, and smashed it 20-30 times with a heavy mallet. It didn't budge, although it did start cutting into the top. Then I took a gear puller, wrapped it around the frame with the screw centered on the cylinder, and started tightening it with a wrench. No change (except perhaps that the screw, which has a point to help keep it centered, is now drilling into the middle of the cylinder). Only other idea I can think of would be to get a flat steel disc just a bit smaller than the top of the cylinder, and insert that under the screw to spread out the pressure more evenly. I thought about using small stack of quarters, but the amount of pressure I've already put on it would tear a hole in such soft metal. So right now, this looks like a total failure: having bought replacement parts, nothing I can do now but throw the chair away.

Second project was to install some covering over the gutter on the garage. We had new gutters and covers installed when we had the house covered with vinyl siding ten years ago, but the garage is detached and a separate deal. I found some material that looked promising at Home Depot, and ordered enough for my garage and my nephew's house (at pre-sale prices, I now see). Should have been a pretty simple installation on the garage -- one 22-foot run, not very high -- but it would up taking me three afternoons. The material had to be bent to fit, I had to cut one piece short, and trim both ends. I bought screws that didn't work very well. But mostly it was just a lot of aches and pains going up and down the ladder. At least I got that little project done. But that still leaves my nephew's house, which will be four times as much work (hopefully, with some help, and having learned some tricks).

The more serious problem struck Thursday evening. I figured it was tie to upgrade my main computer from Ubuntu 16 to 18. I've done this upgrade twice before, so expected it to be slow and disruptive, but uneventful. To be safe, I copied all my data off onto another computer, then shut my work programs down and ran the upgrade. It failed, leaving the machine in "unstable" state. The specific error concerned grub, which is the Linux boot loader. There is something called UEFI built into the motherboard software to provide a feature they call "Secure Boot," which will only allow kernels with certain signatures to be booted. The install program normally creates signed kernels, but due to a bug (reportedly since fixed, but somehow still in the upgrade package) it detected unsigned kernels on the system, and aborted the upgrade rather than install a boot loader that might not be able to boot up. I'm not clear on the exact implications of all that: basically, a bunch of stuff got installed, but not everything, so there are possible incompatible versions. More obviously, with the upgrade process aborted, it isn't clear how to identify and fix the problems, and how to restart and finish the upgrade.

What happened then was basically my mind froze up and I stopped, not knowing how to back out, and not daring to move forward. The computer itself was semi-functional: indeed, I'm using it now to write this post, and should be able to upload it before I'm done tonight (but between Thursday and now I've done next to nothing). After I'm through with this upload, I'll try rebooting, which may or may not work. Worst case is I have to put a new disc in and do a fresh install, then bring the old disc back and patch it all up. Best is that it will reboot, finish installing the packages it has downloaded, and be stable enough that it can look for updates and finally get a complete up-to-date system installed.

Couple other problems this week, but that's enough to chew on. My music work stopped with the computer on Thursday. Most of what's listed below comes from the Will Friedland The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums list. I started a couple weeks ago having only heard one-third of the 57 albums on the list. Now I've heard 47 of the albums: 6 I wasn't able to find on Napster, 4 more I haven't gotten around to checking on. I don't align very well with Friedland's taste here -- I've only rated 12 of 47 at A- or higher -- but three A- records this week all caught me by surprise (Judy Garland, Della Reese, and Kay Starr; the high B+ records by Anita O'Day and Maxine Sullivan were pretty much what I expected, but my previous Garland grades were { C+, C, B, B- }, and I had nothing graded by Reese or Starr).

When I resume, I'll probably go deeper on Frank Sinatra than the one I've missed (In the Wee Small Hours, which pretty much everyone regards as A/A+), not least because I actually own (but never rated) the 14-CD Capitol Records Concept Albums box). The others I need to look up are less promising: Mel Tormé (2 rated, 1 B+, The Mel Torme Collection: U), Sarah Vaughan (13 rated, 1 B+(*), 4 B+), and Margaret Whiting (1 rated: C+).

Didn't even think about Weekend Roundup yesterday, although I'm pretty sure there were some really terrible things to write about (especially with Trump's America Only foreign policy). Moreover, even if the computer comes back to life painlessly, I don't expect to get much done on it next week. I still have the gutters on my nephew's house to deal with. Also, I'm cooking "birthday dinner" this week, so will try to come up with something fabulous for that. Seems like that, at least, is still a project I can carry off. If not, I'll be even more bummed next week. Doesn't look like I'm cut out for getting old and decrepit.

New records rated this week:

• Alchemy Sound Project: Adventures in Time and Space (2016 [2018], ARC): [cd]: B+(***)
• Myra Melford's Snowy Egret: The Other Side of Air (2017 [2018], Firehouse 12): [cd]: A-
• John Moulder: Decade: Memoirs (2009-17 [2018], Origin): [cd]: B
• Tyshaw Sorey: Pillars (2017 [2018], Firehouse 12, 3CD): [cd]: B+(**)
• Brad Whiteley: Presence (2016 [2018], Destiny): [cd]: B+(**)

Old music rated this week:

• Judy Garland: Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961 [2001], Capitol, 2CD): [r]: A-
.
• Eydie Gorme and Steve Lawrence: Sing the Golden Hits (1960 [1990], MCA): [r]: B+(**)
• Dick Haymes: Rain or Shine (1956, Capitol): [r]: B+(**)
• Peggy Lee: The Man I Love (1957, Capitol): [r]: B
• Marilyn Maye: Meet Marvelous Marilyn Maye (1965, RCA Victor): [r]: B+(*)
• Marilyn Maye: The Happiest Sound in Town (1968, RCA Victor): [r]: B+(***)
• Anita O'Day: Sings the Winners (1958, Verve): [r]: B+(***)
• Della Reese: Della (1960, RCA Victor): [r]: B+(**)
• Della Reese: Della Della Cha Cha Cha (1961, RCA Victor): [r]: A-
• Jimmy Scott: The Source (1969 [1970], Atlantic): [r]: B
• Jimmy Scott: All the Way (1992, Sire): [r]: B+(***)
• Bobby Short: Bobby Short (1956, Atlantic): [r]: B+(*)
• Nina Simone: Nina Simone and Piano! (1969 [2011], RCA/Legacy): [r]: B
• Jo Stafford: Capitol Collectors Series (1944-50 [1991], Capitol): [r]: B+(*)
• Jo Stafford: Sings Songs of Scotland (1953-56 [1957], Columbia): [r]: B
• Jo Stafford: I'll Be Seeing You (1959, Columbia): [r]: B+(*)
• Kay Starr: I Cry by Night (1962, Capitol): [r]: A-
• Kay Starr: Capitol Collectors Series (1948-62 [1991], Capitol): [r]: B+(**)
• Maxine Sullivan and Her Jazz All-Stars: Memories of You: A Tribute to Andy Razaf (1956 [2007], Essential Music Group): [r]: B+(***)
• Jack Teagarden: Think Well of Me (1962, Verve): [r]: B
• Tiny Tim: God Bless Tiny Tim (1968, Reprise): [r]: B-

Music Week

Music: current count 30473 [30430] rated (+43), 286 [282] unrated (+4).

Another week with much more old music than new. One chunk of old music was an attempt to fill in a few holes after baritone sax great Hamiet Bluiett's death. Other A- Bluiett records my database:

• Hamiet Bluiett: Live at Carlos 1: Last Night (1986 [1998], Just a Memory)
• Hamiet Bluiett: Young Warrior, Old Warrior (1995, Mapleshade)
• Hamiet Bluiett: Makin' Whoopee: Tribute to the Nat King Cole Trio (1997, Mapleshade)
• World Saxophone Quartet: Selim Sevad: A Tribute to Miles Davis (1998, Justin Time)
• Hamiet Bluiett/D.D. Jackson/Kahil El'Zabar: The Calling (2001, Justin Time)
• World Saxophone Quartet: Political Blues (2006, Justin Time)

I didn't follow up with World Saxophone Quartet albums I may have missed. I didn't care for their early work -- thought they needed something extra beyond the four-sax harmonics, as the few records I wound up liking proved. Still, Napster filed a couple under Bluiett's name, reminding me that I was missing some.

