Music Week

Music: current count 30874 [30842] rated (+32), 251 [269] unrated (-18).

Surprised I accumulated so many records given how miserable I've been all week. I've only been able to sit at the computer for more than an hour at a time the last couple days. That cut down on how much I could stream, but I did make a considerable dent in my physical CD queue: as of this moment, I have zero pending 2018 albums, and not much looking on to 2019.

I added Robert Christgau's grades to my EOY Aggregate. I've only been adding my own grades as I've collected items from other lists, so there are a lot of things I will eventually add to the list but that aren't there now. Somewhat surprised that the following Christgau-rated albums hadn't appeared in any previously compiled list (his grades, then mine, where I have one):

• Atmosphere: Mi Vida Local (Rhymesayers) [**, **]
• Mandy Barnett: Strange Conversation (Dame Productions/Thirty Tigers) [A-, A-]
• Born Ruffians: Uncle Duke & the Chief (Yep Roc) [*]
• Chris Butler & Ralph Carney: Songs for Unsung Holidays (Smog Veil) [**]
• Chicago Farmer: Quarter Past Tonight (self-released) [A-]
• Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba: Routes (Twelve/Eight) [A-, A-]
• The Coathangers: Live (Suicide Squeeze) [**, **]
• Doctor Nativo: Guatemaya (Stonetree) [A-, A-]
• E-40: The Gift of Gab (Heavy on the Grid) [**]
• Robbie Fulks/Linda Gail Lewis: Wild! Wild! Wild! (Bloodshot) [***, A-]
• Gift of Gab: Rejoice! Rappers Are Rapping Again! (Giftstribution Unlimited -EP) [***, A-]
• Hamell on Trial: The Night Guy at the Apocalypse: Profiles of a Rushing Midnight (Saustex) [A, *]
• Clay Harper: Bleak Beauty (self-released) [B+, *]
• Homeboy Sandman & Edan: Humble Pi (Stones Throw -EP) [A-, **]
• Joan Jett: Bad Reputation [Music From the Original Motion Picture] (Legacy) [A-, A-]
• George Jones & the Jones Boys: Live in Texas 1965 (Ace) [***, ?]
• Rich Krueger: Life Ain't That Long (Rockink) [A, **]
• John Kruth & La Società dei Musici: Forever Ago (Ars Spoletium) [A-, A-]
• Jinx Lennon: Grow a Pair!!! (Septic Tiger) [A-, *]
• Jeffrey Lewis: Works by Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010) (Don Giovanni) [B+, A-]
• Mad Crush: Mad Crush (Upon This Rock -EP) [B+]
• Wynton Marsalis Septet: United We Swing: Best of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Galas (2003-07, Blue Engine) [A-, *]
• Walter Martin: Reminisce Bar & Grill (Family Jukebox) [*, B]
• Mast: Thelonious Sphere Monk (World Galaxy) [A, ***]
• Medhane: Ba Suba, Ak Jamm (Grand Closing) [*]
• Molly Tigre: Molly Tigre (Very Special) [***, ***]
• Maria Muldaur: Don't You Feel My Leg: The Naughty Bawdy Blues of Blue Lu Barker (The Last Music Company) [A, A]
• Nas: Nasir (Mass Appeal/Def Jam -EP) [*, **]
• Willie Nelson: My Way (Legacy) [*, **]
• Grant Peeples and the Peeples Republik: Settling Scores Vol. II (Gatorbone) [***, **]
• Primo!: Amici (Upset the Rhythm) [*]
• Allen Ravenstine: Waiting for the Bomb (Morphius/ReR Megacorp) [*, *]
• Ike Reilly: Crooked Love (Rock Ridge Music) [**]
• Riton & Kah-Lo: Foreign Ororo (Riton Time) [A-, A-]
• Derek Smalls: Smalls Change (Meditations Upon Ageing) (BMG) [*]
• Sidi Touré: Toubalbero (Thrill Jockey) [***, **]
• The Chandler Travis Three-O: Backward Crooked From the Sunset (Iddy Biddy) [*]
• Wreckless Eric: Construction Time & Demolition (Southern Domestic) [A-, ***]
• I'm Not Here to Hunt Rabbits (Piranha) [A-, A-]
• Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring '70s (Legacy) [B+, **]

Those are all 2018 releases. Christgau's Dean's List will no doubt include his usual slew of late finds, but they fall out of this page. List is pretty long, but would be longer had I not already counted lists from known Christgauvians like Chris Monsen (Mekons 77, Amy Rigby, Elza Soares) and John Smallwood (Rigby, Lyrics Born, Wussy: What Heaven Is Like). I'll get to more as I find them, and at some point add in my own thus-far missing grades. Also results from Jazz Critics Poll, once they become public (soon, I think).

I have 175 EOY lists compiled to date, totalling 1798 + 46 albums (latter are reissues; very few lists focus on them so far). Not sure how many more I will pick up before I give up. The effort came to a standstill ten or so days ago, and I doubt I'll ever pick up the slack. The top of the list is fairly stable at this point (not that I've been paying close attention). My main interest in the list is to identify records worth checking out, so my intention now is to focus more on lists that line up well with my own interests. That probably means I've seen enough metal already. On the other hand, the current jazz listings are only about one-third as deep as the Jazz Critics Poll standings (154 vs. 487 new albums) and one-fourth as deep as my own personal ratings (176 vs. 678 new + old albums).

New records rated this week:

• The 14 Jazz Orchestra: The Future Ain't What It Used to Be (2018 [2019], Dabon Music): [cd]: B
• The 1975: A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships (2018, Dirty Hit/Polydor): [r]: B
• Sam Broverman: A Jewish Boy's Christmas (2018, Brovermusic): [cd]: B
• City Girls: Period (2018, Quality Control): [r]: B
• City Girls: Girl Code (2018, Quality Control): [r]: B
• Julien Desprez/Luís Lopes: Boa Tarde (2016 [2018], Shhpuma): [cdr]: B+(**)
• Kit Downes: Obsidian (2016 [2018], ECM): [r]: B
• Jake Ehrenreich: A Treasury of Jewish Christmas Songs (2017 [2018], self-released): [cd]: B+(*)
• Peter Evans/Agusti Fernandez/Barry Guy: Free Radicals at DOM (2017 [2018], Fundacja Sluchaj): [bc]: B+(**)
• Lupe Fiasco: Drogas Light (2017, 1st & 15): [r]: B+(**)
• Lupe Fiasco: Drogas Wave (2018, 1st & 15th): [r]: A-
• Nils Frahm: All Melody (2018, Erased Tapes): [r]: B+(**)
• Gaika: Basic Volume (2018, Warp): [r]: B+(*)
• Nabihah Iqbal: Weighing of the Heart (2017, Ninja Tune): [r]: B+(*)
• Thomas Johansson: Home Alone (2016 [2018], Tammtz): [r]: B+(**)
• Jones Jones [Larry Ochs/Mark Dresser/Vladimir Tarasov]: A Jones in Time Saves Nine (2016 [2018], NoBusiness): [cdr]: B+(***)
• Let's Eat Grandma: I'm All Ears (2018, Transgressive): [r]: B+(*)
• Doug MacDonald Trio: View of the City (2016 [2018], Blujazz): [cd]: B+(*)
• Roberto Magris: World Gardens (2015 [2018], JMood): [cd]: B+(***)
• Mac Miller: Swimming (2018, REMember Music/Warner Bros.): [r]: B+(*)
• Liudas Mockünas: Hydro 2 (2017 [2018], NoBusiness): [cd]: B+(*)
• Joel Moore/Nick Mizock/Paul Scherer/Michael Barton/Paul Townsend: Magnetic EP (2018, Blujazz): [cd]: B+(*)
• Møster!: States of Minds (2018, Hubro, 2CD): [r]: B+(*)
• Simon Nabatov/Barry Guy/Gerry Hemingway: Luminous (2015 [2018], NoBusiness): [cd]: A-
• Judy Night Quintet: Sliding on Glass: Live at 210 (2018, Blujazz): [cd]: B+(*)
• Kresten Osgood: Kresten Osgood Quintet Plays Jazz (2018, ILK, 2CD): [cd]: A-
• Otherworld Ensemble: Live at Malmitalo (2017 [2018], Edgetone): [cd]: B+(*)
• Alister Spence and Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe: Imagine Meeting You Here (2017 [2019], Alister Spence Music): [cd]: B+(***)
• Kristen Strom: Moving Day: The Music of John Shifflett (2018, OA2): [cd]: B
• The United States Air Force Band Airmen of Note: Best of the Jazz Heritage Series Volume 1 (2018, self-released): [cd]: B-

Grade (or other) changes:

• Maria Muldaur: Don't You Feel My Leg: The Naughty, Bawdy Blues of Blue Lu Barker (2018, The Last Music Company): [cd]: [was A-] A

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Jon Lundbom Big Five Chord: Harder on the Outside (Hot Cup): February 1

Purchases:

• Bettye LaVette: Things Have Changed (Verve)
• Lyrics Born: Quite a Life (Mobile Home)
• Janelle Monáe: Dirty Computer (Bad Boy)
• Maria Muldaur: Don't You Feel My Leg: The Naughty, Bawdy Blues of Blue Lu Barker (The Last Music Company)
• Pistol Annies: Interstate Gospel (RCA Nashville)
• John Prine: The Tree of Forgiveness (Oh Boy)

Weekend Roundup

No Weekend Roundup last week, and I didn't have any intention of doing one this week either. But when I sat down at the computer today, I figured I'd copy a few links (without comments) into the notebook for future reference. Wound up with quite a few. I started with Matthew Yglesias, then decided to stick to the format I used there: boldfacing the author, linking the article. Normally I would group related articles, such as on the shutdown/wall, or the Syria withdrawal, but only in a couple instances did I do that -- mostly when an article by a unique writer adds or counters one I already had pegged. I wound up with a couple very brief comments, noted interviews, and added tag quotes or subheds under long articles, where the title didn't explain enough.

Still awful sore, but this was probably the first day in ten where I've been able to sit at the computer for more than an hour without really paying for it. Managed to listen to some music along the way, so Music Week tomorrow won't be a total wash.

Some scattered links this week:

• Spencer Ackerman/Adam Rawnsley: $800 million in taxpayer money went to private prisons where migrants work for pennies.

• Andrew J Bacevich:

  • The war in Afghanistan isn't a 'stalemate.' The US has lost.

  • Rebuking Trump's foreign policy, Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigns: interviewed by Amy Goodman. Program also quotes Phyllis Bennis. For her transcript, see The bombings will continue: US military role in Syria won't end.

• Dean Baker: Warren-Schakowsky Bill is a huge step toward bringing drug costs down.

• Peter Baker/Maggie Haberman: For Trump, 'a war every day,' waged increasingly alone: "At the midpoint of his term, the president has grown more sure of his own judgment and more isolated from anyone else's than at any point since he took office."

• Doug Bandow: Why Trump is right to withdraw troops.

• Zack Beauchamp: The 9 thinkers who made sense of 2018's chaos: 1 and 2) Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt on the big picture of the Trump presidency [authors of How Democracies Die]; Kimberlé Crenshaw on the battle over "identity politics" and "intersectionality" [author of On Intersectionality]; 4) Kate Manne on the Brett Kavanaugh fight [author of Down Girl]; 5 to 7) John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck on the midterm elections [authors of Identity Crisis]; 8) Carol Anderson on the war on voting rights [author of One Person, No Vote]; 9) Zeynap Tufekci on the baleful influence of social media [author of Twitter and Tear Gas]. I haven't read any of these, and am rather skeptical of most of them.

