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Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
July archive
(finished).
Tweet: Music Week: 26 albums, 0 A-list
Music: Current count 42729 [42703] rated (+26), 36 [23] unrated (+13).
My
Mid-Year Jazz Critics
Poll threw me off the usual Sunday/Monday post schedule, although
the sheer quantity of news I reaped for yesterday's
Speaking of Which would have been excuse enough (249
links, 11258 words before today's additions).
ArtsFuse published my intro/overview essay,
Diversity Brings Riches: A Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll, on
Friday, at which time I enabled the totals and ballots on my
archival website:
There was a glitch early on where the points totals in the tables
on ArtsFuse got mangled, so had to be fixed. I've received some
feedback on the poll, but not very much. I sent a notice out to
my "jazzpoll" mailing list, but as best I can figure, only about
half of those messages get past the spam traps (gmail seems to
be exceptionally harsh). I put out two announcements on
X, but the
first (link to essay) only has 164 views (1 retweet, 3 likes),
and the
second (link to
updated Music Week) got 222 views (2 retweets, 5 likes).
I also did two notices on Facebook, like
this one, with 1 share and 5 likes.
A
Google search reveals:
Also, a couple critics published their ballots (which are all
available through the link above). Chris Monsen wrote up
his extended mid-year list. I also suspect that I provoked
All About Jazz into polling their writers for this
all-star break edition list. (As I understand it, their call
went out a week after my invites, but they were first to press.)
I've scarcely touched my
metacritic file, but
should get back to it if/when demands on my time lighten up. Its
main value is as a prospecting tool, which I haven't much needed
while I had so many jazz albums to search out. I'm pretty sure
I'll return to it when the year-end lists start coming in, but
between now and then it's likely to only be an occasional hobby.
I'm also not sure I'll continue updating my
Best Jazz Albums of
2024 file, although it's pretty comprehensive for now. An
even more vexing question is whether I'll make a serious effort
at the download links I've been accumulating. More pressing is
that I've fallen behind the queue of promo CDs (although much
of that mail I just opened today).
I did manage to wrap up the
July Streamnotes
file, and to open a new one for August. Rated count is light this
week, as I've had several days where I didn't want to multitask
while writing, or didn't feel up to it. I also found myself tiring
of looking for unheard albums that got poll votes, especially as
many proved inaccessible. Still 189 left in the tracking file,
so maybe I just need a break. It's tempting to just take August
off. I have a lot of stuff to do around the house. Also a couple
of web projects that need attention. I need to rethink my writing
ambitions. There are also some health questions.
I've just finished reading Amy Kaplan's Our American Israel:
The Story of an Entangled Alliance. It's a pretty good general
history of Israel since the 1940s, with its long drift from left
to right, fought mostly on the level of myth, where the intertwined
alliance brings out the worst in both. That focus often ignores
real political issues -- like the American preoccupation with the
Cold War and the postcolonial order of petrostates, and how Israel
could somehow deny Arabs (especially Palestinians) any real agency
in their fate. They are always treated as an irreconcilable other,
to be fought and subdued, and there is nothing they can do about it,
so they cycle endlessly between violence and conciliation, only to
find that neither stance makes any difference. This fixed gaze
saves Kaplan from having to give them any consideration.
The section on Lebanon is pivotal, as Israel shifted direction
from justifiable defense to unconscionable offense. Of course, we
now know that the latter was always part of the game plan, which
is part of the reason we forget how brutal the shift appeared at
the time. There is a passage here describing the devastation of
West Beirut that will make you think of Gaza today. By that point
the right-wing had taken charge in Israel, with Begin as PM, and
Sharon running the war. And as the left in America (and to some
ultimately fruitless extent in Israel as well) started to have
misgivings, the American right embraced the Israeli right ever
more firmly. The book's coverage of Christian Zionism is the most
detailed I've read, and is truly scary -- in large part because
it's really hard to grasp that people can actually believe such
nonsense. The book then moves on to neocon militarism, and to the
war on terror (with Israel as its guiding light, and "start up"
profiteer).
Along the way, the focus on myth offers in-depth discussions of
such cultural artifacts as the books/movies from Exodus to
Schindler's List to The Late Great Planet Earth to
Homeland to World War Z.
New records reviewed this week:
- Daymé Arocena: Alkemi (2024, Brownswood): [sp]: B+(*)
- Carlos Bica: 11:11 (2024, Clean Feed): [sp]: B+(**)
- Zach Bryan: The Great American Bar Scene (2024, Belting Bronco/Warner): [sp]: B+(**)
- Chick Corea & Béla Fleck: Remembrance (2024, Thirty Tigers): [sp]: B
- Jon De Lucia: The Brubeck Octet Project (2023 [2024], Musæum Clausum): [cd]: B+(***)
- Divr: Is This Water (2022 [2024], We Jazz): [sp]: B+(*)
- FUR [Hélène Duret/Benjamin Sauzereau/Maxime Rouayroux]: Bond (2023 [2024], Budapest Music Center): [sp]: B+(**)
- Marshall Gilkes and WDR Big Band: Life Songs (2022 [2024], Alternate Side): [sp]: B+(***)
- Ciara Grace: Write It Down (2024, self-released): [sp]: B+(***)
- The Gringo Pistoleros: The Rise and . . . Subsequent Fall of the Texas Alien (2024, self-released): [sp]: B+(**)
- Christopher Hoffman: Vision Is the Identity (2024, Out of Your Head): [sp]: B+(*)
- Johnny Blue Skies [Sturgill Simpson]: Passage Du Desir (2024, High Top Mountain): [sp]: B+(**)
- Norah Jones: Visions (2024, Blue Note): [sp]: B+(*)
- Pat Metheny: MoonDial (2024, BMG): [sp]: B+(*)
- Kim Myhr & Kitchen Orchestra: Hereafter (2020 [2024], Sofa Music): [sp]: B+(*)
- O.: WeirdOs (2024, Speedy Wunderground): [sp]: B+(*)
- Revival Season: Golden Age of Self Snitching (2024, Heavenly): [sp]: B+(***)
- Splitter Orchester: Splitter Musik (2024, Hyperdelia, 3CD): [sp]: B+(**)
- Stemeseder Lillinger Quartet: Umbra II (2023 [2024], Intakt): [sp]: B+(***)
- Kevin Sun: The Fate of the Tenor (2022 [2024], Endectomorph Music): [sp]: B+(***)
- Kenny Warren: Sweet World (2023 [2024], Out of Your Head): [sp]: B+(**)
- Stian Westerhus & Maja S.K. Ratkje: All Losses Are Restored (2024, Crispin Glover): [sp]: B
- Wimps: City Lights (2023, Youth Riot): [sp]: B+(***)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Fingers: The Complete Fingers Remember Mingus (1979-93 [2024], Jazz in Britain, 3CD): [bc]: B+(***)
- Pat Smythe Quartet: New Dawn: Live 1973 (1973 [2024], British Progressive Jazz): [sp]: B+(***)
Old music:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- John Alvey: Loft Glow (Jazz Music City) [08-25]
- Charlie Apicella & Iron City Meet the Griots Speak: Call to Action/Call to Prayer (OA2) [08-16]
- Welf Dorr/Elias Meister/Dmitry Ishenko/Kenny Wollesen: So Far So Good (self-released)
- Morten Duun: Code Breaker (Cmntx) [07-19]
- Russell Haight: Go Forth (OA2) [08-16]
- Eric Jacobson: Heading Home (Origin) [08-16]
- Omer Leshem: Play Space (Ubuntu Music) [09-27]
- David Liebman & the CNY Jazz Orchestra: If a White Horse From Jerusalem . . . (CNY Jazz Arts Foundation) [08-10]
- Rosemary Loar: Vagabond Heart/Curação Vagabundo (Atlor Music) [07-18]
- Matt Mitchell: Zealous Angles (Pi) [08-16]
- Planet D Nonet: Echoes of Harlem: A Salute to Duke Ellington Vol. 2 (Eastlawn) [07-19]
- Dred Scott/Moses Patrou/Tom Beckham/Matt Pavolka: Cali Mambo (Ropeadope) [09-20]
- Piet Verbist: Flamenco Jazz Summit: El Mar Empieza Aquí (Origin) [08-16]
- Philip Weberndoerfer: Tides (Shifting Paradigm) [08-23]
- Miguel Zenón: Golden City (Miel Music) [08-30]
Daily Log
Messenger note back from John Chacona. I need some better place
to keep things like this:
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
Opened this file on Friday, July 26, early evening. Thought I might
wrap this up Monday evening, but I had a very stressful day, got bummed
out, and accomplished little. Hence, this week's piece has lapsed into
Tuesday, but coverage of [07-30] will be spotty, at best.
One thing I did accomplish on Monday was to write a bit of code
that I'm using here, and should save me a lot of trouble in the
future. As I've been writing these posts, I've often wondered how
much I had written. It then occurred to me that I could measure the
post using two Linux shell commands:
fgrep 'href' FILENAME | wc -l
wc -w FILENAME
The former counts links (assuming there is no more than one link
per line). The latter counts words. I usually omitted the wc
options, since it's easy to visually pick out the number I wanted:
the default counts lines, words, and characters. My first thought
was to wrap those two commands into a shell script, then run it and
append the answer to the web page. Then it occurred to me that I'm
already reading the file to find a few directive lines (mostly used
for the title and date), so I could count links and words as I go,
then add a directive to print them out at (or near) the end. (Which
gives me a bit of flexible control, as opposed to just automatically
appending the stats to every page -- something I still may decide to
do.)
At present, the link counts match the program output, but the word
counts vary somewhat. Obviously, word counts depend on how you delimit
words (e.g., is a "hyphenated-word" 1 or 2 words?). I used wc
just because it was easy and close enough for my purposes. The new
code also takes the easy route, using the PHP str_word_count()
function, which at least initially produced larger word counts (e.g.,
11616 vs. 8674, so in this case +25.6%). But rather than try to tune
the PHP code to better match the wc results, I thought maybe
I should aim for more useful results. I knew that a lot of the text in
these particular files appeared in HTML tags and comments, which never
appears as words on the web page, so I tried removing them -- using
a regular expression replace:
preg_replace('/<[^>]*>/', ' ', LINE)
I then called the word count function both on the edited line and
on the original one -- I was curious what the effect was, and wound
up printing out both totals. I also eliminated the directive lines
from the word count, since like markup they do not appear in the page,
and I was already separating those lines out. For the page cited
above, the word counts wound up at 7996 (tags stripped) and 11616
(total). I can imagine refining this further. The most obvious thing
is I'm not checking for HTML entities right now, which are few (so
have little practical effect), and are rather complicated (so would
require much more complex code).
I don't doubt that my programming skills have atrophied over the
score-plus years since my last full-time job, but it's always a good
feeling to see that I still have some.
One more new formatting tic this week. I thought I'd like to have
some way to draw extra attention to articles that seem especially
important. What seemed like the simplest, most intuitive way was to
change the • bullet to something that would stand out more,
like this -- a bright red
star.
I've applied this in a few places, and probably should in a
few more. (This was a very late addition to the file.) I figured
I could do this with CSS, but ran across the problem that once
an element was selected for the star, any child elements also
inherited the star. (There's a Sarah Jones example below, which
is actually pretty unusual.) I haven't found a way in CSS to
prevent or stop such inheritance, so resorted to another hack
to undo it.
Top story threads:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
Yasmin Abusayma: [07-24]
What it's like for Palestinian women living through the Gaza
genocide: "Palestinian women have been forced to demonstrate
remarkable resilience while navigating the harsh realities of
Israel's genocidal war for themselves and their families."
Eman Alhaj Ali: [07-27]
Living in a nightmare: "In Gaza, night is not peaceful. Going
to sleep means not knowing if you'll wake up in the morning."
Jan Altaner: [07-26]
An investigation shows how the IDF killed Hind Rajab: A
six-year-old Palestinian girl, one of the few names and faces
recognized as such among the thousands Israelis have killed.
M Reza Behnam: [07-25]
The politics of water under occupation: Israel in Palestine.
Shatha Hanaysha: [07-24]
Israel kills 11 Palestinians in 24 hours in the West Bank:
"Israeli forces carried out a drone strike on a crowded refugee
camp, killing five people including a paramedic and her daughter.
Eyewitnesses said Israeli forces desecrated the bodies with a
bulldozer before taking four bodies into custody."
Heidi Levine, et al.: [07-28]
Israel strikes deep in Lebanon after rocket attack, stoking fear
of wider war: "Israel had promised revenge for a rocket strike
from Lebanon that killed 12 in the Golan Heights town of Majdal
Shams. Hezbollah denied responsibility."
Gideon Levy: [07-24]
In Gaza, Israel lost what remained of its humanity.
Ibtisam Mahdi: [07-26]
The decimation of Gaza's academia is 'impossible to quantify':
"With thousands of faculty and students likely killed and campuses
destroyed, Palestinian universities in the Strip are barely surviving
Israel's scholasticide."
Qassam Muaddi: [07-26]
Palestinian factions strike a reconciliation deal -- will this time
be any different? That all depends on Israel, because it's
always Israel, and only Israel, that determines what is allowed.
If Israel has a deal that is broadly acceptable, unified Palestinian
leadership can help sell it. Otherwise, it's just a phase in the
never-ending cycle of powerless people trying to find a strategy
when none is allowed.
Abed Abou Shhadeh: [07-25]
Israel's crackdown on Palestinian citizens could lead to return of
military rule.
Djaouida Siaci: [07-28]
How Israel is stripping Palestinian women of their dignity.
Eric Sype: [07-24]
Big tech terror: for Palestinians, AI apocalypse is already here.
Sharon Zhang:
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Netanyahu wangled an invitation to speak to a joint session of
Congress, first lining up his right-wing allies to float the invite,
then giving the Democratic leadership little choice but to join in.
He may be massively unpopular in Israel, but when he appears in
Washington, he can preen like he owns the place, as he essentially
does. And his exhibition of power over Washington helps maintain
his perch in Israel, where regardless of his many faults, he is
widely seen as the one guy who can force presidents to kowtow.
The whole spectacle was deeply embarrassing for all concerned.
So while he got the ovations he expected, his message just
underscores how deeply out of touch Israel is with world
opinion. Mustafa Barghouti was absolutely right: "a disgusting
speech in a session of shame to the U.S. Congress."
Nathan J Robinson: [07-26]
One of the most shameful moments in American history: "Applauding
Benjamin Netanyahu exposes the dark moral depravity of America's
political class." I promoted this piece to the head of this section
because what it says is exactly right.
Michael Arria: [07-24]
Wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress:
"Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint meeting of Congress to
bolster support for Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza. About
half of the Democrats in Congress skipped the speech where he
vowed to continue the attack until 'total victory' is met."
Seraj Assi: [07-25]
Netanyahu's speech is a gift to future genocide historians.
Jonathan Cook: [07-26]
Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and
his genocide.
Abigail Houslohner/Louisa Loveluck: [07-27]
Netanyahu's US visit revealed 'no workable plan' for peace, critics
say. Not just critics. Netanyahu couldn't have been clearer
that he will do everything in his power to his wars going.
Fred Kaplan:
Danaka Katovich: [07-26]
A standing ovation for genocide.
Joshua Keating: [07-24]
Has Netanyahu finally lost America? "After his address to Congress,
the Israeli prime minister has never looked more isolated."
Blaise Malley: [07-24]
Netanyahu lectures Americans, makes case for 'total victory'.
Souzan Naser: [07-23]
Netanyahu's speech to Congress is a desperate ploy to rally support
for genocide.
Mitchell Plitnick: [07-28]
Congress applauded the genocide in Gaza, but Netanyahu's speech showed
the political consensus on Israel is over: "Benjamin Netanyahu's
call for continued support for the Gaza genocide may have received
rapturous applause from Congress, but the speech revealed uncertain
political terrain for Israel among both Democrats and Republicans.
Nia Prater: [07-24]
Rashida Tlaib holds 'war criminal' sign during Netanyahu speech.
Richard Rubenstein: [07-26]
Netanyahu in Congress: the crime boss fulminates, while his accomplices
cheer.
Annelle Sheline/Adam Weinstein: [07-23]
Bibi's bullying visits to Congress never end well: "Washington
will give Israel's Netanyahu whatever he wants, whether it's in
America's interest or not. Who will say no?"
Richard Silverstein: [02-27]
Netanyahu's tissue of lies: "Congressional speech falls flat."
While we're at it, catch up with his articles, plus an interview:
Emily Tamkin: [07-25]
The very people Netanyahu claims to represent rejected him:
"Neither Americans nor Israelis are buying the prime minister's
version of events."
Ishaan Tharoor: [07-24]
At Netanyahu addresses Congress, agony in Gaza endures.
Jonah Valdez:
Netanyahu insulted and smeared the pro-Palestine protest movement.
Congress clapped.
Other stories in this nexus:
Michael Arria: [07-25]
The Shift: Biden's legacy is genocide. Biden's withdrawal
elicited "sentimental tributes," but not from those who focused
on his defense and support of genocide by Israel.
Dexter Filkins: [07-22]
Will Hezbollah and Israel go to war? That's really up to
Netanyahu, who is fully able to push Hezbollah's buttons to get
whatever level of back-and-forth he wants -- thus far, enough
to provide cover for the real wars against Palestinians both in
Gaza and the West Bank, and to keep the Americans in line with
their depiction of Iran the puppet master on many fronts. As
last week showed, escalating the bombing of Lebanon is easy
within those parameters. Launching a real ground war isn't so
easy, with little to gain and a fair amount to lose.
Nicole Narea: [07-25]
What Kamala Harris really thinks about Israel and Gaza: "Biden's
approach to the war in Gaza has been divisive. Would Haris chart a
new path?" I have a whole section for Harris, where I'll slot pieces
on every other aspect of her campaign and politics, but for now I'd
rather compartmentalize and keep her Israel stuff here, as a subset
of the Washington-based group-think that lets American politicians
and their cronies avoid having to think or care about the issue. I
don't think anyone really knows what she thinks here, because the
position she's in doesn't allow thinking, or doing for that matter.
Maybe when she is president, she will be in a position to do, and
therefore will need to think. But right now, all she really has to
do is to avoid the pitfalls being laid out for her. (Having to meet
with Netanyahu is just one such pitfall.) I'm not unsympathetic to
people who regard Israel (or at least Gaza) as the biggest political
issue of the moment, but through the election, I think they/we should
give her a pass. I'm pretty sure that she's no worse than Biden, and
undoubtedly a lot better than Trump. You don't have to endorse her
(at least for this). You can even rag on Genocide Joe if you want.
But this is just speculation, and probably not helpful at all. Of
course, once she's elected, the gloves can come off. My hope, and
that's really all it is, is that she'll listen better than Biden,
and act more decisively. The time to talk specifically to her is
when she's ready to listen and act.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: {07-24]
Peter Thiel: 'I defer to Israel': "Video surfaces showing the
Palantir tech giant struggling to answer questions about client's
use of AI-generated kill lists."
Brett Wilkins: [07-24]
Ben-Gvir endorses Trump, says he's more likely to back war on
Iran: "The Israeli security minister, who leads the far-right
Jewish Power party, accused the Biden administration of thwarting
Israel's victory against Hamas."
Israel vs. world opinion:
Election notes:
Trump:
Vance:
Trump's running mate, a Republican Senator from Ohio, one thing
you can say for him is that he's gotten more press attention than
any VP candidate since Sarah Palin, and probably more, since he's
not just a turbocharged gaffe machine but has a more philosophical
side that is also easy to chew over. I'm pretty sure that had Trump
picked Doug Burgum or Elise Stefanik, this phase would be done by
now.
Karyn Amira: [07-29]
JD Vance's selection as Trump's running mate marks the end of Republican
conservatism. Problem here is the author's definition of conservatism:
"a philosophy that supports smaller and less-centralized government
because consolidated power could be used to silence political
competition and deny citizens their liberties." That's almost
exactly wrong: conservatives believe in order defined by their
preferred hierarchy, which is necessarily enforced by power in
a state that they seek to control. That's precisely what Trump
and Vance believe in.
On the other hand, Amira's definition actually describes an
obsolete version of liberalism, which has been cynically used
by conservatives to oppose the modern democratic state. From
the progressives in the early 1900s through the New Deal and
Great Society, liberals came to realize that laissez-faire
capitalism had ceased to expand "liberty and justice for all,"
and if left unchecked would revert to a new version of feudal
aristocracy. So they came up with a very successful alternative,
where the state, embodying the will of the popular majority,
would organize and regulate countervailing institutions, their
powers limited and regulated in the public interest.
Needless to say, the would-be lords of neofeudal capitalism
hated this, and fought to preserve and extend their superiority
with every trick they could muster -- including adopting the
time-tested rhetoric of classical liberalism, but redirected
against the democratic state -- which they characterized not
just as a revival of pharoahs and czars but as something more
impersonal and nefarious, as totalitarianism -- and really
against the people it represented.
But while "small government" may have been useful rhetoric
when the government was held by people conservatives reviled,
have you ever seen conservatives once they control the state
reduce its size and power? You might point to deregulation, but
that's effectively a transfer of power from public to private
hands. Similarly, tax cuts and credits are transfers of money
from public to private hands. By debilitating public interest
functions, conservatives seek to discredit the state as a means
by which the people can help themselves. Conservatives may see
the state, in the wrong hands, as a repressive force, but given
power, they eagerly use that force for their own ends, especially
against the people they see as enemies, which is most of us.
Trump and Vance aren't the end of Republican conservatism.
They're more like its apotheosis, grown powerful and arrogant
enough they can quit pretending they're doing anyone any favors
but themselves. Maybe they mark some kind of denouement for
conservative naïveté, but few real world conservatives were
ever so deluded.
Maureen Dowd: [07-27]
JD Vance, purr-fectly dreadful.
Elizabeth Dwoskin/Cat Zakrzewski/Nitasha Tiku/Josh Dawsey:
[07-28]
Inside the powerful Peter Thiel network that anointed JD Vance:
"A small influential network of right-wing techies orchestrated
Vance's rise in Silicon Valley -- and then the GOP. Now the industry
stands to gain if he wins the White House." There hasn't been a VP
pick this explicitly tied to donor choice since the Koch Network
(uh, Mitt Romney) picked Paul Ryan in 2012. And while Republicans
are more likely to brag about their corruption, what are the odds
that Harris's VP pick will be traceable to another megadonor? (I
mean, beyond the default conspiracist pick: George Soros?)
Paul Elie: [07-24]
J.D. Vance's radical religion.
Rebecca Jennings: [07-25]
J.D. Vance didn't have sex with a couch. But he's still extremely
weird. "The rumors were easy to believe, especially when the
potential VP has such terrible ideas about sex."
Sarah Jones: [07-26]
Dear J.D. Vance, childless cat ladies are people too.
Emphasis added:
"Normal people" see this bleak prospect for what it is, and they
have rejected it repeatedly in the voting booth. That probably
won't change. Vance's comments are weird, cruel, and, yes, creepy.
They don't reflect the way most people think or live, even if they
do have biological children. By attacking childlessness, the right
cheapens parenthood, too. The act of having children is no longer
about joy but conquest. I can't imagine anything sadder, though
I am but a childless cat lady. Vance's worldview is poisonous to
parents and children, too: Babies should be loved and wanted for
their own sake, not because they're future nationalists or
tradwives. The right offers a small and selfish vision that is
authoritarian to its core. Their America belongs only to the
righteous few, but my America belongs to everyone. I may never
give birth, but I too have a stake in this country. We're all
responsible for creating a future worth living in. It will belong
to somebody's children, if not to ours.
By the way, Jones also wrote:
[07-23]
A woman can win, which probably belongs with the Harris articles,
but is more about how Hillary Clinton's didn't win, and the precedent
that doesn't really set.
[07-30]
American freak show. I've thought of myself as weird much of my
life, so I've learned to flip the insult and see weirdness as a more
interesting attribute. And that's just one of many pejoratives that
I've been prodded into reconsidering based on my experiences with the
people they are and are not applied to. For instance, people who call
themselves "patriots" because they support wars and who call people
who don't support those wars "traitors" not only have a very shabby
vocabulary, they're also, in my mind at least, making "patriots"
appear to be horrible people, and "traitors" to be fundamentally
decent ones. So I was initially reluctant to jump on the bandwagon
that labels Trump, Vance, et al. as "weird." (I see Tim Walz getting
credit here, but Seth Myers has been leaning in to this line of
attack for several years now.) It just feels to me like we need
some qualification, like in the song: "well I hear he's bad/ hmm,
he's good-bad, but he's not evil." Surely, lots of people are
simply "good-weird," but Trump and Vance are venturing into real
"weird-evil" territory.
Any formerly weird child can attest to how difficult it is to shrug
off this label. What are you going to do, put your fingers in your
ears and chant "I'm not weird, you're weird" until somebody eventually
believes you? I was a little awkward in my day, and I know that's not
how things work. You can refute the attack only by not being weird --
an idea that seems to elude many conservatives. They've left themselves
few options. To address the attack, the bizarre right would have to
reconstitute an entire movement, and that will take time and political
will. Both are in short supply. Go on, then, and call the right weird,
as long as it's part of a bigger argument. Progress ought to be normal,
and it's worth fighting for, too.