I was pointed to the rest of the "old music" by Will Friedland's new book, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums. I made a list of the 57 albums reviewed at great depth there, found that I had only heard a third of them (19/57), and vowed to improve myself. Usually I went straight to the selected album, but sometimes I dug a little deeper -- e.g., wound up playing all of Blossom Dearie's Verve albums, a couple of extras from Doris Day and Rosemary Clooney, and a second Matt Dennis album (that got compiled into a single CD with the pick). On the other hand, I figured Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald would have turned into vast time sinks (plus I already have 15 Cole and 36 Fitzgerald albums graded; Ella at Zardi's was a vault music album from last year, and too good to skip). I felt more need to check out Billy Eckstine (4 records), but I've never been that much of a fan. As for Robert Goulet, his is a name I remembered from my youth but hadn't heard in as many years -- a mistake I'm not likely to repeat soon.

I'll try to knock off some more this week: Judy Garland, Eydie Gormé, Dick Haymes, Peggy Lee, Marilyn Maye, Carmen McRae, Anita O'Day, Della Reese, a dozen more. Friedland's list is skewed pretty strongly to the string-drenched pop of the first few years of the LP era -- basically the pre-rock and anti-rock I grew up rebelling against, so it's not very promising ground for me. Also not finding everything, so I'll probably stop close to 80% (missing so far: Lena Horne, Barb Jungr, Bobby Troup).

I did manage a milestone on one months-long project. I've spent a couple years now collecting bits of text from my on-line notebook. My first pass picked up all the capsule reviews of jazz albums, which I sorted into two book files: one on records from 2000 forward, the other on records recorded earlier (20th century). Those volumes added up to 765 pp (pre-2000) and 1650 pp (post-2000). I then went back through the notebooks and started pulling out all of the political notes (four volumes: 1590 pp 2001-08, 1768 pp for 2009-12, 1666 pp for 2013-16, and 858 pp since 2017), plus another file for various personal notes (memoir, health crises, dinners, deaths, plus some movies and tv: another 780 pp).

When I finished those, I realized that there were still a couple of major chunks of writing unarchived from the notebook: non-jazz capsule reviews (1863 pp) and miscellaneous music writings (e.g., intros to my CG posts, year-end notes, obits: 1735 pp). I finished my initial pass on Sunday, so the total for the nine volumes is 12,685 pages, which works out to about 5.4 million words.

While most of what I've written since 2001 is either in the notebook or accessibly linked from it, I still need to look at other files on the website and fold them in where appropriate. Biggest chunk here is probably the longer music reviews, but I also have fragments of book drafts and project plans, and other things. Would be nice if I can recover my email files -- lost in my early-summer server crash, but perhaps not hopelessly. Other things I need to do:

• Make a pass comparing the misc. music notes to the political files, eliminating redundancies (e.g., political paragraphs stuck in the middle of Music Week posts).
• Make a pass comparing the non-jazz capsule reviews with the jazz guides to eliminate redundancies.
• I need to bring the earlier book files up to date, picking up more recent notebooks and Streamnotes posts.
• The non-jazz capsule reviews are currently organized by date posted. They should be reorganized by genre and artist name.
• The books currently exist as LibreWriter files, with at least some versions available on my website. I need to straighten that out, decide what I want to make available, and write up some sort of introduction to all that.
• I also need to look into alternate formats. PDF files are one possibility, but they are much larger than the LW files. Perhaps more useful would be some sort of Ebook format. I'm aware of some free tools for conversion, but haven't used them yet.

Ultimately, I see these files as resources for constructing various other books and/or websites. Laura has read through the first of the political files (2001-08), but we haven't yet had any substantial discussions on where she thinks it should go. I have various scattershot ideas on these things, but won't try to develop them here and now. I understand that essentially no one will want to sit down and read any of these "books" straight through, I find that a fair amount of the writing has held up over time (some still useful, some even amusing). One good thing for me about this process is that it's given me something tangible (and relatively non-taxing) to do over the past two year. But now it's starting to come to a point where I need to move on: pick a project (or two or three) and focus on that. End of the year might be a good deadline for wrapping this up and figuring that out.

A couple more notes:

Allen Lowe (on Facebook) recommended a 20-CD box from Sony (Canada) called The Perfect Roots & Blues Collection. This looks like a series of CDs Sony/Legacy issued in the early 1990s. If so, I've heard (and own) nearly all of them, and I agree that they've been a really superb series. Even at Amazon's own price ($93.99) it's a bargain, but they have dealers in the UK offering it for much less.

When I looked it up, I noticed another tempting 20-CD box, Jazz From America on Disques Vogue -- jazz recorded by American artists in Paris late 1940s/early 1950s. RCA released a series of these in the early 1990s. I have a dozen or more, most quite good.

I've never bought any of Sony's massive boxes, so I can't speak as to packaging and documentation, but I did write a bit about The Perfect Jazz Collection back in November 2011. For me, and possibly for you, the problem's always been owning so many of the packaged albums the big boxes, even when quite cheap, are still not cost-effective. Still, one can imagine others these sets would be perfect for. Sony also has massive collections of Miles Davis and Johnny Cash, as you can well imagine.

I also want to point out two books that came out last week, that my wife, Laura Tillem, edited:

• Rannfrid Thelle: Discovering Babylon (Taylor & Francis Group): a book on religion and archaeology
• Diane Whato: The Sad Joy of Leaving (Blue Cedar Press): a book of poetry

Both authors live here in Wichita, and are good friends of ours.

New records rated this week:

• David Ake: Humanities (2017 [2018], Posi-Tone): [r]: B+(***)
• Myra Melford's Snowy Egret: The Other Side of Air (2017 [2018], Firehouse 12): [cd]: A-
• Kjetil Møster/John Edwards/Dag Erik Knedal Andersen: Different Shapes/Immersion (2014 [2018], Va Fongool): [r]: B+(*)
• Aaron Parks: Little Big (2018, Ropeadope): [cd]: B+(***)
• Marc Ribot: Songs of Resistance 1942-2018 (2018, Epitaph): [bc]: B+(***)
• Anne Sajdera: New Year (2018, Bijuri): [cd]: B+(*)
• Jared Sims: The New York Sessions (2018, Ropeadope): [cd]: B+(**)
• Alister Spence/Satoko Fujii: Intelset (2017 [2018], Alister Spence Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Mike Steinel Quintet: Song and Dance (2017 [2018], OA2): [cd]: B+(**)
• Patrick Zimmerli Quartet: Clockworks (2017 [2018], Songlines): [r]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Ella Fitzgerald: Ella at Zardi's (1956 [2017], Verve): [r]: A-

Old music rated this week:

• Fred Astaire: The Astaire Story (1952 [2017], Verve, 2CD): [r]: B+(***)
• Fred Astaire: Steppin' Out: Astaire Sings (1952 [1994], Verve): [r]: B+(***)
• Tony Bennett and Bill Evans: Together Again (1976 [2003], Concord): [r]: B+(*)
• Hamiet Bluiett: Birthright: A Solo Blues Concert (1977, India Navigation): [r]: B+(**)
• Hamiet Bluiett: Resolution (1977 [1978], Black Saint): [r]: B+(*)
• Hamiet Bluiett: "Dangerously Suite" (1981, Soul Note): [r]: B+(***)
• Hamiet Bluiett: Ebu (1984, Soul Note): [r]: B+(**)
• Hamiet Bluiett & Concept: Live at Carlos 1 (1986 [1997], Just a Memory): [r]: A-
• Hamiet Bluiett: Sankofa/Rear Garde (1992 [1993], Soul Note): [r]: B+(**)
• Hamiet Bluiett: Live at the Village Vanguard: Ballads and Blues (1994 [1997], Soul Note): [r]: B+(***)
• Hamiet Bluiett: With Eyes Wide Open (2000, Justin Time): [r]: A-
• Rosemary Clooney/Duke Ellington: Blue Rose (1956 [2008], Columbia/Legacy): [r]: B+(**)
• Rosemary Clooney: Rosie Solves the Swingin' Riddle! (1961 [2004], RCA/Bluebird): [r]: A-
• Rosemary Clooney: Everything's Coming Up Rosie (1977, Concord): [r]: B+(***)
• Rosemary Clooney: Sings the Lyrics of Johnny Mercer (1987, Concord): [r]: B+(***)
• Nat 'King' Cole: St. Louis Blues (1958, Capitol): [r]: B+(*)
• Doris Day and Harry James: Young Man With a Horn (1950 [1954], Columbia): [r]: B+(**)
• Doris Day: Day by Day (1956, Columbia): [r]: B
• Doris Day: Day by Night (1957, Columbia): [r]: B
• Doris Day: 16 Most Requested Songs (1945-58 [1992], Columbia/Legacy): [r]: B+(*)
• Doris Day/Robert Goulet: Annie Get Your Gun (1963, Columbia Masterworks): [r]: B+(*)
• Blossom Dearie: Give Him the Ooh-La-La (1957 [1958], Verve): [r]: B+(**)
• Blossom Dearie: Once Upon a Summertime (1958, Verve): [r]: B+(***)
• Blossom Dearie: My Gentleman Friend (1959, Verve): [r]: A-
• Blossom Dearie: Blossom Dearie Sings Comden and Green (1959, Verve): [r]: B+(**)
• Blossom Dearie: Soubrette: Blossom Dearie Sings Broadway Hit Songs (1960, Verve): [r]: B+(**)
• Matt Dennis: Plays and Sings Matt Dennis (1954, Trend): [r]: B+(**)
• Matt Dennis: Dennis, Anyone? (1955, RCA Victor): [r]: B+(**)
• Matt Dennis: Plays and Sings Matt Dennis: Live in Hollywood (1954-55 [2011], Fresh Sound): [r]: B+(**)
• Billy Eckstine: Billy's Best (1957-58 [1995], Verve): [r]: B+(*)
• Ella Fitzgerald: Lullabies of Birdland (1947-54 [1955], Decca): [r]: A-
• Benny Goodman/Rosemary Clooney: Date With the King (1956, Columbia, EP): [r]: B+(**)
• Robert Goulet: 16 Most Requested Songs (1960-69 [1989], Columbia): [r]: C
• Beaver Harris 360 Degree Music Experience: Beautiful Africa (1979, Soul Note): [r]: B+(**)

Grade (or other) changes:

• Blossom Dearie: Blossom Dearie (1956 [1957], Verve): [r]: [was: B+]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Amu: Weave (Libra)
• Ethan Ardelli: The Island of Form (self-released): November 2
• Bobby Broom & the Organi-sation: Soul Fingers (MRi)
• Don Byron/Aruán Ortiz: Random Dances and (A)tonalities (Impakt)
• Richie Cole: Cannonball (RCP): October 26
• Randy Halberstadt: Open Heart (Origin): October 19
• Art Pepper: Unreleased Art Pepper Vol. 10: Toronto (1977, Widow's Taste, 3CD): November 2
• Lucas Pino's No Net Nonet: That's a Computer (Outside In Music): October 19
• Kristen Strom: Moving Day: The Music of John Shifflett (OA2): October 19

Weekend Roundup

The big story of the week seems to be the evident murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He had moved from Saudi Arabia to Virginia, but entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to "finalize some paperwork for his upcoming marriage to his Turkish fiancée." He never emerged from the consulate. The Turkish government has much evidence of foul play, and there are reports that "US intelligence intercepted communications of Saudi officials discussing a plan to 'capture' Khashoggi" -- something they made no attempt to warn Khashoggi about.

Some links (quotes above are from Hill, below):

• Sarah Aziza: Jamal Khashoggi Wasn't the First -- Saudi Arabia Has Been Going After Dissidents Abroad for Decades.

• Peter Baker: In Trump's Saudi Bargain, the Bottom Line Proudly Wins Out.

• Karen DeYoung/Kareem Fahim: After journalist vanishes, focus shifts to young prince's 'dark' and bullying side.

• Lee Fang: Saudi Media Casts Khashoggi Disappearance as a Conspiracy, Claims Qatar Owns Washington Post.

• Ben Freeman: The Saudi Lobby Juggernaut: Written shortly before the Khashoggi story broke, but important background for understanding how it's breaking.

• Evan Hill: The New Arab Winter: "The US has helped nurture a new generation of Mideast dictators, and Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance is just the latest result."

• Fred Kaplan: Trump's Saudi Delusions: "The president's defense of arms sales to the kingdom isn't just immoral -- it's inaccurate."

• Philip Rucker/Carol D Leonnig/Anne Gearan: Two Princes: Kushner now faces a reckoning for Trump's bet on the heir to the Saudi throne.

• Will Sommer: Trump Jr Boosts Smear Tying Missing Journalist Jamal Khashoggi to Islamic Terrorism.

• Jordan Tama: What is the Global Magnitsky Act, and why are US senators invoking this on Saudi Arabia?

• Ishaan Tharoor: Trump chooses Arab authoritarianism over Jamal Khashoggi.

• Alexia Underwood: Saudi Arabia won't be able to sweep the Jamal Khashoggi case under the rug.

• Robin Wright: As America's Élite Abandons a Reckless Saudi Prince, Will Trump Join Them?

• Matthew Yglesias: America deserves to know how much money Trump is getting from the Saudi government: "His corruption is a national security issue." Subhed assumes a meaning to "national security issue" that I don't think is in evidence. You might think that "national security" has something to do with preventing war and other forms of hostility which cause problems among nations, but US foreign policy doesn't work like that. Rather, it reflects certain business and military interests, which have effectively formed a "deep state" -- a consistent world posture largely unaffected by popular elections. In this context, the only "national security issue" is one which upsets this "deep state" -- e.g., one which exposes it to unwelcome public scrutiny. Thus qualified, maybe Trump is upsetting the "national security": for one thing, his personal corruption threatens to expose the underlying "deep state" interests, especially where they diverge; also, Trump's utter lack of concern for the veneer of democracy, human rights, free speech, etc., recasts the whole project as no more than self-interested hypocrisy.

The week started with Nikki Haley's resignation as US ambassador to the UN, but a week later it's hard to find any mention of it. Then the Florida panhandle got demolished by Hurricane Michael. Then there was some sort of White House summit between Trump and Kanye West. Meanwhile, elections are coming.

Some scattered links this week:

• Matthew Yglesias: Superior ruthlessness isn't why Republicans control the Supreme Court: "They had some good luck -- and, most importantly, they had the votes." After their losses in 2016, all the Democrats could do to derail the Kavanaugh nomination was to convince the public that he was a really terrible pick, and opinion polls show that they did in fact make that case. However, as we've seen many times before, Republicans are fine with ignoring public opinion (at least as long as they keep their base and donors happy), so they're eager to exploit any power leverage they can grab, no matter how tenuous. Democrats (in fact, most people) regard that as unscrupulous, which Republicans find oddly flattering -- backhanded proof that they hold convictions so firm they're willing to fight (dirty) to advance them. Some Democrats have come to the conclusion that they need to become just as determined to win as the Republicans -- e.g., David Faris's recent book: It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. Several problems with this: one is that there are still Americans that believe in things like fair play and due process, and those votes should be easy pickings for Democrats given how Republicans have been playing the game; another is that past efforts by Democrats to act more like Republicans haven't fared well -- they're never enough to appease the right, while they sure turn off the left. But what Democrats clearly do have to do is to show us that they take these contests seriously. I didn't especially like turning the Kavanaugh nomination into a #MeToo issue, but that did make the issue personal and impactful in a way that no debate over Federalist Society jurisprudence ever could.

  Other Yglesias pieces:

  • Trump's 60 Minutes interview once again reveals gross ignorance and wild dishonesty.