• Peter Beinart: What the Yemen vote reveals about the Democratic Party.

• Julia Belluz: A new Trump rule could take food stamps away from 755,000 people.

• Christina Cauterucci: Claire McCaskill's bitter farewell.

• Juan Cole:

  • Shiite parties decry Trump's 'arrogant' and 'disdainful' visit to Iraq, ignoring Iraqis.

  • 2018: Saudis made a play for regional hegemony and tripped over a single murder.

• Steve Eder: Did a Queens podiatrist help Donald Trump avoid Vietnam?

• Conor Friedersdorf:

  • What the Syria Hawks refuse to acknowledge.

  • How the press sustains the Forever War.

• Susan B Glasser: How Trump made war on Angela Merkel and Europe.

• Justin Glawe: Immigrant deaths in private prisons explode under Trump.

• Tara Golshan: Trump's approval rating drops to Charlottesville levels during shutdown.

• Sarah Greenberger: I worked in the Interior Department. Watching Zinke's tenure was heartbreaking.

• Sean Illing:

  • "The fish rots from the head": a historian on the unique corruption of Trump's White House: interview with Robert Dallek, author of Franklin Roosevelt: A Political Life, from 2017.

  • Team of sycophants: a presidential historian on Trump's White House: another interview with Robert Dallek, from March 2018.

  • Intellectuals have said democracy is failing for a century. They were wrong. Reviews a debate by Walter Lippmann and John Dewey.

• Umair Irfan:

  • The EPA wants to make it harder to ratchet down toxic chemicals from power plants.

  • 3 big takeaways from the disasters that hammered the US in 2018 (w/Brian Resnick).

• Dahr Jamail: Ten ways 2018 brought us closer to climate apocalypse.

• Patrick Radden Keefe: How Mark Burnett resurrected Donald Trump as an icon of American success.

• Jen Kirby:

  • Mattis's resignation was a scathing indictment of Trump's foreign policy.

  • Trump will reportedly remove 7,000 troops from Afghanistan.

• Michael Klare: The Coming of Hyperwar.

• Paul Krugman:

  • Bad Faith, Pathos and GOP Economics.

  • The Ghost of Trump Chaos Future.

  • The Case for a Mixed Economy.

  • Conservatism's Monstrous Endgame.

• Jill Lepore: What 2018 looked like fifty years ago.

• Eric Levitz: Eric Levitz: Trump: Give me a wall or I'll engineer a recession.

• Dara Lind: Slats, fences, and wall, explained: what exactly the shutdown fight is about.

• Adam Liptak: Roberts, leader of Supreme Court's conservative majority, fights perception that it is partisan. On the other hand: Nelson W Cunningham: A holiday mystery: Why did John Roberts intervene in the Mueller probe?

• Eric Lipton/Steve Eder/John Branch: 'This is our reality now.' On Trump and the environment: Dismissing science; Easing a 'war on coal'; Sidestepping protections; Profiting, at a cost

• German Lopez:

  • Congress just passed the most significant criminal justice reform bill in decades.

  • William Barr helped establish mass incarceration. Now Trump wants him as attorney general.

• Bill McKibben: At last, divestment is hitting the fossil fuel industry where it hurts.

• John Nichols: The Trouble With Patrick Shanahan.

• Caitlin Oprysko: Trump sounds 'more like a mob boss than president' with Cohen attacks.

• Martin Pengelly:

  • John Kelly: judge me on what Trump didn't do while I was chief of staff.

  • Trump blames Democrats for deaths of children as shutdown grinds on.

• Matt Peterson: The making of a trade warrior: on Robert Lighthizer. Related: Annie Lowrey: The 'madman' behind Trump's trade theory: on Peter Navarro.

• Rob Picheta: Journalists faced 'unprecedented' hostility this year, report says. Related: United States added to list of most dangerous countries for journalists for first time.

• Gareth Porter: Trump scores, breaks generals' 50-year war record.

• Andrew Prokop:

  • Trump's attorney general nominee wrote a memo expressing deep suspicion of the Mueller probe.

  • Trump names Mick Mulvaney acting White House chief of staff.

  • The Trump inauguration is now being criminally investigated.

• Linda Qiu:

  • Deciphering the Patterns in Trump's Falsehoods.

  • In Tweetstorm, Trump Bends Truth on Foreign Policy and the Border Wall.

• Sudarsan Raghavan: An unnatural disaster: "Yemen's hunger crisis is born of deliberate policies, pursued primarily by a Saudi-led coalition backed by the United States."

• Frank Rich: GOP leaders won't tolerate Trump's chaos for much longer. Who's he kidding? The only other person who still harbors such fantasies is: Thomas L Friedman: Time for GOP to threaten to fire Trump.

• David Roberts:

  • The case for "conditional optimism" on climate change.

  • What made solar panels so cheap? Thank government policy.

  • Clean energy technologies threaten to overwhelm the grid. Here's how it can adapt.

  • 9 questions about climate change you were too embarrassed to ask. Note "Further reading" links.

  • Climate change policy can be overwhelming. Here's a guide to the policies that work. Interview with Hal Harvey, author of Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy.

  • Energy transitions are usually slow. Why the clean energy transition might be faster.

• Amanda Sakuma:

  • John Kelly's exit interview lifts the curtain on the chaos within the Trump White House.

  • Trump orders federal pay freeze for 2019.

  • Saudi Arabia is reportedly outsourcing its war in Yemen to child soldiers.

  • Trump is using the deaths of two migrant children to push for his border wall.

  • Trump threatens to shut down the border for the third time in three months.

• Dylan Scott:

  • Court dissolves North Carolina elections board with election fraud scandal still under investigation.

  • More evidence piles up in North Carolina election fraud scandal.

  • Elizabeth Warren's ambitious new bill to lower generic drug prices, explained.

• Scott Shane/Sheera Frenkel: Russian 2016 influence operation targeted African-Americans on social media.

• Richard Silverstein: Netanyahu government falls.

• Danny Sjursen: Ringing in a new year of war.

• Emily Stewart: What the Republican tax bill did -- and didn't -- do, one year later: "The GOP tax cuts didn't pay for themselves. They did, however, deliver a lot of stock buybacks."

• Andrew Sullivan: The establishment will never say no to a war.

• Nick Tabor: The Trump Administration's war on wildlife should be a scandal.

• Hiroko Tabuchi: The oil industry's covert campaign to rewrite American car emissions rules.

• Matt Taibbi:

  • We know how Trump's war game ends: "Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war."

  • The Malaysia scandal is starting to look dire for Goldman Sachs: "Malaysian authorities filed criminal charges against Goldman, seeking a stunning $7.5 billion in reparations."

  • The French protests do not fit a tidy narrative.

• Alexia Underwood: Trump's secret trip to Iraq didn't quite go as planned.

• Siva Vaidhyanathan: Facebook workers are the only ones who can hold Facebook accountable.

• Peter Wade: John Kelly confirms he was lying all along: The White House is in chaos.

• Philip Weiss: Sheldon Adelson was a giant loser in midterms -- and Trump is letting him know it.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • The comically large 2020 Democratic field, explained.

  • Joe Biden is leading the 2020 polls. Here's what he thinks about policy.

  • Tucker Carlson isn't speaking forbidden truths about immigration -- he's just wrong.

  • Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are both way more popular than Trump.

  • Trump's perhaps correct critique of the Federal Reserve, explained.

  • Paul Ryan's farewell address contained a blaze of nonsense about poverty.

  • I'm starting to think Mexico isn't going to pay for the wall.

  • Beto O'Rourke's voting record is more conservative than the average Democrat's.

  • There never were any "adults in the room".

  • The shutdown is intractable because Trump's wall is ridiculous and Republicans know it.

• Li Zhou: Trump as gotten 66 judges confirmed this year. In his second year, Obama had gotten 49.

• Two pieces on the late Amos Oz: Haidar Eid: Amos Oz was no dove; and Marc H Ellis: Amos Oz and the end of liberal Zionism.

Streamnotes (December 2018)

Pick up text here.

Music Week

Music: current count 30842 [30808] rated (+34), 269 [269] unrated (+0).

Surprised the count is this high. I was on a tear early in the week, especially between the time I compiled last week's results and when I finally posted them last Wednesday. However, that came to a screeching halt on Thursday or Friday (I can't remember which), when I woke up and found it very difficult and painful to sit up or stand. It doesn't seem like back pain; more in my hips, evenly distributed. I've had something like this happen a few widely scattered times in the past, but it's always cleared up in a couple of days. This doesn't seem to be getting better. Once I straighten up I can walk around without too much pain, but bending over or kneeling down is tough.

I had ambitious plans for fixing a Christmas Eve dinner, working mostly out of two Yotam Ottlenghi cookbooks, Ottolenghi and Jerusalem. I figured I should do some preliminary shopping on Friday, even though I hadn't fully sorted the menu out, and do a bit more on Sunday before starting to cook that evening. But with the pain and immobility, I started cutting back. I got my wife to drive me to Dillons for the Friday shopping, and made do with the single stop. Then I asked one of my guests to help out with the cooking. Linda Jordan joined me for several hours Saturday evening and from 1:30 through dinner on Sunday, and somehow we knocked out a decent menu of dishes (descriptions from memory):

• Shawarma: a leg of lamb, marinated overnight in a spice paste, and roasted.
• Sweet potato gratin: sliced into rounds, packed with garlic and sage, partly baked, then covered with cream and baked more to finish.
• Eggplant: cut in half, roasted, topped with sauteed onions, spices, and feta cheese.
• Eggplant: cut into cubes, roasted, in a saffron-yogurt sauce.
• Endive: split, carmelized, stuffed with a mix (bread crumbs, parmesan, herbs, cream), topped with prosciutto, and baked.
• Pearl barley and parsley salad: also with toasted cashews and spiced feta cheese.
• Zucchini and tomato salad: also with walnuts, in a yogurt sauce.
• Tomatoes: cut into chunks, with basil and dressing.
• Mast va khiar: cucumber, scallions, golden raisins, walnuts, and mint in yogurt.
• Amish Door's date pudding, topped with caramel sauce and whipped cream.

Saturday night Linda made the pudding and caramel sauce; we roasted the eggplants, cooked the barley, prepped the feta, mixed up the marinade and rubbed it into the lamb. After Linda left I did the mast va khiar and the whipped cream.

Sunday I had to get the lamb into the oven by 1:30. I sliced an onion, and started frying it. Linda arrived and took over. I mostly mixed sauces. I tried cutting the sweet potatoes with a mandoline, but gave up and used the food processor instead (harder to set up, but cut much faster). Two ovens were the key: while the lamb was roasting at 325F, the gratin and the endive needed 400F: 70 minutes for the sweet potatoes and 20 for the endive. We actually had all the side dishes and the latter ready for the oven by 4:30, so there was no last-minute drama. I hadn't really thought that through in the planning, but it worked out perfectly. Food was pretty good, too.

Pain wasn't too bad walking around, or sitting on a high bar stool doing prep. Linda did pretty much all of the stovetop cooking, as well as shuffling things in and out of the ovens. Got a good night's sleep, but this morning was the worst yet -- especially after sitting at the computer 15-20 minutes. This stretch on the computer has gone on for two hours. Not too bad crouched over working here, but I expect it will be tough getting up.