But I'm starting to appreciate the advantages of flipping scripts
like this. And when you think about it, there's a lot of not just
weird but very bizarre thought going on with the far-right these
days. I mean, I'm 73, and my thinking has evolved a lot over the
years, but I can still remember things that I learned as norms and
rules when I was a child, like the 10 Commandments, the 7 Deadly
Sins, the Boy Scouts' 12 laws, the Golden Rule, the maxim that
"power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," and
strategic bits of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,
and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and much more that I never really
rejected even though I eventually disposed of most of the dross
and cant they were wrapped up in. And because I can remember, and
still largely respect, those norms and rules, it's really easy to
see just how far many right-wingers have strayed from principles
they claim as exclusively their own, and how ridiculous they look
when they do. In some ways, calling them "weird" is the kindest
way you can point that out. Their weirdness may even be their one
saving grace. It certainly won't be in their Project 2025.
Ezra Klein: [07-17]
The economic theory behind J.D. Vance's populism: Interview with
Oren Cass, who was Mitt Romney's domestic policy director in 2012,
who since "evolved" and founded American Compass, a think tank
catering to "populist" Republicans.
Paul Krugman:
Bradley Onishi: [07-27]
J.D. Vance will be a more extremist Christian VP than Mike Pence:
"The vice presidential pick's Catholicism hasn't received a lot of
attention, but it's the key to the populist radicalism he wants to
impose on America."
Andrew Prokop: [07-25]
J.D. Vance has made it impossible for Trump to run away from Project
2025: "He wrote the forward for a new book by Project 2025's
architect -- and has backed some of its most extreme ideas." The
book is
Kevin D Roberts: Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington
to Save America, coming out on Sept. 24.
Corey Robin: [07-26]
Like a diary, only far more masculine: Reading J.D. Vance's,
from his blog days.
Robert Schlesinger: [07-29]
J.D. Vance proves it: Trump hires the very worst people:
Trump's new running mate will haunt him just like all of the
fools and weasels from his first administration."
Alex Shephard: [07-26]
Is J.D. Vance the worst vice presidential pick ever? Fair
question, unless you know much about American history, in which
case it's way too early to tell. It also depends on what you mean
by "worst." John Tyler and Andrew Johnson probably helped their
tickets win, but were really terrible presidents. Some others that
didn't become president were also pretty notoriously bad, like
Aaron Burr and John Calhoun (two terms, under two presidents who
were polar opposites in every aspect except for their loathing
of Calhoun). Then there was Spiro Agnew, the only VP ever forced
to resign. And what about Dick Cheney? If memory serves, the only
VP ever to finish his term with a single-digit approval index.
Then there are the ones who never won anything. They tend to be
easily forgotten, but tag reads "Palin Lite," in case you want
a hint. So with competition like that, Vance hardly has a chance.
But it's early days, and at least he's in the running.
Ed Simon: [07-17]
J.D. Vance keeps selling his soul. He's got plenty of buyers.
Mr. Vance is more a product of the Upper West Side and New Haven,
Capitol Hill and Cambridge, than of the Appalachian hollers.
"Hillbilly Elegy" owed much of its critical and commercial success
to how it flattered its audience about their own meritocratic
superiority over the people whom Mr. Vance was supposedly championing,
and reaffirming some of the most pernicious stereotypes about the
residents of Appalachia. "What separates the successful from the
unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives,"
Mr. Vance wrote. In his telling, those who fell into poverty,
unemployment or substance abuse hadn't dreamed big enough.
He points to whole books written about Vance's book, like:
Matt Stieb: [07-27]
J.D. Vance can't stop saying the dumbest things imaginable.
And other Republicans:
Emily Bazelon: [07-27]
The right-wing dream of 'self-deportation': "Some conservatives
have a grim proposal to make undocumented immigrants leave: exclude
their children from schools." I hadn't heard of "self-deportation"
until Mitt Romney adopted it as his anti-immigration platform in
2012. It is quite the euphemism. It basically means systematically
treating immigrants (and, to be sure, anyone who looks or sounds
like an immigrant) so cruelly they resign themselves to leaving
on their own. Or it could just as well drive them to turn to crime,
which expedites the regular deportation process.
Jenny Brown: [07-27]
Project 2025's anti-union game plan.
From there, the plan is to bulldoze the protections US workers have
built up over one hundred years of determination, sacrifice, and
unity.
It's ugly: abolish overtime pay laws, outlaw public sector unions
entirely, get rid of health and safety protections, eliminate the
federal minimum wage, make it harder to receive unemployment, and
put children back to work like in the 1920s.
Hitting building trades workers, they would get rid of requirements
for prevailing wage pay and project labor agreements in federal
projects.
There's more. They want to get rid of the Department of Education.
Ban teaching women's history and African American history in schools --
lest we get ideas about how to change things! Ban abortion nationwide.
(The AFL-CIO details the
whole alarming list here.)
Patrick T Brown: [07-19]
Pro-lifers helped bring Trump to power. Why has he abandoned us?
Because you're losers? You don't think he ever actually cared about
you, did you?
Thomas B Edsall: [07-24]
What the Trump-Vance alliance means for the Republican Party.
One thing that occurs to me here is that the more Republicans like
Vance talk about supporting American workers, the more ground that
opens up for Democrats to appeal to same, only with more realistic
programs and greater credibility. It encourages them to lean left,
rather than crawl scared toward the right (like so many have been
doing since Reagan).
Jack Herrera: [07-28]
Trump says he wants to deport millions. He'll have a hard time removing
more people than Biden has. "Even as Trump slams the president
for open borders, the Biden-Harris administration has kicked out far
more immigrants than Trump ever managed."
Hassan Alu Kanu: [07-29]
DEI and the GOP: "Hey Republicans, your racism is showing."
Julius Krein: [07-23]
Republican populists are responding to something real. One could
argue that -- although Krein isn't very clear here -- but not that
they're offering realistic responses to real problems.
Robert Kuttner: [07-30]
The left's fragile foundations: "Could a weaponized Trump IRS
wreck the progressive infrastructure by attacking the entire nonprofit
ecosystem?" This is a big and important article. "Defund the left"
has long been a major Republican goal. One small bit:
These vulnerabilities remain in place today. It has long galled the
right that Planned Parenthood is a major recipient of government
funds; of its budget of over $2 billion, about $700 million comes
from government health service reimbursements and grants. While the
Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding of abortion, 17 states
allow Medicaid funding of abortion through their state contributions
to the mixed federal-state program. In addition, Planned Parenthood
is a major recipient of federal Title X family-planning support of
its clinics. As right-wing groups keep complaining, money is fungible
and federal family-planning funds free other money to pay for abortions.
Under Trump, the government did bar Planned Parenthood from the Title
X program in 2019, but this was restored by Biden in 2021.
The battle to defund the left would be far more sophisticated under
a second Trump administration. The Heritage Foundation's detailed
blueprint, Project 2025, systematically targets the entire range of
agencies, and one of its tactics is to undermine agencies that help
progressive organizations such as the NLRB and numerous others. With
a second Trump presidency, the right's war against Planned Parenthood
will only intensify.
Michael Lind: [07-20]
Trump's transformation of the Republican Party is complete.
Calder McHugh: [07-27]
Republicans keep trying to copy Trump's humor -- and voters keep
cringing. Perhaps the material never was funny in the first
place -- just the buffoon delivering it?
Pamela Paul: [07-25]
The Republican Party's elite conundrum: Let me condense this
a bit (all her words, but with less wandering):
Donald Trump loves to show off how smart he is. [But] Trump is
shrewd enough to know that Americans don't like a guy who acts
smart. So if his fumbles are strategic, it's not entirely dumb.
In MAGA world, glorified ignorance actually serves as a
qualification for higher office, empowering more effective rage
against 'the liberal elite' and 'the ruling class.' This puts
those Republican politicians saddled with inconvenient Ivy
League degrees in an awkward position, like the guy who shows
up in a tux for a rodeo wedding. In order to say in office and
on message, they must reject the very thing that propelled their
own careers. After all, the Republican Party has turned ignorance
into a point of pride.
Of course, this is ultimately about Ron DeSantis (Yale, Harvard
Law), Ted Cruz (Princeton, Harvard Law), Josh Hawley (Stanford,
Yale Law), Tom Cotton (Harvard, Harvard), and now J.D. Vance
(Ohio State, but finally Yale Law).
Charles P Pierce:
Tessa Stuart: [07-25]
Trump allies sure are talking a lot about civil war: "The former
president's supporters keep raising the idea there's violent conflict
in America's future." When lies don't suffice, Republicans will try
extortion: vote for us, or we'll [insert threat here, ranging from
shut down the government to killing you].
Harris:
Maggie Astor: [07-28]
Harris campaign says it raised $200 million since Biden dropped out:
"The one-week total is more than President Biden's haul in the first
quarter of the year. About two-thirds came from first-time donors,
according to the vice president's campaign."
Brian Beutler: [07-26]
The perils of backseat driving Kamala Harris: When I saw this
title, I was hoping for a lesson on said perils, and not just that
when she veers off in some other direction you're bound to look
useless and/or stupid, but instead we get this: "She can try to
bring the anti-Trump coalition back together, or she can chase the
unicorns of 2008. It's still not clear which approach will make
the most sense."
Jonathan Blitzer: [07-28]
The real story of Kamala Harris's record on immigration:
"Republicans have attacked the Vice-President as the Biden
Administration's "border czar," but her remit was always to
address the root causes farther south."
John Cassidy: [07-29]
Kamala Harris and the legacy of Bidenomics.
David Dayen: [07-29]
The only member of Congress who has worked for Kamala Harris:
"'What I saw is someone who is not for sale,' Katie Porter told the
Prospect."
Moira Donegan: [07-25]
Unlike Joe Biden, Kamala Harris will be a genuine champion for
abortion rights.
Ellen Ioanes: [07-24]
Could a short campaign be exactly what Kamala Harris needs?
"Dozens of other democracies have short election cycles. Can the
Democrats learn something from them?" As far as I'm concerned, the
long campaigns of the recent era have been insanely wasteful, a
weird prism that has reduced everything else to refraction. No
evidence that we've learned any lessons here, as this one seems
to have just been dumb luck, but we should figure out how to do
better. (Hint: the one thing that could help would be to curtail
the big money influence.)
George Hammond/James Fontanelle-Khan/James Politti:
Kamala Harris campaign seeks 'reset' with crypto companies:
Well, this is bad news, plain money-grubbing with one of the
worst "industries" on the planet. As Dean Baker
noted: "Crypto is the lowest of the low, there is no reason
to do anything with these clowns but tax them."
Ed Kilgore: [07-25]
How Kamala Harris can fight the 'too liberal' label: But does
she have to? Should she even want to?
As Kilgore points out, Kerry may have hurt himself more
by running away from his liberal record than had he stood firm, and
explained why he was right to do so. Most "moderate" Americans are
actually closet liberals, not least because liberalism is deeply
imbued in American political lore. Moreover, Republican charges
against "liberals" are so widely flung about that hardly anyone
knows what they're talking about. Why not just take them to task?
Stand firm in your beliefs, and show some leadership in fighting
back. Nothing hurts Democrats more than cowardice. Even people
with very little understanding of the issues can sense fear. If
undecided, they tend to turn to the more forceful, more resolute
candidate. (That is, after all, how Republicans win while taking
positions few people actually support.)
Lydia Polgreen: [07-27]
I was a Kamala Harris skeptic. Here's how I got coconut-pilled.
Greg Sargent: [07-26]
Trump's repulsive new "laughing Kamala" smear reveals a MAGA
weakness: "As Trump and his allies ramp up the vile attacks
on Kamala Harris's personality, a progressive strategist explains
why Harris's joyful disposition might be perfectly suited to
taking on MAGA."
Michael Scherer/Tyler Pager: [07-28]
How Kamala Harris took control of the Democratic Party: "Party
officials and campaign aides raced to flip an entire brand from
facing hope to salute emojis."
Alex Shephard: [07-26]
Kamala Harris has plenty of time to win the election: "Three
months isn't as short as it sounds. In Europe, campaigns are often
even shorter."
Matt Stieb: [07-29]
White dudes for Harris was a 'rainbow of beige' that raised $4
million.
Zoya Teirstein: [07-22]
What Kamala Harris's track record on climate change makes clear.
Michael Tomasky: [07-21]
Kamala Harris has two superpowers, and that's all she needs:
"She may have run a bad presidential race before, and had a rocky
vice presidency. But she's not 81, and she's not Donald Trump."
This was written just 9 days ago. You think maybe Tomasky would
have found some positives since then?
Matthew Yglesias:
Make the VP selection on the merits! "The political impact of the
Veep is overrated; the substantive stakes are underrated." Problem
is nobody seems to know what the merits needed will be, let alone
which candidates have them. The office has been a disaster as far
back as John Adams, even with ones who were reasonably competent to
become president, and it's been a little more than a gamble for all
concerned.
Li Zhou: [07-24]
Who could be Kamala Harris's VP? The potential list, briefly explained.
The only thing we can really be sure of is that the decision will
be made for us, without any input or airing, and rubber-stamped
because Democrats don't really trust themselves with democracy
any more. And whoever they pick, it will probably be ok. It is,
as one says, "above my pay grade." [PS: I wrote this bit before I
moved it under Yglesias, and added the rest. My intention was not
to talk about any individuals. Adding the item on Sanders didn't
really violate that, but eventually it made sense to add a couple
more pieces. I have no endorsements here. My wife is anti-Shapiro,
so that article is a nod to her.]
Ben Burgis: [07-24]
Bernie Sanders should be Kamala Harris's vice president:
This isn't going to happen, for lots of reasons, some of which
actually make sense. Even if he could help Harris win -- doubtful,
given that he scares donors otherwise sympathetic to Harris, and
would seem to validate Republican charges that Harris is the most
leftist Democratic candidate ever -- he'd give up his seniority
in Congress, and his independence, which we'll need to guard
against Harris triangulating right.
Ryan Cooper: [07-25]
Tim Walz would make a great running mate.
David Klion: [07-24]
The only vice presidential pick who could ruin Democratic unity:
"Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is a leading candidate to be
Kamala Harris's running mate. Selecting him would fracture the
party." This is mostly over Israel. Harris needs to figure out
some way to finesse the issue. Shapiro's dedication to Israel is
complete, with no hint of ambiguity or conflict, allowing for no
independent initiative by America.
Robert Kuttner: [07-29]
Kamala Harris's Eric Holder problem: "Her choice to vet candidates
for vice-president needed more vetting himself."
Li Zhou: [07-21]
Kamala Harris's strengths -- and vulnerabilities -- explained.
Jason Zinoman: [07-28]
Kamala Harris's laugh is a campaign issue. Our comedy critic weighs
in.
Biden:
Dean Baker:
[07-22]
A tribute to President Biden.
[07-18]
Adjusting the Washington Post's Biden-Trump scorecard.
[07-26]
Bloomberg says things are almost as bad as 2019, when Trump was in
the White House: "Seriously, they probably don't want readers
to walk away with that impression, but that is the implication of
the piece they did complaining about people working multiple jobs."
[07-29]
The biggest success story the country doesn't know about: "Yes,
inflation has been punishing. But there is a mountain of good news
that media have barely reported. Here's the real record the Democrats
can run on."
Under Biden, the United States made a remarkable recovery from the
pandemic recession. We have seen the longest run of below 4.0 percent
unemployment in more than 70 years, even surpassing the long stretch
during the 1960s boom. This period of low unemployment has led to
rapid real wage growth at the lower end of the wage distribution,
reversing much of the rise in wage inequality we have seen in the last
four decades. It has been especially beneficial to the most
disadvantaged groups in the labor market.
The burst of inflation that accompanied this growth was mostly an
outcome of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine. All other wealthy
countries saw comparable rises in inflation. As of summer 2024, the
rate of inflation in the United States has fallen back almost to the
Fed's 2.0 percent target. Meanwhile, our growth has far surpassed that
of our peers.
Furthermore, the Biden administration really does deserve credit
for this extraordinary boom. Much of what happens under a president's
watch is beyond their control. However, the economic turnaround
following the pandemic can be directly traced to Biden's recovery
package, along with his infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act, and the
Inflation Reduction Act, all of which have sustained growth even as
the impact of the initial recovery package faded. While the CARES Act,
pushed through when Trump was in office, provided essential support
during the shutdown period, it was not sufficient to push through the
recovery.
One should also use every opportunity to stress that the CARES Act,
at least everything that was good in it, was the result of leverage
Democrats in Congress had. With the economy in free fall, Trump wanted
something to save the stock market. That the act also helped unemployed
workers, collapsing small businesses, and helped many stave off debt
collection, was because Trump had to deal with Pelosi and Schumer.
Without their help, Trump's own dismal record would have been that
much worse.
Zachary D Carter: [07-24]
You have no idea what Joe Biden for employment.
Elie Honig: [07-26]
Let's knock off the 25th amendment talk.
Kerry Howley: [07-27]
Exit ghost: "Watching Joe Biden say good-bye."
Umair Irfan: [07-23]
Joe Biden's enormous, contradictory, and fragile climate legacy:
"If elected, Trump could slow down Biden's progress, but the shift
to clean energy is unstoppable."
Branko Marcetic:
[07-22]
Joe Biden wanted this. This is a left view, but seems fair:
There is a tendency, even among the Left, to overstate the extent of
Biden's populism. This is, after all, a president who nickel-and-dimed
Georgia voters on the $2,000 checks he had pledged, quickly abandoned
his promise of a $15 minimum-wage increase that might have helped
voters weather inflation, and refused to fight to keep transformative
pandemic-era policies like Medicaid expansion and expanded unemployment
insurance. However ambitious his Build Back Better legislation was, we
sometimes talk about it as if it had actually become law, when the
reality is it died -- and did so in large part because Biden considered
getting a handshake with Republicans a higher priority.
That his presidency became the unlikely vehicle for progressive
economic populism tells us less about Biden himself than the state of
the Left: a Left that, however disorganized and defeated, succeeded in
dragging someone like Biden into adopting even a watered-down version
of its political program. It did so not just through political pressure,
but by changing the political landscape to such an extent that a man
who had spent his life tacking right in the chase for political power
came to realize there was a popular constituency for a left-populist
agenda, and that it was worth his while politically, crucial to his
legacy even, to give pursuing such a thing an honest-to-God shot.
[07-25]
How Joe Biden became a steadfast Israel defender.
Nicole Narea: [07-24]
So what does Joe Biden do now? "In an Oval Office speech, Biden
said his farewells. But his job isn't done yet."
Noah Rawlings: [07-29]
Build no small things: "A sampling of innovative projects made
possible by the Biden legislative wins."
And other Democrats:
Lee Drutman: [07-28]
The Democratic Party is (still) broken: "The sudden ascendance
of Kamala Harris doesn't change the fact that the party suffers from
deep, possibly fatal problems." I'm not sure how useful this analysis
is. I don't doubt that the Democratic Party has structural problems,
tied mostly to the need to raise huge amounts of money from interest
groups that want favors not solutions, and the double standards that
blame Democrats for all problems while excusing Republicans. But the
Democrats do have one big advantage: in a two-party system, they're
the only ones who are sane and conscientious and actually care about
people, which should give them some advantages, wouldn't you think?
However, the author seems to be wedded to a fantasy idea, explained
in his book
Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracyh
in America.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: [07-27]
The Interview: Pete Buttigieg thinks the Trump fever could break.
Michael Podhorzer: [07-24]
Democrats are poised to win. But only if they make the election about
Trump. As I've been saying, all along.
Michael Tomasky: [07-25]
The race the Democrats need to run now: "How the party can
reshape this election so it isn't about Donald Trump's martyrdom."
I dunno. I mean, there's something to be said for martyring Donald
Trump. It's not that I don't think this has a place:
That's all the more reason for Harris to make the race a contest
between not only two people but two ideas of America, two extremely
different visions of what the federal government can and will do to
protect the rights of all Americans, especially vulnerable ones.
That means talking about Trump's plans. But just as importantly,
it means trying to make voters understand that the presidency is
much larger than one person. It's an army of people with a set of
beliefs who either will or will not protect abortion rights, defend
workers' interests, insist upon the basic human dignity of migrants,
fight for the human and civil rights of LGBTQ people, continue the
fight against the effects of climate change, uphold civil liberties,
and respect the principles of democracy.
But anything that gets people to turn on Trump is fine with me.
Legal matters and other crimes:
Climate and environment:
In some ways, just another mid-summer week, but one with four days
topping all-time heat records, and 104 (at least that's one count)
active wildfires in the US.
Economic matters:
Jake Johnson: [07-25]
Global 1% captured $42 trillion in new wealth over past decade.
Jean Yi: [07-24]
The great telemarketing scam behind pro-police PACs. Before we
got a phone system that announces caller IDs, we were plagued with
2-5 phone calls per week trying to shake us down for donations to
help out our poor police. We probably still are, but simply don't
answer any calls we don't recognize and welcome. We always figured
these calls as scams, but this article makes it all much more clear.
If any politicians wanted to do something that would immediately
better the lives of most Americans, they would come up with a legal
framework to destroy the entire telemarketing industry (and hopefully
take junk texts and emails with it -- for now at least, I'm ok with
advertisers buying stamps, which at least helps fund the post office,
even though most of our mail goes straight to recycle).
Ukraine War and Russia:
America's empire and the world:
Ben Armbuster: [07-26]
What it means when someone calls you an 'isolationist': "When
war-boosters like Max Boot don't have a comeback, they turn to
smears."
Dan Grazier: [07-25]
Time to retire the phrase 'military industrial complex': "Sorry
Ike: it's a bit too dated and no longer the right moniker to describe
what we're up against."
Samantha Schmidt/Ana Vanessa Herrero/Maria Luisa Paúl: [07-28]
Venezuelans vote in election that could oust an autocrat: Or
a democratically-elected leftist, depending on your perspective.
I don't have much insight into or opinion on the Maduro government,
but that they're allowing an election that could go either way,
and that they've run elections in the past that have gone against
their druthers, suggests that the "autocrat" charge is overblown.
At this point, it might be best for the embattled left to give
way to the American-backed right-wingers. Presumably that would
satisfy American efforts to strangle the revolution, ending the
isolation US sanctions have imposed. The right will then be free
to resume the crony capitalism they profit from, fixing none of
the problems that have plagued Venezuela from the early Standard
Oil days, but giving the left a clear and present local enemy to
organize against (as well as the spectre of American imperialism).
Reagan and his Contras bullied Nicaraguans into voting against the
Sandinistas, but eventually the voters returned them to power.
More on Venezuela:
Nick Turse:
Joby Warrick/Souad Mekhennet: [07-25]
Sanctions crushed Syria's elite. So they built a zombie economy
fueled by drugs. For more on US sanctions, see:
Other stories:
Obituaries
Trip Gabriel: [07-28]
James C Scott, iconoclastic social scientist, dies at 87: "In
influential books, he questioned top-down government programs and
extolled the power of the powerless, embracing a form of anarchism."
I've noted a couple of his books in my Roundups -- Seeing Like
a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed (1999), and Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces
on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play (2012) --
but have never read him. I'm certainly sympathetic to the notion
that power isn't all it's cracked up to be, even for those who
seem to possess it. I also know enough about anarchism to be able
to see it as a model for acting in situations where no effective
power is possible, like international relations.
Martin Landler: [07-25]
Martin S Indyk, diplomat who sought Middle East peace, dies at 73:
"As ambassador to Israel in the Clinton administration and as a special
envoy under Barack Obama, he was skeptical of Israeli settlements."
Instead of skeptical, he should have been flat-out opposed, as the
settlements he allowed to propagate destroyed the "two-state solution"
he was an apostle of. Like many US diplomats, he was so in thrall to
Israel that he could never be an honest broker, even when he realized
that Israel had no intention or desire for peace, which he did reckon
more often than most.
Nicholas Levis: [07-26]
A non-conformist of the power elite: Lewis Lapham, 1935-2014.
New York Times:
Obituaries:
I scrolled through ten pages and, aside from the above, recognized
a few names I hadn't noted, but wanted to at least mention:
Books
Rachel Connolly: [07-25]
Porn shows what people still won't say about sex: "A book
of intimate interviews reveals how reluctant people are to speak
about their true desires." Long review of
Polly Barton: Porn: An Oral History.
Richard J Evans: [07-01]
Can the museum survive? "From looted artifacts to rogue employees,
a series of crises have beset some of the world's most visited
collections." Review of
Adam Kuper: The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions
to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions.
David Klion: [07-29]
After histgory ended: "How the chaos and excesses of the 1990s led
to the politics of today." Review of
John Ganz: When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How
America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s.
Carlos Lozada: [07-02]
Is America a City on a Hill or a Nation on the Precipice? "Ours
is a nation obsessed with depicting and interpreting itself, usually
with the boldest of brushstrokes." Sounds, well, to use a word I
first encountered in 8th grade, when it suddenly became everyone's
favorite put-down for virtually everyone else, "conceited." Reminds
me that "nationalism" is the word for projecting narcissism on a,
well, national scale. Lozada reads a lot of books, which gives him
lots of examples for essays like this one. But for every example,
you can just as easily find an exception. Which makes me wonder,
why bother?
Samuel McIlhagga: [07-26]
Anne Applebaum's dystopia of rules: A review of the Ukraine hawk's
new book,
Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World.
I always assumed that her 2018 book,
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, was a credible if
somewhat jaundiced historical account of Stalin's tragic efforts
to collectivize agriculture in Ukraine in the 1930s, much like
Timothy Snyder's 2010 book,
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. But both
authors have moved beyond their research into political polemics,
where they pose as defenders of democracy but act as advocates
of conflict and aggression, including war, against Russia. At
least Snyder seems to have had some left leanings -- he started
out as a student and protégé of Tony Judt -- before the 1989-90
revolts in Eastern Europe turned him against Russia, but her
earlier books suggest that Applebaum was an ardent cold warrior
from the start. She honed her political agenda in her 2020 book,
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
(the paperback changed the subtitle to: The Failure of Politics
and the Parting of Friends). Here she broadens her attack to
encompass the entire neocon shit list, from its Russia-China-Iran
axis to peripheral irritants like Venezuela and North Korea.