  • People don't like "PC culture" -- not that many of them can tell you what "PC culture" means (only that it consists of self-appointed language police waiting to pounce on you for trivial offenses mostly resident in their own minds). Refers to Yascha Mounk: Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture, which doesn't much help to define it either. To me, "PC culture" is exemplified by the God-and-country, American exceptionalist pieties spouted by Democratic politicians like Obama and the Clintons -- a compulsion to say perfectly unobjectionable things because they know they'll be attacked viciously by the right (or for that matter by center/leftists wanting to show off for the right) for any hint of critical thought. On the other hand, on some issues Republicans are policed as diligently -- racism is the one they find most bothersome, mostly because catering to the insecurities of white folk is such a big part of their trade. Of course, if we had the ability to take seriously what people mean, we might be able to get beyond the "gotcha" game over what they say.

  • Trump's dangerous game with the Fed, explained.

  • Trump's USA Today op-ed on health care is an absurd tissue of lies.

  • The case for a carbon tax: A carbon tax has always made sense to me, mostly because it helps to counter a currently unregulated externality: that of dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Two key ideas here: one is to implement it by joint international agreement (Yglesias suggests the US, Europe, and Japan, initially, but why wait for the US?), then grow it by charging tariffs against non-members; the other is to start low (to minimize short-term impact) and make the taxes escalate over time. Yglesias contrasts a carbon tax to David Roberts: It's time to think seriously about cutting off the supply of fossil fuels. This reminds me that major oil players have every now and then "advocated" a carbon tax, specifically when threatened with proposals like Roberts'. Unfortunately, it looks like the only way to get a carbon tax passed is to threaten the oil companies with something much more drastic. No one has much faith in reason anymore.

  • Immigrants can make post-industrial America great.

  • Trump's successful neutering of the FBI's Kavanaugh investigation has scary implications: Trump evidently got the rubber stamp, ruffle no feathers investigation of Brett Kavanaugh he wanted, showing that Comey replacement Christopher Wray can be trusted to protect his party.

    The White House got away with stamping on an FBI investigation. Think of it as a dry run for a coming shutdown of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

    It's easy to forget, but the existence of a Russia inquiry isn't a natural fact of American life. Barack Obama was president when it began, and then in the critical winter of 2016 to 2017, many Republicans, particularly foreign policy hawks, were uneasy with Trump and saw an investigation as a useful way to force him into policy orthodoxy. When Comey was fired, enough of that unease was still in place that many Republicans pushed for a special counsel to carry things forward.

    Trump, however, has clearly signaled his desire to clean house and fire Mueller after the midterms. And the Kavanaugh fight has shown us (and, more importantly, shown Trump) that congressional Republicans are coming around to the idea that independence of federal law enforcement is overrated. His White House, meanwhile, though hardly a well-oiled machine, has demonstrated its ability to work the levers of power and get things done.

    If the GOP is able to hold its majority or (as looks more likely, given current polling) pick up a seat or two, a firm Trumpist majority will be in place ready to govern with the principle that what's good for Trump is good for the Republican Party, and subverting the rule of law is definitely good for Trump.

• Stavros Agorakis: 18 people are dead from Hurricane Michael. That number will only rise. Category 4, making landfall with winds of 155 mph, the third-most intense hurricane to hit the continental US since they started keeping count (after an unnamed Labor Day storm in 1935 and Camille in 1969) -- i.e., about as strong as the hurricane that the Trump administration couldn't cope with in Puerto Rico.

• Ryan Bort: The Georgia Voter Suppression Story Is Not Going Away.

• Juan Cole: 15 Years after US Occupied Iraq, it is too Unsafe for Trump Admin to Keep a Consulate There.

• Joe Klein: Michael Lewis Wonders Who's Really Running the Government: Book review of Lewis's The Fifth Risk, which looks at what Trump's minions are doing to three government bureaucracies: the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce. Mostly they are shredding data, and purging the departments of the workers with the expertise to collect and analyze that data. Lewis explains why that matters -- a welcome relief from those journalists who are satisfied with reporting the easy stories about stupid Trump tweets and hi-jinks.

• Paul Krugman: Goodbye, Political Spin, Hello Blatant Lies: I try my best to avoid political ads, but got stuck watching a jaw dropper for Wichita's Republican Congressman Ron Estes, who spent most of his 30 seconds talking about how hard he's been working to save Medicare. Wasn't clear from what, since the only imminent threat is from his fellow Republicans, and his key votes to repeal ACA and cut corporate taxes and saddle us with massive deficits sure don't count. Estes isn't what you'd call a political innovator -- the main theme of his ads last time was that a vote for him would thwart Nancy Pelosi's nefarious designs on the Republic -- so most likely his ads this time are being repeated all across the nation. Also by Krugman: The Paranoid Style in GOP Politics.

• Dara Lind: The Trump administration reportedly wants to try family separation again.

• Anna North: Why Melania's response to Trump's alleged affairs was so weird:

  In some ways, it's a relief that the first lady is rarely called upon to perform the thankless task of trying to convince the country that her husband respects women. But it's also a sign of something darker: Plenty of Americans know the president doesn't respect women, and a lot of them don't care. They may even like it.

• Sandy Tolan: Gaza's Dying of Thirst, and Its Water Crisis Will Become a Threat to Israel.

Daily Log

Been compiling my last two "books" from the notebook, and finally caught up to the present moment. Miscellaneous Music Writings comes to 1735 pages (718k words). Non-Jazz Capsule Reviews is 1863 pages (806k words). I need to make a second pass through the book files, and weed out bits from the music writings that really belong in either the political or personal books. Also cut out any jazz reviews from the capsule book. (I was pretty sloppy about that in the beginning, when the review posts were more scattershot). That will probably knock a hundred pages off each. I also need to take another look at the lists and such I dropped from the Misc. book, and be more consistent about what I include and what I don't. That'll probably add some material back.

Next step beyond that would be to go back to the non-notebook writings that should be considered. I figure I'll add the pre-2000 stuff in the appendix.

Music Week

Music: current count 30430 [30390] rated (+40), 282 [280] unrated (+2).

Everything below is jazz. Most of it is new stuff I wasn't serviced on (unless someone sent me a download link which I didn't open; i.e., it was streamed, either from Napster or Bandcamp). Only a couple of CDs I did receive, mostly because I took so long making up my mind about the Jonathan Finlayson record (A-, but just barely). Most of my tips came from Phil Freeman's monthly Ugly Beauty column at Stereogum. Biggest find there was the trove of Japanese jazz from the 1970s (for once, the sampler is the place to start). The only old music was a Penguin Guide 4-star I had missed, by a saxophonist who showed up on at least three of this week's new discs (to best effect with Matt Penman).

I've walked Freeman's columns back to March, which gets increasingly into things I've already heard. One thing I didn't know was that Buell Neidlinger died back on March 16. He was the bassist in Cecil Taylor's 1956-61 groups -- in at least one case the album was initially under his name (New York City R&B). My database credits him with four A- records from the 1980s: Swingrass '83, Across the Tracks, Rear View Mirror, and Locomotive (all recorded 1979-87, but most got delayed releases -- Swingrass '83 was the first I noticed, and fell in love with.

The great baritone saxophonist Haimet Bluiett also died last week. I need to take some time and dive into his dicography -- I see, for instance, that Napster has Birthright, a PG 4-star from 1977. Some A- records I have heard: Live at Carlos I: Last Night; Young Warrior, Old Warrior; Makin' Whoopee: Tribute to the Nat King Cole Trio; The Calling. Bluiett also batted clean up in the World Saxophone Quartet, and he was particularly prominent on their best-ever Political Blues.

I did a little work on my project of collecting the last bits from my on-line notebook into book form. I'm up to February 2015 with a volume of miscellaneous music notes (1343 pp) and another of non-jazz capsule reviews (1515 pp). I doubt the former (which largely consists of introductions like this one) will be of any real interest, but think it would be handy to get it into searchable form. It turns out that 2011-13 were big years for misc. notes, mostly because that was when Robert Christgau's Expert Witness at MSN encouraged comments, and that resulted in a lot of community commentary. I jotted down pretty much everything I contributed -- often answering questions on recommended CDs, or extemporaneously venting on subjects like Charlie Parker.