Plan is to come back and post this later tonight. I'm due to post December's Streamnotes sometime this week. I may go ahead and push it out without the usual indexing. Music count for the last 3-4 days has been close to zero. No idea when I'll be able to do more.

I should note that the Howard Riley album below (Live in the USA) would have topped my Reissues/Historical ballot in the Jazz Critics Poll had I gotten to it in time. I've said before that most years I find another A-list album within 2 days of filing my ballot, and a ballot-contender within two weeks. I'm usually thinking of new releases there, but note that Adam Forkelid's Reminiscence (also below) is up at number 12 in my Best Jazz Albums of 2018 list, so just barely below top ten.

New records rated this week:

• Lynne Arriale Trio: Give Us These Days (2017 [2018], Challenge): [r]: B+(*)
• Bob Baldori/Arthur Migliazza: The Boogie Kings: Disturbing the Peace (2018, Blujazz/Spirit): [cd]: B+(*)
• Eraldo Bernocchi: Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It (2018, RareNoise): [cdr]: B+(*)
• The Beths: Future Me Hates Me (2018, Carpark): [r]: B+(*)
• Samuel Blaser: Early in the Mornin' (2017 [2018], Out Note): [r]: B+(*)
• Bobby Bradford/Hafez Modirzadeh: Live at the Blue Whale (2017 [2018], NoBusiness): [cdr]: B+(***)
• Brockhampton: Iridescence (2018, RCA): [r]: B+(**)
• Marie Davidson: Working Class Woman (2018, Ninja Tune): [r]: A-
• Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band: Presence (2018, Smoke Sessions): [r]: B
• Adam Forkelid: Reminiscence (2017 [2018], Moserobie): [cd]: A-
• John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble: All Can Work (2017 [2018], New Amsterdam): [bc]: B
• Park Jiha: Communion (2016 [2018], Tak:til): [r]: B+(**)
• JLin: Autobiography [Music From Wayne McGregor's Autobiography] (2018, Planet Mu): [r]: B+(***)
• Phillip Johnston: The Adventuers of Prince Achmed (2013 [2018], Asychronous): [bc]: B+(*)
• Phillip Johnston & the Coolerators: Diggin' Bones (2017 [2018], Asynchronous): [bc]: B+(***)
• Martin Küchen/Rafal Mazur: Baza (2017 [2018], NoBusiness): [cdr]: B+(*)
• Lotic: Power (2018, Tri Angle): [r]: B
• François Moutin & Kavita Shah Duo: Interplay (2018, Dot Time): [r]: B+(***)
• Now Vs Now: The Buffering Cocoon (2018, Jazzland): [r]: B
• Jacob Sacks: Fishes (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(**)
• Scheen Jazzorchester/Eyolf Dale: Commuter Report (2018, Losen): [cd]: B+(*)
• SLUGish Ensemble: An Eight Out of Nine (2018, SLUGish): [bc]: B+(**)
• Martial Solal: My One and Only Love: Live at Theater Gutersloh (2017 [2018], Intuition): [r]: B+(***)
• Luciana Souza: The Book of Longing (2018, Sunnyside): [r]: B+(**)
• Subtle Degrees: A Dance That Empties (2017 [2018], New Amsterdam): [bc]: B+(***)
• Earl Sweatshirt: Some Rap Songs (2018, Tan Cressida/Columbia, EP): [r]: B
• Trio HLK: Standard Time (2018, Ubuntu Music): [bc]: B+(***)
• Trondheim Jazz Orchestra & Ole Morten Vågan: Happy Endings (2018, Odin): [r]: B+(**)
• Yves Tumor: Safe in the Hands of Love (2018, Warp): [r]: B
• Ben Wendel: The Seasons (2018, Motéma): [r]: B+(*)

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

• Marion Brown/Dave Burrell: Live at the Black Musicians' Conference, 1981 (1981 [2018], NoBusiness): [cd]: A-
• Detail [Johnny Mbizo Dyani/Frode Gjerstad/Evin One Pedersen/John Stevens]: Detail at Club 7 (1982 [2017], Not Two): [r]: B+(***)
• Howard Riley: Live in the USA (1976 [2018], NoBusiness): [cd]: A
• Wadada Leo Smith/Sabu Toyozumi: Burning Meditation (1994 [2018], NoBusiness): [cd]: A-
• Cecil Taylor: Poschiavo (1999 [2018], Black Sun): [r]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Ran Blake/Jeanne Lee: The Newest Sound You Never Heard (1966-67, A-Side, 2CD): January 25
• Blue Standard: A Good Thing (Big Time): January 18
• Benjamin Boone/Philip Levine: The Poetry of Jazz: Volume Two (Origin): January 18
• Eric Dolphy: Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (Resonance, 3CD): January 26
• Kresten Osgood: Kresten Osgood Quintet Plays Jazz (ILK, 2CD)
• Alister Spence and Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe: Imagine Meeting You Here (Alister Spence Music): January 18
• Stephan Thelen: Fractal Guitar (Moonjune): January 18

Music Week

Music: current count 30808 [30774] rated (+34), 269 [259] unrated (+10).

Collected the lists late Sunday night, after I wrapped up Weekend Roundup, but still didn't get started writing this until late Tuesday night. Francis Davis was supposed to hand in the 13th Annual Jazz Critics Poll results and analysis today. I assume that happened. At least, I have 139 ballots tabulated (including a couple days of stragglers, but safe to say it's too late to weigh in now). We went back over several contentious and/or confusing issues Monday, making minor adjustments to the votes in cases where some voters got the New and Reissue/Historical categories mixed up. We also carried 2017 votes forward in cases where a record got more votes (not just more points) this year than last.

The poll won't be published until January. Evidently NPR needs the extra lead time to line up sample music and such. I'll try to refrain from commenting until then. One thing the delay does is give me some time to do little bits of programming to clean things up. Probably the most annoying thing for me is that the sort beyond points/votes looks to be accidental. (I think it actually follows the order of albums in the table, which this year were entered as I encountered them on the ballots, mostly in submission order.) Whether I get around to that remains to be seen. Also whether I write up any real commentary on whatever I learned in the process. I've thought about that the last few days, and have a few scattershot notions, but I'm not being very productive.

Actually, I'm feeling pretty fucking depressed. The season may have something to do with it. My mother was a very big Christmas fan, and it's never been the same for me since she passed. And it diminished further when my brother and his family moved away. Then my sister died in March, so this year I'll be cooking Christmas Eve dinner for one nephew, and maybe a couple of friends who don't have their own family obligations. Still, that dinner is a project that give me some meaning. It's much of what I thought about today, and will be until the date. Doesn't seem like much else pressing to do.

We had a tough time organizing our annual latke dinner (Hannukah, but the point is potato pancakes). Did that on Sunday, and my nephew was the only guest who showed up. I grated five russet potatoes, two onions, added five eggs, salt, and pepper, and fried up a bunch of 6-inch discs. Salted some average-looking salmon, and sliced it up. Served sour cream and applesauce (actually the leftover pear-apple mix from the Peace Center desserts). In the past I've made various side dishes, but none of that this time. I did make an apple shalet for dessert: basically, bread pudding with baked sliced apples. It could have used some ice cream, but that's my usual reaction to fruit.

Weather bothers me too. Back in the summer I hated the heat so much I couldn't even recall what cold felt like, but it turns out that it hurts -- even more. I wanted to do some work on my nephew's house, but haven't felt like it (nor has he). Haven't done any projects here, at least beyond some minor leaf work. Nothing inside either. I keep talking about replacing the floor drain in the basement, and spent some money (bought the replacement drain, also a cement chisel since the hard part is busting up the old floor and mixing and pouring a new one), but have yet to start the work. (I did look into renting a small jack hammer, in case the hand tools aren't up to the job.)

And, of course, I'm running into various "confuser" problems. Since I set up an email list for technical advisors, I've been getting ten emails from my server every hour complaining about "excessive resource use" by the various Mailman scripts (none of which have delivered a single email as yet). I'm pretty sure they're false alarms -- e.g., the processes are sleeping, not using anything more than a little RAM -- but this means I find close to 200 new emails when I get up (obviously, not my only source of nuisance email, but a big one). I doubt the list itself will be any help for this particular problem: only two people have asked to join so far, both known to me and neither likely to be much technical help. If you can help on website tech issues, or just want to monitor and occasionally weigh in on user issues, please email me and ask to be signed up.

One tech problem I would have liked to throw open to the list had to do with the RSS Feed at Robert Christgau's website. When I checked it, after posting yesterday's XgauSez Q&A, my browser dropped all of the formatting I had seen from previous tests. I ran it through a validator, found and fixed a couple problems (mostly date/time format), and finally got it to validate. But I still get no format in Firefox. Since I've never used RSS feed clients, I'm having lots of trouble figuring out whether it's working. It could be that Firefox itself has changed: I know now that they've dropped their "Live Bookmarks" feature, but I'm not sure when (or aware of an update on my end). I need to do more research when I get some time, but it's one of those questions that someone probably knows much more about than I do.

I want to backport the RSS code to my own website, but should hold off until I understand it better. I thought I might try some experiments with my WordPress-based Notes on Everyday Life website, but I found it in a terrible mess -- itself a rabbit hole that would take me days (or weeks) to work back out of. Seemed easy when I originally built the site, but I don't seem to be able to get my mind around the tools this time (or have lost the patience for doing so). In fact, I still haven't fixed the boot problem on my new main working computer. Just did a software update this afternoon, so now it wants to be rebooted. Trouble is, it doesn't book cleanly since the last major update. I've been able to overcome this by switching into the BIOS and manually booting from there, but that always seems risky. So for now I think it would be a good idea to hold off until I post this and update everything else. Just a precaution, but as they keep telling us, we live in a dangerous world, where things we depend on can no longer be trusted to fucking work.

I should write something about progress with the EOY Aggregate file, but will have to save that for another day.