Manuel Roig-Franzia: [07-24]
Donald Trump's nephew asks questions about racism in new memoir:
"Fred C. Trump III cast aside decades of silence to delve into the
roots of the Trump family's dysfunction at a critical moment in
American political history." The book is
All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way.
Michael Tatum:
Books read (and not read): July 2024.
Also, just happened to notice this:
Music (and other arts?)
Chatter
Dean Baker:
[07-30]
[in response to: X has SUSPENDED the White Dudes for Harris account
(@dudes4harris) after it raised more than $4M for Kamala Harris.]
Musk is using his control of X to make in-kind contributions to
Trump in lieu of his pledge to contribute $45 million a month to
a Trump super Pac
Ramesh Ponnuru:
[07-31]
Trump policing who's really black and who's a good Jew in the same
week.
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
music.
Original count: 259 links, 11258 words (15482 total)
Current Count: 263 links, 11360 words (15648 total)
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Daily Log
We wanted to get the backyard lights working, at least so we could
track the new dog better. I had bought a replacement for the corner
yard light, probably 3-4 years ago, then didn't replace it when it
the old one started working again, which didn't last. Another one,
over the back door, gave out a few months back. I figured I should
go and replace the one, and take a look at the other. After a very
cursory look, I ordered a replacement. That came yesterday, so I
got the ladder out and attempted to replace it. I failed, and I'm
pretty disgusted as a result.
Turns out that the problem was probably just a loose wire
connection, that could have been fixed with a mini-screwdriver.
However, since I had the replacement, I took the plate off,
and one of the spliced wires came apart. The wires were back
behind a vinyl siding box, and I couldn't get to them, even
just to splice another wire in. Also, the new unit had no
space for its wires to fold in, so they would have to be
pushed back into the hole. It also looked like two wires in
the box were spliced together, and I couldn't figure out what
was going on with them. (Probably runs down to the switch.)
Hot. Up on a ladder. No space to work, and poor understanding.
I guess that means it was over my head. Still pretty upset.
Friday, July 26, 2024
Daily Log
ArtsFuse published my Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll
essay today, so I opened up the
website with all the totals and ballots. I'm updating
Music Week
to reflect that, and have posted a note on
X:
ArtsFuse published my Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll, which collects the
diligent research and expert listening skills of 90 of the world's
most exacting jazz critics and fans. Essay includes top 50 new and top
20(+1) old music albums, with links to the rest.
I did a notice in a comment on Facebook, and later did a more proper
Expert Witness
notice:
We've finally posted the full results, ballots, etc., for the Mid-Year
Jazz Critics Poll, voted on by 90 distinguished writers and broadcasters.
Start by looking at my introduction/overview essay at ArtsFuse, then
move from there to my website, which has all of the details:
I expanded that a bit more in my Facebook friends
post:
I've spent a big chunk of the last month working on this thing,
and now it's out: we've finally posted the full results, ballots,
etc., for the Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll, voted on by 90 distinguished
writers and broadcasters. Start by looking at my introduction/overview
essay at ArtsFuse, then move from there to my website, which has all
of the details. Find some new jazz. Stimulate your mind, and bring
some peace and beauty to the world:
William Marx, of Arts Fuse, also posted this on
Facebook:
The Arts Fuse welcomes Tom Hull's first-ever mid-year Jazz Critics
Poll. Any survey of new jazz will show the broad range of creation
being produced by an extraordinary diversity of musicians. That's
because jazz has spread all around the world, bringing us together
in peace (and sometimes even harmony).
I wrote a letter to the Jazzpoll mailing list:
The essay and list tops are up at ArtsFuse:
link
Links from there to the website, which lists a total of 366 New
Releases and 109 Rara Avis that received votes, plus presents all 90
ballots by participating critics. The ballots are available in chunks
of 20, or individually (see the critics file for an index).
I added inline "footnotes" for cases where people voted for old
music as new and vice versa, and added extra points to the right
category (which helped Ron Miles, Tomasz Stanko, and Gush). I meant to
add notes for albums that previously received 2023 votes (no carry
over points, but still of interest), and also for records that hadn't
yet been released (which I allowed votes for, figuring I was going to
get some anyway). So I may add more notes later.
Please recheck your ballots. I've made minor changes from the ones
you were returned as I've found minor errors and/or adjusted credits
and titles. Let me know if I've screwed anything up. Unless you find
something that's my fault, the totals and ballots are final.
If you publish your own mid-year list/essay (expanding beyond the
ballot), please let me know, and I'll add the link to your ballot. I'd
like to encourage you to write and publish on your own something about
what you learn from the poll. I think this is an interesting and
valuable exercise, one that is good for all of us, and good for jazz
in general, so I'd like to see the word spread a bit. If you do so, or
if you notice someone else doing so, please let me know. If I get
enough notices to make it worthwhile, I'll add an index file to that
effect.
I also welcome any questions for the FAQ. I need to go back through
all of the support files, and figure out what's useful and what's not,
and clean the site up. I really should do that for the rest of the
website: figure out what's missing, chase it all down (hopefully,
Francis will have it somewhere), and get it all properly
organized.
I figure I'll write again in a week or so, to give you an update on
whatever news I have, and to speculate a bit about the future. I will,
as always, be interested in hearing your thoughts.
Thanks again for everyone who voted, and for those of you (a couple
dozen, if memory serves) who couldn't or wouldn't but at least wrote
in, most expressing their continued interest in the forthcoming 19th
Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll.
ArtsFuse allows comments, so I thought I should track them here:
Steve: Did the Norma Winstone/Jon Downes album come out too
late to have a shot?
I'm surprised there's only one International Anthem release, and that
it placed fairly low.
Tom Hull: There was no release date window. I allowed
any 2024 (or 2023) releases, including ones in advance of the polling
deadline -- a couple dozen such albums received votes. Winstone/Downes
came out on May 7, on ECM, the label of the winning album by Vijay
Iyer, a label which placed two later releases in the upper charts
(Oded Tzur, Tomasz Stanko). It's inevitable that most voters will have
missed most albums in any given time frame, but an ECM release in May
had a pretty decent chance of getting recognized.
Four International Anthem albums received votes in the poll, but
only one (SML) made it to the top 50. They aim for crossover albums
and make an effort to promote their albums in the rock/pop press,
which sometimes pays dividends, but this year's batch of artists are
still pretty obscure. My favorite album on the label so far this year,
by Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly, didn't receive any
votes. Lots of albums didn't receive votes.
[Name lost]: I keep reviewing the text, and feel a bit dumb,
but cannot make sense of the numbers listed for each entry. I understand
the Hullworks list totals [points(vote count)] but not what's above.
Help? E.g. Iyer is "51.5 (27)" in the Hullworks results, but above
shows "5 (27)". Can you explain the latter? Sorry if I'm missing some
explanatory text, I've tried several times.
Tom Hull: [My response is lost, but the gist was that
the Hullworks vote totals were correct, but ArtsFuse had mangled them,
and we needed to fix that. I then picked up the website HTML code,
edited it by hand, then sent it to Bill Marx, who replaced the bad
tables. Marx then deleted the comments, figuring the site was fixed,
so why dwell on the problem? There was also some X discussion.]
Vincent Kargatis: [on X]: I asked too on the ArtsFuse
page, but can you explain the numbers listed? e.g. Iyer showing "5
(27)" while at hullworks I understand the "51.5 (27)".
Tom Hull: [on X]: I saw your comment. The points number
got mangled when ArtsFuse converted the files I gave them. I sent
them new code, which fixed the points, but they've inserted
tags, so the format is still screwed. Should be fixed soon. The
Hullworks tables are correct.
- Vincent Kargatis: [on X] Thx! I spent too many minutes
trying to puzzle it out.😆 Thanks for your work! These are useful
lists for listeners and artists (who benefit from the former's
discovery) alike!
Tangent: have you done an age distribution analysis of each
year's top ten? That might be interesting.
I wrote a fairly long Facebook comment, in response to a grade dispute:
The June 2023 CG has "Big Sistahs" as an "A MINUS." As does the
website copy of that CG, as does the CG database. So as far as I am
concerned, not a typo. I usually grab the CG text a day or two after
it's initially posted, which gives Christgau a chance to edit where he
sees fit. After that, I depend on him to tell me of any changes, which
almost never happens. When I later add the CGs to the database, I run
the database output by him, which gives him a second chance to correct
anything (as well as catch any errors I add -- I also run those things
by Joe Yanosik, who has a good eye and memory for such things, and who
has always been a big help to me). Unlike Joe, I've learned never to
bug Bob about his grades. He doesn't like it, and usually just digs in
harder. I'm sure he understands that opinions, even his, are in
constant flux, but he doesn't feel any obligation to constantly alter
the historical record to reflect those changes. I personally take a
more flexible view on this, in part because I've never regarded my
grades as definitive, but even I rarely change old grades, sometimes
just because I don't feel up to doing the paperwork (but mostly
because I never find time to get back to old music, even records I
really liked).
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
July archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 35 albums, 5 A-list
Music: Current count 42703 [42668] rated (+35), 23 [15] unrated (+8).
[07-26]: The Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll is public now.
ArtsFuse has published my essay,
Diversity Brings Riches: A Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll, which
includes the leader board (top 50 New Releases, top 20 Rara Avis).
I've unlocked the complete results on my
jazzpoll website:
ArtsFuse has a comment facility. Thus far I've seen one comment,
and tried replying to it. I'm tracking these comments in my
notebook. I'm hoping
they'll give me some fodder for my FAQ file. You can also query
or comment
direct to me.
Later today I'll send out a notice to the Jazzpoll mailing
list: the usual links, of course, but also an appeal for voters
to do some publicity of their own, possibly writing pieces about
what they've learned from poll. I'm also looking ahead to the
end-of-year poll. This has been a valuable practice run for what
could be a much more ambitious task.
One thing I would like to do between now and then is to
redesign the website to make it into a better integrated whole.
This might wind up with putting all of the data into a single
multi-year database, so we can track voters, artists, etc.,
over multiple years. I'm also curious about more statistical
analysis. But even before that, we have to identify
the missing pieces, and the questions they raise. If you are
interested and willing to do some work, you can figure out how
to get in touch.
By the way, according to my
tracking file, I have rated
633 albums so far this year, of which 427 (67.4%) are jazz. So
I'm not doing a very good job of easing into retirement.
I'm slowly decompressing after deep burial in the work of running
my Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll. The
website is up, but
the results won't be public until ArtsFuse publishes my introductory
essay -- which I turned in on Tuesday, so it shouldn't be much longer.
After some initial panic, I finally counted 90 ballots, which is a
bit more than half of the 159 ballots we received for the
2023 Poll. A couple
dozen more invitees wrote back with apologies, mostly due to the very
limited voting period I allowed and other demands on their time, but
several just didn't like the idea (while expressing an interest in
year-end voting -- I know of other critics who just don't like the
idea of polls and lists in general, but they had taken themselves off
my mailing list).
Voters were asked to vote for up to 10 "new releases" (first
releases of new music recorded no earlier than 2014) and up to 5
"rara avis" (reissues or newly released music from 2013 or earlier).
The 90 critics voted for 366 "new releases" and 109 "rara avis"
albums. If memory serves, 3 albums got votes in both, and 3 more
received one vote in the wrong time frame, so the total number of
albums that received votes was 472, which is 5.24 per voter. I'd
hazard a guess that about half of those records got 1 vote each.
Also, at least half of them weren't in my
tracking file before the poll,
so were new to me. I've added them all now, and over the last
3-4 weeks I've listened to a lot of jazz I wasn't previously
aware of (including all 5 A- records this week, and most of the
high B+ records too).
As I've probably mentioned, I find lists most useful as a means
for checking what I do and do not know. Donald Rumsfeld once made
the distinction between "known-unknowns" and "unknown-unknowns."
Well, I keep the former are on a list as such, leaving only the
latter as still unaccounted-for unknowns. So, thanks to the last
few weeks, I now know much more about what I don't know. When the
results are published, so can you.
As part of this exercise, I went ahead and prematurely compiled a
Best Jazz Albums of 2024
file. (I didn't bother compiling the companion Best Non-Jazz list,
because I didn't need it, and didn't want to bite off the extra
work, least of all in maintenance -- indeed, I may not maintain
the Jazz file until the need arises come November.) The most notable
thing here is that the A-list has already reached 60 albums, whereas
for recent full years, it has never grown beyond 87 albums. I can
imagine three possible explanations for this bounty: this is a
really great year for new jazz; I'm much better informed this year
than ever before; and/or I'm growing soft and addled in my old age.
Still, I've retained enough wits to discriminate between these 60
A/A- albums and 108 with B+(***) grades, and another 193 with lower
grades. (Let's see: in 2023, that split was 85 A/A-, 225 B+(***),
532 lower, so comparing this year so far to last gives us: 70.5%,
48.0%, 36.2%.) So, sure, that's skewed pretty significantly. But I
can't think of anything to do about it. The grading scale was never
conceived of as a curve, and it's too late to change much now.
While working on the essay, I slowly pieced together a
Speaking of Which, which wound up straddling the Republican
Convention, Biden's withdrawal, and Kamala Harris's clinching of
the Democratic nomination. The domestic politics did at least take
my mind away from the international situation, which as far as I
can tell is still very much out there -- especially the atrocities
in and around Israel. One story I avoided was Netanyahu's speech
to Congress. I thought the most telling moment there was when
Biden praised and gave thanks to Joe Biden, and Republicans stood
and applauded. Of course, it wasn't Biden they were applauding.
Nor were they really showing how supplicant they are to Netanyahu
(although they clearly are). They mostly relished how Netanyahu's
embrace disgraced Biden and his administration. As I've noted many
times before, the only time Republicans are up for a "bipartisan"
deal is when they see it as a wedge between the Democratic leaders
and their base. All of Washington may be in thrall to Israel, but
it's not a good look for the self-anointed leaders of the free
world.
Of course, I didn't really finish with last week, so next week's
Speaking of Which will start as soon as this Music Week posts. And
as I'm unlikely to be done on Sunday, next Music Week should again
be delayed -- perhaps enough to give me most of a week (as long as
I wrap up before the end of July, I'll be happy.) After that, I
hope to slow down a bit, and take stock. I have lots of projects
to work on around the house. I have some doctor stuff on tap. I
also have a new website to think about. And I need to rethink the
whole writing life. Besides, August is usually pretty miserable
here in Wichita.
Meanwhile, a couple mid-year lists to check out:
New records reviewed this week:
- أحمد [Ahmed]: Giant Beauty (2022 [2024], Fönstret, 5CD): [bc]: A-
- Alliance [Sharel Cassity/Colleen Clark]: Alliance (2024, Shifting Paradigm): [sp]: B+(**)
- Beholder Quartet: Suspension of Disbelief (2024, Sachimay): [sp]: A-
- Oddgeir Berg Trio: A Place Called Home (2024, Ozella): [sp]: B+(*)
- Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few: The Almighty (2023 [2024], Division 81): [sp]: B+(**)
- Nick Dunston: Colla Voce (2024, Out of Your Head): [cd]: B+(**)
- Isabelle Duthoit & Franz Hautzinger: Dans le Morvan (2021 [2024], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(*)
- Nick Finzer: Legacy: A Centennial Celebration of JJ Johnson (2024, Outside In Music): [sp]: B+(***)
- Gregory Groover Jr.: Lovabye (2023 [2024], Criss Cross): [sp]: B+(**)
- Giovanni Guidi: A New Day (2023 [2024], ECM): [sp]: B+(**)
- Jo Harrop: The Path of a Tear (2024, Lateralize): [sp]: B+(***)
- Xaver Hellmeier: X-Man in New York (2022 [2023], Cellar Music): [sp]: A-/li>
- اسم ISM [Pat Thomas/Joel Grip/Antonin Gerbal]: Maua (2022 [2024], 577): [dl]: A-
- Tobias Klein/Frank Rosaly/Maria Warelis: Tendresse (2022 [2024], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
- Christian McBride/Edgar Meyer: But Who's Gonna Play the Melody? (2024, Mack Avenue): [sp]: B+(*)
- The New Wonders: Steppin' Out (2024, Turtle Bay): [sp]: B+(***)
- Carlos Niño & Friends: Placenta (2022-23 [2024], International Anthem): [sp]: B
- Omawi [Marta Warelis/Onno Govaert/Wilbert De Joode]: Waive (2021 [2023], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
- Hery Paz: River Creatures (2023 [2024], Porta Jazz): [sp]: B+(***)
- Frank Paul Schubert/Michel Pilz/Stefan Scheib/Klaus Kugel: Live at FreeJazz Saar 2019 (2019 [2024], Nemu): [cd]: B+(***)
- SML: Small Medium Large (2022-23 [2024], International Anthem): [sp]: B+(***)
- Space: Embrace the Space (2024, Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(***)
- Natsuki Tamura/Satoko Fujii: Aloft (2023 [2024], Libra): [cd]: B+(***)
- Terton [Louie Belogenis/Trevor Dunn/Ryan Sawyer]: Outer, Inner, Secret (2023 [2024], Tzadik): [sp]: B+(***)
- Marta Warelis/Andy Moor: Escape (2022 [2024], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(**)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Cannonball Adderley: Burnin' in Bordeaux: Live in France 1969 (1969 [2024], Elemental Music, 2CD): [cd]: B+(**)
- Cannonball Adderley: Poppin' in Paris: Live at L'Olympia 1972 (1972 [2024], Elemental Music): [cd]: B+(***)
- Atrás del Cosmos: Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams (1980 [2024], Blank Forms Editions): [sp]: A-
- Charlie Mariano: Boppin' in Boston 1947-1953 (1947-53 [2024], Fresh Sound): [sp]: B+(**)
- Gerry Mulligan: Night Lights (1963 [2024], Philips): [sp]: B+(*)
- The Oscar Pettiford Memorial Concert (1960 [2024], SteepleChase): [sp]: B+(*)
Old music:
- Beholder: Claim No Native Land (2017, Sachimay): [sp]: B+(*)
- Beholder: The Cicada Sessions (2022, Sachimay): [sp]: B+(**)
- Beholder Quartet: Omni Present (2023, Sachimay, EP): [sp]: B+(*)
- اسم ISM [Pat Thomas/Joel Grip/Antonin Gerbal]: Nature in Its Inscrutability Strikes Back (2014 [2015], Café Oto): [sp]: B+(***)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Cannonball Adderley: Burnin' in Bordeaux: Live in France 1969 (Elemental Music) [04-26]
- Cannonball Adderley: Poppin' in Paris: Live at L'Olympia 1972 (Elemental Music) [04-26]
- Livia Almeida: The Brasilia Sessions (Zoho) [07-19]
- Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band: Walk a Mile in My Shoe (Imani) * [08-12]
- Richard Guba: Songs for Stuffed Animals (self-released) [06-06]
- Joel Harrison & Alternative Guitar Summit: The Middle of Everywhere: Guitar Solos Vol. I (AGS) [07-24]
- Jason Kao Hwang: Soliloquies: Unaccompanied Pizzicato Violin Improvisations (True Sound) (09-15]
- Lux Quartet: Tomorrowland (Enja/Yellowbird) [08-09[
- Rose Mallett: Dreams Realized (Carrie-On Productions) [09-01]
- Shelly Manne & His Men: Jazz From the Pacific Northwest (1958-66, Reel to Real) [04-20]
- Brother Jack McDuff: Ain't No Sunshine: Live in Seattle (1972, Reel to Real) [05-17]
- Terence McManus: Music for Chamber Trio (Rowhouse Music) [09-24]
- Jason Stein: Anchors (Tao Forms) [09-13]
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
Originally scheduled for July 21, this kept getting pushed out as
I worked on my mid-year jazz critics poll. Finally posted [07-24],
with some later adds.
Big breaking news this week was the end of Joe Biden's campaign
for a second term as president. This became public on Sunday, July
20. I started collecting bits for this post back on Thursday, July
18, and in the intervening days I collected a fair number of pieces
on the arguments for Biden to withdraw. I've kept those pieces below
(and may even add to them), while splitting the section on Biden,
and adding one on Kamala Harris, who as Vice-President and as Biden's
running mate is the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Biden won all of the primaries, so an overwhelming majority of DNC
voters were selected and pledged to Biden (and implicitly to Harris).
Biden has endorsed Harris. And most of the people who put pressure
on Biden to withdraw did so realizing that Harris would be his most
obvious replacement. Opposition to Biden was almost never rooted in
rejection of his policies or legacy. (Critics of Biden's deaf, blind
and dumb support for Netanyahu's genocide may beg to differ, but
they had little if any clout within the party powers who turned on
Biden. Nor do Israel's supporters have any real reason to fear that
Harris will turn on them.)
I originally meant to start this post with a bit from a letter
I wrote back on Thursday [07-18], which summed up my views on
Biden's candidacy at the time:
For what little it's worth, here's my nutshell take on Biden:
If he can't get control of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza by
early October, he's going to lose, no matter what else happens.
For people who don't understand them, they're bad vibes, so why
not blame the guy who was in position to do something about them.
That may be unfair, but that's what uninformed voters do. And if
you do understand them (which I think I do), Biden doesn't look
so good either. He sees Ukraine as a test of resolve, and Israel
as a test of loyalty, and those views are not just wrong, they
kick in his most primitive instincts.
Otherwise, the election will go to whichever side is most
effective at making the election into a referendum on the other
side. That should be easy when the other side is Trump, but it
gets real hard when most media cycles focus on your age and/or
decrepitude. That story is locked in, and isn't going away. When
your "good news" is "Biden reads from teleprompter and doesn't
fumble," you've lost.
Even if Trump's negatives are so overwhelming that even Biden,
incapacitated as he is, beats him (and surely it wouldn't be by enough
to shut Trump up), do we really want four more years of this?
As of early Tuesday evening, I'm still preoccupied with trying to
wrap up my jazz critics poll. I expect to mail that I will get that
mailed in tonight, and hope that I may wrap this up as well, with
the by-now-usual proviso that I may add more the next day, but
certainly will have lots to return to next week.
As of late Wednesday evening, I figure I should call it a week.
I still haven't gotten to everything, but I've deliberately skipped
anything on the Netanyahu speech to Congress, and various other
pieces of late-breaking news (including recent campaign rallies
by Trump, which I overheard some of, and by Harris, which I gather
was much more fun. If I do grab something more while working on
Music Week, I'll flag it as usual. Otherwise, there's always next
week.
One half-baked thought I will go ahead and throw out there is
this: maybe this was the plan all along? I know it's hard to credit
the Democratic Party insiders with devising much less executing
such a clever plan. But if you wanted to get to where we are now,
it's not that hard to imagine. If Biden hadn't run, Harris would
have been his probable successor, but not without a bruising and
potentially divisive primary fight. Biden's reelection campaign
kept that from happening -- and to make extra sure, scotching
the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary eliminated the two
best opportunities potential opponents might gamble on. Biden
wound up with an overwhelming majority of delegates locked in,
and predisposed to Harris as his successor.
Biden's presumptive nomination also gave cover to Trump, who
never had to face the age questions that dogged the slightly
older Biden. Then Biden tanks the debate, which gives Trump a
huge psychological boost, but drags out his withdrawal until
after Trump's nomination becomes official. By the time he does
announce, all the ducks are lined up for Harris, cemented by
the record-breaking cash haul. No one will run against her,
and all Democrats will unite behind her. It's not a very good
example of democracy in action, but it's clean and final, and
she enters the campaign against Trump with few wounds and very
little baggage.
On the other hand, Trump, despite all the optimism he brought
into the RNC just last week, has tons of debilitating baggage --
to which he's already added his "best people" VP pick, J.D. Vance.
I've said all along that the winner will be the one who does the
best job of making the election into an opportunity for the people
to rid themselves of the other candidate. The odds of Trump being
the one we most want to dispose of just went way up.
Make no mistake, there is something profoundly wrong with our
democracy, and it goes way beyond gerrymanders and registration
scheming. It mostly has to do with the obscene influence of money
not just on who can run in elections and what they can campaign
on, but also on what whoever manages to get elected can or cannot
do with their post. This influence goes way back, and runs very
deep, but it's pretty clear that it's gotten significantly worse
over the last several decades, as income and wealth have become
much more unequally distributed.
We are, of course, fortunate that not everyone with great sums
of money wishes to harm most of us. It's mostly just Republicans
who want to drive us to ruin, and who surely will if we allow them
the power to do so. (The Supreme Court is one place where they
already have that power, and it is already providing us with a
steady stream of examples of how "power corrupts and absolute
power corrupts absolutely.") Rich Democrats may be every bit as
self-interested and egocentric as rich Republicans, but at least
they can see that government needs to work reasonably well for
everyone, and not just for the rich at everyone else's expense.
They understand things that Republicans have turned against:
that life is not a zero-sum game (so you don't have to inflict
losses in order to gain); that security is only possible if
people sense that justice prevails; and that no matter how much
wealth and power you gain, you still depend on other people who
need to be able to trust you.
Perhaps you can and should trust rich Democrats in times of
severe crisis, such as in this election. Today's Republican Party,
with or without Trump, is threat enough. But know that those same
rich Democrats don't trust you to make decisions they can support,
which is why they hijacked the 2020 primaries to stop Sanders with
Biden, and why they've micromanaged the 2024 process to give your
nomination to Harris. And actually, I'm strangely OK with that.
Top story threads:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
Seraj Assi: [07-21]
Israeli soldiers flaunt war crimes on social media. Why aren't they
held accountable? "In video after video, soldiers document their
atrocities, marking a new era of impunity."