I always figured my non-jazz capsule reviews were too spotty for any sort of reference book/website, but it turns out that there are enough of them to provide a decent starting point if other people got interested in adding to them.

I interrupted work on this to post another batch of Robert Christgau's Xgau Sez questions and answers. At some point I'd like to adapt that framework to offer a similar service here. I've struggled for many years to crank out pieces I think might be of public interest. It might be a relief to let other people direct me for a while.

I noticed this week that Tom Smucker has finally published a whole book on what's long been one of his favorite topics: Why the Beach Boys Matter. I have a copy on order. Ironically, my own original foray into rock criticism came from arguing with Don Malcolm over the Beach Boys. I'm surprised he never got around to writing his own book. Also noticed and ordered a copy of a new edition of Vince Alletti's The Disco Files 1973-78. I actually knew both Vince and Tom during my few years in New York, so I consider them old friends.

Posting of this got delayed as I was trying to figure out when I was done with Weekend Roundup. I had started intending to write something different on Brett Kavanaugh, but never really got past the preface. I have some sympathy for the argument that something that happened over 35 years ago shouldn't permanently tar a person. I think that many interactions between the sexes are confusing, and best forgotten. I think we should be more tolerant and forgiving of what are often just human foibles. On the other hand, I'm not sure that of my general sensitivities actually offer Kavanaugh much benefit. I could see why a normal person might not recall details or motives of the charges, but such a person would at least recognize the horror and pain behind the charges, and sympathized with the victim. Kavanaugh didn't do that. His blanket denial effectively repeated the original attacks. And his insistence that the charges were purely political, a "hit job" ordered by the Democrats, pure "borking," effectively said that he thought he should be exempt from his actions and consequences purely because of his politics.

As it turned out, Kavanaugh's final testimony was one of the most disgusting performances I have ever seen -- something that should have disqualified him all by itself. Before you can forgive sins, you first must recognize them and make amends. Kavanaugh didn't come close to doing that. Indeed, his entire career, and the broader agenda of the political movement he furthers, offers little more than repeated examples of the strong trampling the weak and the rich abusing the poor.

New records rated this week:

• Joey Baron/Robyn Schulkowsky: Now You Hear Me (2016 [2018], Intakt): [r]: B+(**)
• Jakob Bro: Bay of Rainbows (2017 [2018], ECM): [r]: B+(**)
• Mike Clark & Delbert Bump: Retro Report (2018, Ropeadope): [r]: B+(**)
• Drums & Tuba: Triumph! (2018, Ropeadope): [r]: B+(*)
• Espen Eriksen Trio With Andy Sheppard: Perfectly Unhappy (2018, Rune Grammofon): [r]: A-
• Jonathan Finlayson: 3 Times Round (2018, Pi): [cd]: A-
• Nick Finzer's Hear & Now: Live in New York City (2018, Outside In): [r]: B+(**)
• The Vinny Golia Sextet: Trajectory (2017 [2018], Orenda/Nine Winds, 2CD): [r]: B+(***)
• Devin Gray: Dirigo Rataplan II (2016 [2018], Rataplan): [cd]: B+(***)
• Hofbauer/Rosenthal Quartet: Human Resources (2017 [2018], Creative Nation Music): [cd]: B+(***)
• José James: Lean on Me (2018, Blue Note): [r]: B+(*)
• Mark Kavuma: Kavuma (2017 [2018], Ubuntu Music): [r]: B+(*)
• Shai Maestro: The Dream Thief (2018, ECM): [r]: B+(**)
• Dave McMurray: Music Is Life (2018, Blue Note): [r]: B+(**)
• Ryan Meagher: Lost Days (2017 [2018], Fresh Sound New Talent): [r]: B+(*)
• Ryan Meagher: Evil Twin (2018, PJCE): [r]: B
• Allison Miller/Carmen Staaf: Science Fair (2018, Sunnyside): [r]: B+(*)
• Joe Morris/Ben Hall/Andria Nicodemou: Raven (2016 [2017], Glacial Erratic): [bc]: B+(*)
• Moskus: Mirakler (2016-17 [2018], Hubro): [r]: B+(**)
• Wolfgang Muthspiel: Where the River Goes (2018, ECM): [r]: B+(**)
• Matt Penman: Good Question (2017 [2018], Sunnyside): [r]: A-
• Madeleine Peyroux: Anthem (2018, Decca): [r]: B+(*)
• Mikkel Ploug/Mark Turner: Faroe (2018, Sunnyside): [r]: B+(**)
• R+R=Now: Collagically Speaking (2018, Blue Note): [r]: B
• Cécile McLorin Salvant: The Window (2018, Mack Avenue): [r]: B+(*)
• Christian Sands: Reach Further EP (2017-18 [2018], Mack Avenue): [r]: B+(**)
• Christian Sands: Facing Dragons (2018, Mack Avenue): [r]: B+(**)
• JP Schlegelmilch/Jonathan Goldberger/Jim Black: Visitors (2018, Skirl): [r]: B+(*)
• Elliott Sharp Carbon: Transmigration at the Solar Max (2018, Intakt): [r]: B+(***)
• Chad Taylor: Myths and Morals (2018, Ears & Eyes): [r]: B+(*)
• Mark Turner/Ethan Iverson: Temporary Kings (2017 [2018], ECM): [r]: B+(**)
• Steve Turre: The Very Thought of You (2018, Smoke Sessions): [r]: B+(*)
• Jeff "Tain" Watts: Travel Band: Detained in Amsterdam (2017 [2018], Dark Key): [r]: B+(***)
• Walt Weiskopf: European Quartet (2017 [2018], Orenda): [r]: B+(**)
• Chip Wickham: Shamal Wind (2017 [2018], Lovemonk): [r]: B

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

• Tohru Aizawa Quartet: Tachibana Vol. 1 (1975 [2018], BBE): [bc]: A-
• Takeo Moriyama: East Plants (1983 [2018], BBE): [bc]: B+(***)
• Calm Waters Rolling Swells & Roiling Seas: A Whaling City Sampler (2004-17 [2018], Whaling City Sound): [cd]: B
• J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz From Japan 1969-1984 (1969-84 [2018], BBE): [r]: A-
• Ralph Thomas: Eastern Standard Time (1980 [2018], BBE): [bc]: B+(***)

Old music rated this week:

• Mark Turner: In This World (1998, Warner Brothers): [r]: A-

Grade (or other) changes:

• The Internet: Hive Mind (2018, Columbia): [r]: [was: B+(**)] B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Claus Højensgård/Emanuele Mariscalco/Nelide Bendello: Høbama (Gotta Let It Out)
• Jacobson/Friis/Maniscalco + Karlis Auzixs: Split: Body/Solo (Getta Let It Out): advance
• Kyle Nasser: Persistent Fancy (Ropeadope)
• Nikita Rafaelov: Spirit of Gaia (Gotta Let It Out)

Weekend Roundup

Story of the week: It's official: Brett Kavanaugh just became the least popular Supreme Court justice in modern history. The Senate vote was 50-48, almost a straight party vote. The Republican advantage in the Senate is 51-49 (counting Angus King and Bernie Sanders as Democrats). Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed by 54-45, with all Republicans and three Democrats (Manchin, Heitkamp, and Donnelly). Opposition was clearly political: Republicans had made it so by their refusal to even hold so much as a hearing on Merrick Garland, Obama's moderate nominee for the seat, turning it into a spoil for the 2016 election winner. But other than being cut from the same political cloth, Gorsuch had no personal baggage that made his nomination controversial.

Republicans have dreamed and schemed of reversing the Court's "liberal bent" -- really just an honest belief that the Constitution protects individual and minority civil rights -- ever since Nixon's "southern strategy" nominated Clement Haynsworth and, failing that, G. Harrold Carswell in 1969. The Republican campaign took an even more extremist turn when Reagan nominated the blatantly ideological Robert Bork in 1987 (after having slipped Antonin Scalia by in 1986). But only with GW Bush did Republicans consistently apply a rigorous ideological litmus test to their nominees. (Bush's nomination of Harriet Myers was quashed by hard-liners who didn't trust her to be conservative enough. They were still livid that his father's appointment didn't turn out to be as reliably reactionary as Scalia and Clarence Thomas.)