New records rated this week:

• Andrew Barker/Daniel Carter: Polyhedron (2017 [2018], Astral Spirits): [bc]: B+(**)
• Jon Batiste: Hollywood Africans (2018, Verve): [r]: B+(*)
• Beak>: >>> (2018, Temporary Residence): [r]: B+(*)
• Boygenius: Boygenius (2018, Matador, EP): [r]: B
• Christine and the Queens: Chris (2018, Because Music): [r]: B+(**)
• Maria Da Rocha: Beetroot & Other Stories (2018, Shhpuma): [r]: B+(**)
• El Eco With Guillermo Nojechowicz: Puerto de Buenos Aires 1933 (2017, Zoho): [r]: B+(*)
• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo: Kikoeru: Tribute to Masaya Kimura (2018, Libra): [cd]: A-
• Fernando Garcia: Guasabara Puerto Rico (2017 [2018], Zoho): [r]: B+(*)
• Vinny Golia/Henry Kaiser/Bob Moses/Damon Smith/Weasel Walter: Astral Plane Crash (2018, Balance Point Acoustics): [r]: B+(**)
• Hamar Trio: Yesterday Is Here (2016 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(***)
• Lonnie Holley: MITH (2018, Jagjaguwar): [r]: B
• François Houle/Alexander Hawkins/Harris Eisenstadt: You Have Options (2016 [2018], Songlines): [r]: B+(***)
• Quin Kirchner: The Other Side of Time (2018, Astral Spirits): [bc]: B+(***)
• Knalpot: Dierendag (2017 [2018], Shhpuma): [r]: B+(*)
• Leikeli47: Wash & Set (2017, Hardcover/RCA): [r]: B+(***)
• Leikeli47: Acrylic (2018, Hardcover/RCA): [r]: B+(**)
• Master Oogway: The Concert Koan (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(**)
• Peter McEachern Trio: Bone-Code (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: A-
• Música De Selvagem: Volume Único (2017 [2018], Shhpuma, EP): [r]: B+(*)
• Rico Nasty: Nasty (2018, Sugar Trap): [r]: B+(**)
• Barre Phillips: End to End (2017 [2018], ECM): [r]: B+(***)
• Antonio Raia: Asylum (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(**)
• Mattias Risberg: Stamps (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(*)
• Bobby Sanabria Manhattan Big Band: West Side Story: Reimagined (2017 [2018], Jazzheads, 2CD): [r]: B
• Travis Scott: Astroworld (2018, Epic/Grand Hustle): [r]: B+(**)
• Thollem/DuRoche/Stjames Trio: Live in Our Time (2015 2018], ESP-Disk): [r]: B+(*)

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

• John Coltrane: 1963: New Directions (1963 [2018], Impulse!, 3CD): [r]: B+(***)
• Soul of a Nation: Jazz Is the Teacher/Funk Is the Preacher (1969-75 [2018], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(***)

Old music rated this week:

• John Coltrane: Newport '63 (1961-63 [1993], Impulse!): [r]: A-
• Barre Phillips: For All It Is (1973, Japo): [r]: B+(**)
• Barre Phillips: Journal Violone 9 (2001, Émouvance): [r]: B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Bob Baldori/Arthur Migliazza: The Boogie Kings: Disturbing the Peace (Blujazz)
• Bobby Bradford/Hafez Modirzadeh: Live at the Blue Whale (NoBusiness): cdr (lp only)
• Marion Brown/Dave Burrell: Live at the Black Musicians' Conference, 1981 (NoBusiness)
• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo: Kikoeru: Tribute to Masaya Kimura (Libra)
• Jones Jones [Larry Ochs/Mark Dresser/Vladimir Tarasov]: A Jones in Time Saves Nine (NoBusiness): cdr (lp only)
• Martin Küchen/Rafal Mazur: Baza (NoBusiness): cdr (lp only)
• Doug MacDonald Trio: View of the City (Blujazz)
• Liudas Mockünas: Hydro 2 (NoBusiness)
• Joel Moore/Nick Mizock/Paul Scherer/Michael Barton/Paul Townsend: Magnetic EP (Blujazz, EP)
• Simon Nabatov/Barry Guy/Gerry Hemingway: Luminous (NoBusiness)
• Judy Night Quintet: Sliding on Glass: Live at 210 (Blujazz)
• Howard Riley: Live in the USA (1976, NoBusiness)
• Wadada Leo Smith/Sabu Toyozumi: Burning Meditation (1994, NoBusiness)

Weekend Roundup

Some scattered links this (or the previous) week:

• The latest Obamacare ruling is part of a larger conservative attack on democracy: A federal judge in Texas ruled Friday that the whole of ACA is unconstitutional, despite a previous ruling by the Supreme Court that it is constitutional, despite the failure of the Senate to repeal or significantly rewrite it during the 2017-18 Congress, despite the elections in 2018 that overturned Republican control of the House and various states, including Wisconsin -- where this particular case originated. It's a good example of why Republicans obsess so much over appointing their political hacks to the courts.

  Friday night he [Wisconsin Solicit General Misha Tseytlin] scored his triumph -- his kooky legal theory is the law of the land, according to at least one federal judge.

  Other judges may disagree and as best I can tell experts in the legal community are deeply skeptical that this challenge will ultimately prevail, arguing that it reflects a fringy legal perspective. I'm not a lawyer myself and more importantly I'm not a psychic so I don't know what John Roberts wants to do with this issue.

  But what strikes me about the case is how utterly mainstream Tseytlin's theory became in GOP circles very quickly, and how brazenly undemocratic Republicans have been in pursuit of their goal of depriving people of their health insurance. . . .

  The striking thing about all of this, however, is that it's not just one oddball judge in Texas -- it's twenty Republican attorneys general. And it's not just one GOP elected official misleading voters about their stance on preexisting conditions, it's dozens. And it's not just one embittered losing gubernatorial candidate pulling an undemocratic fast one during the lame duck session -- it's the near-unanimous decision of two different state legislative caucuses. This is, evidently, how the overlapping networks of donors, operatives, activists, and elected officials who comprise the GOP think the country should be run.

  You've probably heard that Republicans in Wisconsin and Michigan have scrambled to pass lame-duck legislation to strip powers from incoming Democratic governors (much as North Carolina Republicans did after losing the governorship there in 2016). One of those laws prevents the new Governor and Attorney General from withdrawing from lawsuits like this one. After decades of increasingly unscrupulous effort to manipulate the public and manoeuver behind the scenes, Republicans have lost all respect for democracy. More links on this:

  • Tara Golshan: How Republicans are trying to strip power from Democratic governors-elect.

  • Ezra Klein: The Texas ruling against Obamacare is a boon to Medicare-for-all.

  • Sarah Kliff: Federal court rules Obamacare unconstitutional -- but the law stands for now.

  Other Yglesias links:

  • Top House Democrats join Elizabeth Warren's push to fundamentally change American capitalism: Support is growing for Warren's Accountable Capitalism Act, which introduces the idea of "codetermination" to the structure of US corporations. The idea is practiced in Europe, mostly in Germany. When you give workers seats on corporate boards, companies behave better, and not just to their workers but to customers and to the general public. Germany, for instance, has retained most of its manufacturing base while maintaining favorable trade balances -- the exact opposite of what US companies have done under the prevailing doctrine of doing nothing but increasing shareholder profits. This sort of reform seemed inconceivable in America before 2010, when Thomas Geoghegan's book, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life, came out. No one mentions this book, but the growing interest in socialism has something to do with awareness of successful European models.

    Warren's corporate accountability initiatives would have huge economic implications but zero budgetary cost. At a time of low levels of public trust in institutions, these proposals don't ask anyone to have faith that government officials are going to make good use of resources.

    What's more, while the co-determination aspect of the proposal does draw inspiration from Germany, fundamentally, the pitch for the overall package is a lot closer to "Make America Great Again" than to "make America like Scandinavia." The basic notion is that the American private sector used to operate in a better, more inclusive way before the rise of shareholder supremacy and with a couple of firm regulatory kicks we can get it to work that way again.

    My late grandfather, who was an old-line communist in his day, used to tell me with mixed admiration and regret that FDR had saved capitalism by entrenching institutions that guaranteed broadly shared prosperity. Those institutions, fundamentally, are what was undone in the shareholder value revolution.

    Warren and her new allies are betting is that at a time when the political right is increasingly not even bothering to pretend to offer economic solutions anymore, America can pull off the same trick a second time -- offering the public not a huge new expansion of government programs, but a revival of the midcentury stakeholder capitalism that once built a middle class so prosperous that the idea of surging mass interest in socialism was unthinkable.

  • Trump keeps complaining about the Fed while appointing people who don't agree with his complaints. Yglesias adds, 'He's very bad at doing his job." Still, that ignores the extent the Fed has been captured by the interests it's supposed to regulate.

  • It's ridiculous that it's unconstitutional for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for president. No, it isn't. And no, we didn't miss a precious opportunity by barring Arnold Schwarzenegger from running for president. There are ridiculous things in the Constitution, but this isn't one of them. And even if it were, the political climate is so corrupt these days I'd rather go with what we got than risk a Constitutional Convention. Still, if we were to change the rules on presidential eligibility, I'd go more restrictive, not less. In particular, I'd like to see children and spouses of presidents barred from running. Too bad they didn't write that into the 22nd Amendment.

  • Why criticism of Amazon isn't sticking. "Despite an elite backlash, the public still loves a good deal."

  • Good riddance to John Kelly:

    No person's entire career can be summed up in a single quote. But ousted White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's defense to the charge that the Trump administration's child separation policy at the border was cruel deserves to be etched into his tombstone.

    "The children," he said, "will be taken care of -- put into foster care or whatever."

    That is roughly the degree of thoughtfulness and consideration that was put into the policy. And it properly reflects Kelly's true legacy as chief of staff.

    More on Kelly and his job:

    • Fred Kaplan: John Kelly Was Supposed to Bring Credibility to the White House. He Failed.

    • Andrew Prokop: Trump names Mick Mulvaney acting White House chief of staff: Aren't there some quotes somewhere where Mulvaney's bragging about hiding stuff from Trump and inventing his own policies? [I did find this one: Video shows Trump's next chief of staff calling him 'terrible human being'.] Mulvaney's one of the purest ideologies in Trump's administration. On the other hand, his performance to date has mostly consisted of scuttling things: investigating government expenses at OMB, combatting fraud at CFPB -- things they no longer do effectively. As a temp, will he be giving up his other job(s)? Especially as this one implies that he might actually have to do some work. "However, the decision may have been made mainly out of personal chemistry (Trump is said to enjoy Mulvaney's company, and they've golfed together) as a temporary solution while Trump searches for a permanent appointee." Shouldn't the editors have added "[sic]" after "permanent"?

  • The Trump-era threat to democracy is the opposite of populism.

  • Gavin Newsom promised to fix California's housing crisis. Here's a bill that would do it. "A bold vision for denser construction, this time with more tenant protections."

  • Democrats need some 2020 Senate candidates. Points out that the map is currently very strongly skewed in favor of Republicans (median state is R+6%), so Democrats will be hard pressed to gain enough seats in 2020 to make a difference (and failing to do so will drastically hurt their chances of implementing much-needed reforms). I would add that I've long considered Congress to be much more important than the Presidency. The first (and almost only, aside from war issues) question I'd ask of any Democratic presidential candidate is what are you doing to build up the party down-ballot. (Anyone who starts to answer that with "I" is suspect.)

    The ongoing power grabs in Wisconsin and Michigan should remind Democrats that if the 2020 election leaves Republicans in charge of the Senate, they will likely use that authority in unprecedented and aggressive ways that make it completely impossible to govern. And while the presidency is a more important office than any single Senate seat, the recruitment of quality candidates probably matters more on the Senate side precisely because the map is so skewed. It's completely understandable that individual ambitious politicians are gazing at the White House, but party leaders, operatives, donors, elder statespeople, etc. have a serious obligation to discourage this trend and push talented politicians into the Senate races where they are needed.

  • The Weekly Standard's demise is a reminder that there are some idea worse than Trumpism: "The most principled resistance to Trump comes from conservatism's most dangerous faction." Regardless of how much snark William Kristol et al. direct at Trump, you should never forget Kristol's role in formulating and promoting the neoconservative capture of American foreign policy, especially their embrace of permanent war, the only state possible given that any equitable peace must be rejected as a sign of weakness.

    Yet the demise of the Weekly Standard is not exactly a disastrous blow to American intellectual life. The independence from Trump's perspective was welcome, but unfortunately, that doesn't mean its brand of conservatism was any better than that of the ranting demagogue. In fact, it was arguably more damaging in terms of its concrete impact on the world.