Julia Conley: [07-22]
UNICEF reports Israel is killing kids at shocking rates amid West
Bank assault: "Since Israel began its bombardment nearly 10
months ago, 143 Palestinian children have been killed in the West
Bank."
Awdah Hathaleen: [07-22]
In Umm al-Khair, the occupation is damning us to multigenerational
trauma: "I saw the first bulldozers arrive in my village 17
years ago. Now, after the most brutal weeks in our history, my son
will carry similarly painful memories."
Shir Hver: [07-19]
The end of Israel's economy: "As Israel's genocidal war against
Gaza continues unabated, the Israeli economy is facing a catastrophe.
The physical destruction in Israel from the war has been minimal,
but one thing has been destroyed: its future."
Edo Konrad: [07-20]
Israeli settlers believe their moment has come. "Never have
settlers had this kind of influence over Israeli politics, and
Netanyahu is afraid of them bringing down the government, which
gives them enormous influence and power to keep the war going."
Ibtisam Mahdi: [07-18]
Searching for Gaza's missing children: "Buried under rubble,
lost in the chaos, decomposed beyond recognition: the desperate
struggle to find thousands amid Israel's ongoing war."
Maziar Motamedi: [07-21]
Everything to know about Israeli and Houthi attacks amid war on
Gaza: "The Yemeni group remains undeterred in its support for
Palestine despite the massive Israeli attack on a key port."
Qassam Muaddi: [07-16]
Israel's legalization of settlements in the northern West Bank,
explained: "Israel is launching a political and military
assault on the West Bank. Its legalization of settlements in
the north is a crucial part of the story."
Mouin Rabbani: [07-21]
Polio and the destruction of Gaza's health infrastructure:
"Polio had been eradicated in the Gaza Strip but was detected this
past week. While it is unclear how it has suddenly reappeared it is
beyond doubt how it's spreading: Israel's systematic destruction of
Gaza's health infrastructure."
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Israel vs. world opinion:
Arash Azizi:
The left's self-defeating Israel obsession: "Taking an extreme
position, then demanding total orthodoxy, does no favors for democratic
socialism in America." I'm out of "free articles" at The Atlantic,
so I can only imagine what this person is complaining about and/or
purports to believe in and/or thinks the alternatives are.
Ghousoon Bisharat: [07-23]
'Israel always sold the occupation as legal. The ICJ now terrifies
them': "Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu unpacks the ICJ opinion
on Israel's military regime, and the lessons of turning international
law into action."
Mark Braverman: [07-21]
Palestinian Christians challenge the World Council of Churches on
Gaza: "Palestinian Christians are criticizing a World Council
of Churches statement for ignoring the context of the October 7
attacks and refusing to call out the unfolding Gaza genocide."
Jonathan Cook:
Emilio Dabed: [07-16]
By failing to stop the Gaza genocide, the ICJ is working exactly
as intended: "The international legal order was built to
administer colonial violence, not to end wars -- and that poses
serious questions for the Palestinian struggle."
Richard Falk: [07-24]
Why the world must stand behind ICJ decision on Israeli occupation:
"While this was only an 'advisory opinion,' it carries significant
weight through the level of judicial consensus on such a politically
polarising topic."
Masha Gessen: [07-20]
What we know about the weaponization of sexual violence on October
7th: "Rape is a shocking and sadly predictable feature of war.
But the nature of the crime makes it difficult to document and,
consequently, to prosecute."
Hanno Hauenstein:
Gideon Lelvy: Getting rid of Netanyahu is not enough: An
interview with "one of the most articulate critics of Israeli
war and apartheid." Asked whether there was any discussion in
Israel about a recent massacre in Gaza:
I can guarantee you, if it wouldn't have been two hundred killed
in Nuseirat but two thousand, it would still be justified by most
of Israel. To them, Israel has the right to do whatever it wants
after October 7. And it's not up to the world to put up limits for
us. That's the mindset. Obviously, there are those who see things
differently, but they are a minority and quite scared to raise
their voices. Most Israelis would justify any aggression against
Palestinians right now, on any scale.
Jake Johnson: [07-15]
World 'cannot remain silent in the face of this endless massacre,'
says Lula: "The Israeli government continues to sabotage the
peace process and the cease-fire in the Middle East," said the
Brazilian president after a deadly weekend of bombings."
David Kattenburg: [07-19]
In a historic ruling, ICJ declares Israeli occupation unlawful,
calls for settlements to be evacuated, and for Palestinian
reparations: "The International Court of Justice declared
Israel's occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is
unlawful, the settlements must be evacuated, and Palestinians
must be compensated and allowed to return to their lands."
Yoav Litvin: [07-19]
Israel: where genocide meets real estate.
Harold Meyerson: [07-22]
A modest suggestion for an American Jewish response to Bibi: excommunicate
him. "At the Republicans' behest, Netanyahu will speak to Congress
on Wednesday. What better time to figuratively cast him out?"
Ralph Nader: [07-15]
The Gaza genocide deepens: the reckoning begins for the
perpetrators.
Dan Owen: [07-24]
How Israel plans to whitewash its war crimes in Gaza: "The Israeli
army uses the veneer of internal accountability to fend off external
criticism. But its record reveals how few perpetrators are punished."
Richard E Rubenstein: [07-19]
Zionism: the end of an illusion.
Raja Shehadeh: [07-23]
The world's highest court has confirmed what we Palestinians always
knew: Israel's settlements are illegal.
Election notes:
Jeffrey St Clair: [07-19]
Politics on the verge of nervous breakdown. This starts with the
most detailed and credible account of the Trump rally shooting I've
bothered to read, ranges wide enough to include a picture of Mussolini
with a nose bandage after a 1926 assassination attempt, then moves on
to Biden (pre-withdrawal), compares his tenure to that of Stalin and
Brezhnev, doubles back to J.D. Vance, and winds up with a potpourri
of scattered points, like:
As if to emphasize their indifference to the victims of the
shooting, they're having an AR-15 giveaway at the GOP convention . . .
Days after a 20-year-old tried to nail Trump with an AR-15, a
federal appeals court ruled that Minnesota's law requiring people
to be at least 21 to carry a handgun in public is unconstitutional.
While the Democrats -- for some reason comprehensible only to
Democrats -- have "paused" fundraising after the failed assassination
attempt, a Trump-owned company is selling sneakers for $299 a pair
with an image of his bloodied face after the rally shooting . . .
Republican National Convention:
Focus on the Convention here. Articles that focus on Trump and
Vance, even at the convention, follow in their own sections.
Intelligencer Staff:
Jonathan Alter: [07-19]
Good news for Democrats: Trump's bad speech wrecked the Republican
convention.
Zack Beauchamp: [07-15]
How the Republican convention and Project 2025 work together.
Ben Burgis: [07-19]
So much for a newly reborn Republican Party.
David Freedlander:
Mel Gurtov: [07-22]
Gathering of the clan: The Trump criminal enterprise at the RNC.
Antonia Hitchens:
- [07-16]
Trump, unity, and MAGA miracles at the R.N.C. "The former
President's campaign has always been inflected with a bit of
martyrdom. When he walked onto the convention floor on Monday
night, his right ear bandaged, it was the most profound and
unexpected culmination of all the messianic talk."
- [07-19]
The spectacle of Donald Trump's R.N.C.: "An inside look at the
Republican Party's weeklong celebration of the former President."
Ben Jacobs: [07-17]
It was losers night at the RNC: "One by one, Trump's former rivals
kissed the ring." Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, etc.
Fred Kaplan:
Branko Marcetic:
Amanda Marcotte: [07-17]
MAGA energy takes over the RNC: Republicans are riled up over Donald
Trump's shooting: "Republicans at the convention aren't upset
over Donald Trump's shooting -- they're giddy."
Harold Meyerson: American Prospect writer attending
the RNC:
[07-15]
This week's Republican challenge: "How can their convention,
and nominee, call for both calming de-escalation and furious
retribution?"
[07-16]
Republican make-believe: playing nice and loving workers: "That
was the implausible message of their convention's opening night."
Republican elites are so used to the gullibility of their base, they
assume they can just say anything, and no one will bat an eye.
[07-17]
The RNC, night two: the party as cult.
[07-18]
Would J.D. Vance join a UAW picket line outside a Tesla factory?
Quotes Vance: "We're done catering to Wall Street. We'll commit to
the working man!" Laughs.
[07-19]
A party of precarious manhood, led by a blithering idiot: "Trump's
acceptance speech was a mishmash of self-love, protestations of
toughness, and prefabricated lies." Opening line: "The problem with
Joe Biden, sometimes, is that you can't hear him. The problem with
Donald Trump is that you can." Trump's speech reminded Meyerson of
an article he wrote back in June:
[06-10]
How the Republicans became the party of precarious manhood:
"On Donald Trump's genius at exploiting working-class male
displacement and anxiety."
Rick Perlstein: [07-24]
Seeds of a conservative crack-up: "My conversation with them
[a group of progressive anti-abortion activists protesting the
RNC with signs like 'GOP murders babies'] was the only interesting
thing I absorbed at the Republican convention last week."
Chris Walker: [07-16]
Hundreds march against GOP in Milwaukee during first day of RNC.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: [07-18]
The rise of the new right at the Republican National Convention:
"In Milwaukee, Donald Trump's choice of J.D. Vance as Vice-President
was seen as a breakthrough for the young conservative movement, which
blames elite institutions for the destruction of the American working
class." Not that they care one whit about the working class, but
they claim whatever they can, knowing that it gets under the skin
of Democrats, who at least feel guilty for their own betrayals.
Trump:
New York Times Opinion:
Donald Trump's first term is a warning. This looks like they
finally went back and reviewed their own reporting, and belatedly
realized, oh my God, how could we just let all this happen?
This week, Republicans have tried to rewrite the four years of
Trump's presidency as a time of unparalleled peace, prosperity
and tranquility: "the strongest economy in history," as Senator
Katie Britt of Alabama put it. The difference between Trump and
Biden? "President Trump honored the Constitution," said Gov.
Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia
offered Mr. Trump's first term as an example of "common-sense
conservative leadership."
The record of what Mr. Trump actually did in office bears
little resemblance to that description. Under his leadership,
the country lurched from one crisis to the next, from the migrant
families separated at the border to the sudden spike in prices
caused by his trade war with China to the reckless mismanagement
of the Covid pandemic. And he showed, over and over, how little
respect he has for the Constitution and those who take an oath
to defend it.
For Americans who may have forgotten that time, or pushed it
from memory, we offer this timeline of his presidency. Mr. Trump's
first term was a warning about what he will do with the power of
his office -- unless American voters reject him.
The timeline is mostly told through pictures, which are often
shocking, and tweets, which are mostly stupid. One thing I was
especially struck by was the prominence given to Trump's catering
to the whims and desires of the right-wing in Israel, while still
neglecting to point out their direct bearing on increasing
hostilities and the ongoing genocide. Also seems to me like
there's too much focus on Trump's national security lapses,
which caters to the worst instincts of the so-called Security
Democrats, when the real problem with Trump is not lack of
vigilance but a general disinterest and even contempt for
peace and real democracy.
I expect this timeline will be recut into campaign commercials,
fast and furious, driving home the point that Trump is nothing but
trouble.
Anna Betts: [07-25]
FBI director questions whether Trump was hit by bullet or shrapnel
in shooting.
Jonathan Blitzer: [07-15]
Inside the Trump plan for 2025: "A network of well-funded far-right
activists is preparing for the former President's return to the White
House."
Jonathan Chait:
[07-17]
Trump invites China to invade Taiwan if he returns to office.
Given all the credible charges you could lay at Trump, why bother
with this bullshit? Trump has this dangerously stupid idea that if
he can scare Taiwan, they'll pony up for more US arms and bribes
for security. China's just the bogeyman in this scam. Chait has
his own dangerously stupid idea here, which is that American
deterrence is the only thing keeping China out of Taiwan. I'm
not saying that Taiwan has nothing to worry about, but they do
have more control over their own predicament than the ridiculous
whims of presidents and pundits.
[07-19]
Donald Trump cannot even pretend to change who he is.
John Ganz: [06-05]
The shadow of the mob: "Trump's gangster Gemeinschaft."
Jay Caspian Kang: [07-19]
Are we already moving on from the assassination attempt on
Trump? "When an act of violence doesn't lend itself to a clear
argument or a tidy story, we often choose not to think about it."
Ed Kilgore: [07-19]
The old, ranting, rambling Trump was back at the Republican
convention.
Eric Levitz: [07-19]
The RNC clarified Trump's 2024 persona: Moderate authoritarian weirdo:
"The Trump campaign is at once a savvy, disciplined operation and an
illiberal narcissist's personality cult." Weirdo, sure, but considered
in light of the whole package, weirdo loses all of its affectionate
and amusing traits. "Moderate" is the word that hurts here, like a
toenail cut into the quick. On some political policy scales, Trump
may rate as more moderate than many other prominent Republicans (off
the top of my head: Abbott, DeSantis, Cruz, Rubio, Cotton, Hawley,
Vance, Gosar, Gaetz, Mike Lee, Nikki Haley, Liz Cheney), but every
bit of his persona screams extremism -- he sees himself as a real
fighter, as one real bad dude, and that's how he wants you to see
him. That's the act he puts on, and that's what most of his fans
are lapping up. Once you see that, the weirdo stuff falls into
place, and should be viewed much more harshly: he's showing you
that he doesn't care what others think, that he can be as weird as
he wants, and there's nothing they can do about it.
Chris Lewis: [07-15]
The dangerous authoritarian gunning to serve as Trump's grand
vizier: "Russell Vought is rumored to be under consideration
for chief of staff in a second Trump administration. This would
be a disaster."
Nicole Narea: [07-17]
Why tech titans are turning toward Trump: "Silicon Valley isn't
right-wing, but its Trump supporters are getting louder."
Tom Nichols:
A searing reminder that Trump is unwell: "His bizarre diatribe
at the RNC shows why the pro-democracy coalition is so worried
about beating him."
Matt Stieb:
Robert Tait: [07-25]
Trump monetizes assassination attempt by using photo as book
cover.
Maureen Tkacik: [07-18]
The assassin amid the undesirables: "On the abiding despair of the
failed Trump assassin's post-COVID, private equity-looted nursing
home."
Li Zhou: [07-16]
The Trump shooting points to shocking Secret Service security
lapses.
Vance:
Trump picked Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate and potential
vice-president, confirmed by the RNC, so he's very much in the news,
and for this week at least, elicited quite a bit of response: much
more than I suspect any of his competition would have generated.
Alex Abad-Santos: [07-19]
The damsel-ification of Usha Vance: "What people project onto
the would-be second lady fits a pattern of benevolent sexism about
GOP wives."
Michael Arria: [07-16]
The Shift: J.D. Vance's anti-Palestine record: "J.D. Vance is
a strong supporter of Israel, and, like many U.S. Zionists, he
attributes the allegiance to his Christianity."
Aaron Blake: [07-24]
Could Republicans get buyer's remorse with J.D. Vance? "New
polls show him to be unusually unpopular for a new VP pick. Here's
how that compares historically, and what it could mean."
Ben Burgis: [07-16]
On stochastic terrorism and speech as violence: Responding to
Vance's tweet blaming Biden for the attempted shooting of Trump:
In effect, conservatives like Vance are appropriating the idea,
long put forward by some liberals, that overheated political
rhetoric is itself a form of violence. The theory of "stochastic
terrorism" holds that over-the-top rhetoric about a targeted
individual or group has the effect of encouraging "lone-wolf"
political violence -- that is to say, political violence carried
out by individuals on their own initiative rather than terrorist
organizations -- and that this makes the purveyors of the rhetoric
responsible for the violence.
Actually, the right is far more likely to employ verbal threats
and agitation toward violence than the left is, largely because
they're much more into violence as a tool of political power. It's
hard not to believe that the atmosphere of malice they create has
no relationship to occasional violent outbursts, but causality or
even responsibility is hard to pin down. Burgis concludes, "let's
not go down that road." But Vance is so imbued with the culture
of violence that his own charge can just as easily be taken as
encouragement for his "2nd amendment people" to take a shot at
Biden. When Democrats criticize Trump, their obvious even if just
implcit remedy is the ballot. But when Trump rails against "vermin,"
just what is he imploring his followers to do? And given that a
couple of his follows have actually committed acts of criminal
violence against his designated enemies, shouldn't we be alarmed
at such speech?
Kevin T Dugan: [07-18]
Why J.D. Vance wants a weak dollar. Is that a good idea?
I'm not so sure it isn't. I've been bothered by trade deficits
since the 1970s, when they mostly started to cover up the drop
in domestic oil production. Since then, they've mostly worked
to increase inequality both here and abroad.
Gil Duran:
Where J.D. Vance gets his weird, terrifying techo-authoritarian
ideas: "Yes, Peter Thiel was the senator's benefactor. But
they're both inspired by an obscure software developer who has
some truly frightening thoughts about reordering society."
Thom Hartmann:
John Ganz: [07-16]
The meaning of JD Vance: "The politics of national despair
incarnate."
Vance himself, of course, is a winner in the cultural sweepstakes: his
Hillbilly Elegy became a massive success, explaining the failures of
the white poor. He made it okay to look down on them. After all, one
of them said it was okay. Conservatives who reviled Trump's base
turned to Vance as well as liberals who condescendingly wanted to
"understand" them. It was really the same old conservative nonsense
about "cultural pathology" applied to whites now instead of blacks -- a
way to blame the poor for being poor, to "racialize" the white poor as
the blacks had been; to find in them intrinsic moral weaknesses rather
than just a lack of money and resources.
But Vance always wanted to run with hares and hunt with the hounds.
He wants to hold fast to the his wounded Scots-Irish machismo while
simultaneously rising to heights of both American capitalism and
cultural success. He took his background to be both an advantage and a
handicap, a counter-snobbery that served him well as he entered the
halls of power and wealth. Look back at the famous American
Conservative
interview that turned him into a sensation: ". . . the
deeper I get into elite culture, the more I see value in this reverse
snobbery. It's the great privilege of my life that I'm deep enough
into the American elite that I can indulge a little anti-elitism.
Like I said, it keeps you grounded, if nothing else! But it would
have been incredibly destructive to indulge too much of it when I was
18." . . . Reverse snobbery, like all snobbery, comes from
comparison, of a feeling of not living up, of wanting to best
others. As Peter Thiel acolyte, he's familiar with René Girard's
theories of envy and knows how that emotion gives rise to hate. Vance
once said that Trump might be "America's Hitler" to a law school
buddy. This is what that friend says now: "The through line between
former J.D. and current J.D. is anger . . . The Trump turn can be
understood as a lock-in on contempt as the answer to anger . . ." To
people like that, Hitler, so to speak, has a point.
Jacob Heilbrunn: [07-17]
With Vance selection, Trump doubles down on America first. One
can readily fault Vance for lots of things, but calling him an
"isolationist" -- "the heir to Charles Lindbergh, Pat Buchanan, and
other GOP isolationists" -- is pretty flimsy.
Sarah Jones: [07-16]
The billionaire and the bootlicker.
Ed Kilgore: [07-18]
Who is J.D. Vance? His muddled RNC speech didn't tell us.
Paul Krugman: [07-18]
J.D. Vance puts the con in conservatism. Well, it's always been
there, but he takes it to especially extravagant lengths.
Eric Levitz: [07-17]
J.D. Vance's GOP is for bosses, not workers: "Trump's 'populist'
running mate won't change his party's class allegiances."
Nicholas Liu: [07-18]
JD Vance wants to abandon Ukraine but bomb Mexico and
Iran.
Ryan Mac/Theodore Schleifer: [07-17]
How a network of tech billionaires helped J.D. Vance leap into
power: "Mr. Vance spent less than five years in Silicon Valley's
tech industry, but the connections he made with Peter Thiel and others
became crucial to his political ascent."
Arwa Mahdawi: [07-20]
Sorry, JD Vance, but being a 'childless cat lady' is actually not a
bad thing.
Andrew Prokop: [07-17]
J.D. Vance's radical plan to build a government of Trump
loyalists: "Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil
servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people."
Obviously, this isn't original with Vance. Republicans have been
dreaming of this for years, and Trump did a fair amount of it during
his first term -- especially in purging employees who think there
might be something to fossil fuel-based climate change. It was part of
Rick Scott's
Senate plan, and is part of Project 2025.
Max Read: [2020-07-21]
Peter Thiel's latest venture is the American government: This old
article popped up, but should by now have spawned many updates. My
view all along was that Trump was putting the VP slot up for bids --
in effect, he was shopping for the best dowry. Burgum made the short
list because he has his own money. The rehabilitation of "Little
Marco" also suggested that he brought some serious money into play --
every serious Republican candidate in 2016 had some kind of
billionaire in the wings. (In 2012, Newt Gingrich griped that he
couldn't compete, because he only had one billionaire, whereas Romney
had four.) I don't know who was backing Rubio, but J.D. Vance was
always a front for this guy, Peter Thiel.
Veronica Riccobene/Helen Santoro/Joel Warner: [07-16]
J.D. Vance wants to crack down harder on abortion access.
Becca Rothfeld: [07-23]
Hillbilly Elegy and J.D. Vance's art of having it both
ways.
Martin Scotten: [07-22]
JD Vance owes almost everything to Peter Thiel, a pro-Trump
billionaire and "New Right" ideologue.
Ishaan Tharoor:
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: [07-15]
Why Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance for Vice-President: "The Ohio
senator is an attack dog for the former President, but he is also
something more emergent and interesting: he is the fuse that Trump
lit."
Robert Wright: [07-19]
J.D. Vance, the tech oligarch's populist.
Simon van Zuylen-Wood: [07-24]
Democrats might want to take J.D. Vance seriously: But isn't it so
much more fun to take him as a joke? Does he really deserve anything
else?
And other Republicans:
Dean Baker: [07-17]
Decision 2024: Would people be willing to pay higher taxes to make
Elon Musk richer?
That is a question that should occur to people who read through
the Republican Party's platform. Not only does the platform promise
to extend the 2017 tax cuts, which will potentially put tens of
billions of dollars in Elon Musk's pocket over the next decade,
it also promises to "modernize the military."
"Republicans will ensure our Military is the most modern, lethal
and powerful Force in the World. We will invest in cutting-edge
research and advanced technologies, including an Iron Dome Missile
Defense Shield, support our Troops with higher pay, and get woke
Leftwing Democrats fired as soon as possible."
This looks to be hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars
in additional spending over the next decade. Elon Musk, among others,
is likely to be well-situated to get some of the contracts that will
be involved in modernizing the military. . . .
As far as how much Musk and other military contractors are likely
to get out of an increase in spending, it is worth noting that
excessive payments and outright fraud are already big problems
with military contracting. However, the problem is likely to get
considerably worse in a second Trump administration.
There are a number of potential checks on fraud and abuse in place
at present. These include the Defense Department's Inspector General,
the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the Justice Department,
which can investigate allegations of fraud.
Donald Trump has said that he wants to remove these sorts of checks
on his presidential power. They would all fit into his category of the
"deep state." These people are likely the "woke Leftwing Democrats"
who the platform promises to fire as soon as possible.
Zack Beauchamp: [07-19]
It's Trump's party now. Mostly. "How the Trumpified GOP resembles
Frankenstein's monster."
Tim Dickinson: [06-09]
Meet Trump's new Christian kingpin: "Oil-rich Tim Dunn has changed
Texas politics with fanatical zeal -- the national stage is next."
Abdallah Fayyad: [07-16]
The crime wave is over but Republicans can't let go: "The GOP
is still pretending that crime is spiraling out of control."
David Frum:
This crew is totally beatable: "Democrats just need to believe
they can do it."
Sarah Jones: [07-18]
The GOP is still the party of the boss.
Christian Paz: [07-16]
The clever politics of Republicans' anti-immigrant pitch: "The
Republican National Convention featured plenty of angry rhetoric
about immigration. It might find a receptive audience."
Nikki McCann Ramirez/Ryan Bort: [07-10]
A guide to Project 2025, the right's terrifying plan to remake
America.
Biden:
He announced he was withdrawing as the Democratic candidate for
president in 2024 on Sunday, July 21, so the following links can
be easily divided into before and after sections. More recent links
first:
Perry Bacon Jr: [07-23]
The give groups of Democrats that ended Biden's candidacy: "How
the party decided."
- Opponents of Biden's Israel-Gaza policies: They may not have
had any power over the decision, but they were the first to smell
smoke, and to demonstrate Biden's weakness.
- Six middle-aged white guys: Biden-friendly pundits who sensed
that Biden could lose. I can think of many more than six, but
Bacon cites Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan
Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor (the "Pod Save America" guys).
- Donors: No names provided here, which is the way they like it.
- A weird coalition on Capitol Hill: The first to stick their
necks out were Lloyd Doggett and Peter Welch, their numbers
eventually swelling to an almost random
38 Democrats (out of 263).
- The big four: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and
Barack Obama.
Bacon also wrote on Harris:
Ed Kilgore: [07-24]
No, the Biden-Harris switch is not a 'coup'.
Natasha Lennard:
Biden is no hero for stepping aside: Unfortunate when people
say he is, but rubbing dirt into his wounds won't help much either.
Sometimes you have to humor people in power to get them to do the
right things, especially when the right thing is giving up some of
their power. History can always be rewritten later.
Nicole Narea: [07-24]
So what does Joe Biden do now? "In an Oval Office speech, Biden
said his farewells. But his job isn't done yet."
Heather Digby Parton: [07-22]
Joe Biden's brilliant exit: Democrats get a boost, Republicans left
bewildered.