Kavanaugh turned out to be a very different story (from Gorsuch), yet the result was nearly the same. Only one Democrat (Manchin) voted for Kavanaugh, while one Republican opposed the nomination (Murkowski, who wound up not voting in an offset deal with an absent Republican senator). The first problem Kavanaugh faced was that he would replace Anthony Kennedy, who's run up a dreadful record in recent years but was still regarded as a moderate swing vote between the two polarized four-member camps. Kavanaugh would tilt that balance 5-4, allowing conservatives to rule almost arbitrarily for their political sponsors. Second, he was a person whose entire career was spent as a political operative: most notably as part of the Ken Starr prosecution of Bill Clinton, and later in the Bush White House where he argued for ever greater presidential power (at least for Republicans). A big part of the early debate over his nomination concerned discover of the paper trail of his partisan activities against Clinton and for Bush. His supporters in the White House and Congress made sure that those documents were never made available, and as such the extent of his partisan corruption was never properly aired.

His record as a DC Circuit Court judge was also largely unexamined, although his ruling, since overturned, against a detained immigrant girl who wanted to obtain an abortion, is a pretty clear signal that his views on abortion show no respect for "settled law." This case also shows his contempt for immigrants and refugees, his willingness to apply the law differently for different classes of people, and his reticence to restrain abuses of government power (at least against some people). I've long believed that the proper role for the Supreme Court is to build on the best aspirations of the Constitution to make government serve all the people, to protect the rights of minorities and individuals from the all-too-common abuses of power. Through much of my life, the Court at least leaned in that direction -- often not as hard as I would like, but their rulings against segregation, to defend a free press, to establish a nationwide right to abortion and most recently to marriage, have been major accomplishments, consistent with the understanding of America I grew up with, as a free, just, and egalitarian nation (ideals we haven't always achieved, but that we most often aspired to).

So, when I'm faced with the question of whether a given person should be given the responsibility of serving on the Supreme Court, the only question that matters to me is whether that person will understand and shape the rule of law in ways that promote greater freedom, equality, and justice, or not. After a fair investigation, I see nothing whatsoever that suggests to me that Brett Kavanaugh is a person who should be entrusted with that responsibility. In fact, what evidence I've seen suggests that he would actually be worse than any of the four partisan conservative judges currently on the court. To my mind, that should have been enough to settle the matter -- although between the fact that Republicans tend to vote as an arbitrary pack, and the tendency of many "moderate" Democrats to defer to Republican leadership, that wouldn't have been enough to defeat Kavanaugh.

However, Kavanaugh's confirmation didn't solely hinge on whether he'd be a good or bad Justice. It wound up turning on whether he was guilty of sexual assault, and whether he lied under oath about that charge (and ultimately about many other things). With these charges, Kavanaugh's confirmation wound up recapitulating that of Clarence Thomas back in 1991. The charges are slightly different. Thomas was accused of making grossly inappropriate office comments, which was especially grievous given that he ran (or mis-managed) the Reagan administration office responsible for regulating such matters. The initial charge against Kavanaugh was that as a high school student he had committed a drunken assault on a girl, which stopped barely short of rape. (Others subsequently came forward to charge Kavanaugh with other acts of drunken, sexually charged loutishness, but none of those women were allowed to testify or further investigated.)

You can read or spin these charges in various ways. On the one hand, sexual assault (Kavanaugh) is a graver charge than sexual harassment (Thomas); on the other, Kavanaugh was younger at the time and the event took place at a party when he was drunk, whereas Thomas was at work, presumably sober, and effectively the boss of the person he harassed. It is unclear whether this was an isolated incident for Kavanaugh, or part of a longer-term pattern (which is at least suggested by subsequent, uninvestigated charges, plus lots of testimony as to his drinking). Still, the one thing that was practically identical in both cases is that both nominees responded with the same playbook: blanket denials, while their supporters orchestrated a smear campaign against the women who reluctantly aired the complaints, while trying to portay the nominees as the real victims. Thomas called the charges against him a "lynching." Kavanaugh's preferred term was "hit job." Neither conceded that as Supreme Court nominees they should be held to a higher standard than criminal defendants. In the end, in both cases, marginal Senators wound up defending their vote as "reasonable doubt" against the charges. There was, after all, nothing admirable about being charged or defending themselves in such a disingenuous way. Both cases have wound up only adding to the cynicism many of us view the Courts with.

I'll tack on a bunch of links at the end which will round up the details as we know them, as well as other aspects of the process, not least the political rationalizations and consequences. But one thing that I think has been much less discussed than it should be is that neither Thomas nor Kavanaugh promoted or defended themselves on their own. I don't know who was the first Supreme Court nominee to hire lawyers and publicists to coach in the confirmation process, but the practice goes back before Thomas. I was reminded of this when John Kyl was appointed to fill the late John McCain's Senate seat. At the time Kyl was working for a DC law form representing Kavanaugh for his confirmation, so Kyl instantly became Kavanaugh's most secure vote. That nominees need help managing their egos and loose tongues was certainly proved by Bork, who managed to alienate and offend 58 Senators (almost all of whom had previously voted for Scalia, not exactly known for his tact). Mostly this handling means to make sure that the nominee doesn't say anything substantive about the law that may raise the hackles of uncommitted Senators, so the handlers only get noticed in the breech of an inadvertent gaffe. However, when something does go wrong, the first decision is whether to fight or flee -- since Nixon fought for Haynsworth (and lost), over a dozen nominees have simply withdrawn, often when faced with far less embarrassing charges than Thomas or Kavanaugh. As we saw with Myers, a nominee with no natural Democratic support can be brought down by a handful of vigilant Republicans, allowing the fringe of the party to insist on a harder candidate.

With a 51-49 majority, it wouldn't have taken much more than two Republicans to force Trump to withdraw Kavanaugh, but in the end only Murkowski opposed, and she was offset by Manchin (not that Pence wouldn't have been thrilled to cast a 50-50 tiebreaker). A couple of Republicans waffled a bit, but Collins and Flake have a long history of feigning decency then folding, and most simply don't care how bad a candidate looks (e.g., they voted for Betsy DeVos). They're quite happy to win with a bare minimum of votes, even when the polls are against them (e.g., their corporate income tax giveaway), figuring they can always con the voters again come election day. The problem with replacing Kavanaugh with a less embarrassing candidate came down to timing: restarting the process would have pushed it past the election into lame-duck territory, and possibly into the next Congress, which will likely have fewer Republicans (although not necessarily in the Senate). Never let it be said that the Republicans have missed an opportunity to gain an advantage -- and there are few prize they covet more than control of the Supreme Court.

Further links on the Cavanaugh Nomination:

• Perry Bacon Jr: Republicans Rescued Kavanaugh's Nomination by Making It About #MeToo: Interesting thesis, but the only chance it had of working was within the confines of a 51-49 Republican majority in the Senate. Within that framework, an issue that increases Republican solidarity works, even if it also increases Democratic solidarity -- in fact, the two are complementary. Doesn't mean that they made the Kavanaugh nomination more popular among the people, but that's not the sort of thing Republicans worry about. Nate Silver also asked: Is Kavanaugh Helping Republicans' Midterm Chances? His data isn't very persuasive one way or the other. It has been widely reported that the Republican base has been raised from its torpor by the Kavanaugh fight -- blowback against the Democratic Party "hit job" that will cost the Democrats in the end. That sounds like pure hype to me, but Republicans found lots of gullible press to get the message out.

• Jonathan Chait: Why Bret Kavanaugh's Hearings Convinced Me That He's Guilty.

• Jill Colvin: Trump Says His Decision to Mock Blasey Ford Was Turning Point for Kavanaugh.

• David Corn: The Real Reason the White House Told the FBI Not to Interview Christine Blasey Ford? They were worried that if the FBI interviewed Kavanaugh, he'd wind up being caught in a lie.