    There's so much on war and empire here that Yglesias doesn't bother with Kristol's most important directive: that Republicans should never compromise on health care policy. This dates back to Clinton's 1990s proposal, defeat of which really put Kristol on the map, and set the standard for Republican obstruction and rejection of all reforms -- even when Obama had lined up all of the interested business lobbies to support ACA. Until Trump came around, Kristol was at the center of virtually every malign direction in American politics. It's worth noting that Weekly Standard never paid its way. From day one, it was a subsidized propaganda organ, doing the bidding of wealthy owners and sponsors. Its failure signals declining utility: evidently, in the Trump era the right no longer needs clever sophists like Kristol who can appeal to elites. Going forward, mass delusion will have to suffice. More links on Weekly Standard:

    • Jane Coaston: What the Weekly Standard meant to conservatism. Shows the cover for the first issue, with the Capitol in flames and Newt Gingrich firing an Uzi under the headline "Permanent Offense."

    • Jon Schwarz: The 10 Most Appalling Articles in the Weekly Standard's Short and Dreadful Life.

    I also read pieces by Franklin Foer and John Judis that try much too hard to show Weekly Standard respect.

  • Despite congressional pressure, Amtrak can't get its story straight on train-boarding rules.

  • The $21 trillion Pentagon accounting error that can't pay for Medicare-for-all, explained.

• Ross Barkan: Clean water: the latest casualty in Trump's attack on the environment. Also: Sharon Lerner: Trump's Attack on the Clean Water Act Will Fuel Destructive Pipeline Boom.

• Charles Duhigg: The Real Roots of American Rage: A long piece on "the untold story of how anger became the dominant emotion in our politics and personal lives -- and what we can do about it." Starts by showing how anger can actually facilitate communication and lead to more understanding, but that isn't what we're seeing in politics today, especially coming from the right (although the author clearly would like to spread the blame around all sides of political spectrum).

  When we scrutinize the sources of our anger, we should see clearly that our rage is often being stoked not for our benefit but for someone else's. If we can stop and see the anger merchants' self-serving motives, we can perhaps start to loosen their grip on us.

  Yet we can't pin the blame entirely on the anger profiteers. At the heart of much of our discontent is a very real sense that our government systems are broken. . . . Many of the nation's most contentious issues are driven by a feeling that our institutions have failed us. Historically, this feeling has been at the root of some of America's most important movements for change. Ours, too, could be a moment for progress, if we can channel our anger to good ends, rather than the vanquishing of our enemies.

  It may be that anger is pretty broadly distributed in America these days, but one particularly nasty form of anger is almost exclusively embodied in Trump's political theater: I don't usually recommend video, but see Adam Serwer's explication, Trump and His Supporters Thrive on Cruelty.

• Charles Dunst/Krishnadev Calamur: Trump Moves to Deport Vietnam War Refugees.

• Lee Fang: Billionaire Republican Donors Helped Elect Rising Centrist Democrats.

• David A Farenthold/Matt Zapotosky/Seung Min Kim: Mounting legal threats surround Trump as nearly every organization he has led is under investigation. More links:

  • George T Conway III/Trevor Potter/Neal Katyal: Trump's claim that he didn't violate campaign finance law is weak -- and dangerous. "The case against the president would be far stronger than the case against John Edwards was." Edwards was prosecuted (but acquitted) for paying off a mistress during his presidential campaign.

  • Jen Kirby: What you need to know about accused Russian spy Maria Butina's plea deal.

  • Andrew Prokop: What's next for the Trump hush money investigation, and The Trump inauguration is now being criminally investigated.

  • Asha Rangappa: Mueller should try to indict Trump. It would guarantee his report goes public.

  • James Risen: Is There Anything Trump, Cohen, and Manafort Didn't Lie About?

  • Aaron Rupar: What's illegal about Trump's hush payments to women, briefly explained. Not only were the payments effectively political contributions, they were strategically important, perhaps even decisive, ones. The payments kept two stories of extramarital affairs out of the media during the last few weeks of the campaign. Had the stories broke then, they would have been big deals in the media, especially as they would add credence to the "grab them by the pussy" bus tape, much as Comey re-opening the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails dredged up that whole back story. That, quite conceivably, could have turned the election, and spared us most of the last two years. You might be inclined to argue that such stories shouldn't have mattered, but given media attitudes to sex and scandal, you know it did matter. Rupar also wrote: "You can make anything a crime": Republicans shrug at Trump being implicated in felonies.

  • Rebecca Solnit: Trump's countless scams are finally catching up to him.

  • Jeffrey Toobin: Adam Schiff's Plans to Obliterate Trump's Red Line: "With the Democrats controlling the House, Schiff's congressional investigation will follow the money."

• Umair Irfan: Ryan Zinke to resign as Interior Secretary at the end of the year. Subheds: "Ryan Zinke racked up a long list of scandals"; "Zinke was an ideologue who served fossil fuel interests"; "Zinke worked to drastically weaken environmental protections." Until Trump finds someone worse, he will leave the department to "deputy David Bernhardt, a former oil executive." Also see: Robinson Meyer: Ryan Zinke Is the Blue Wave's First Casualty:

  Every single one of these initiatives is almost certain to continue under Bernhardt. What will not continue is Zinke's penchant for publicity. . . . That hubris made him a terrific target for Democrats. They hoped to use his personal misdeeds to point to the larger pattern of deregulation and industry friendliness at his department. . . .

  In resigning, Zinke reveals the power of Democrats' new ability to oversee the Trump administration. Zinke is the first casualty of the 2018 blue wave: the first Cabinet official who stepped down in the face of subpoenas. He left, in fact, to avoid facing subpoenas. Yet in resigning, he also shows the limits of that same new power. Democrats can no longer use Zinke's hubris to get people to pay attention to the Trump administration's larger set of policies at Interior.

  Irfan also wrote: Countries have forged a climate deal in Poland -- despite Trump: not sure the article justifies the headline (not that the dig against Trump isn't warranted). Also see: Carolyn Kormann: How the US Squandered Its Leadership at the UN Climate Conference; also: Emily Atkin: Have the Democrats Hit a Tipping Point on Climate Change? The latter notes that Democrats have talked much more about climate change since Trump was elected, especially after Trump's denialism became so all consuming.

• Jen Kirby: The Senate just passed a resolution to end US support for the Saudi war in Yemen. Also: Tara Golshan: The bizarre story of Democrats helping Republicans stall action on Yemen: "Everyone had the same question: Why didn't House Democratic leadership fight harder?" Also related here: Samuel Oakford: Washington Sends the Saudis a Long-Overdue Bill. Also of interest here: David D Kirkpatrick/Ben Hubbard/Mark Landler/Mark Mazzetti: The Wooing of Jared Kushner: How the Saudis Got a Friend in the White House.

• George Monbiot: How US billionaires are fuelling the hard-right cause in Britain. You know, it's not like Putin invented the idea of trying to influence foreign elections.

• George Packer: The Corruption of the Republican Party: "The GOP is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start." He's not the sharpest analyst (nor the clearest writer) but I'm pretty sure he's not blaming it all on Lincoln -- more like the Goldwater/Reagan conservative ascendancy, which founded a political vehicle for elite capitalism fueled by cultural resentment, first and foremost of white racists. Five of the six states Goldwater carried were the core of the Confederate Slave Power, and they've remained solid Republican ever since. One mistake Packer makes is in positing the existence of "conservatives who still believed in democracy." Conservatives, pretty much by definition, never have believed in any such thing. At best, they give it a little lip service, but deep down their great fear is that people will realize that they can use their votes to create more equality, and thereby limit the power of the rich. Nothing does more to sow doubt in the masses than to turn government into a vast cesspool of corruption.

• Kim Phillips-Fein: Atlas Weeps: Better title (the link caption): "The Bad History -- and Bad Politics -- of Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge's Capitalism in America." Review of a book you won't want to read but could use a brief report on.

• Nomi Prins: A World That Is the Property of the 1%: "The inequality gap on a planet growing more extreme."

• Ola Salem: Saudi Arabia Declares War on America's Muslim Congresswomen. Kind of like the way Israel attacks Jewish-American critics while cozying up to right-wing Americans; see, e.g., Katherine Franke: The pro-Israel Push to Purge US Campus Critics.

• Li Zhou: Arizona Sen. John Kyl is officially stepping down on December 31: "Arizona will get two new senators in 2019." One elected, one not. Zhou also wrote: Republicans' civil war over criminal justice reform, explained.

Music Week

Music: current count 30774 [30736] rated (+38), 259 [264] unrated (-5).

No Weekend Roundup this week. Sunday was the deadline for ballots for the 13th Annual Jazz Critics Poll, and I spent pretty much every waking hour collecting and compiling mail, checking details on records, and occasionally kicking back requests for clarification or changes -- main problem is the arbitrary 10-year cutoff date between new and historical music categories. Still counted a couple of stragglers today, giving us 137 ballots -- same as in 2017. I expect results to be published at NPR sometime next week, but don't know anything for sure. Presumably they'll let me know in time for me to set up the complete totals and individual ballots on my website. I still have some annotation to do, but everything is pretty well set up on my end. That means I should get back to normal shortly -- it's just that aside from JCP, nothing I had planned to do last week got done, so I'm starting from a hole.

I did wind up making one minor change to my JCP ballot (see last week): I dropped Nik Bärtsch's Ronin: Awase from 10th place on my new list and moved Martin Küchen & Landaeus Trio: Vinyl into its slot from the Reissues/Historical list (moving the following three records there up). Küchen's music dates from 2013-14, so doesn't qualify as historical given the 10-year rule. And I decided that it isn't really a reissue, even though the music was previously released on two vinyl LPs. This was their first appearance on CD, and it's not unusual for new records to go through changes from format to format. Seemed like the best answer for JCP, although I still have it Reissue/Historical in my own still-evolving EOY lists Jazz (also Non-Jazz). Both of those lists grew by 2 last week, so now are 55-49. Still, none of the new records came close to being ballot picks.

No incoming CDs last week, although I did get a couple packages this week, including new releases from NoBusiness in Lithuania. I don't think I've ever run the numbers before, but my impression has long been that close to half of my top-rated albums come from European artists (22/55 this year) and/or labels (25/55) -- not that I'm sure I'm counting either right. (Add one in both columns for Japan/Asia.)

I should also offer a link to the EOY Aggregate file. I was close to caught up a week ago, but since then I've fallen way behind -- lots of lists are coming out, and I've only counted a few. So I expect quite a bit of change as I catch up.