Sean Rameswaram/Bryan Walsh: [07-23]
"What was not a race yesterday is a race today": David Axelrod on
Biden dropping out: "What a fresh face might mean for the
November election." An interview.
I had already collected a bunch of links before the withdrawal.
While this should be a moot issue going forward, we shouldn't forget
too readily what happened and why.
Intelligencer: [07-19]
Pressure builds as more Democrats call on Biden to step aside:
"Here are the latest developments on the efforts to get Joe to go."
Following some earlier reports scattered about this section, he's
getting the "live updates" treatment.
Russell Berman:
'I think it's happening': "The lone senator who has called on
Biden to withdraw is growing confident that the president will
leave the race."
Jonathan Chait: [07-18]
The presidential nomination is becoming worthless for Joe Biden:
"A devastating polling nugget shows what happens if he stays in."
David A Graham: [07-18]
The end of Biden's candidacy approaches: "At the start of the
day yesterday, it was conceivable that Joe Biden might manage to
hold on to the Democratic nomination for president. But this morning,
things seem to be slipping out of his grasp." He cites a number of
reports of people who are close enough to Biden to have leverage
but who still don't want to be seen with blood on their hands.
There's also the all-important fear of "money drying up." The big
selling point is fear of a Trump presidency, but if you're rich
enough to splurge on politics, you don't have that much to fear.
It's more a matter of hedging your bets.
Elie Honig: [07-19]
The secret Biden tape that we shouldn't hear. That's special
counsel Robert Hur's interview of Biden in conjunction with the
"top secret" documents Biden found in his garage. At the time it
was first disclosed, it was reported that the tape made Biden out
like a doddering fool, so naturally Republicans in Congress set
out to subpoena it.
Dhruv Khullar: [07-18]
Doctors are increasingly worried about Biden: "Nine physicians
weighed in on the President's health. Almost all were concerned
that Biden's symptoms might go beyond a gradual, aging-related
decline."
Eric Levitz: [07-18]
Democrats are finally taking on Biden -- and giving the party a
chance to win: "Pelosi, Schumer, and Obama have all signaled
to Joe that it's time to go."
Nicole Narea: [07-18]
Biden is betting on impossible promises to progressives: "Biden
is trying to reinvigorate his candidacy by pushing progressive
priorities." That might work better if the left had any real power
in the Democratic Party, if Biden had the power to deliver, and if
the promise didn't panic the corporate faction into dumping him.
Nia Prater: [07-18]
The push to replace Biden is rapidly gaining momentum.
Harris:
Intelligencer Staff: [07-22]
Kamala Harris is now the presumptive nominee: live updates:
She cleared 2,579 delegates less than 36 hours after Biden dropped
out and endorsed her.
Mariana Alfaro/Marianna Sotomayor: [07-24]
House GOP leaders ask member to stop making racial attacks against
Harris. Probably more where this came from:
Michael Arria: [07-22]
Looking at Kamala Harris's record on Israel: "If elected president,
many believe that Kamala Harris will continue Joe Biden's doomed policy
in Gaza."
Karen Attiah: [07-24]
The first clean-up job for Harris is Biden's horrible Gaza policy.
I sympathize with the sentiment, but I don't see the political angle.
The Biden administration needs to quietly shut the Gaza war down,
with a stable ceasefire, with no Israeli troop presence in Gaza,
and with some kind of international salvage/reconstruction effort,
probably under the UN with some contingent of Arab volunteers.
Harris should (and hopefully can) work behind the scenes to firm
up the administration's resolve to do this, but also shouldn't
be seen as getting her hands too dirty in the effort. She needs
this, because if the war/genocide is still continuing in October,
that's going to reflect very badly on Biden, and therefore (but
probably somewhat less) on her. So yes, this is important. But
advice like this -- Indigo Olivier:
Kamala, denounce Netanyahu. Do it now. -- is neither likely
to work on Israel, nor is it likely to gain her any voters.
Ryan Cooper: [07-23]
What would President Harris do with Gaza?: "There are tentative
signs that she would not indulge Israel's war as President Biden has
done." This is pretty speculative. No one expects Harris to break
with Israel, or even to rethink the fundamentals of the alliance,
but it's possible to love Israel and still exercise some restraint
to steer Israelis away from embarrassing themselves, as they have
done ever since their defense against Hamas attacks turned into
a campaign of genocide. Indeed, many Israelis -- not Netanyahu
and his allies, who will take every atrocity they can get away
with, but many of his wholeheartedly Zionist opponents -- expect
the US to act as a brake on their own worst impulses. It is worth
noting that when the Biden administration briefly held up supply
of 2000 lb. bombs, Harris was disciplined enough to keep her
messaging in line with the policy, while Biden waffled and gave
up any pretense.
David Dayen: [07-23]
Who is Kamala Harris? "The vice president has been a cautious
political operator. Her vision for the future points in several
directions."
Benjamin Hart: [07-24]
Kamala Harris's biographer says she's always been underestimated.
Interview with Dan Morain, author of
Kamala's Way: An American Life.
Susan Milligan: [07-24]
Sexism and racism only make Kamala Harris stronger.
Christian Paz: [07-18]
Kamala Harris and the border: The myth and the facts.
Greg Sargent: [07-23]
Fox News's awful new Kamala Harris smears hit nuclear levels of
idiocy: "As right-wing media scramble for an effective attack
on the vice president, a reporter who has closely examined Harris's
career explains why her political identity is so hard to pin down."
Michael Scherer/Gerrit De Vynck/Maeve Reston: [07-23]
Historic flood of cash pours into Harris campaign and allied groups:
"Democrats reported raising more than $250 million since Biden announced
he was leaving the presidential race and endorsed Harris."
Marc A Thiessen: [07-24]
Harris is a gaffe-prone leftist. Why didn't anyone challenge her?
"That would-be rivals are waiting for 2028 suggests they know our
democracy will survive Trump." When I saw this title, I had to click
on it, just to see who could be that dumb (although in retrospect I
should have guessed). If you do bother to read this, you'll get a
prevue of all the angles Republicans will use against Harris. If I
knew nothing else, I'd take them as reason aplenty to vote for her.
Still, I have to wonder whether the rest of the Republicans will
even rise to Thiessen's level of sophistry. Consider this recent
run of advice-giving columns:
Rebecca Traister: [07-24]
The thrill of taking a huge risk on Kamala Harris: "The actual
case for being unburdened by what has been." I think the author is
really onto something here:
None of us knows if we can do this. And we are about to do it anyway.
And the combination of those truths helped me, in those vertiginous
few minutes, to not feel panic but excitement. I felt excited about
the future for the first time in years.
More than that: I felt excited not in spite of my uncertainty,
but because of it. I felt that our national political narrative
was finally accurately mirroring our national reality: Everything
is scary, we have never been here before, we don't
know if we can do this, and precisely because these stakes are
so high, we are at last going to act like it, by taking unprecedented,
untested, underpolled, creative measures to change, grow, and fight at
a pitch that meets the gravity of the urgent, existentially important
task in front of us. No more clinging to the walls of the past for
safety, no more adhering to models or traditions or assumptions that
the autocratic opposition has shown itself willing to explode over
the past two decades in its own efforts to win.
Our aversion to uncertainty is part of how we got to this precipice.
Too unwilling to take risks -- on people, ideas, and platforms, on
the next generation of leadership -- Democrats have remained chained
to the past.
In some ways, Harris is the safe choice right now, but after
Biden and Clinton, she doesn't feel like such a stale, stodgy
compromise. She feels like a candidate who can fight back, who
won't spend the next four months backpedaling and disclaiming.
And why can't she win? Who really believes racist, sexist,
red-baiting Republicans theses days? Just cowards who take
their clues from the fear and shame of those being maligned?
Traister addresses this here:
There are certainly terrible things in store: the
racism and sexism Harris will face, the monstrous and vengeful
resistance to her rise, in which she will be accused of
incompetence and
radicalism and being an
affirmative-action token and a
barren cat lady and a
welfare queen who has
slept her way to the top, all according to the right's
overfamiliar playbooks for how to discredit people they would
rather not participate fully in this democracy and helped by a
media happy to engage in double standards. We know there will
be bad polls and gaffes. And those who feel scared about what
is on the line, including possibly me, will be tempted to say,
"I told you this would happen!" because in our moments of direst
discomfort we take slim consolation in certainty, even when the
certainty is about how awful we knew everything was going to be.
But if we permitted that dismal comfort to guide us, we would
not have any space to be shocked and inspired by how good
some things can be: the giddy
memes emerging from an improbably enthused online left, the
cheerily halved "BIDEN/HARRIS" yard signs now reading simply
"HARRIS."
The $81 million in donations raised in 24 hours. The 58,000 volunteers
who stepped up in less than two days to work phones and knock doors.
The Sunday-night zoom call hosted by Win With Black Women and
Jotaka Eaddy, which was scheduled to accommodate 1,000 women,
that eventually had to make room for 44,000 participants,
all within hours of Harris becoming the unofficial candidate. The
next night, a call organized by Win With Black Men drew 53,000
registrants, well above its capacity, of whom 21,000 were
ultimately able to attend.
And other Democrats:
Included here are pieces about the upcoming procedure for
replacing Biden as presidential nominee, any candidates beyond
Harris, and the upcoming convention.
Climate and environment:
Economic matters:
Ukraine War and Russia:
Blaise Malley: [07-19]
Diplomacy Watch: Europe turns attention to GOP ticket: "Moscow,
Kyiv, also react to eventuality of Trump returning to White House."
This was written post-Vance, pre-Harris, so maybe the panic has
subsided a bit. What hasn't changed is the war's stalemate, or more
accurately, spiraling self-destruction.
America's empire and the world:
Wesley K Clark: [06-23]
America is already great again: "Don't let doomsayers like Donald
Trump fool you. On every meaningful metric of national strength, the
United States under Joe Biden is a rising power -- and we have the
economic means and necessary alliances to meet our gravest challenges."
He's fighting bullshit with bullshit, which he wouldn't have to if he
could just escape the "metric of national strength" Trump characterizes
as greatness. I remember how Bill Moyers tried to convince LBJ to call
his programs "the good society," but Johnson, ever the bullshit artist,
insisted on "great" -- and got neither. Clark actually does a fair job
of pointing out how the reforms Biden started, and further reforms that
are broadly supported by the democratic wing of the Democratic Party,
can make our lives better, can help the rest of the world, and put us
in better alignment with peace and justice everywhere -- an analysis
that could be much sharper with a bit less ego and arms hawking.
Tom Engelhardt: [07-18]
Where did the American Century go? "The decline and fall of
presidential America: are we now living in a defeat culture?"
Mike Lofgren: [06-23]
Why can't America build enough weapons? That's really not the
question we should be asking, but that anyone can bring it up should
expose the hopeless trap we've locked ourselves into. "The debasement
of the U.S. defense industrial base began, ironically, under Ronald
Reagan, and won't be reversed until we abandon the free-market
fundamentalism he introduced." This is a subject that merits a long
screed, one I have no time or patience for now.
Other stories:
Adam Clark Estes: [07-11]
Why I quit Spotify: Some things to think about, especially as
"Spotify raised its prices in July for the second time in as many
years." As I recall, in the announcement letter they touted all
the extra podcast content the extra money will help them develop.
(They develop things? I've never listened to a podcast there, so
the all money they spent on Joe Rogan -- and on pissing off Neil
Young and Joni Mitchell -- was wasted, as far as I'm concerned).
Bryan Walsh: [07-16]
It's time to stop arguing over the population slowdown and start
adapting to it: "The world population could peak in your
lifetime."
Li Zhou: [07-19]
The "largest IT outage in history," briefly explained: "Airlines,
banks, and hospitals saw computer systems go down because of a
CrowdStrike software glitch." Note that only Microsoft Windows
users were affected ("Mac and Linux users were not affected").
Obituaries
John Otis: [07-24]
Lewis Lapham, editor who revived Harper's magazine, dies at 89:
"He turned Harper's into what he called a 'theater of ideas,'
promoting emerging voices including David Foster Wallace, Christopher
Hitchens and Fareed Zakaria." I only occasionally read Harper's
(and later Lapham's Quarterly), but I've read a couple of his
books, and thought he was a superb political essayist: Theater
of War: In Which the Republican Beocmes an Empire (2003), and
Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush
Administration (2006). I should do a complete book rundown,
but for now I just ordered a copy of his 2017 book,
Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy.
Giovanni Russonello: [07-24]
Toumain Diabaté, Malian master of the kora, is dead at 58:
"He believed that music could transcend national borders set by
colonialism and restore ancient ties, even as it embraced the
changes of a globalizing society."
Alex Williams: [07-19]
Happy Traum, mainstay of the folk music world, dies at 86: "A
noted guitarist and banjo player, he emerged from the same Greenwich
Village folk-revival scene as his friend and sometime collaborator
Bob Dylan."
Books
Zack Beauchamp: [07-17]
Why the far right is surging all over the world: "The 'reactionary
spirit' and the roots of the US authoritarian moment." Excerpt from
a book the author has been working on:
The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political
Tradition Swept the World.
Doug Storm: [2022-09-16]
A crash course in the works of H Bruce Franklin . . . with H Bruce
Franklin. I just read the late cultural historian's memoir,
Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War, which
does a good job of recounting the path of post-WWII militarism
from the red scare into Vietnam, as he discovered it in real time,
and also recounted a much more militant anti-war movement than I
was ever involved in. The book ends rather abruptly after Vietnam,
making me wonder whether he planned a second one, or just figured
his later life just wasn't that interesting. The interview covers
the book, as well as other works, like
Music (and other arts?)
Ian Bogost:
The mid-year best-of list is a travesty: "The worst idea of 2024
so far." And here I was thinking that the worst idea of 2024 was
using AI to select bombing targets on Gaza. Or using drones for
terror bombing around nuclear power plants in Ukraine. Or major
political parties picking two doddering idiots to debate the very
serious issues facing America and the world. The author seems to
have reconciled himself to end-of-year lists: "These annual rundowns
arrive during a period of reflection, when a full year's worth of
human art and industry is about to recede into history." That's an
odd turn of phrase: don't things turn into history the moment they
happen? Whether they recede or not depends on whether they still
have continuing import, or have (like most things) turned into
passing fancies. Even so, one suspects that passing fancies are
precisely what end-of-year lists are meant to recognize.
But it end-of-year lists are ok, what's so bad about mid-year
lists? The time chunks are arbitrary. Smaller ones give us less
material to cover, but you don't have to think back so far, and
when it comes to music albums, it's not like we have a scarcity
problem. My mid-year jazz critics poll (89 voters) identified
468 albums, vs. the full-year 2023 total of 760 (159 votes).
It sounds like he's complaining about the novelty, but I've
been tracking mid-year lists for a decade or more. They're
still not nearly as common as end-of-year lists, but
I've tracked about
35 so far this year, which includes a majority of the music
publications that
Album of the Year follows. As far as I know, nobody's taking
the 6-month time chunk seriously enough to run a second-half list
at end-of-year time, but I have seen movement toward shorter time
periods, with quarterly and even monthly retrospectives.
Paul Schwartzman: [07-11]
Who killed the Kennedys? The Rolling Stones won't tell you anymore.
Songs evolve, sometimes as historical references slip from memory --
"On the Sunny Side of the Street" lives on, but increasingly likely
to substitute for "rich as Rockefeller" -- and sometimes when casual
terms fell out of fashion, as when Louis Armstrong changed "darkies"
to "the folks."
Mid-year best-of lists:
Chatter
Zachary D Carter: [07-25][Response to Matt Stoller: "Democratic
Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman gives $7 million to Harris,
immediately demands she fire FTC Chair Lina Khan."]
Hoffman is a fool, these Silicon Valley gazillionaires don't actually
believe in democracy.
The US economy is great, business is booming, the threat to growth
is Jay Powel refusing to cut interest rates, not Lina Khan enforcing
the law.
Nathan J Robinson: [07-25]
The core problem that Republicans have, and the reason they
struggle to win the popular vote, is that they seem to despise the
majority of people who live in this country.
We hate cat ladies, LGBTQ people, teachers, baristas, union
members, immigrants, the underclass, "DEI," librarians, Hollywood,
welfare moms, civil servants, professors, students, environmental
activists, atheists, Muslims. Am I missing anyone from the list?
ok well your little cult should go form its own country
where you don't have to live with anyone who doesn't share your
theocratic morality
Rick Perlstein: [07-25]:
This video I made of a beautiful nature scene slowly defaced
by the ugliest, most arrogant building this side of Pyongyang: I feel
like it Says Something about Obama, and how history might judge
him.
An arcadian fantasy, then the banal reality.
Terrible at building a bulwark against incipient fascism.
That may become the salient metric, like for James Buchanan or
Neville Chamberlain.
Tikun Olam: [07-25] [Responding to Ami Dar: "Former IDF Chiefs
of Staff and Mossad directors (i.e. just a bunch of antisemitic
leftist traitors) write the Congressional leadership: 'Netanyahu
poses an existential threat to the State of Israel.'"]
- It's amazing how generals and Shin Bet chiefs who performed
horrible crimes during their careers, all of a sudden develop a
moral conscience after they retire.
Actually, there's a movie about this phenomenon. It's called
The Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh, came out in 2012,
featuring interviews with six former Shin Bet heads. These people
rise in the ranks based on their drive to dominate Palestinians,
then when they retire, they realize they've accomplished nothing,
leaving nothing but blown opportunities in their wake. But by
then they've been replaced by younger men eager to proove they
can be even more aggressive.
Rick Perlstein: [07-25]
This links to Jordan Liles: [07-23]
No, JD Vance did not say he had sex with couch cushions: "A false
online ruor about former U.S. President Donald Trump's running mate,
a latex glove and couch cuishions spawned a number of jokes and
memes." I must have heard of
Snopes (a
"fact-checking website," originally set up in 1994 as the Urban
Legends Reference Pages) before, but can't ever recall consulting
it. It is possibly useful for debunking false rumors, but it also
does a nice job of propagating them, and possibly even turning
them into an art form. I can see this as scurrilous, but it can
also be kind of funny. For instance, this page links to six more
stories on Vance:
- JD Vance had middle-class upbringing in 4-bedroom house in
suburban Ohio?
- JD Vance said women should stay in violent marriages?
- Trump mistakenly referred to JD Vance as 'JD Wentworth'?
- JD Vance once called Trump 'America's Hitler'?
- JD Vance's last name means 'bedbug' in Yiddish?
- JD Vance says parents should have bigger say in democracy
than non-parents.
The links are laid out in a grid, reminding me of those
"prove you're not a robot" matrixes, challenging you to pick
which ones are true and which are false. I'm not interested
in playing, but will note that four sound somewhat familiar,
and only one strikes me as implausible.
PS: I also stumbled across
this: "When I get that feeling I want sectional healing . . ."
Initial count: 209 links, 10413 words.
Updated count [07-25]: 228 links, 11635 words.
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
music.
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
July archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 44 albums, 9 A-list
Music: Current count 42668 [42624] rated (+44), 15 [20] unrated (-5).
I put out the call for a
Mid-Year Jazz
Critics Poll back on
June 30, offering a July 14 deadline for ballots, which would
give me a few days to wrap things up before ArtsFuse returns
from vacation on July 17. Sure, I expected a light turnout:
mid-year lists, while increasingly common as click-bait, don't
have the same gravitas as year-end wrap-ups, so fewer voters
would be prepared let alone interested; there are vacations
and other distractions; the voting period was much shorter
than for the year-end poll; and I didn't want to work as hard
at rounding up voters.
(Last year's
159 voters
took a lot of hustle on my part, but in taking the poll over
from Francis Davis, I really wanted to prove that I could do
it, and it was very wearing.) I didn't do any prospecting for
new voters, and hoped that sending a single message to my
Jazzpoll mailing list would do the trick.
It didn't: by last Wednesday, I had only about two dozen
ballots counted, with another dozen promises to vote later,
and a half-dozen polite declines, out of approx. 200 invitees.
I had figured that 50% (let's say 80) ballots would still be
a good showing, and would generate a lot of information. But
25% struck me as way too low. I had reason to suspect that a
big part of the problem was that many messages from my server
were being flagged and sequestered as "spam," especially by
the gmail servers. So I rebooted, and sent a second round of
invitations out to a subset of the list -- the ones I hadn't
heard from, skipping a few who hadn't voted in recent years --
in MailMerge-customized letters from my regular email account
(which has been dicey enough of late). That took many hours
I had wanted to avoid, but got an almost immediate response.
I streamlined the invitation a bit, and extended the deadline
to July 17 (tonight, or effectively tomorrow morning). As of
last night, I had 78 ballots counted, and as I'm writing this
I have 2 more in my inbox, so I'm happy with my 50%.
[PS: By posting time, the count increased to 86.]
I'll need to move on from this to write an essay (intro,
overview, whatever), as well as footnotes on various oddities
and discrepancies in the voting. I've struggled with the essay
the last couple years, so fear I may again. On the other hand,
the data is really extraordinary, so just dive into that. And
every time I do this, I come away even more impressed with
the extraordinary knowledge and exemplary judgment of the
fine people who participate in this Poll. There's nothing we
need more in this increasingly complex and scatter-brained
world than smart people who develop and share their expertise
so that we all may benefit. I'm proud to do my bit, and to
help them do theirs.
I might as well start here and disclose my own ballot:
NEW RELEASES
- Fay Victor, Herbie Nichols SUNG: Life Is Funny That Way (Tao Forms)
- Emmeluth's Amoeba, Nonsense (Moserobie)
- Luke Stewart Silt Trio, Unknown Rivers (Pi)
- Ballister, Smash and Grab (Aerophonic)
- Dave Douglas, Gifts (Greenleaf Music)
- The Core, Roots (Moserobie)
- James Brandon Lewis Quartet, Transfiguration (Intakt)
- Roby Glod-Christian Ramond-Klaus Kugel, No Toxic (Nemu)
- Ivo Perelman Quartet, Water Music (RogueArt)
- Mike Monford, The Cloth I'm Cut From (self-released)
RARA AVIS (REISSUES/ARCHIVAL)
- Sonny Rollins, Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings (Resonance)
- Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy, The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp (1995, Elemental Music)
- Alice Coltrane, The Carnegie Hall Concert (1971, Impulse!)
- Karen Borca Trio Quartet & Quintet, Good News Blues: Live at the Vision Festival 1998 & 2005 (NoBusiness)
- Mars Williams & Hamid Drake, I Know You Are but What Am I (1996, Corbett vs. Dempsey)
As lists go, this feels pretty haphazard and tentative. I keep
an ongoing
ranked list, but don't put much
effort into maintaining it. What usually happens is that once I
decide an album is A-, I scan the list from the top or bottom
(depending on whether it's a real solid A- or a somewhat iffy
one), find something that is roughly comparable, and insert the
new record above or below that reference point. I fiddled with
these a bit, but didn't do much rechecking. Fact is, I never do
much rechecking.
This week's batch of reviews are mostly albums that popped
up on ballots. I wasn't previously aware that the Kenny Barron,
Ivanna Cuesta, Welf Dorr, and [Ahmed] albums existed. Tomeka Reid
was one of those download links I've been sitting on -- I probably
have nearly 100 stashed away, but I'm loathe to do the extra work
when it's so easy to play a promo or stream something -- but it
did well enough I felt obligated to listen to it. (Same for Braxton,
with all 8 hours + 10:36, available on
Bandcamp.) Beger, Borca, and Brötzmann were promo CDs, but
they too can be found complete on
Bandcamp. I learned about the Armstrong from hype mail the
day it became available to stream.
I started to prepare a file with all of my 2024 jazz reviews,
similar to my
2023 best jazz,
but it isn't ready to be presented yet. I'll clean it up if I
decide I want to mention it in my poll essay, or just discard
it until end-of-year. (Once I've started it, it's just another
thing to try to keep updated.) One thing I can note here is that
when I divvied the 2024 file up into jazz and non-jazz sections,
the split among new A/A- records was 52-to-25, with old music
12-to-5. That seems like a lot, given that I wound up with
only 84 for all of 2023 (and 75 for
2022, 77 for
2021, 86 for
2020, 77 for
2019, 67 for
2018, 84 for
2017, 75 for
2016, 81 for
2015, 69 for
2014, 87 for
2014 -- that's
as far as the file series goes back, and the record as far as I can
easily tell. Makes me wonder if I'm going soft in my old age, but
other explanations are possible, including that the Mid-Year Poll
has made me aware of 237 albums I didn't previously have in my
tracking file. Most I haven't
played yet, but the dozens I have gotten to contributed to this
skew.
Given all the extra work on the Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll,
I didn't get around to
Speaking of Which until Saturday, when I started with a
long section on why Biden should withdraw from the Democratic
presidential nomination. This all seems so obvious that it's hard
to fathom the negligence and nonsense of whoever's conspiring to
keep Biden in the race. On the other hand, much else that popped
up in the week's news is hard to fathom. I certainly haven't had
the time to figure it out.
The Trump shooting remains a story I know very little about,
and have very little interest in pursuing, unless it turns out
that my suspicion, as yet purely based on cynicism, that it was
a staged PR ploy, turns out to be valid. (By the way, we've
been watching the old Jane Marple mysteries. In one of them,
the killer creates a blackout, kills someone else, then shoots
herself, nicking the ear, so that when the lights come back on,
she appears to have been the target (and very lucky). The ear
was chosen because it bleeds readily but not seriously. It
also emphasizes the luck involved, because it's generally
very hard to shoot someone's ear without hitting their head.
Of course, there are other ways to fake it, at little risk
to Trump. The whole thing would take skill and timing, which
seems beyond Trump and his cronies, the chances of such a
scheme getting exposed are high, and it's hard to imagine
that even Trump could lie his way out of it. On the other
hand, how gullible is just about everyone involved so far?