• Garrett Epps: Requiem for the Supreme Court: "Through the 20th century, the Court stood as an independent arbiter of the rule of law. It is a unifying, national institution no longer." Some earlier Epps pieces: A Judge Who Can't Be Vetted Shouldn't Be Confirmed; Kavanaugh's Unsettling Use of "Settled Law".

• Megan Garber: The Most Striking Thing About Trump's Mockery of Christine Blasey Ford; also wrote: The Pernicious Double Standards Around Brett Kavanaugh's Drinking. .

• Josh Gerstein: Kavanaugh's first vote could be in Trump executive power fight.

• Ryan Grim/Akela Lacy: Sen. Susan Collins and Brett Kavanaugh Are Both in the Bush Family Inner Circle. That Helps Explain Her Vote. Some other pieces from The Intercept:

  • Lee Fang; At Secretive Retreat, Evangelicals Celebrate Brett Kavanaugh's Confirmation.

  • Peter Maass: Dear Senators: The Opposition to Brett Kavanaugh Includes Churches, Law Professors, and Conservatives -- Even His Own Friends.

  • Robert Mackey: "It's a Very Scary Time for Young Men in America," Donald Trump Says. Yes, That Donald Trump.

  • Robert Mackey: On Russian TV, Brett Kavanaugh Is a Victim of "the Plague of Malignant Feminism".

• Paul Krugman: The Angry White Male Caucus. It's certainly true that Kavanaugh didn't do any favors for people who are prickly about their status as white males, but I still think the high dudgeon he took at being questioned and doubted is more rooted in class privilege than in race or sex. Actually, Krugman sort of admits this: "during my own time at Yale . . . I did encounter people like Kavanaugh -- hard-partying sons of privilege who counted on their connections to insulate them from any consequences from their actions." Being one, Krugman gets that there are exceptions to every generalization. The difference between born elites like Kavanaugh and Krugman isn't who they are or where they came from but whether they managed to outgrow the limits of their upbringing or simply surrendered to it.

• Charles Ludington/Lynne Brookes/Elizabeth Swisher: We were Brett Kavanaugh's drinking buddies. We don't think he should be confirmed.

• Jane Mayer/Ronan Farrow: The FBI Probe Ignored Testimonies From Former Classmates of Kavanaugh. Authors also wrote: Senate Democrats Investigate a New Allegation of Sexual Misconduct, From the Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh's College Years.

• Dana Milbank: Susan Collins' Declaration of Cowardice. Title refers back to Sen. Margaret Chase Smith's 1950 "Declaration of Conscience" when she broke with and denounced Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Sen. Mitch McConnell made the connection, with Sen. Lindsey Graham piling on, accusing the Democrats of "mob rule" and saying "this is as close to McCarthyism as I hope we get in my lifetime." Ignorance must be bliss. Not only was McCarthy a Republican, his assistant, Roy Cohn, went on to mentor the young Donald Trump. Indeed, Trump's favorite tactics, from decrying fake news to turning everything he's charged with into a slur against the Democrats, is straight from Cohn and McCarthy's playbook.

• Nathan J Robinson: How We Know Kavanaugh Is Lying. Very long and detailed, nails him coming and going. Robinson also wrote: If the Rule of Law Means Anything, Kavanaugh Must Be Impeached, asking "If a federal judge can get away with lying to Congress, why do we even have sworn oaths?"

• James Roche: I Was Brett Kavanaugh's College Roommate: "He lied under oath about his drinking and the terms in his yearbook."

• Jennifer Rubin: Is the Supreme Court salvageable? For one thing, I don't for a minute buy the argument that we can depoliticize the Supreme Court by restoring the 60-vote Senate filibuster, or even that, having packed the Court from the right, we even can begin to see it as anything but political. On the other hand, Rubin is right here: They left no doubt what they think of women.

• Elana Schor/Burgess Everett/Nancy Cook: A GOP 'disaster' averted: The final harrowing hours of Kavanaugh's confirmation.

• Adam Serwer: The Guardrails Have Failed: "The conflict over Trump's Supreme Court nominee exposed the fast-eroding institutional barriers to the president's authoritarian instincts."

• Avi Selk: The junk science Republicans used to undermine Ford and help save Kavanaugh.

• Rebecca Solnit: Brett Kavanaugh's many lies should disqualify him from holding any office.

• Amy Davidson Sorkin: Brett Kavanaugh and the GOP's Bargain With Trump.

• Kay Steiger/Andrew Prokop/Dara Lind/Ella Nilsen/Li Zhou/Tara Golshan/Zack Beauchamp: 8 takeaways from the knock-down, drag-out fight over Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation: Vox reporters. Also on Vox:

  • Zack Beauchamp: The Supreme Court's legitimacy crisis is here. The charts here show that confidence in the Supreme Court has eroded pretty regularly since Scalia got in and started to turn every ruling into a test of political ideology. The exception was in the mid-1990s, when Clinton's nominees joined the court (Breyer, Ginsberg). Chart doesn't break disillusion down by political leanings, but polarizing politicization probably made both ends less happy.

  • Dylan Matthews: America under Brett Kavanaugh; and Kavanaugh likely gives SCOTUS the votes to overturn Roe. Here's how they'd do it.

  • Dylan Scott: Republicans don't care what you think.

  • Emily Stewart: "Nothing unifies Republicans like the courts": Republicans celebrate Kavanaugh confirmation; and Susan Collins's 2020 challenger already has a $3 million campaign fund, thanks to her vote on Kavanaugh.

  • Matthew Yglesias: Kavanaugh's confirmation will delegitimize the Supreme Court -- and that's good: I'm not someone who thinks that it's good for things to get worse because that's what it takes to wake people up to advance real (long-needed) changes, so I don't agree with the title. But the subhed is on target: "It's time America woke up to the radical right that's run the Court for years." And Yglesias provides a number of cases that show how horrific the right-wing Supreme Court has been for a number of years. Yglesias also wrote: Republicans don't care if Kavanaugh is guilty because they don't think what he did was wrong.

• Laurence H Tribe: All the Ways a Justice Kavanaugh Would Have to Recuse Himself: Assumes, of course, that Kavanaugh has a sense of decency and legal propriety, which he has shown no evidence of thus far. Also, most likely, if Kavanaugh has learned anything from Trump, it's never recuse yourself.

• Jessica Valenti: Kavanaugh is the Face of American Male Rage.

• Benjamin Wittes: I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn't Confirm Him.

• Richard Wolffe: Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation isn't democracy. It's a judicial coup.

Some scattered links this week:

• David Barstow/Susanne Craig/Russ Buettner: Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father: Long article on the various schemes Trump's father used to funnel wealth to his children, especially to Donald -- the article pegs the total there at $413 million, often through tax-avoidance schemes of dubious legality. This should be a big story, even if it does ultimately melt into numerous other stories about Trump's business affairs. Some related pieces and commentary:

  • Dan Alexander/Chase Peterson-Withorn: How Trump Is Trying -- and Failing -- to Get Rich Off His Presidency.

  • Paul Krugman: Trump and the Aristocracy of Fraud.

• Christopher R Browning: The Suffocation of Democracy: Alt title (from Paul Woodward): "How the Republican Party is gradually killing American democracy." Browning's specialty is "the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and Europe in the era of the world wars." Trump has managed to gain the attention of quite a few Nazi-era scholars lately.

• Umair Irfan: A major new climate report slams the door on wishful thinking.

• Fred Kaplan: Trump Calls Out Election Meddling -- by China: "This looks like an attempt to shift the blame if the Republicans lose badly in November."

• Jane Mayer: How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump: Based mostly on a new book by political scientist Kathleen Hall Jamieson: Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President -- What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know. The most comprehensive piece I've seen on this subject.

• David E Sanger: US General Considered Nuclear Response in Vietnam War, Cables Show: Gen. William Westmoreland's initiative, overruled by Lyndon Johnson. Still, the failure of politicians to take nuclear weapons "off the table" is what allows general to think they may be viable options.