New records rated this week:

• Albatre: The Fall of the Damned (2018, Shhpuma): [r]: B
• Anguish: Anguish (2018, RareNoise): [cdr]: B+(**)
• Lotte Anker/Pat Thomas/Ingebrigt Håker Flaten/Ståle Liavik Solberg: His Flight's at Ten (2016 [2018], Iluso): [bc]: B+(**)
• Kadhja Bonet: Childqueen (2018, Fat Possum): [r]: B-
• Butcher Brown: Camden Session (2018, Gearbox): [r]: B+(*)
• Carla Campopiano Trio: Chicago/Buenos Aires Connections (2018, self-released): [cd]: B
• Guillermo Celano/Jachim Badenhorst/Marcos Baggiani: Lili & Marleen (2016 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(**)
• Coyote Poets of the Universe: Strange Lullaby (2018, Square Shaped, 2CD): [cd]: A-
• Dystil: Dystil (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(*)
• Satoko Fujii/Joe Fonda: Mizu (2018, Long Song): [bc]: B+(***)
• The Goon Sax: We're Not Talking (2018, Wichita): [r]: A-
• Guillermo Gregorio/Rafal Mazur/Ramón López: Wandering the Sounds (2018, Fundacja Sluchaj): [bc]: B+(***)
• Barry Guy: Barry Guy @ 70: Blue Horizon: Live at Ad Libitum ()2017 [2018], Fundacja Sluchaj, 3CD): [bc]: A-
• Eric Harland: 13th Floor (2018, 13th Floor): [r]: B+(*)
• Stefon Harris + Blackout: Sonic Creed (2017 [2018], Motéma): [r]: B-
• Ingrid Jensen/Steve Treseler: Invisible Sounds: For Kenny Wheeler (2018, Whirlwind): [r]: B+(***)
• Jessice Lurie: Long Haul (2017, Chant): [r]: B+(**)
• Masta Ace & Marco Polo: A Breukelen Story (2018, Fat Beats): [bc]: B+(***)
• Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet: Polka (2018, Whirlwind): [r]: A-
• Onyx Collective: Lower East Suite Part One (2017, Big Dada, EP): [r]: B+(*)
• Onyx Collective: Lower East Suite Part One (2017, Big Dada, EP): [r]: B+(*)
• Onyx Collective: Lower East Suite Part Three (2018, Big Dada): [r]: B+(***)
• Chris Pitsiokos/Susana Santos Silva/Torbjörn Zetterberg: Child of Illusion (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(*)
• Rosalía: El Mal Querer (2018, Sony Music): [r]: B
• Akira Sakata & Chikamorachi With Masahiko Satoh: Proton Pump (2015 [2018], Family Vineyard): [r]: B+(***)
• Akira Sakata/Simon Nabatov/Takashi Seo/Darren Moore: Not Seeing Is a Flower (2017 [2018], Leo): [r]: B+(**)
• Josh Sinton's Predicate Trio: Making Bones, Taking Draughts, Bearing Unstable Millstones Pridefully, Idiotically, Prosaically (2018, Iluso): [bc]: B+(**)
• Tirzah: Devotion (2018, Domino): [r]: B+(**)
• Turbamulta: Turbamulta (2018, Clean Feed): [r]: B+(*)
• Chucho Valdés: Jazz Batá 2 (2018, Mack Avenue): [r]; B+(***)
• Voicehandler: Light From Another Light (2017 [2018], Humbler): [cd]: B+(*)
• Walking Distance: Freebird by Walking Distance feat. Jason Moran (2018, Sunnyside): [r]: B+(***)
• Aida Bird Wolfe: Birdie (2018, self-released): [cd]: B+(***)
• Z-Country Paradise: Live in Lisbon (2016 [2018], Leo): [r]: A-

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

• Joan Jett: Bad Reputation [Music From the Original Motion Picture] (1976-2016 [2018], Legacy): [r]: A-
• L7: Wireless (1992 [2016], Easy Action): [r]: B+(***)
• L7: Fast and Frightening (1990-98 [2016], Easy Action, 2CD): [r]: B+(**)

Old music rated this week:

• L7: Slap-Happy (1999, Bong Load): [r]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week: no music albums, but let's list some recent music books:

• Robert Christgau: Is It Still Good to Ya? Fifty Years of Rock Criticism 1967-2017 (paperback, 2018, Duke University Press)
• John Corbett: Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium (paperback, 2017, Duke University Press)
• Tom Smucker: Why the Beachboys Matter (paperback, 2018, University of Texas Press)

Music Week

Music: current count 30736 [30692] rated (+44), 264 [271] unrated (-7).

Got so jammed up Monday I didn't get a word of this written on its appointed day, but I did manage to move the records from the scratch file and start on next week while I was falling behind. One task was to format Robert Christgau's latest XgauSez question and answer session, which came out in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Another was counting ballots for the 13th Annual Jazz Critics Poll (56 in at present, deadline Sunday, December 9, 7pm). I can't show you any of that, but I've also been counting EOY lists for my EOY Aggregate, which you can track the progress of. Although lists started to appear before Thanksgiving, there wasn't much until December 1 (or the Monday after).

It occurs to me I should probably nail down my Jazz ballot now, rather than wait for the end of the week. Of course, my real list remains subject to change. If the past is any guide, I'll probably find a new A- record within 2-3 days, and something to nudge into the ballot territory in 10-15 days.

New Music:

1. Joakim Milder/Fredrik Ljungkvist/Mathias Landraeus/Filip Augustson/Fredrik Rundkvist: The Music of Anders Garstedt (Moserobie)
2. Peter Kuhn Trio: Intention (FMR)
3. Kira Kira: Bright Force (Libra)
4. Rich Halley 3: The Literature (Pine Eagle)
5. Rodrigo Amado: A History of Nothing (Trost)
6. James Brandon Lewis/Chad Taylor: Radiant Imprints (OFF) **
7. Sons of Kemet: Your Queen Is a Reptile (Impulse!) **
8. Henry Threadgill 14 or 15 Kestra: Agg: Dirt . . . and More Dirt (Pi)
9. Kevin Sun: Trio (Ectomorph Music)
10. Nik Bärtsch's Ronin: Awase (ECM) **

Reissues/Historical:

1. Martin Küchen & Landaeus Trio: Vinyl (2013-14, Moserobie)
2. Alexander Von Schlippenbach/Aki Takase: Live at Café Amores (1995, NoBusiness)
3. Art Pepper: Unreleased Art Pepper Vol. 10: Toronto (1977, Widow's Taste, 3CD)
4. Fred Hersch: Fred Hersch Trio '97 @ The Village Vanguard (Palmetto)

Vocal:

1. Benjamin Boone/Philip Levine: The Poetry of Jazz (Origin)

Debut:

1. Kevin Sun: Trio (Ectomorph Music)

Latin Jazz:

1. David Virelles: Igbó Alákorin (The Singer's Groove) Vol I & II (Pi)

You may notice that the Reissues/Historical list doesn't match the EOY file. I decided to only include records that I have physical copies of -- partly to credit the few good publicist who actually still send me eligible records, and partly because some of the records on the current list (like the expanded Sonny Rollins Way Out West and the reduced Anthony Braxton Quartet (Willisau) 1991 Studio) are items I was already pretty familiar with. Also, note that only three Reissue/Historical albums will be counted. I went to four in case the judge decides that the Küchen album is too recent (although it is literally a reissue of recent vinyl releases).

[PS: I finally decided to treat Küchen/Landaeus as new and slot it at number 10, bumping Nik Bärtsch's Ronin from the top ten. So, turns out my blog-posted ballot didn't last 30 minutes before I had a change of heart/mind.]

I published Streamnotes (November 2018) last Friday, so most of this week's batch of newly rated records got written up there. I added one more jazz A- in the two days after Streamnotes (Flavio Zanuttini), and I've actually added one more in the two days between when I ended last week and as I'm writing now (Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet's Polka). My current division of A-lists is 53 Jazz vs. 47 Non-Jazz, so it's tilted a bit toward jazz over the last couple weeks.

I was hoping to get a couple of technical things set up so I could announce them this week, but didn't get around to doing the necessary work:

• I plan on setting up an RSS feed, like I did for Robert Christgau's website. Same idea: manually manage a list of new/updated files (checking against a time-sorted list of files), and write a bit of code to format that list as RSS 2.0. This could just include the faux blog files -- that's certainly the piece that needs RSS exposure. Shouldn't take more than a couple hours to set up at this point.

• I want to add a question-and-answer feature, like I did for Robert Christgau with XgauSez. It will take a couple hours to set up a special email account, add the captcha code, port the question form and the Q&A reader, and add some links. I'd also like to add some new features, like a keyword search.

• I want to set up an email list (based on GNU Mailman) for people who would like to offer advice (technical but also user) on my various website projects (especially robertchristgau.com and tomhull.com, and a future music website, to be hosted at terminalzone.net). I've often found myself wishing I could tap into a pool of technical help, as well as to get comments on user design questions, especially as I undertake development projects, like the recent RSS feeds, and more importantly a redesign of the Christgau website. I expect this to be set up shortly after I post this, but it will (at least for the time being) be a private list, so if you want to join (to participate or maybe just to lurk) please send me email. Most likely I will subscribe you then, and you will receive email with an account password (which you can change). You can use your password to change your options (such as to elect to receive a daily digest instead of every email message as it's sent), or to unsubscribe. You may also at any time ask me to unsubscribe you.

So, one (mostly) down. The others shouldn't be too hard to get working in the next week. Also managed to get a stub set up over at Terminal Zone, so I can start hanging things there. Still, most of this coming week will go to tabulating ballots and collecting lists. I guess the latter qualifies as my favorite waste of time. At some point I need to stop and get onto other work, but for now, 'tis the season for it.

New records rated this week:

• Juhani Aaltonen/Raoul Björkenheim: Awakening (2016 [2018], Eclipse): [r]: B+(**)
• Tom Abbs & Frequency Response: Hawthorne (2018, Engine Studios): [r]: B+(***)
• Anderson .Paak: Oxnard (2018, Aftermath/12 Tone Music): [r]: A-
• Brom: Sunstroke (2017 [2018], Trost): [bc]: B+(**)
• Peter Brötzmann/Heather Leigh: Sparrow Nights (2018, Trost): [bc]: B+(*)
• Dustin Carlson: Air Ceremony (2017 [2018], Out of Your Head): [cd]: B+(**)
• Neneh Cherry: Broken Politics (2018, Smalltown Supersound): [r]: B+(***)
• Chicago Edge Ensemble: Insidious Anthem (2018, Trost): [bc]: B+(***)
• Lando Chill: Black Ego (2018, Mello Music Group): [r]: B+(*)
• Zack Clarke: Mesophase (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(*)
• Collective Order: Collective Order Vol. 3 (2018, self-released): [cd]: B
• Francesco Cusa & the Assassins Meets Duccio Bertini: Black Poker (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(*)
• Drone Trio [Evelyn Davis/Fred Frith/Phillip Greenlief]: Lantskap Logic (2013 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(*)
• James Francies: Flight (2018, Blue Note): [r]: B
• Full Blast: Rio (2016 [2018], Trost): [bc]: B+(***)
• Marquis Hill: Modern Flows Vol. 2 (2018, Black Unlimited Music Group): [r]: B
• Khruangbin: Con Todo El Mundo (2018, Dead Oceans): [r]: B+(*)
• Frank Kimbrough: Monk's Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk (2017 [2018], Sunnyside, 6CD): [r]: A-
• Roy Kinsey: Blackie: A Story by Roy Kinsey (2018, Not Normal): [bc]: B+(***)
• Simone Kopmajer: Spotlight on Jazz (2018, Lucky Mojo): [cd]: B+(**)
• Andrew Lamb Trio: The Casbah of Love (2018, Birdwatcher): [r]: B+(**)
• Low: Double Negative (2018, Sub Pop): [r]: B+(*)
• Kirk Knuffke/Steven Herring: Witness (2017 [2018], SteepleChase): [r]: B
• Thomas Marriott: Romance Language (2017 [2018], Origin): [cd]: B+(**)
• Joakim Milder/Fredrik Ljungkvist/Mathias Landraeus/Filip Augustson/Fredrik Rundkvist: The Music of Anders Garstedt (2016 [2018], Moserobie): [cd]: A
• Father John Misty: God's Favorite Customer (2018, Sub Pop): [r]: B
• Fredrik Nordström: Needs (2018, Clean Feed): [r]: B+(***)
• Miles Okazaki: Work: The Complete Compositions of Thelonios Monk (2018, self-released, 6CD): [bc]: B+(***)
• Caterina Palazzi/Sudoku Killer: Asperger (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(***)
• Charlie Porter: Charlie Porter (2018, Porter House): [r]: B+(*)
• Quoan [Brian Walsh/Daniel Rosenboom/Sam Minaie/Mark Ferber]: Fine Dining (2017 [2018], Orenda): [r]: B+(**)
• Ernesto Rodrigues/Guilherme Rodrigues/Bruno Parrinha/Luís Lopes/Vasco Trillo: Lithos (2017 [2018], Creative Sources): [cd]: B+(**)
• Renee Rosnes: Beloved of the Sky (2017 [2018], Smoke Sessions): [r]: B+(**)
• John Scofield: Combo 66 (2018, Verve): [r]: B+(**)
• Sleep: The Sciences (2018, Third Man): [r]: B+(*)
• Marcus Strickland Twi-Life: People of the Sun (2018, Blue Note): [r]: B
• Trio Heinz Herbert: Yes (2018, Intakt): [cd]: B+(***)
• The Way Ahead: Bells Ghosts and Other Saints (2017 [2018], Clean Feed): [r]: B+(*)
• Mars Williams: Mars Williams Presents an Ayler Xmas (2017, Soul What): [bc]: B+(***)
• Mars Williams: Mars Williams Presents an Ayler Xmas: Volume 2 (2018, Soul What): [bc]: B+(**)
• Yoko Yamaoka: Diary 2005-2015: Yuko Yamaoka Plays the Music of Satoko Fujii (2018, Libra, 2CD): [cd]: B+(**)
• Flavio Zanuttini Opacipapa: Born Baby Born (2018, Clean Feed): [r]: A-