So it can't possibly be true, but they're playing it just
like it was scripted. And everyone else seems to be falling
for it.
Hardly any adds to Speaking of Which today: fixed a couple
broken links, some typos. I'll open a file for next week after
Music Week goes up. It'll be lower priority than the Poll, but
good for the occasional break from thrashing on the Poll essay.
I haven't been following the RNC, but I'm sure the people who
have will be able to explain in its all its true horror.
There's also this story: Inae Oh: [07-16]
The DNC's plan to force Biden's nomination is everything people
hate about the DNC. If they go through with this, it won't
have been the first time they gamed the rules to help Biden
escape normal Democratic procedures: derailing the Iowa caucus
and New Hampshire primary, where Biden had performed poorly in
2016, while making South Carolina the first primary, eliminated
the most likely path for someone more credible than Dean Phillips
to challenge Biden, so no one risked it. This would be shabby
in any case, but is especially galling from the people who sell
themselves as the guardians of democracy.
New records reviewed this week:
- أحمد [Ahmed]: Wood Blues (2022 [2024], Astral Spirits): [sp]: A-
- Kenny Barron: Beyond This Place (2024, Artwork): [sp]: A-
- BassDrumBone: Afternoon (2023 [2024], Auricle): [cd]: B+(***)
- Jamie Baum Septet+: What Times Are These (2023 [2024], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(*)
- Albert Beger/Ziv Taubenfeld/Shay Hazan/Hamid Drake: Cosmic Waves (2023 [2024], No Business): [cd]: A-
- Anthony Braxton: 10 Comp (Lorraine) 2022 (2022 [2024], Braxton House): [bc]: B+(*)
- George Cartwright & Bruce Golden: Dilate (2024, self-released): [bc]: B+(*)
- Ivanna Cuesta: A Letter to the Earth (2023 [2024], Orenda): [sp]" A-
- Jeremiah Cymerman: Body of Light (2022-23 [2024], 5049): [sp]: B+(*)
- Welf Dorr/Elias Meister/Dmitry Ishenko/Kenny Wollesen: So Far So Good (2022 [2024], self-released): [bc]: A-
- Edition Redux: Better a Rook Than a Pawn (2023, Audiographic): [bc]: B+(***)
- Bill Frisell: Orchestras (2021-22 [2024], Blue Note): [sp]: B+(**)
- Paul Giallorenzo Trio: Play (2021 [2023, Delmark): [sp]: B+(*)
- Erik Griswold/Chloe Kim/Helen Svoboda: Anatomical Heart (2023 [2024], Earshift Music): [sp]: B+(**)
- Sarah Hanahan: Among Giants (2024, Blue Engine): [sp]: B+(***)
- Simon Hanes: Tsons of Tsunami (2024, Tzadik): [sp]: B+(**)
- Roger Kellaway: Live at Mezzrow (2023 [2024], Cellar Music): [sp]: B+(*)
- Brian Landrus: Plays Ellington & Strayhorn (2023 [2024], Palmetto): [cd]: B+(***)
- Nduduzo Makhathini: Unomkhubulwane (2024, Blue Note): [sp]: B+(***)
- Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel: The Room (2024, Real World): [sp]: B+(**)
- Madeleine Peyroux: Let's Walk (2024, Just One Recording/Thirty Tigers): [sp]: B+(***)
- Tomeka Reid Quartet: 3+3 (2023 [2024], Cuneiform): [dl]: A-
- Michael Shrieve: Drums of Compassion (2024, 7D Media): [sp]: B+(*)
- Harry Skoler: Red Brick Hill (2022 [2024], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(**)
- Something Else! [Featuring Vincent Herring]: Soul Jazz (2024, Smoke Sessions): [sp]: B+(*)
- Gregory Tardy: In His Timing (2023, WJ3): [bc]: B+(*)
- Alan Walker: A Little Too Late (2024, Aunt Mimi's): [cd]: B+(*)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Louis Armstrong: Louis in London (1968 [2024], Verve): [sp]: A-
- Derek Bailey/Sabu Toyozumi: Breath Awareness (1987 [2024], NoBusiness): [cd]: B+(***)
- Karen Borca Trio Quartet & Quintet: Good News Blues: Live at the Vision Festival 1998 & 2005 (1998-2005 [2024], No Business): [cd]: A-
- Peter Brötzmann/Toshinori Kondo/Sabu Toyozumi: Complete Link (2016 [2024], NoBusiness): [cd]: A-
- Nat King Cole: Live at the Blue Note Chicago (1953 [2024], Iconic): [sp]: B+(**)
- The Jazzanians: We Have Waited Too Long (1988 [2024], Ubuntu Music): [sp]: B+(**)
- Charles Mingus: Incarnations (1960 [2024], Candid): [sp]: B+(**)
- Louis Moholo-Moholo: Louis Moholo-Moholo's Viva-La-Black (1988 [2024], Ogun): [bc]: B+(**)
- Septet Matchi-Oul: Terremoto (1971 [2024], Souffle Continu): [sp]: B+(***)
- Sun Ra & His Arkestra: Pink Elephants on Parade (1985-90 [2024], Modern Harmonic): [sp]: B+(***)
- The John Wright Trio: South Side Soul (1960 [2024], Craft): [sp]: B+(**)
Old music:
- Albert Beger: The Primitive (1995, NMC): [sp]: B+(**)
- Albert Beger: lThe Art of the Moment (2000, Third Ear Music): [sp]: B+(*)
- Welf Dorr: Funk Monk 2002 (2002 [2020], self-released): [sp]: B+(*)
- Welf Dorr: Flowers for Albert (2005 [2020], self-released): [sp]: B+(**)
- Welf Dorr Unit: Blood (2014 [2018], Creative Sources): [bc]: B+(*)
- Welf Dorr/Dmitry Ishenko/Joe Hertenstein: Pandemic House Sessions (2020 [2021], self-released): [sp]: B+(***)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Greg Copeland: Empire State (Franklin & Highland, EP) [09-06]
- Ize Trio: The Global Suites (self-released) [08-02]
- Frank Paul Schubert/Michel Pilz/Stefan Scheib/Klaus Kugel: Live at FreeJazz Saar 2019 (Nemu) [05-01]
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll ballot, new albums:
- Fay Victor: Herbie Nichols SUNG: Life Is Funny That Way (Tao Forms, 2CD)
- Emmeluth's Amoeba: Nonsense (Moserobie)
- Luke Stewart Silt Trio: Unknown Rivers (Pi)
- Ballister: Smash and Grab (Aerophonic)
- Dave Douglas: Gifts (Greenleaf Music)
- The Core: Roots (Moserobie)
- James Brandon Lewis Quartet: Transfiguration (Intakt) **
- Romy Glod/Christian Ramond/Klaus Kugel: No ToXiC (Nemu)
- Ivo Perelman Quartet: Water Music (RogueArt) *
- Mike Monford: The Cloth I'm Cut From (self-released)
Old music:
- Sonny Rollins: Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings (Resonance, 3CD)
- Mal Waldron/Steve Lacy: The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp (1995, Elemental Music, 2CD)
- Karen Borca Trio Quartet & Quintet: Good News Blues: Live at the Vision Festival 1998 & 2005 (No Business)
- Mars Williams & Hamid Drake: I Know You Are but What Am I (1996, Corbett vs. Dempsey) **
Daily Log
I made a quick pass at a
Best Jazz Albums of 2024,
thinking that might help me construct a mid-year poll ballot. I
didn't want to put the effort into doing a companion non-jazz file,
but as a side effect, I wound up with the following list of A/A-
non-jazz new releases:
- Heems & Lapgan: Lafandar (Veena Sounds)
- Fox Green: Light Over Darkness (self-released)
- Pet Shop Boys: Nonetheless (Parlophone)
- The Paranoid Style: The Interrogator (Bar/None)
- Beth Gibbons: Lives Outgrown (Domino)
- Kali Uchis: Orquídeas (Geffen)
- Dua Lipa: Radical Optimism (Warner)
- Bill Ryder-Jones: Iechyd Da (Domino)
- Thomas Anderson: Hello, I'm From the Future (Out There)
- Kim Gordon: The Collective (Matador)
- Tierra Whack: World Wide Whack (Interscope)
- Taylor Swift: The Tortured Poets Department (Republic)
- Bob Vylan: Humble as the Sun (Ghost Theatre)
- Willie Nelson: The Border (Legacy)
- Kneecap: Fine Art (Heavenly)
- 1010benja: Ten Total (Three Six Zero)
- Nia Archives: Silence Is Loud (Hijinxx/Island)
- Maggie Rogers: Don't Forget Me (Capitol)
- Madi Diaz: Weird Faith (Anti-)
- Serengeti: KDIV (Othar)
- Kacey Musgraves: Deeper Well (MCA Nashville)
- Leyla McCalla: Sun Without the Heat (Anti-)
- Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft (Interscope)
- Hermanos Gutiérrez: Sonido Cósmico (Easy Eye Sound)
- Sprints: Letter to Self (City Slang)
Also non-jazz reissues/compilations/archival music:
- Franco & O.K. Jazz: Franco Luambo Makiadi Presents Les Editions Populaires (1968-1970) (Planet Ilunga)
- Mixmaster Morris/Jonah Sharp/Haruomi Hosono: Quiet Logic (1998, WRWTFWW)
- Rail Band: Buffet Hotel De La Gare, Bamako (1973, Mississippi)
- Merengue Típico, Nueva Generación! (1960s-70s, Bongo Joe)
- Austin Peralta: Endless Planets [Deluxe Edition] (2011, Brainfeeder)
Meanwhile, the jazz list looks like this:
- Fay Victor: Herbie Nichols SUNG: Life Is Funny That Way (Tao Forms, 2CD)
- Emmeluth's Amoeba: Nonsense (Moserobie)
- Luke Stewart Silt Trio: Unknown Rivers (Pi)
- Ballister: Smash and Grab (Aerophonic)
- Dave Douglas: Gifts (Greenleaf Music)
- The Core: Roots (Moserobie)
- James Brandon Lewis Quartet: Transfiguration (Intakt) **
- Romy Glod/Christian Ramond/Klaus Kugel: No ToXiC (Nemu)
- Ivo Perelman Quartet: Water Music (RogueArt) *
- Mike Monford: The Cloth I'm Cut From (self-released)
- Matt Wilson: Matt Wilson's Good Trouble (Palmetto)
- Advancing on a Wild Pitch: Disasters, Vol. 2 (Hot Cup) **
- Dan Weiss: Even Odds (Cygnus)
- QOW Trio: The Hold Up (Ubuntu Music) **
- Ivo Perelman/Mark Helias/Tom Rainey: Truth Seeker (Fundacja Sluchaj) **>
- Queen Esther: Things Are Looking Up (EL)
- Dave Rempis/Pandelis Karayorgis/Jakob Heinemann/Bill Harris: Truss (Aerophonic/Drift)
- Julia Vari Feat. Negroni's Trio: Somos (Alternative Representa)
- Chris Potter/Brad Mehldau/John Patitucci/Brian Blade: Eagle's Point (Edition) **
- Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble: Open Me, a Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit (Spiritmuse) **
- David Murray Quartet: Francesca (Intakt) **
- Matthew Shipp Trio: New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz (ESP-Disk)
- Amanda Gardier: Auteur: Music Inspired by the Films of Wes Anderson (self-released)
- Four + Six: Four + Six (Jazz Hang)
- Charles Lloyd: The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (Blue Note) **
- Ivanna Cuesta: A Letter to the Earth (Orenda) **
- Idit Shner & Mhondoro: Ngatibatanei [Let Us Unite!] (OA2)
- Jason Stein/Marilyn Crispell/Damon Smith/Adam Shead: Spi-raling Horn (Balance Point Acoustics) **
- Claudio Scolari Project: Intermission (Principal)
- Ivo Perelman/Barry Guy/Ramon Lopez: Interaction (Ibeji Music) **
- Charlie Kohlhase's Explorer's Club: A Second Life (Mandorla Music) **
- John Surman: Words Unspoken (ECM) **
- William Parker/Cooper-Moore/Hamid Drake: Heart Trio (AUM Fidelity)
- Joel Ross: Nublues (Blue Note) **
- Radam Schwartz: Saxophone Quartet Music (Arabesque)
- Tomeka Reid Quartet: 3+3 (Cuneiform) **
- Alfredo Colón: Blood Burden (Out of Your Head)
- Albert Beger/Ziv Taubenfeld/Shay Hazan/Hamid Drake: Cosmic Waves (No Business)
- Welf Dorr/Elias Meister/Dmitry Ishenko/Kenny Wollesen: So Far So Good (self-released) **
- Julieta Eugenio: Stay (Cristalyn)
- Layale Chaker & Sarafand: Radio Afloat (In a Circle)
- Samo Salamon/Vasil Hadzimanov/Ra-Kalam Bob Moses: Dances of Freedom (Samo)
- Nicole Glover: Plays (Savant) **
- Owen Broder: Hodges: Front and Center, Vol. Two (Outside In Music)
- Jason Robinson: Ancestral Numbers (Playscape)
- Beings: There Is a Garden (No Quarter) **
- Maria Faust Jazz Catastrophe: 3rd Mutation: Moth (Bush Flash) **
- Gilbert Holmström: Peak (Moserobie)
- Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet: Four Guitars Live (Palilalia) **
- Ernesto Rodrigues/Bruno Parinha/João Madeira: Into the Wood (Creative Sources)
- Mathias Højgaard Jensen: Is as Is (Fresh Sound New Talent)
- Mercer Hassy Orchestra: Duke's Place (Mercer Hassy)
And for reissues/compilations/archival music:
- Sonny Rollins: Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings (Resonance, 3CD)
- Karen Borca Trio Quartet & Quintet: Good News Blues: Live at the Vision Festival 1998 & 2005 (No Business)
- Mal Waldron/Steve Lacy: The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp (1995, Elemental Music, 2CD)
- Charles Gayle/Milford Graves/William Parker: WEBO (1991, Black Editions Archive) **
- Mars Williams & Hamid Drake: I Know You Are but What Am I (1996, Corbett vs. Dempsey) **
- Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert (1971, Impulse!) **
- Mal Waldron/Terumasa Hino: Reminscent Suite (1973, BBE) **
- Grupo Irakere: Grupo Irakere (1976, Mr. Bongo) **
- Louis Armstrong: Louis in London (1968, Verve) **
- Art Tatum: Jewels in the Treasure Box: The 1953 Chicago Blue Note Jazz Club Recordings (Resonance, 3CD)
- Christer Bothén Featuring Bolon Bata: Trancedance [40th Anniversary Edition] (1984, Black Truffle) **
- Roberto Magris: Love Is Passing Thru: Solo/Duo/Trio/Quartet (2004, JMood)
Monday, July 15, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
Not actually posted until 16-July-2024.
I'm starting this introduction on Tuesday, already two days late,
ignoring for now the new news pouring in, especially from the RNC.
Due to my
Mid-Year Jazz Critics
Poll project, I wasn't able to start until Saturday, at which
point I started with the long introduction to the
Biden section. After that, I scrounged up
a few quick links to seemingly important stories. The alleged Trump
shooting -- I'm not denying it, but I'm not fully buying it either --
had just happened, so I had to spin off a section on that. Monday
the Cannon ruling on the Trump documents case came down, so I had
to note that. If I find out that Hamas and Netanyahu agreed to a
cease fire deal -- I've heard that, but as I'm writing this I haven't
seen any confirmation -- I'll note that too. (But thus far I've been
smart to ignore past rumors of impending agreement.)
A couple days ago, still with Biden very much on my mind, I thought
I'd begin this introduction with a spur-of-the-moment tweet I
posted:
Unsolicited advice to the ruling class: can someone point out to Biden
that being president and running are two different full-time jobs. He
should pick one, like the one we need someone to focus on and do well,
right now. He could set a model we should add to the Constitution.
Looking it up now, I see that it only has 97 views, with 0 replies,
forwards, or likes. It seems like views have been steadily declining,
although the number of followers (640) is about double from a long
plateau about a year ago.
One thing that stimulated my thought was when I saw several folks
pushing a constitutional amendment to impose a maximum age limit on
presidents. (Search doesn't reveal a lot of examples, but
here's one.) I have no time to argue this here, but I've often
worried about the accumulation of arbitrary power in the presidency --
especially war-making power, but there are other issues here -- and
with in the development of a political personality cult (Reagan is
the obvious example, with Trump even more so, but they at least
remained aligned with their party, while Clinton and Obama used
their office to direct their party to their own personal fortunes,
a shift that worked to the detriment of other Democrats).
Banning self-succession (second consecutive terms) wouldn't
fix all of the problems with the presidency, but it would help,
especially in terms of democracy. I won't go into details here,
but there should also be limits on nepotism (spouses, children,
possibly more), and major campaign finance reforms. Whether you
keep the two-term total limit is optional -- eliminating it may
get rid of the often stupid "lame duck" argument. But I also
suspect that people will have little appetite for returning a
non-incumbent ex-president.
One more point: if presidents can't run again, maybe they'll
actually put their political instincts aside and settle into
actually doing their jobs. Trump is the obvious worst-case
example: the first thing he did after inauguration in 2017 was
to file as a candidate for 2020, and he returned to holding
campaign rallies a month or two later. Given how temperamental
his judgment was, we are probably lucky that he turned out to
be so oblivious to actually doing the job, but that's hardly
something we can count on saving us again. Even more competent
presidents were repeatedly distracted by political duties --
ones they were, as a requirement for selection, more interested
in, if not necessarily better at.
At this point, the essential skill sets of campaigners and
administrators have diverged so radically that it's almost
inconceivable that you could find one person for both jobs.
I could imagine a constitutional change where whoever wins the
presidency has to appoint someone else (or maybe a troika) to
run the executive government, while being personally limited
to symbolic public service, like the King of England, or the
President of Israel. But the amendment I proposed above should
be a much easier sell, especially given the mess we're in now.
Fortunately, we don't actually need the amendment this year.
All we need is for Biden to drop out. As I explain below, there
are lots of good reasons for him to do so. This is one more,
and if he grasped it, would be a principled one.
About 10 PM Tuesday, time to call it quits for this week. I may
pick up a few adds while I'm working on the similarly delayed Music
Week, but I expect to be extremely busy on deadline day for the
Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll (up to 78 ballots as I write this). No
doubt I'll have to do a lot of cross-checking next week to keep
from repeating stories. But the big ones, rest assured, will
return, pretty much as they are here, so what's below should
give you a leg up on everyone else.
Top story threads:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
Ellen Cantarow: [07-14]
A cancer on the West Bank: "How the Israeli extreme right has
achieved victory." Essential history, starting with Gush Emunim
and the Alon Plan. If you don't know this stuff, you should.
Tareq S Hajjaj: [07-14]
Testimonies from the Mawasi massacre: 90 people buried in the
sand: "The Israeli army committed another massacre against
displaced Palestinians in tent encampments, this time in the
coastal Mawasi area, which Israel had designated as a 'safe
zone.'"
Haggai Matar: [07-04]
A flawed peace conference offers a radical proposal: hope:
"In a context of fear, hatred, and violence, an Israeli-Palestinian
gathering that seemed detached from reality actually represented
something revolutionary."
Qassam Muaddi: [07-11]
Why the West Bank is on the verge of economic collapse: "The
West Bank's economic crisis and the expansion of Israel's settlements
are connected."
Mahmoud Mushtaha: [07-10]
Israel ordered thousands to 'safe' areas in Gaza City -- them bombed
them: "After fleeing west at the Israeli army's instruction,
Palestinians quickly found themselves encircled and under fire
from tanks, drones, and snipers."
Orly Noy: [07-04]
Only an anti-fascist front can save us from the abyss: "Israeli
society will emerge from this war more violent, nationalist, and
militaristic than ever. The work of curbing its worse impulses
must start now."
Abed Abou Shhadeh: [07-15]
For Palestinian parents, every day of this war provokes existential
anxiety: "In the annihilation of Gaza, we see a vision of our
future as Palestinians inside Israel. So do we cling to our land,
or ensure our children's safety and leave?"
Oren Ziv:
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Israel vs. world opinion:
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: [07-12]
We must understand Israel as a settler-colonial state: I'd go a
bit deeper and say we can only understand Israel if we start
from acknowledging that it is primarily a settler-colonial state.
I'm not saying this because I think "settler-colonial state" means
we should automatically condemn Israel, and especially not to argue
that the only solution is expulsion ("go back where you came from"
just won't do here). But identifying it as such puts Israel into a
conceptual framework that really helps explain the options and
choices that Israeli political leaders made -- many of which do
indeed deserve approbation -- as well as providing a framework to
see some way of ending the conflict on terms that most people can
find agreeable. I would add that among settler-colonial states,
Israel is exceptionally frustrated, which is why it has turned
into such a cauldron of interminable violence.
Marcy Newman: [07-13]
The reluctant memoirist exposes the academy: "At a time when
Palestine activism and free expression at U.S. universities are
under attack, Steven Salaita's new memoir disabuses us of the
notion that these universities are anything other than hedge
funds with a campus."
James North: [07-10]
Israel's leading paper says its own army deliberately killed Israelis
on October 7. But in the US media: silence: "Israel ordered
the 'Hannibal Directive' on October 7 by ordering the killing of
captive Israeli soldiers and civilians. But the U.S. media continues
to hide the truth."
Alice Rothchild: [07-14]
The destruction of healthcare in Gaza and the scientific assessment
of settler colonial violence: "The Jewish Voice for Peace Health
Advisory Council held a distinguished panel of experts that addressed
the settler colonial determinants of health in light of the Gaza
genocide." Following up on these documents:
Philip Weiss: [07-14]
Weekly Briefing: The 'NYT' justifies Israeli slaughter of civilians
as necessary tactic: "The New York Times says Israel has been
'forced' to massacre Palestinian civilians because Hamas militants
hide in bedrooms. The U.S. used such justifications for massacres
in Vietnam."
Trump:
Well, this happened:
[Vox]: [07-14]
Who shot Trump? What we know about the assassination attempt.
[PS: This piece has been updated after I wrote the following, as
more information was released, such as the identities of the
people shot, including the alleged shooter.]
"This is what happened at the Butler rally, as we understand it
right now." As I understand it, shots were fired during a Trump
rally. Trump dropped to the ground. When he appeared again, there
was blood on his face. Secret Service surrounded him, and moved
him off the platform. The people around him jerked when he did,
but afterwards mostly looked confused. He tweeted later that he
had been shot, nicked in the ear. (From his head angle at the
time of the shot, it must have come from the far side -- not from
the crowd, or from the gallery behind him.) Reports are that two
people wound up dead -- one the alleged shooter, and another person,
still unidentified, and two more people were injured. It's not
clear where those people, including the shooter, were, or what the
timing of were. One report says the shots came from an "AR-type"
gun.
I'll link to more pieces as I collect them. But knowing only
what is in here (and having watched the video provided), my first
reaction is that a real assassination attempt like this would be
very hard to pull off, but would be very easy to fake (assuming
you could imagine that anyone involved would be willing to do so,
which with this particular crew isn't inconceivable; still, the
risk of faking it and then getting exposed seems like it should
be pretty extreme). No need to jump to that conclusion, but I'm
pretty sure the "grassy knoll" squad is going to jump all over
this story. More Vox pieces are collected in:
Donald Trump targeted in assassination attempt.
Zack Beauchamp:
Constance Grady: [07-15]
The pure media savvy of Trump's first pump photo, explained by an
expert: "It's his brand now." The interview goes into the making
of other iconic photos, as well as Trump's history of seizing on
moments like this.
Jeet Heer:
[07-13]
In the wake of the Trump shooting, we need clarity -- and caution:
"The best way to fend off conspiracy theories and instability is by
emphasizing the need for solid facts."
[07-14]
Biden condemns political violence without whitewashing Trump:
"The president deftly avoids the trap of surrendering his critique
of MAGA lawlessness."
Murtza Hussain:
Will this make Trump more popular? "Assassination attempts
targeting populist leaders have had a track record of boosting
their popularity."
Sarah Jones: [07-15]
God's strongman.
Ed Kilgore: [07-15]
Trump assassination attempt makes 2024 election more bonkers than
ever: "But will it cinch a victory for him?" Evidently,
"many Republicans are
already saying the bullets that nearly killed Donald Trump have
clinched his return to the White House."
Natasha Lennard:
The only kind of "political violence" all U.S. politicians oppose.
Eric Levitz:
[07-14]
Heated rhetoric is dangerous, but honest disagreement is necessary
for democracy: "Critics are blaming Democratic rhetoric for
Trump's shooting. Here's what they're missing." Subheds: "Biden's
most heated rhetoric about Trump is defensible"; "heated rhetoric
is an inextricable feature of democratic life." Maybe he figures
it's too soon, but sooner or later someone will recall that the
only candidate who's ever called for "2nd amendment people" to
take matters into their own hands is one Donald J. Trump.
[07-14]
Yes, it's still fair to call Trump a threat to democracy: "The
attempt on his life shouldn't cow his critics." Looks like a new
title for the same article.
Stephen Prager: [07-16]
'Political violence' is all around us: "Condemning 'political
violence' rings hollow coming from politicians who are highly
selective in the violence they deplore. We should oppose it
consistently."
Aja Romano: [07-15]
The Trump assassination attempt was a window into America's fractured
reality. I'm not sure whether the subhed is a conclusion or just
a premise: "The shooting wasn't staged, but conspiratorial thinking
has become widespread in our paranoid age." You know, the latter
truism doesn't prove "the shooting wasn't staged." It just suggests
that we shouldn't jump to that conclusion.