• Adam Serwer: The Cruelty Is the Point: "President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear." That's about as apt a one-line definition of Trump as a political actor and movement as you can come up with. Sure, doesn't cover everything: not the rampant corruption, the abuse of government to increase private profit-taking, the efforts to undermine law and justice both at home and abroad, but that's just boilerplate for the Republicans these days. Trump's "added value" is his ardor for cruelty and violence. When people talk about Trump's cult as Fascism, that's exactly what they have in mind. By the way, if you want an alternative term to Trump's Fascism, Matt Taibbi suggests Nihilism: Why Aren't We Talking More About Trump's Nihilism?

• Adam Serwer: Something Went Wrong in Chicago: "A white policeman was convicted of murder in the killing of a black teen -- an outcome that goes against the many forces aligned to prevent the officer from facing consequences."

• David Sirota: America's new aristocracy lives in an accountability-free zone: "Accountability is for the little people, immunity is for the ruling class. If this ethos seems familiar, that is because it has preceded some of the darkest moments of human history."

• Jerry Useem: Power Causes Brain Damage: I'm not comfortable with the notion that this is describing anything real in the way of neurological or neurobiochemical research, but it's long been obvious that political power changes people, often making them less able to intuit what other people think or feel, to empathize, to sympathize, even to understand. In a word, power tends to turn people into assholes. I've long thought that the New Left's undoing as a political movement was our critique and wariness of power, which made it difficult to consolidate and defend gains.

• Robin Wright: Did the Saudis Murder Jamal Khashoggi? Also: David Hearst: Jamal Khashoggi: A different sort of Saudi; James North: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, lionized by US pundits and politicians, is a -- suspected murderer.

• Matthew Yglesias: Family structure matters, but can we do anything about it? This was kind of a weird thing to write about, especially touting the presence of dads this week. I don't doubt that the research Yglesias cites is valid. Indeed, for any given individual, to get ahead or just make the best of a raw deal, I'd suggest embracing as many conservative personal platitudes as possible. Still, that doesn't mean the conservative preference for patting themselves on the back and shaming everyone else is a policy perscription -- it's more like a dare to class revolution. Yglesias also wrote:

  • The DCCC wants to remind you that you hate rich people: A recent ad acknowledges that Americans have good reason to resent the rich -- something Hillary Clinton's ads didn't dare do.

  • Seriously, we need to see Donald Trump's tax returns.

  • Why Amazon is fighting for $15: After Bernie Sanders introduced his BEZOS bill to deal with companies that take advantage of safety net programs to get by with underpaying workers, Jeff Bezos did a 180 and announced he'd raise the minimum wage at Amazon to $15/hour. Meanwhile, note that Facebook is leaning right to curry favor with Trump and co.

  • NAFTA is now USMCA: Semi-big news in that Trump has delivered on his promise to renegotiate NAFTA. The biggest change is in the name, rendered unpronounceable to bury the matter.

Music Week

Music: current count 30390 [30365] rated (+25), 280 [273] unrated (+7).

Week got wiped out several different ways. Helped a friend fix a huge Russian dinner on Friday. Shopped for that on Wednesday, having to hit up nine (or was it eleven?) stores along the way, then spent from Thursday afternoon to something like 4AM doing prep for another 6-7 hours of cooking on Friday. Wound up with way too much food, but much of it was magnificent. Only the dessert disappointed, an attempt at Prague cake which I now understand doesn't resemble the real thing at all.

Then Saturday I developed a fever with no other symptoms, and I basically shut down over the weekend -- so no Weekend Roundup, even following one of the more outrageous weeks of the Trump era. (Not like there won't be plenty more as bad or worse.) I started reading Jill Lepore's massive (or schematic, depending on your point of view) These Truths: A History of the United States. She starts by quoting the preamble to the US Constitution, and I realized it to offer not a practical description of the federal government but a vision statement of what that government should aspire to. The same, of course, could be said of the first lines of the Declaration of Independence, which Lepore also mentions.

What I then realized is that the standard for all three "separate and equal" branches of government should be their efforts to achieve these founding aspirations. We were fortunate, at least for the first half of my life, to have a Supreme Court that took those aspirations seriously, especially in its assertion of civil rights even while the other branches dragged their heels. Since Nixon, the right-wing has made a determined effort to overturn those rulings and to strip us of our rights, not least by stacking the courts with people who oppose the aspirations the nation was founded on. With the hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, we got a good view of just what kind of person would gladly do such things. Regardless of whether Kavanaugh has committed sexual assault and/or perjury, he's made it abundantly clear that he's unfit for the Supreme Court, or for that matter for the judgeship he currently holds.

Maybe I'll write more on that later in the week. My most immediate task is to get September's Streamnotes organized and posted. Thinking about the dinner, then not thinking at all, I totally missed the end of the month. I can backdate what I have, making it look like I did it on time and before doing this. The latter, at least, is mostly true.

I'm not sure what comes next. I can always return to compiling my last two books from the notebooks (non-review music notes, non-jazz reviews; I'm currently stalled in May, 2013). I could take a look at Pitchfork's The 2000 Best Albums of the 1980s -- the music decade I paid the least attention to at the time. Another possible source of unheard records is Will Friedland's latest book, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums. I picked up the book at the library, and while there is zero chance that I'll read it through, the actual album list isn't prohibitively long (probably 40-50 albums, half already heard). On the other hand, the new jazz queue has grown a bit (26 albums at the moment), so I should pay some attention to that.

New records rated this week:

• Dmitry Baevsky/Jeb Patton: We Two (2018, Jazz & People): [r]: A-
• Tony Bennett & Diana Krall: Love Is Here to Stay (2018, Verve/Columbia): [r]: B+(**)
• Black Art Jazz Collective: Armor of Pride (2018, HighNote): [r]: B
• Geof Bradfield: Yes, and . . . Music for Nine Improvisers (2018, Delmark): [r]: B+(**)
• Jonathan Butler: Close to You (2018, Mack Avenue): [r]: C+
• Noname: Room 25 (2018, self-released): [bc]: A-
• Eddie Palmieri: Full Circle (2018, Ropeadope): [r]: B+(***)
• Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble: From Maxville to Vanport (2018, PJCE): [cd]: B+(**)
• Ned Rothenberg/Hamid Drake: Full Circle: Live in Lodz (2016 [2017], Fundacja Sluchaj): [r]: B+(*)
• Steven Taetz: Drink You In (2018, Flatcar/Fontana North): [cd]: B
• The United States Air Force Band Airmen of Note: The Jazz Heritage Series 2018 Radio Broadcasts (2018, self-released, 3CD): [cd]: C
• Fay Victor's SoundNoiseFUNK: Wet Robots (2017 [2018], ESP-Disk): [r]: B+(**)

Old music rated this week:

• Gene Ammons: The Gene Ammons Story: Gentle Jug (1961-62 [1992], Prestige): [r]: B+(**)
• Gene Ammons: Gentle Jug Volume 2 (1960-71 [1995], Prestige): [r]: B+(***)
• Gene Ammons: The Boss Is Back! (1969 [1993], Prestige): [r]: B+(**)
• Bud Powell: Jazz Giant (1949 [1957], Verve): [r]: B+(***)
• Bud Powell: Piano Interpretations by Bud Powell (1955 [1959], Verve): [r]: B+(**)
• Bud Powell: The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 4: Time Waits (1958 [1999], Blue Note): [r]: A-
• Bud Powell: Strictly Confidential (1964 [1994], Black Lion): [r]: B+(***)
• Bud Powell: Salt Peanuts (1964 [1988], Black Lion): [r]: B

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Don Byron/Aruán Ortiz: Random Dances and (A)tonalities (Intakt)
• David Dominique: Mask (Orenda): November 9
• Michael Formanek Elusion Quartet: Time Like This (Intakt)
• Aaron Goldberg: At the Edge of the World (Sunnyside): November 16
• Aaron Parks: Little Big (Ropeadope): October 19
• Subtone: Moose Blues (Laika): October 26
• Harry Vetro: Northern Ranger (T.Sound): October 19

Sep 2018