Old music rated this week:

• Boneshaker: Unusual Words (2012 [2014], Soul What): [bc]: B+(***)
• Billie Holiday: Songs for Distingué Lovers (1957 [1958], Verve): [r]: A-
• Terry Pollard: Terry Pollard (1955, Bethlehem): [r]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Sam Broverman: A Jewish Boy's Christmas (Brovermusic)
• Scheen Jazzorchester/Eyolf Dale: Commuter Report (Losen)

Weekend Roundup

Any week since Trump became president, spend a day or two and you'll come up with a fairly long list of pieces worth citing, and the sense that you're still missing much of what is going on. For instance, my usual sources on Israel/Palestine have yet to catch up with this: Josef Federman: Israeli Police Recommend Indicting Netanyahu on Bribery Charges. Seems like that should be at least as big a story as Putin and Saudi crown prince high-five at G20 summit. But this is all I came up with for the week.

I probably should have written standalone pieces on GWH Bush and on Jill Lepore's These Truths, but wound up squeezing some notes here for future reference. Under Bush, I wondered how many articles I'd have to read -- critical as well as polite or even adulatory -- before someone would bring up what I regard as the critical juncture in his period as president: his invasion of Panama. I lost track, but in 20-30 pieces I looked at, none broached the topic. I had to search specifically before I came up with this one: Greg Grandin: How the Iraq War Began in Panama. When Bush became president, people still talked about a "Vietnam syndrome" which inhibited American politicians and their generals from starting foreign wars. Bush is generally credited as having "kicked the Vietnam syndrome," with two aggressive wars, first in Panama, then in Iraq. Bush and the media conspired to paint those wars as glorious successes, the glow from which enabled Clinton, Bush II, and Obama to launch many more wars: Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Syria, as well as dozens of more marginal operations. Woodrow Wilson once claimed to be fighting "a war to end all wars." Bush's legacy was more modest: a war to kindle many more wars.

Oddly enough, the story below that links up most directly to Bush's legacy of war is the one about the increasing rate of premature deaths (suicides and overdoses). That's what you get from decades of nearly continuous war since Bush invaded Panama in 1989. The other contributing factor has been increasing income inequality, which has followed a straight line ever since 1981, when the Reagan/Bush administration slashed taxes on the rich.

Recently, we've seen many naive people praise Bush for, basically, not being as flat-out awful as his Republican successors. They've done this without giving the least thought to how we got to where we are now. The least they could do is check out Kevin Phillips' 2004 book: American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush.

Some scattered links this week:

• Matthew Yglesias: President George H.W. Bush dies at 94: First line here took me aback: "George H.W. Bush was a genuinely excellent president responsible for historic achievements that are often overlooked because of the arbitrary way we value presidential legacies." Indeed, my first reaction was to look up how old Yglesias was when Bush was president: 7 when Bush was elected in 1988 and took office in 1989, 11 when Bush lost in 1992 and left office in 1993. For comparison, I was 10-13 while John Kennedy was president, and while I remember the 1960 election and a fair amount from that period, most of what I know about those years I learned later. The times were different, but I suspect a similar dynamic, as we tend to view past presidents through the prism of their successors. Bush had the good fortune to be followed by two much worse Republicans -- his eldest son, and now Donald Trump. Yglesias would have us believe that Bush was "the last of the Republican pragmatists," because his successors have been very different: basically, ideological culture warriors -- the son sometimes tried to hide it, which in turn has helped to rehabilitate him relative to Trump. On the other hand, what I found most striking in Bush's career was his role in normalizing, at every step along the way, the right-wing descent of the Republican Party. Not that he was ever my idea of a decent, principled Republican -- and note that there actually were some in 1966, when he was first elected to Congress -- but two changes he made c. 1980 are indicative: when he joined the anti-abortion forces, and when he shelved his critique of "voodoo economics" to embrace Reagan. Those shifts were opportunistic more than pragmatic. They were moves he could make because he was empty inside, little more than a hack serving the class interests of his benefactors -- much like his Senator father had done, and as his sons would do. Jack Germond liked to call him "an empty suit." Yglesias is pretty selective about what he mentions and what he leaves out. (Perhaps we should have an office pool on how many Bush articles I read before anyone mentions Panama?) He does mention the Iraq War as some kind of internationalist success, not mentioning any connection to the thirty years of recurring chaos and conflict that ensued. On the other hand, he doesn't mention two generally positive foreign policy things that happened under Bush: a fairly broad shift to democracy (including wins by left-ish political movements) in Latin America, and pressure on Israel to negotiate peace (leading to the Oslo Accords, which Clinton allowed Netanyahu and Barak to undermine). Other Bush links:

  • Peter Beinart: What the Tributes to George HW Bush Are Missing: "The 41st president was the last person to occupy the Oval Office whose opponents saw him as fully legitimate." Beinart attributes that to his WASP heritage, and to the fact that he was elected with a majority of the votes -- something only Barack Obama has since achieved -- but it really has more to do with the security and sensibility of the opposition. Democrats controlled Congress when Bush was president, and saw him as someone who would work with them. On the other hand, Republicans saw Clinton as an usurper and a threat, and dispensed with all pretenses of bipartisanship. When Obama came in, they simply doubled down, opting for pure obstructionism. Democrats didn't react to Republican presidents with such venom, but both Bush and Trump entered office after having lost the popular vote, and both pursued hard-right, strictly partisan agendas.

  • Ariel Dorfman: George HW Bush thought the world belonged to his family. How wrong he was.

  • Franklin Foer: The Last WASP President: Not literally true, not figuratively either, inadvertently showing the lengths some people have to take to come up with a hook to hang Bush on. For example:

    Take his record on race. Bush comes from a Yankee tradition that prides itself on its liberal attitudes. His father, a senator from Connecticut, sponsored legislation desegregating schools, protecting voting rights, and establishing an equal-employment commission. George H. W. Bush seemed to accept this as his patrimony. At Yale, he lead a fund-raising drive for the United Negro College Fund. When he moved to Midland, Texas, he made a point of inviting the head of the local NAACP to his house for dinner. As the chairman of the Harris County GOP, he put the party's money in a black-owned bank.

    Of course, the next paragraph had to bring up "the notorious Willie Horton ad," and the following one notes:

    After so accurately decrying Voodoo Economics, he joined the administration that enshrined them. He stood by Reagan as he opposed sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime, and as the administration mounted a crusade against "reverse discrimination," an effort to undo affirmative action.

    The problem is that if the only reason you exhibit "liberal attitudes" is for show, there's nothing to keep you from ditching them as soon as the fashion changes. Personal aside here: I never heard of "WASP" until I went to a college where more than half of the students were Jewish, although I've also heard non-Jewish northeasterners use the term. It was one of several identities I was grouped in but never thought of myself as belonging to (including its constituent parts: white, Anglo-Saxon, and protestant). But I picked up the term, even if it rarely meant much to me. About the only time I've thought of it lately was in regards to the Supreme Court. For much of American history, the Supreme Court was exclusively a WASP club. That changed a bit with Louis Brandeis, but remained pretty much the norm into the 1980s. Since then Republicans have almost exclusively nominated Catholics (including Clarence Thomas), and Democrats mostly Jews, until at present we have six Catholics, three Jews, and no WASPS on the Supreme Court. I suppose you could credit Bush with nominating the last of the liberal WASP justices (David Souter) -- one of those things that right-wing Republicans never forgave him for, even though he clearly didn't mean to offend them. His other Supreme Court pick was Thomas.

  • Mehdi Hasan: The Ignored Legacy of George HW Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice: Much about Iraq, but still no mention of Panama.

  • Laura McGann: Eight women say George HW Bush groped them. Their claims deserve to be remembered as we assess his legacy.

  • Rachel Withers: George HW Bush's "Willie Horton" ad will always be the reference point for dog whistle racism. Withers also wrote: Trump praises George HW Bush, the president whose vision he recently mocked (hoary picture here: note how close the Clintons and Bushes are); and George HW Bush's state funeral arrangements: what we know.

  Other Yglesias pieces this week:

  • The next generation of Democratic congressional leadership is coming into view.

  • Paul Ryan is leaving Congress in the most fitting way possible: "He's doing what he does best: saying stuff about policy that's not true."

  • Elizabeth Warren wants to outflank Trump on trade. Also on Warren: Alex Emmons: In Foreign Policy Speech, Elizabeth Warren Takes Aim at Global Corruption.

  • Trump's talk of pardoning Manafort is a clear abuse of power.

  • Nancy Pelosi is going to be speaker again. What Democrats need now is a TV talking head.

  • Trump's Washington Post interview shows a presidency that's beyond satire.

  • A Wall Street Journal interview on trade shows Trump has no idea what he's doing.

  • The best thing you can do to stop climate change is to vote against Republicans.

• Jason Ditz: UN Confirms US Airstrike in Helmand Killed 23 Civilians: News reports focused last week on unapologetic murderers giving each other high-fives at the G20 summit in Argentina, but week-by-week the US proves to be the real killing machine. Also by Ditz: US Says SW Libya Airstrike Kills 11 al-Qaeda 'Suspects'; Observatory: US Airstrikes Kill Dozens in Eastern Syria. If you're surprised that the US is (still) bombing in Libya, learn about AFRICOM: Nick Turse: US Military Says It Has a "Light Footprint" in Africa. These Documents Show a Vast Network of Bases. Back to Afghanistan, consider: Danny Sjursen: America Is Headed for Military Defeat in Afghanistan.

• Marc Fisher: Trump borrows his rhetoric -- and his view of power -- from the mob.