Helen Santoro/Lucy Dean Stockton/David Sirota/Joel
Warner:
Pennsylvania GOP fought a ban on the gun used in Trump shooting.
Timothy Messer-Kruse: [07-15]
The myth of the magic bullet: He doesn't weigh in on the Trump
shooting, but takes on the more general idea, that a single bullet
can change history for the better. I rather doubt his assertion
that "there would still be a MAGA movement" without Trump, because
no matter how much fuel of "white resentment" had accumulated, it
still took a spark to set it off, and it's hard to find a leader
with Trump's particular mix of ego and ignorance. But he is right
when he says, "Trump is not a threat to democracy as much as he
is a symbol of its deepening absence."
On Monday, Trump announced his pick for vice president: JD Vance:
Zack Beauchamp: [07-15]
What J.D. Vance really believes: "The dark worldview of Trump's
choice for vice president, explained."
Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would
have carried out Trump's scheme for the vice president to overturn
the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He
once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation
into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about
Trump. After last week's assassination attempt on Trump, he attempted
to whitewash his radicalism by blaming the shooting on Democrats'
rhetoric about democracy without an iota of evidence.
This worldview translates into a very aggressive agenda for a
second Trump presidency. In a podcast interview, Vance said that
Trump should "fire every single mid-level bureaucrat" in the US
government and "replace them with our people." If the courts attempt
to stop this, Vance says, Trump should simply ignore the law.
"You stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say
the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it," he
declares.
Aaron Blake: [07-15]
The risk of J.D. Vance: "Trump went with the MAGA pick. But the
2022 election suggests that might not be the right electoral one."
Jonathan Chait: [07-15]
J.D. Vance joins ticket with man he once called 'America's Hitler':
"Apparently he meant it as a compliment."
Ben Jacobs: [07-15]
J.D. Vance on his MAGA conversion: "Trump's man in Ohio once called
him 'America's Hitler,' but there's an explanation."
Sarah Jones: [07-15]
Hillbilly shapeshifter: "Re-reading J.D. Vance's memoir." This
came out earlier this year, but gets an update for the moment.
Ed Kilgore: [07-15]
J.D. Vance as VP means Trump picks MAGA over 'unity'.
What does "unity" even mean? Trump has complete control. He doesn't
need to compromise with anyone. One might ask why he would pick a
double-crossing weasel, but Trump probably figure he's on top of
that game. Maybe Kilgore is just trying to plug the Intelligencer
liveblog:
So much for 'national unity': RNC live updates. Republicans
don't need "unity": they believe they're the only ones who count,
so they already are "unity" -- now if they can just get rid of
everyone else, they'll be set (and America will be great again,
like it was when the other people didn't count).
Daniel Larison: [07-15]
What will Vance do for Trump's foreign policy? "The Ohio senator's
ideology is hard to nail down as he has vacillated between restraint
and interventionism."
Steve M: [07-15]
J.D. Vance probably hates you more than Trump does: "It is clear
that Vance is an angry, nasty person whose contempt for the people
he doesn't like is bone deep." Also:
Now that Trump has chosen Vance, I expect Democrats to focus on the
mean tweets Vance posted about Trump before he became a Trump fan.
I don't see the point -- politicians (and non-politicians) change
their minds about people all the time. Kamala Harris said harsh
things about Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign. George H.W. Bush
attacked Ronald Reagan's economic ideas in the 1980 campaign. I
think it's more important for voters to know how much contempt
Vance has for everyone who disagrees with him or does things he
doesn't like. I have kids, so he hates me. Maybe he hates you too.
Veronica Riccobene/Helen Santoro/Joel Warner:
J.D. Vance wants police to track people who have abortions.
Ross Rosenfeld:
The scary message Trump sent by choosing J.D. Vance: "The Ohio
senator is a sycophant who will never challenge or question his
boss -- not even to defend American democracy."
Of course, the Trump news doesn't end there.
Sasha Abramsky: [07-14]
A brief history of Trump and violence: "But that can't be allowed
to erase the long, ugly history of Trump's dalliance with violence."
David Atkins: [07-08]
Pay attention to Trump's every cruel and crazy syllable: "All eyes
are on President Biden's words, but Trump is getting meaner and
increasingly bonkers each day."
Let's look at just a few recent examples.
- Trump wants to make poor migrants fight each other for sport.
- Trump wants to ban electric cars because someone in an electric
boat might get eaten by a shark.
- Donald Trump wants to ban all vaccine mandates in schools,
which would include polio, measlesl, etc.
- Trump wants to end meaningful elections in the United States.
- Trump thinks the end of Roe v Wade was "amazing" and brags
that he was "able to kill Roe v. Wade.
Elizabeth Austin: [07-13]
Trump's Democrats-support-infanticide trope is an infuriating lie:
"Republicans like the soon-to-be GOP presidential nominee are mocking
every woman who got that horrible call from the obstetrician and made
the tragic decision to end a hopeless pregnancy."
Christopher Fettweis: [05-15]
Trump's big idea: Deploy assassination teams to Mexico: "His
plan to kill drug kingpins to solve the American opioid crisis
will backfire dramatically."
Chris Lehman: [07 -11]
Donald Trump's new strategy: act normal: "With the opposition in
disarray, Trump and his campaign have begun exhibiting unusual restraint
in hopes of expanding his support."
Clarence Lusane: [07-12]
Who thinks Donald Trump is racist? "Other racists, that's who!"
Nicole Narea: [07-15]
A right-wing judge just threw out a case against Trump in a brazen
abuse of power: "The classified documents case against Trump
hits another major setback before the 2024 election." Why?
In her ruling, Cannon argued that because Smith had not been appointed
a special counsel by the president and confirmed by the Senate, his
appointment violated the Constitution's Appointments Clause. . . .
Cannon's ruling, which relies on a stringent reading of the
Constitution and represents a brazen break with precedent, has
come under
heavy criticism from
legal scholars. Under her ruling, the appointment of prior
special counsels would have also come into question, from Archibald
Cox, who investigated the Watergate scandal that led to President
Richard Nixon's resignation, to Robert Mueller, who investigated
Russian interference in the 2016 election.
I'm sure there will be more on this next week. Well, for now,
this one is worth quoting at length:
Steve M.: [07-15]
The death of America is steady rot:
We think we'll lose democracy and the rule of law suddenly if Donald
Trump becomes president again. We think the edifice will be destroyed
like the Twin Towers on 9/11: the planes hit the buildings, and without
hours they collapsed in on themselves.
But our system is like a house that's rotting room by room. The
foundation has cracks. There are termites. The roof leaks. One room
after another has become uninhabitable.
We've lost the federal courts. The would-be murderers of America
already have the federal bench they need to sustain the horrible
America they want. A second Trump presidency won't really worsen
the federal bench -- it will only fix it in place in its current
form for several more decades. I'm 65, and I'll never live to see
a federal bench that isn't an extremist Republican legislature in
robes.
Through gerrymandering, we lost democracy in many state legislatures
years ago. In states like North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Texas, liberals
and moderates add up to more than 45% of the electorate and have exactly
none of the legislative power, because of gerrymandering. This happened
long before Trump and there were no "Death of Democracy" front-page
headlines.
If Trump wins in November, he and the thugs of Project 2025 might
take a wrecking ball to what's left of the house. But already several
rooms are closed off. It's unsafe to live in them. And even if Trump
loses, or wins and doesn't follow through with the worst ideas his
backers have proposed, many rooms in the house will continue to rot.
A lot of this rot can be traced back to Reagan in the 1980s, when
a brief majority of Americans put sentiment and emotion over reason
and practicality, and ceded power to the people Kurt Anderson called
Evil Geniuses (subtitle: The Unmaking of America: A Recent
History), and for that matter to the conspiracies -- to use a
word we've systematically been trained to abjure -- of the 1970s
that many others have written about (off the top of my head: Rick
Perlstein, Jane Mayer, Max Blumenthal, Kim Phillips-Fein, Laura
Kalman, Nancy McLean, Jeff Madrick). For sure, part of the blame
lies with Democrats, like Carter and Clinton, who thought they
could beat the Republicans at their own game, and some to with
Democrats like Obama and Biden, who chose to play along rather
than rouse the people to defend their rights against relentless
Republican assault.
M's point is absolutely right. Bad choices often take years,
sometimes decades, to manifest themselves. To cite two examples
where the elapsed time was too short to cloud causality, the
distance from Reagan's deregulation of the S&L industry to
its collapse was 6-8 years. The distance from Clinton's repeal
of Carter-Glass and the deregulation of derivatives -- changes
mostly championed by Republicans like Phil Gramm, but Clinton
signed off on them -- was 8-10 years. Longer, more insidious
time frames are even more common. I recall George Brockway
tracing the financial madness circa 2000 back to an obscure
banking law Republicans passed after their fluke congressional
win in 1946 -- the same one that gave us Taft-Hartley, which
had little effect on unionized auto, aircraft, steel, etc.,
workers through the 1960s but led to their collapse from the
1980s on. Similarly, there are blunders from the early Cold
War that still haunt us (like the overthrow of Iran in 1953).
We've been systematically starved of democracy for decades
now: ever since campaigns became media circuses, increasingly
in thrall to the sponsor class. Maybe now that the strangulation
has become so obvious -- the only choice we've been allowed is
between the two least popular, and quite arguably the two least
competent, politicians in America -- we'll finally realize our
need to struggle to breathe free. Or maybe we'll just fucking
die. After all, we're about 90% buried already.
. . . And other Republicans:
Sasha Abramsky: [07-02]
Will Arizona be MAGA's last stand? "Trump needs the state's votes
to win. But after its highest court revived an 1864 law that bans
abortions, all bets are off."
Hassan Ali Kanu: [07-11]
No, Trump and GOP have not 'softened' on abortion, women's rights:
"The language change in their platforms is nakedly dishonest bait and
switch."
Sarah Jones: [07-14]
The authoritarian plot: "At the National Conservatism conference,
Republicans mix with racists ranting about 'post-white America.'"
Steve M: I have a couple more of his posts elsewhere,
but let's go to town here:
[07-13]
First thoughts on the shooting (updated): Starts with his own
prediction tweet: "Every rank-and-file Republican voter believes
this was an assassination attempt ordered by President Biden.
Trump will soon start pouring gasoline on the flames by stating
this as if it's fact." Update shows it's happening even ahead of
Trump's provocation. He does have them well trained.
[07-13]
Project 2025: the gaslighting is well underway.
[07-13]
Fear the all-powerful left! "The fever dreams of the propaganda-addled
crazies at the Heritage Foundation are hilarious."
[07-12]
Are Biden's poll numbers impervious to bad news, like Trump's?
I think the upshot here is that while people may not know what (or
whom) to believe, they've become so wary of being lied to that they
reject any news, probably from any source, leaving them impervious
to change. If you're a journalist/pundit, you may think it's your
job to adjust to new facts, but if you're not, it's just fucking
noise, almost all of which can be discounted.
[07-11]
New York Times editorial: Trump is bad -- but the Republican
Party is awesome! That editorial was titled
Trump is not fit to lead.
Not a single Democrat is cited in this editorial. I understand that
that's the point -- the ed board members, if you asked them about
this, would say, "We're making the point that even Trump's fellow
Republicans know he's unfit" (though no Republican in good standing
dares to say that). But this is also a sign that the Times
ed board agrees with the Republican Party's decades-long campaign
to "other" Democrats. Our political culture accepts the GOP's assertion
that Democrats aren't really Americans.
[07-10]
Dear Democrats: You know people can hear you, right? (updated):
It's been thirteen days since the June 27 debate. On each of those
thirteen days, the top news story in America -- not just in the
monomaniacal New York Times, but everywhere -- has been
"Christ, That Joe Biden Is Really, Really Old. He Can't Possibly
Win. He Has to Step Aside. Has He Done It Yet?" Other stories,
including stories that could have been very damaging to Donald
Trump, were fully or partly buried. And still Democrats can't
muscle Biden out, persuade him to leave the race, or stop talking
about it and get behind him. . . .
I think Democrats believe it's okay for this to play out in
public for two weeks -- two weeks of bad headlines for the man
who now seems certain to be the nominee -- because of a fundamental
misunderstanding of politics that hurts them in other areas as well.
They think this is fine because they think voters pay attention to
politics only in the last couple of months before an election.
That's the reason most Democrats don't bother with messaging unless
it's election season, while Republicans engage in messaging every
day of every year.
I'm not personally super bothered by the protracted process, but
clearly this has given Trump and the Republicans a whole month of
big PR wins, from the June 27 debate all the way through the end
of the RNC, especially as, in response to the shooting incident,
Democrats have wisely decided to pull their ads, and keep their
powder dry. But if the election was next week, this would have
been a total disaster for the Democracy. (Maybe not for the small-d
concept, but that's what they called the Party back in Jackson's
day, and that's what Will Rogers meant when he said he wasn't a
member of an organized political party: he was a democrat.) But
at some point soon-ish, they really have to get the act together
and turn this mess around. I don't see how they can do that without
first jettisoning Biden, who is the indelible personification of
a much greater crisis in democratic faith.
[07-09]
The press doesn't have a "bias toward coherence" -- it has a bias
toward Republicans.
Shawn Musgrave:
Trump's camp says it has nothing to do with Project 2025 manifesto --
aside from writing it.
Timothy Noah:
The GOP platform perfectly reflects the lunacy of Trump's party:
"I read it so you don't have to: It's an unconditional surrender to
the cult of Trump, and its plan to reduce inflation is laughable."
Rick Perlstein: [07-10]
Project 2025 . . . and 1921, and 1973, and 1981: "Terrifying
blueprints for the next Republican presidency are a quadrennial
tradition." Perlstein points out that aside from all the truly
evil stuff you've possibly read about elsewhere, there is also a
lot of confusion and in-fighting going on. For example:
The section about Russia in the State Department chapter -- the
author is an old hand of the High Reaganite wing of the Republican
foreign-policy guild; a "globalist," if you will -- emphasizes that
the Russia-Ukraine conflict "starkly divides conservatives," with
one faction arguing for the "presence of NATO and U.S. troops if
necessary," while the other "denies that U.S. Ukrainian support is
in the national security interest of America at all."
This misunderstanding is important. The silence, so far,
on those parts, indicts us. These are great, big, blinking red
"LOOK AT ME" advertisements of vulnerabilities within the conservative
coalition. Wedge issues. Opportunities to split Republicans at their
most vulnerable joints, much as when Richard Nixon cynically expanded
affirmative action requirements for federal building projects, in
order to seed resentment between blue-collar building trades Democrats
and Black Democrats.
And yes, there is plenty of blunt insanity, too. But, bottom line,
this is a complicated document. "Conservatives in Disarray" is precisely
the opposite message from that conveyed by all the coverage of Project
2025. But it is an important component of this complexity, and why this
text should be picked apart, not panicked over, and studied both for
the catastrophes it portends and the potential it provides.
Andrew Prokop: [07-13]
Project 2025: The myths and the facts: "The sweeping conservative
plan for Trump's second term is very real. Here's what it actually
says."
Prem Thakker:
GOP platform doesn't mention the word "climate" once -- even after
hottest year on record.
Biden
Evidently Biden's age was already an issue in 2008, when Barack
Obama picked him for Vice President. The thinking was that his age
would balance off Obama's youth, that the position would cap off
an already long and distinguished political career, and that he'd
be too old to mount a serious run in 2016, leaving the field open
for Hillary Clinton.
But when Clinton lost to Donald Trump -- let
that sink in for a moment, folks -- Biden convinced himself that
he could have done better, and set out to prove it in 2020. And
he was a flop, his age dulling the charisma he never really had
in the first place, but with Bernie Sanders a year older age
wasn't so much an issue, and with Sanders winning, Biden became
the only credible option to stop him, and the donor wing of the
Democratic Party were desperate to do that.
After derailing Sanders, defeating Trump should have been the
easy part, but somehow Biden managed to make even that look hard
fraught. He won, but not decisively enough to lead Congress, or
to squelch Trump's big lie about a rigged/stolen election. Trump
has, if anything, loomed larger in American politics than Biden,
even as president, could do. While that is testimony to several
alarming tendencies in public opinion -- and media that both
panders to and cashes in on controversy -- one cannot help but
suspect that Biden's age is part of the problem.
At any rate, it's the part that people focus on once they
realize that there is a problem that it could plausibly explain.
They do that because it's tangible, something they have lots of
experience with or at least observing. It's also something you
can base expectations on, because it's inevitably progressive:
if age seems to be a problem now, you can only expect it to get
worse. Many Democrats, especially one who have closely bound
their careers to Biden, have worked hard to hide evidence and
deflect discussion of Biden's age -- even from Biden himself.
But once you see it, as most people did in his June 27 debate
with Trump, it's hard to revert to denialism. It's like the
zit you never noticed, then found you can't avert your eyes
from. Pretty soon you wind up with the Emperor's New Clothes.
As the following links will show, Democrats are divided: Biden
and his closest allies still think that if they hold firm, he can
ride the story cycle out, and by November refocus the campaign on
beating back the immense threat of a Trump win; many others are
skeptical and/or worried sick; a few actually see that replacing
Biden with a younger, more dynamic, and hopefully much sharper
candidate -- Harris seems to fill that bill, and is well-placed
to step in, but there could be dozens of good options -- opens up
an opportunity to not just eke out a win in November but deliver
a crushing blow to Trump and his crony fascists.
As I've probably made clear over the last couple weeks, I'm
skeptical, but also in the latter camp. I'm not really capable
of the sort of despair that sees Biden, even as decrepit as he
obviously is, losing to Trump -- despair in the future tense,
as anticipation of a horrible turn of events, something very
different from the sickening feeling when such events happen
(as I remember all too well from November 2016). That part is
just faith, still intact even if waiting to be shattered.
But my skepticism takes many forms. The one I'm most certain
of is that if Biden remains in the race, he will commit a fair
number of age-related gaffes and blunders, maybe including what
wouldn't be his first fall, and that every time he does, his age
will return as the paramount media obsession, shifting attention
from the real and present threat of Trump. I don't know how many
votes that will cost Biden, but it is a risk, and also a major
opportunity cost. We need Democrats to win not just to stop
Trump and shore up the somewhat liberal wing of the militarist
oligarchy that Biden aligns with, but to actually address real
problems, helping an overwhelming majority of Americans through
very troubling times.
Another form of skepticism is suggested by my rather sour turn
of phrase in that last line. I gravitated toward the new left in
the late 1960s, and since then I've been as acutely critical of
the Democratic Party as I've been of the Republicans, even as I've
most often voted for Democrats, figuring them to be not just lesser
evils but occasionally good for modest reforms. Either is reason
enough to vote Democratic. (It's not like your vote is good for
much else.) But if you're on the left (or anywhere else excluded
from access to power), you might also consider voting a tactical
choice: you're going to spend the next four years in opposition
anyway, but which issues would you rather protest against? Biden,
or any other Democrat with a chance, will leave you plenty to
argue against.
One thing I can say about age is that it mellows you out. My
critical analysis is as radical (in the sense I originally got
from a 1966 book titled
The New
Radicals) as ever, but my appetite for conflict has really
dimmed, and I'm willing to appreciate almost any tad of ameliorative
reform. I chalk much of my personal change up to aging, and I suspect
similar things happen to most people, including politicians like
Biden. As I've noticed, Biden is the only president in my lifetime
who turned out better than I expected (well, until Gaza, which is
hard to excuse). Part of that is that he came in with really low
expectations. Part of it may be that he's old enough to remember
the pre-Carter, pre-Reagan, pre-Clinton Democrats -- even though
he seemed totally simpatico with them, you know how old people
lose recent memories before they lose formative ones? There's no
one else like him in the Democratic Party these days. (Sanders
is old enough, but never was that kind of Democrat. He was much
better, which is why he remains so much sharper.) I do worry that
whoever replaces Biden will be just another neoliberal shill. But
even where Biden's heart is in the right place -- and, let's face
it, it isn't always -- he's lost his ability to persuade, to lead,
and to listen.
So my considered view is that we need to move him out, and start
working on viable future. Even if Biden sticks and wins -- and I'll
vote for him, despite thinking he really belongs in a Hague Court --
he's only going to get older, more decrepit, less credible, more
embarrassing, and less effective as he struggles to hang on past
his 86th birthday. And if he dies, resigns, or has to be removed,
his replacement will enter with a much reduced mandate. Dump him
now, elect his replacement, elect a Congress that's willing to do
things, and the next four years will start looking up.
I guess that's more of an editorial than an introduction. I
wrote it before collecting the following links:
Intelligencer: [07-09]
Biden resistance appears to be waning in Congress: For a brief
period, this publication seemed convinced that Biden is persevering
in his fight to stay atop the Democratic Party ticket.
Sasha Abramsky: [07-10]
An open letter to the president of the United States: "There are
worse things in life than a comfortable retirement."
Michael Arria: [07-09]
Biden was already a vulnerable candidate because of the genocide:
"Biden was already plummeting in the polls before his disastrous
presidential debate with Trump. The reason was his ongoing complicity
in the Gaza genocide and the Uncommitted movement."
David Atkins: [07-11]
I'm a DNC member and a public opinion professional. It's highly unlikely
Biden can win: "Only one person can build on the administration's
accomplishments, have unfettered access to funds and ballot lines,
and do so without wasting precious time. Her name is Kamala Harris."
Another long-time, major Biden apologist breaks ranks.
Rachel Bade/Eugene Daniels/Ryan Lizza: [07-11]
Playbook: What Obama and Pelosi are doing about Biden. Report
here is that George Clooney showed his op-ed to Obama before he
ran it, and did not receive any objection. "Obama's team declined
to comment." Pelosi seems to be maneuvering behind the scenes, but
"out of respect for Biden and national security writ large" thought
he should hang on through the NATO summit. Now (my thinking here),
with the shooting, it would make sense to wait until after the RNC
shuts down.
Joseph Contreras: [07-06]
What Joe Biden could learn from Nelson Mandela about knowing when
to quit: "Unlike the beleaguered U.S. president, the South
African leader did not want to be an 81-year-old head of state
and served only one term."
Keren Landman: [07-11]
The controversy over Biden and Parkin's disease, explained.
Eric Levitz:
Andrew Prokop:
[07-09]
Is it undemocratic to replace Biden on the ticket? "Biden says
the primary voters picked him. Is there more to democracy than that?"
What kind of democracy was that? Practically nobody ran against Biden
in 2024 because the campaign finance system lets donors pick who can
run, and they didn't dare cross Biden -- especially after Democrats
canceled Iowa and New Hampshire, which historically have been wide
open and have a history of upsets, and which Biden lost badly in
2020, in favor of running South Carolina first, the sourc of Biden's
breakthrough win in 2020.
[07-11]
What Biden's news conference did, and didn't, clear up: "The
presser went fine. But the Democratic defections continued."
[07-14]
Will Trump's shooting change everything? Or surprisingly little?
"Two theories on the political impact of the Trump assassination
attempt." The Trump campaign will try to spin this in to a big deal,
blaming it all on the left and championing Trump as a life-risking
fighter for true Americans, who want nothing more than to make their
beleaguered nation great again. But it doesn't change the issues,
or stakes, one iota.
[07-15]
Did Trump's shooting save Biden's nomination? "Democratic defections
have slowed, but Biden isn't out of the woods yet." Perhaps I should
re-read this more carefully, but on first scan, absolutely nothing
in this piece makes any sense to me.
Kaleigh Rogers: [07-12]
Americans were worried about Biden's age long before the debate.
Background from the poll-watchers at 538, who also produced:
Nathaniel Rakich: [07-10]
What the Democrats doubting Biden have in common: "They're more
moderate, while his backers are progressive and racially diverse."
Tommy Barone: [07-11]
4 reasons to beware of post-debate polling takes: "Biden's lost
some ground, but it's hard to say much more."
Luke Savage: [07-12]
The Biden problem has been years in the making: "As concerns
mount over Biden, the Democratic Party reminds us this isn't a
democracy."
Bill Scher:
[07-05]
I've defended Biden for years. Now, I'm asking him to withdraw:
"After waiting too long to reassure the public of his mental fitness,
the president is sinking in the polls with little hope for recovery.
But he can resign with grace and make history." Scher has long struck
me as the most diehard Biden apologist in the Washington punditocracy,
and indeed he was one of the few to have reserved hope after the
debate (see:
A wasted opportunity for Biden (but still time for redemption)).
So this appears as a significant retreat. And he's followed with:
[07-09]
How Kamala can win (without mini-primary madness).
[07-12]
Wilson didn't resign. The world suffered. Biden need not repeat that
mistake: "Wilson hid an incapacitating stroke from the public
and fatally compromised his mission to establish a functional League
of Nations. Once again, global peace and democracy precariously rely
on a president reluctant to face a personal health crisis." Well,
that's another whole can of worms, and while it's always fun to
argue about Wilson, his case is really not relevant here. I will
say that Wilson was a very complex but tragically flawed character,
often invoked in arguments that reduce him to caricature. My own
argument is that his failure to sell Americans on the League of
Nations -- which was evident before his stroke took him out of
action -- had no real bearing on the coming of WWII, but his
failures at Versailles did (as Britain and France cast aside his
anti-imperialism and insisted on punitive reparations over his
better sense).