• Bernard E Harcourt: How Trump Fuels the Fascist Right: I think this gives him credit for deliberation that he probably doesn't deserve, but here's the argument:

  Everything about Trump's discourse -- the words he uses, the things he is willing to say, when he says them, where, how, how many times -- is deliberate and intended for consumption by the new right. When Trump repeatedly accuses a reporter of "racism" for questioning him about his embrace of the term "nationalist," he is deliberately drawing from the toxic well of white supremacist discourse and directly addressing that base. Trump's increasing use of the term "globalist" in interviews and press conferences -- including to describe Jewish advisers such as Gary Cohn or Republican opponents like the Koch brothers -- is a knowing use of an anti-Semitic slur, in the words of the Anti-Defamation League, "a code word for Jews." Trump's self-identification as a "nationalist," especially in contrast to "globalists" like George Soros, extends a hand to white nationalists across the country. His pointed use of the term "politically correct," especially in the context of the Muslim ban, speaks directly to followers of far-right figures such as William Lind, author of "What is 'Political Correctness'?"

  Trump is methodically engaging in verbal assaults that throw fuel on his political program of closed borders, nativism, social exclusion, and punitive excess. Even his cultivated silences and failures to condemn right-wing violence, in the fatal aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, for instance, or regarding the pipe-bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc, communicate directly to extremists. We are watching, in real time, a new right discourse come to define the American presidency. The term "alt-right" is too innocuous when the new political formation we face is, in truth, neo-fascist, white-supremacist, ultranationalist, and counterrevolutionary. Too few Americans appear to recognize how extreme President Trump has become -- in part because it is so disturbing to encounter the arguments of the American and European new right.

• Umair Irfan: Sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere, explained.

• Jen Kirby: USMCA, the new trade deal between the US, Canada, and Mexico, explained: Not all that different from NAFTA. One thing to keep in mind is that when it comes to trade deals, the conflicts are less between countries than between companies and people (workers, customers, and the governments should they be tempted to challenge the companies). Also:

  • Alexia Fernández Campbell: Trump's new trade deal is better for workers than NAFTA was: Well, some workers, maybe. She also wrote: The G20 summit is a reminder of how little the US is doing for American workers; also: US farms are going bankrupt at an alarming rate. Trump's trade war is partially to blame.

• Paul Krugman: When MAGA Fantasy Meets Rust Belt Reality: Posits two possible meanings of Make America Great Again: "a promise to restore the kind of economy we had 40 or 50 years ago -- an economy that still offered lots of manly jobs in manufacturing and mining"; and "a promise to return to the good old days of raw racism and sexism." Krugman argues that the former would be an impossible task even if Trump had a clue, which he clearly does not -- most of this piece explains why. As for the racism/sexism, Krugman does concede that "Trump is delivering on that promise." I think he's overly generous there: sure, Trump knows how to be racist and sexist, but are people following his lead or resisting it, and are they making a real difference in the world? Maybe, a little bit, but not so much as to actually satisfy Trump's supporters.

  Krugman also wrote: The Depravity of Climate-Change Denial. I agree with most of what he says here, but take exception to: "climate change isn't just killing people; it may well kill civilization." That's really excessive hyperbole, the sort of thing that lets deniers present themselves as skeptics vs. alarmists -- I read a letter in the Wichita Eagle last week that used that ploy. Even fairly large climate shifts (say on the order of +6°C/10°F), while causing large economic dislocations (as a first guess, North Dakota becomes Kansas, and Kansas becomes Coahuila), are things people can readily adapt to easy enough. Maybe overall habitability is diminished a bit (you lose land to rising sea levels, but you gain utility from arctic lands; perhaps more ominously, tropical diseases will spread). But unless climate change triggers cataclysmic war, that's nothing civilization cannot handle. I've long thought that people who think about climate change tend to exaggerate its effects and importance, so I'm not surprised to find the level of hysteria grow as evidence mounts and parties vested in carbon fuel continue to thwart even modest attempts to reduce the risk. Still, I doubt the solution is to ramp the rhetoric up to apocalyptic levels.

• German Lopez: After a mall shooting, police killed the wrong person -- and the real shooter remains at large: The mall was in Alabama. The dead bystander was black. A follow-up article explains: PR Lockhart: The Alabama mall shooting highlights the dangers of owning a gun while black.

• Ella Nilsen: House Democrats unveil their first bill in the majority: a sweeping anti-corruption proposal: To be introduced as House Resolution 1, no chance of passing the Republican Senate let alone of overriding a Trump veto, but this stakes out high ground from which to investigate and judge the most thoroughly corrupt administration in US history. Also: Akela Lacy: In Democrats' First Bill, There's a Quiet Push to Make Public Campaign Finance a Reality.

• David Roberts: I'm an environmental journalist, but I never write about overpopulation. Here's why.

• Jennifer Rubin: Trump has done nothing for rural Americans.

• Aaron Rupar: Michael Cohen's plea deal shows that Russia did have something on Trump. Other links on Cohen:

  • Adam Davidson: Michael Cohen's Disclosures Raise Serious Questions About Donald Trump and His Business Interests. Also by Davidson: Is Fraud Part of the Trump Organization's Business Model?; How Trump's Impulsiveness, Vanity, and Cronyism Could Tank the Economy; and The Investigations Trump Will Face Now That Democrats Control the House.

  • Sharon LaFraniere: Mueller Exposes the Culture of Lying That Surrounds Trump.

  • James Risen: As the Mueller Probe Heats Up, Donald Trump's Lies Are Giving Way to the Truth.

  • Jeffrey Toobin: The Legal Perils That Michael Cohen's Guilty Plea Poses for Donald Trump.

  • Alex Ward: Michael Cohen's guilty plea proves the House GOP's Russia investigation was a sham. Also by Ward: Why Michael Cohen's Trump Tower Moscow revelation matters, in under 500 words.

  • Ken White: Three Remarkable Things About Michael Cohen's Plea.

• Dylan Scott: Under Trump, the number of uninsured kids is suddenly rising. Note that the chart shows a steady decrease in number of uninsured children from 2008 through 2016, before the rise in 2017.

• Dylan Scott: Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith wins Mississippi Senate election: Duly noted, by a 54-46% margin. You know why. Still, that's a lot closer than Mississippi split since, uh, the 1870s. For more, see: Bob Moser: Don't Hate Mississippi:

  It's never a shock to see white Mississippians cover themselves in shame. They've been doing it reliably throughout the entire history of a place that became known as the "lynching state" long before the inceptions of the Confederacy, the Klan, or Jim Crow. . . . In politics, too, white Mississippians have always put passion -- for white supremacy and black subjugation -- above all pragmatic considerations. With clockwork regularity, every election, they've chosen to keep their state an economic and educational backwater, an international symbol of America's racial lunacy.

• Emily Stewart: GM is closing plants and cutting jobs. Here's what it means for workers -- and for Trump.

• Julissa Treviño: Suicides are at the highest rate in decades, CDC report shows: Up 33 percent since 1999, up 2000 from 2016 to 2017, something which gets less press than the number of drug overdoses, which has surged to even higher levels. On the latter, see: German Lopez: Drug overdose deaths were so bad in 2017, they reduced overall life expectancy. Also see: Lenny Bernstein: US life expectancy declines again, a dismal trend not seen since World War I.

• Alex Ward: Russia just openly attacked Ukraine. That could mean their war will get worse. Like virtually all western reports, this is rather slanted, but the crisis is significant. Basic background: after anti-Russian, pro-West political factions in Ukraine affected a coup in 2014, removing a more/less democratically elected Russia-friendly president, several regions of Ukraine with large Russian demographics revolted, especially Crimea and Donbass. Russia encouraged (and perhaps orchestrated) these revolts, including a declaration by local officials in Crimea of their intent to be annexed by Russia. There was a vote in Crimea to join Russia, which was boycotted by opponents, so carried by a large margin. Crimea has been under Russian control since then, and the ties were made literal by the construction of a 12-mile bridge over the Kerch Strait between Russia and Crimea. Since 2014, there has been sporadic and indecisive fighting in Donbass and along the border, and Ukraine (and its Western allies) has refused to recognize any changes. The Kerch Strait separates the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, so it remains an important shipping lane for Ukraine, as well as for Russia. With the opening of the bridge, Ukraine attempted to reassert its rights to send naval ships through the Kerch Strait, and Russia responded by blockading the channel, seizing the ships, and imprisoning the sailors: that's what "openly attacked" means in the headline above. Russia charged Ukraine with a "well-thought-out provocation." For a counter view, see: Ted Galen Carpenter: Ukraine Doesn't Deserve America's Blind Support.

• Julian E Zelizer: Why the US Can't Solve Big Problems.

  The federal government released a devastating report last week documenting the immense economic and human cost that the U.S. will incur as a result of climate change. It warns that the damage to roads alone will add up to $21 billion by the end of the century. In certain parts of the Midwest, farms will produce 75 percent less corn than today, while ocean acidification could result in $230 billion in financial losses. More people will die from extreme temperatures and mosquito-borne diseases. Wildfire seasons will become more frequent and more destructive. Tens of millions of people living near rising oceans will be forced to resettle. The findings put the country on notice, once again, that doing nothing is a recipe for disaster.

  Yet odds are that the federal government will, in fact, do nothing. It's tempting to blame inaction on current political conditions, like having a climate change denier in the White House or intense partisan polarization in Washington. But the unfortunate reality is that American politicians have never been good at dealing with big, long-term problems. Lawmakers have tended to act only when they had no other choice.

• Finally, here are some links reviewing Jill Lepore's big book These Truths: A History of the United States (recently read by me):

  • HW Brands: How did America get here? Jill Lepore's new book offers clues in our history.

  • Alex Carp: History for a Post-Fact America.

  • Jack E Davis: 'These Truths by Jill Lepore is a gutsy and lyrical look at our nation's history.

  • Michael Kazin: The Origins of America's Enduring Divisions.

  • Ilana Masad: America Doesn't Have to Be Like This.

  • Jennifer Schuessler: Jill Lepore on Writing the Story of America (in 1,000 Pages or Less).

  • Andrew Sullivan: The American Past: A History of Contradictions.

  • Sean Wilentz: The American Revolutions [behind their paywall].

  The Wilentz piece is probably the best of the bunch -- at least I found myself agreeing with most of the substantive criticisms. It occurs to me that there are two basic models for writing a 700+ page history of the US from colonial times to Donald Trump: either briefly sum up most of the stuff most people already know, or assume that readers already know that stuff and add little side-glances they don't know that help round out the picture. Lepore did the latter, and included a lot of material I didn't especially know before. She also limited her focus to the ebb and flow of ideals, corruptions, and manipulations in politics. I was surprised, for instance, that from the 1930s on she focused mostly on the development of polling and campaign management, which sort of logically led to Trump -- she actually gets to Trump before 2000, Bush-Gore, and Obama. But even earlier, she spent a good deal of time on the rise of the partisan press c. 1800, and the shift toward non-partisan journalism from the 1880s on (papers like the New York Times, and later the big three TV networks). Worth reading, but not for many clear lessons. A much more pointed book on founders and ideals is Ganesh Sitaraman's The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic. But then I suppose she'd reply that history is always messy, never cut and dried.

  One more point to make: These Truths differs from most US history books in that Lepore makes a conscious effort to recognize and treat fairly everyone -- not just the dominant white males that traditionally get all the pages. She balances off natives against colonizers, slaves against slaveholders, women against men, and (to a lesser extent) laborers against captains of industry. She writes as much about Jane Franklin as her brother Ben, and as much about Harry Washington as his one-time owner George. She writes way too much about Phyllis Schlafly (but also Donald Trump, who probably wouldn't have garnered a mention had she finished the book three years earlier).

Nov 2018