Jeffrey St. Clair:
[07-12]
Running on empty: Very good coverage on Hurricane Beryl here,
but this is mostly on Biden, starting with a
Chris Hayes quote: "Biden is a decent man who has done nothing
wrong. He has not got caught in a scandal -- he's just aging." To
which St. Clair responds: "The real scandal is that liberals don't
see arming a genocide as a scandal." I'm inclined to compartmentalize
and see opposing Netanyahu's genocide in Gaza and opposing Trump in
America as both critically important but separable matters, and I'm
even willing to cut Biden some slack, as he is a potential solution
to both -- although in the latter he's mostly proven hapless, in the
former, which is something he could do something about on his own,
he's drifted into criminal negligence. But clearly Hayes misspoke,
and he, at least, should have known better. We've seen many attempts
to use flattery to tempt Biden to quit (e.g.,
George Clooney,
Thomas Friedman,
Paul Krugman,
David Remnick,
Matthew Yglesias), but it hasn't worked, and it's hard to see
why it would. This seems more like the time for brutal honesty.
If you must, sugar-coat it as tough love, but save the huzzahs
for after he does "the right thing."
[07-15]
Big Boy Biden in his own words: He starts by quoting some of
the praised heaped on Biden for his press conference performance,
like Andrew Bates: "To answer the question on everyone's minds:
No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs. He's
just that fucking good." That leaves St. Clair wondering:
After hearing these encomia, I had to check myself. This is Joe
Biden they're talking about, right? The same Joe Biden who voted
for the Iraq War, the most disastrous foreign policy debacle in
US history? The same Joe Biden who backed the overthrow of Qaddafi,
turning Libya into an anarchic war zone dominated by slave trading
gangs? The same Joe Biden who provoked and now refuses to seek an
end to a bloody, stalemated war in Ukraine? The same Joe Biden who
has continued Trump's Cuban embargo and tariffs on China? The same
Biden who has spent the last 3.5 years pandering to the bone-sawing
Saudi regime he called a "pariah" state during his 2020 campaign?
The same Biden who refused to renegotiate a nuclear agreement with
Iran? The same Biden who has armed a genocide in Gaza that may end
up claiming over 200,000 Palestinian lives? The same Biden who could
barely string together two complete sentences a couple of weeks ago?
Adding, "An unlikely transformation, IMHO." So then he reads the
White House transcript, and quotes it liberally, although his best
line is in his introduction: "Biden's answers reminded me of some
of Samuel Beckett's later works exploring the thought patterns of
a decaying mind."
Alexander Stille:
We learned everything we needed to know about Biden in 1988: "His
stubborn refusal to heed wise advice, and bottomless belief in his own
greatness, were on display in his first campaign for president."
Michael Tomasky: [07-12]
Democrats: "He was better than the debate" is not remotely good
enough: "In Trump world, they're thinking landslide. Democrats
need to act and talk Biden into stepping aside, and soon."
p>Cenk Uygur: [07-11]
Biden will not be the nominee: "The Young Turks host has long
predicted Biden's campaign would implode. He explains why it wasn't
obvious to everyone, and predicts what will happen next." Nathan
J Robinson interviews him.
And other Democrats:
Legal matters and other crimes:
Climate and environment:
Economic matters:
Ukraine War and Russia:
America's empire and the world:
Bob Dreyfuss: [07-09]
A surprise win by an Iranian reformist. Masoud Pezeshkian,
regarded as a moderate, won Iran's election to become president
after Ebrahim Raisi's recent death.
Also on Iran:
Anatol Lieven: [07-08]
This week, NATO III celebrates itself: "As thousands descend on
Washington for an anniversary summit, we posit that the alliance is
broken and sleepwalking into war." Also on NATO:
Other stories:
Zack Beauchamp: [07-10]
What the world can learn from Indian liberalism: "The intellectual
Pratap Bhanu Mehta explains how liberalism grew out of 3,000 years of
Indian history."
Roger Kerson: [07-09]
You think this year's presidential conventions will be crazy? 1924's
fights over the Ku Klux Klan were wilder.
Katie Miles: [07-08]
"She usually won." Remembering Jane McAlevey, 1964-2024.
Also:
Initial count: 146 links, 9355 words.
Updated count [07-16]: 193 links, 9436 words.
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
Biden.
Friday, July 12, 2024
Daily Log
I've written about this in the blog, but decided to reduce it to a
twitter point:
Unsolicited advice to the ruling class: can someone point out to Biden
that being president and running are two different full-time jobs. He
should pick one, like the one we need someone to focus on and do well,
right now. He could set a model we should add to the Constitution.
Some interaction with Phil Overeem following my B review of Sun Ra's
Excelsior Mill, which he had named in his mid-year jazz ballot:
Phil: Trust me and not Tom on Sun Ra's EXCELSIOR
MILL. Just kidding, because it truly ain't for everyone, but it IS for
some of you, I promise! Phantom of the Opera + Garth + Space
Exploration + plus a crafty dude with over a half century of keyboard
in his fingers.
Me: As Ronald Reagan liked to say, "trust, but verify."
Phil: Tom, subjective verification is tricky business, but
to me that just means, TRY IT! Loving it, though, doesn't make me
right and you wrong, obviously! That's all I am saying: put your ear
to it. But concentrate and don't be playing with your phone
Me: I did try it, on your recommendation, and thanks for
that. I gave it as much concentration as seemed necessary, which is
just the way I work. I find more good albums that way than anyone
needs, so I don't mind it much when I reject something someone else
treasures. That happens all the time. Surely no one thinks that I
think that they should think what I think. That would make this kind
of work impossible. Nor am I dismissing the suggestion that more
concentration might make a difference. I discovered that quite
memorably long ago with a record called "Hirth From Earth" (too late
to review it for Christgau, who usually focuses much better than I do
but let it go with a B+; I did write about his second album). But it's
impossible, at least for me, to sustain that degree of focus, so often
I allow myself to be satisfied with fleeting impressions. I thought I
heard enough to appreciate but not recommend it. But it's certainly
plausible that there's more to it.
I was tempted to point out that I never play with my phone, but
then I realized I do lots of other things on my computer while I'm
listening to records I'm reviewing.
Tuesday, July 09, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
July archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 42 albums, 5 A-list
Music: Current count 42624 [42580] rated (+42), 20 [29] unrated (-9).
Some updates, although at this point [07-12] I might as well start
working on next week's posts. I added a fair amount to extras I
already added to the latest
Speaking of Which: most tweets on Biden's probable withdrawal,
plus a couple similar pieces including the
George Clooney op-ed. I also added links to the Michael Tatum
and Robert Christgau Consumer Guides, which are probably of more
interest here:
Michael Tatum: [07-09]
A downloader's diary (53): Much more than capsule reviews,
major takes on Beyoncé, Nia Archives, Zawose Queens, Carly Pearce,
Fox Green, and much more. Pearce and Fox Green also appear here:
Robert Christgau: [07-10]
Consumer Guide: July, 2024: Also a rare jazz album, Jason Moran's
From the Dancehall to the Battlefield, which was runner-up in
The Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: 2023, despite being a
self-release with little publicity.
I have a bit more information on the Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll,
but that probably deserves a separate post, which I'm not up to at
the moment. The most pressing matter is that response has been light,
and I suspect that a bit part of that is due to email problems. As
frequent readers may recall, I've been plagued by them for months
and possibly years. I tried coming up with workaround strategies,
one of which has been completely ineffective: which was to ask
people to forward invites, and suggest a willingness to accept
unsolicited invites. The only thing I got there was an offer by
a long-time virtual friend, who is not really a credentialed
critic but whose opinion I value highly, to submit a list.
In a
moment of weakness (or possible insanity), I offered to publish
his list, and more like it if anyone bothers to submit them.
So if you can imagine drawing up a credible list of up to 10
2024 jazz albums and up to 5 2024 archival jazz albums, take
a look at the
Non-Critic Ballot Invitation, and follow instructions.
Those ballots won't figure into official totals, and counting
them isn't a priority for me, but I will eventually publish
all I receive, and I wouldn't be surprised if, as lists go,
your batch winds up being as credible as the ones submitted
by the pros. I will be surprised if they wind up being
representative of jazz fandom, because I'm doing virtually
nothing to promote this, and if you can only read about it
here, you're in a very small minority (and I'll be lucky to
get ten ballots).
The links below to the
Poll Website are still valid, and now point to somewhat more
substantial information. On last update, I had 25 ballots. I'm
resending the invitations -- a slow and painstaking process --
hoping to avoid spam traps and get some more responses. I will
say that the data I have, though sparse, is really terrific stuff.
It's a cliché in compiling these lists to say "this is a really
great year," but when all is said and done, you'll see for yourself.
Delayed until Tuesday again, because
Speaking of Which took all of Monday, itself being pushed out by
the seemingly futile notion that I could add a few
Afterthoughts to the previous week's massive
Speaking of Which.
Seems like I could wind up delaying this post a second day,
as it's already late as I'm writing this. Most of Tuesday got
chewed up writing two long comments relating to the Biden
nomination: one on a
Matthew Yglesias post, the other an expansion of my
Afterthoughts comment. None of this even mentions the seemingly
important (if true) Ben Jacobs: [07-09]
How the Democratic movement to dump Biden went bust.
Or Nia Prater: [07-09]
Why is the Squad backing Biden so forcefully? As Yglesias
explained in his piece, the calculation for Democratic politicians
is different than the one for journalists and pundits. New York
Magazine, which published a number of pieces extremely critical of
Biden (probably all op. cit. through my links above) has gotten so
into circling the wagons, they've gone into live blog mode:
Biden resistance appears to be waning in Congress. On the other
hand, Eric Levitz: [07-09] is back with another piece:
The arguments for Biden 2024 keep getting worse.
Definitely no Afterthoughts this week, and I'm going to be hard
pressed to do a Speaking of Which by Sunday or Monday. Most pressing
thing after getting this up will be to follow up on the
Mid-Year Jazz Critics
Poll. Deadline remains Sunday, July 14. I've received 18 ballots
so far, referencing a total of 177 albums. About 50% of those albums
were not previously in my
tracking file, so I've been using
them for prospecting (three of the five A- albums this week came
from ballots; the other two are promos I received, with no votes
so far).
Probably the most important thing I need to do is to compare the
Jazzpoll mailing list, which is where I sent the invites, to the
more authoritative list I made last year of people I actually sent
invites to, especially the ones I voted. At some point I stopped
automatically adding names to the Jazzpoll list, so chances are
that a couple dozen people who should have been invited weren't.
I'm also worried about invites being diverted into spam folders --
I know of at least two such cases, both with gmail. If I had the
time and energy, I would follow up, but it's a lot of work. I also
need to go back and review some couple emails I received after last
year's poll -- a couple offers of help, at least one person who
asked to be invited (and should be).
To make up for these shortcomings in the invitation process, I
asked people to inform and possibly invite their colleagues. Thus
far I haven't received any takers, or for that matter inquiries.
The only evidence I have is that some spam has started getting
caught there. Not a lot, and none of it's getting through, but
it's one more thing to deal with.
At this moment, the
website is a bit
behind my local copy, but I will refresh it a couple times this week.
I need to edit several documentation files, and change the methodology
notes in the totals files. The main things of possible public interest
are the
invitation,
the list of
critics
who have voted, and the list of
new
releases and
rara
avis that have received votes. The actual results won't be
public until ArtsFuse publishes them.
I've had very little time for updating my
metacritic file, but I
have added the mid-year lists I've been noting in the Speaking of
Which music section, so there's been a bit of movement. File still
needs a lot of work. I did, by the way, start counting all of the
metal magazines at AOTY (but I've yet to go back and fill in the
ones I skipped earlier). I wish their coverage of jazz, hip-hop,
electronica, and country was as deep as their interest in metal,
but it isn't. I haven't gotten around to sources like All About
Jazz, Saving Country Music, and Hip Hop Golden Age, which would
help remedy those deficits. No time, and not much energy these
days. Also, I can barely see, so if I don't post this right away,
it won't make it tonight.
PS: Facebook blocked me, so I may give that a rest.
New records reviewed this week:
- BbyMutha: Sleep Paralysis (2024, True Panther): [sp]: B+(**)
- Beings: There Is a Garden (2024, No Quarter): [sp]: A-
- Chris Byars: Boptics (2023 [2024], SteepleChase): [sp]: B+(**)
- Kim Cass: Levs (2023 [2024], Pi): [cd]: B+(***)
- Ernesto Cervini's Turboprop: A Canadian Songbook (2022 [2024], Three Pines): [bc]: B+(***)
- Coco Chatru Quartet: Future (2024, Trygger Music): [lp]: B+(***)
- Alfredo Colón: Blood Burden (2023 [2024], Out of Your Head): [cd]: A-
- GloRilla: Ehhthang Ehhthang (2024, CMG/Interscope): [sp]: B+(***)
- Conrad Herwig: The Latin Side of McCoy Tyner (2023 [2024], Savant): [sp]: B+(**)
- Janel & Anthony: New Moon in the Evil Age (2024, Cuneiform): [cdr]: B+(**)
- Mathias Højgaard Jensen: Is as Is (2022 [2024], Fresh Sound New Talent): [cd]: A-
- Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O: True Story (2020-21 [2024], New Soil/Mushroom Hour): [sp]: B+(**)
- Alex Kautz: Where We Begin (2024, Sunnyside): [cd]: B+(*)
- Cassie Kinoshi's SEED.: Gratitude (2023 [2024], International Anthem): [sp]: B+(*)
- Charlie Kohlhase's Explorer's Club: A Second Life (2022 [2024], Mandorla Music): [sp]: A-
- Janel Leppin: Ensemble Volcanic Ash: To March Is to Love (2023 [2024], Cuneiform): [cdr]: B+(***)
- Frank London/The Elders: Spirit Stronger Than Blood (2023 [2024], ESP-Disk): [cd]: B+(***)
- Megan Thee Stallion: Megan (2024, Hot Girl): [sp]: B+(***)
- Che Noir: The Color Chocolate, Volume 1 (2024, Poetic Movement, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
- Clarence Penn: Behind the Voice (2024, Origin): [cd]: B+(*)
- Ken Peplowski: Unheard Bird (2024, Arbors): [sp]: B-
- Ken Peplowski: Live at Mezzrow [Smalls Live Living Masters Series] (2023 [2024], Cellar Music): [sp]: B+(***)
- Carla Santana/José Lencastre/Maria do Mar/Gonçalo Almeida: Defiant Ilussion (2023 [2024], A New Wave of Jazz): [bc]: B+(***)
- Dirk Serries/Rodrigo Amado/Andrew Lisle: The Invisible (2021 [2024], Klanggalerie): [bc]: B+(***)
- Matthew Shipp: The Data (2021 [2024], RogueArt): [cdr]: B+(***)
- TV Smith: Handwriting (2024, JKP/Easy Action): [sp]: B+(***)
- Anthony Stanco: Stanco's Time (2023 [2024], OA2): [cd]: B+(**)
- TiaCorine: Almost There (2024, South Scope/Interscope, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
- Ryan Truesdell: Synthesis: The String Quartet Sessions (2022-23 [2024], ArtistShare, 3CD): [cdr]: B+(**)
- Steve Turre: Sanyas (2023 [2024], Smoke Sessions): [sp]: B+(***)
- Lisa Ullén: Heirloom (2023 [2024], Fönstret): [bc]: B+(**)
- Jack Walrath: Live at Smalls (2023 [2024], Cellar Music): [sp]: B+(***)
- Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Fu##in' Up (2023 [2024], Reprise): [r]: B+(***)
- Denny Zeitlin: Panoply (2012-23 [2024], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(**)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Christer Bothén Featuring Bolon Bata: Trancedance [40th Anniversary Edition] (1984 [2024], Black Truffle): [bc] A-
- Johnny Griffin Quartet: Live in Valencia 92 [The Jordi Suñol Archives 3] (1992 [2024], Storyville): [sp]: B+(***)
- Shelly Manne & His Men: Jazz From the Pacific Northwest (1958-66 [2024], Reel to Real): [sp]: B+(**)
- Brother Jack McDuff: Ain't No Sunshine: Live in Seattle (1972 [2024], Reel to Real): [sp]: B+(*)
- Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre: Live From Studio Rivbea: July 12, 1975 [Rivbea Live! Series, Volume 1] (1975 [2024], No Business): [cd]: B+(***)
- Sun Ra: Excelsior Mill (1984 [2024], Sundazed/Modern Harmonic): [sp]: B
Old music:
- Christer Bothén Trio: Triolos (2003-04 [2006], LJ): [sp]: B+(**)
- Ernesto Cervini: Joy (2021 [2022], Three Pines): [sp]: B+(**)
- Maurice McIntyre: Humility in the Light of the Creator (1969, Delmark): [sp]: B+(***)
- Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre: Forces and Feelings (1970 [1972], Delmark): [r]: B+(**)
- Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre Quartet: Peace and Blessings (1979, Black Saint): [sp]: B+(**)
- Jack Walrath Quintet: In Europe (1982 [1983], SteepleChase): [sp]: B+(*)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Robby Ameen: Live at the Poster Museum (Origin) [07-26]
- BassDrumBone: Afternoon (Auricle) [06-24]
- Mai-Liis: Kaleidoscope (OA2) [07-26]
Daily Log
I wrote this in a letter to a musician who sent me a notice about
some future albums. The notice included an offer to send CDs. Rather
than a simply reply, I went into some detail about how I work. At
the time, I thought I might include it in Music Week, but as the
evening came to a close, I figured it might be best just to move
it aside, perhaps to return to later.
Just a few notes on how I work: The lag time between when I write
about something and when I post it is one week or less. I don't like
reviewing things that aren't available yet, so I keep my promo CDs
sorted by release date, and usually hold them until they're
released. However, if I do accidentally play an album before its
release date, I'll go ahead and publish the review. Everything I
receive on CD gets some kind of review (which may just be a
grade).
I keep the promo literature with the CDs until I review them, after
which I throw it away. In any case, I look up some background on the
internet. There are certain pieces of information I like to have, like
recording dates (Penguin Guide prefers them over release dates; I
track both).
I can play LPs, but CDs are easier for me to manage, so I prefer
them.
As the number of promo CDs I receive, I've turned to streaming
sources for most of the records I review. I subscribe to Napster and
Spotify, and will use Bandcamp (and sometimes YouTube) where full
albums are available. I've used a couple other platforms on occasion,
but don't look for them. The main frustration there is finding
background information, so it helps if that's readily available.
I get a fair number of download links from publicists. I almost
never act on them immediately: many are advances, many are on labels
that will eventually be available through streaming, and some I just
don't care about. The ones I think I might eventually be interested in
get moved into a "Downloads" directory. I may eventually go back there
to look for things I wasn't able to review from CD or streaming but am
still interested in. That doesn't happen often, and it may be well
after release date. Downloads are a lot more work for me than
streaming, so I treat them as a last resort (even knowing that they
often have better sound; I put little emphasis on sound quality, but
don't doubt that it has a subliminal effect).
So at present, it's safe to say that I act on fewer than 10% of the
downloads I'm offered. I can imagine things I could do to make better
use of this resource. I could, for starters, keep a log file of all of
my download offers (searchable by artist, title, label, and date), so
I could could more easily look them up, and quickly see what I do have
available. I could also find (or less likely, write) a program to
manage the things I have downloaded. I know that other people use
things like iTunes for that, and I gather that some of them are happy
enough with their choices that they actually prefer downloads (or so I
hear from corner-cutting publicists), but I've never found one I
liked. (Suggestions welcome. In principle, having a digital store of
items I can't readily stream would be a nice thing to have.) I'll also
note that I've never mastered the art of burning CDs from my download
files, which would be an alternative way of storing them.
Monday, July 08, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
Daily Log
I got the following message from FacebooK:
You're Temporarily Blocked
It looks like you were misusing this feature by going too fast.
You've been temporarily blocked from using it.
If you think this doesn't go against our Community Standards
let usk now.
I clicked on "let us know" and sent a message to the effect that
I don't have any idea what they're talking about. I looked up a
Help Center page on "Why you may be blocked from using features on
Facebook. It listed three possible reasons for "why you may be
blocked." It's hard to see how any apply ("something you posted
or shared seems suspicious or abusive"; "messages or friend
requests you sent were marked unwelcome"; "you've done something
that doesn't follow our Community Standards"). I think I've made
two posts in the last week: one Music Week announcement to "Expert
Witness," the other a food pic.
Upon reflection, the "going too fast" message might have been
triggered because I rebooted and restarted Firefox, restoring my
session with a half-dozen Facebook tabs open. Each would have to
reload automatically, so it could seem like multiple new page
requests occurring at robotic speeds (perhaps if most of the
pages are stale, which can happen with Facebook; most of the
time Firefox reloads pages from cache).
If I click OK on the blocked message, I can see the page.
First time I tried that and tried reloading the page, I got
another blocked message, but second time it worked, so maybe
the block has been cleared.
Saturday, July 06, 2024
Speaking of Which: Afterthoughts
Blog link.
Wednesday, July 03, 2024
Music Week
Expanded blog post,
July archive
(in progress).
Tweet: Music Week: 31 albums, 3 A-list
Music: Current count 42580 [42549] rated (+31), 29 [22] unrated (+7).
Nominally a day late (ok, two days), but last
Music Week
was two days late, so this is still a short week. I started off most
days with old r&b in the CD player -- especially
Scratchin': The Wild Jimmy Spruill Story, which combined a
few minor hits with some major studio work, leading me to
tweet up two singles
(Bobby Lewis,
Tossin' and Turnin', and Bobby Long,
The Pleasure Is All Mine). Beyond that, what I got to was pretty
haphazard, with a fair amount of old music left over from the William
Parker research.
My piece was published by ArtsFuse, here:
Celebrating bassist William Parker's lifetime of achievement.
You can also find my
2003 CG, with its updated
discography, and my
notes file, which
includes my full set of reviews of albums Parker. The former could
still use some cleanup, especially to separate out the albums that
Parker didn't play on -- the CG was originally focused on Matthew
Shipp and the Thirsty Ear Blue Series he curated, until I started
noticing how many more albums Parker played on and how central
they were to the whole circle. The latter needs even more work,
as most of it was cut-and-pasted from my
book files (which are now several
years out of date), with others copied with HTML markup (where
they still have bold credits and letter grades). If I didn't
fear getting sucked into a huge time sink, I'd go fix those,
but for now I can only offer excuses.
Besides, I have a much more urgent website project to work on.
I've decided to use my Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll contacts to
run a Mid-Year straw poll. I explain this on the
website (which
still needs a good deal of work) and in the
invite
letter (which went out to approx. 200 critics on June 30).
I'm asking for lists of up to 10 new releases (which can include
newly discovered 2023 releases) and/or up to 5 "rara avis" (old
music, recorded 10+ years ago, or reissues). Deadline is July
14, and ArtsFuse will publish the results, probably later that
week.
The Poll is a quickie experiment. I've simplified the rules to
make it easier on voters (and hopefully on he who counts), and I've
saved myself a lot of work by only sending out one batch of invites
without trying to vet new voters. The problem with the "one batch"
approach is that I'm using a server and software that has been known
to run afoul of some spam traps. I especially fear that people with
gmail addresses may have their invites diverted or discarded. But
it's impossible to test and verify these things. I made an effort
to research this problem before, to little avail, and I will make
another one soon, but in the meantime, please read the following,
and follow up if anything seems to apply to you:
If you've ever voted before, or for that matter received an
invite before, and haven't received an invite, please check your
spam filter. If you find one, take steps to get your mail provider
to recognize that the mail isn't spam. If you can't find one, assume
you're eligible and use
this one.
Follow the instructions, and vote. Let me know if you want to be
added to my list (jazzpoll [at] hullworks.net). Not everyone who
has voted is on the list (various reasons, including sloth on my
part), but I can add you. The advantage of being on the list is
that I'll send you updates and further requests.
If you haven't received an invite, but think you should be
qualified, look up the invite, follow instructions, and send me
your lists. You need to have some real expertise in jazz (my first
approximation would be listening to 200+ jazz records per year,
but that's easy for me to say because I listen to 700+), have some
verifiable credentials (you write about some of them, which can
be on your own blog or mainstream or niche publications, and/or
you broadcast about them, which obviously includes radio but I
suppose could extend to podcasts), and construct lists that are
focused on jazz (the occasional outlier or, as DownBeat likes to
call them, "beyond"; by the way, "smooth jazz" is not jazz, at
least for purposes of establishing credibility, although it may
be acceptable as "beyond"). If this checks out, I will very likely
accept your ballot, and you'll be on the inside track for future
invites.
Check with your friends: make sure they got their invites,
and let people you think should be voting know that they can vote,
and how. They can always
hit me up with questions, but
we don't have a lot of time, so it's best to move fast.
I suppose it wouldn't hurt to publicize this wider, although
bear in mind that I still see this as a forum of critics -- even
though I recognize that there are lots of fans that have become
pretty expert themselves, especially given how easy it's become
to check out new music on streaming platforms.
Also, one key point to emphasize is that this isn't a big deal.
I'm not asking you to exercise Solomonic (or Christgauvian) judgment
over the jazz universe. Your list doesn't have to find the absolute
best records (whatever that might mean). Nor does it have to be
ranked. (Although blessed are the rankers, for they get slightly
more points weighting for their efforts.) Nor does it even have
to be a full list. Just jot down a few albums that you would like
to recommend to other people. That's mostly how these lists will
be used.
Given the late date, the short deadline, my various shortcuts,
and the fact that we've never done this before, I'm not expecting
much, but even if we just get 50 voters (as opposed to the 159 in
2023), I think
the lists will be interesting and informative.
I started to track mid-year lists when they started appearing
just before June 1 -- see my
metacritic file, which
is running behind at the moment, as the last couple weeks haven't
allowed much opportunity to work on it -- and they both give me
a broad sense of what's out there and a useful roster of prospects
to check out. This also ties into my
tracking file, which has a
jazz selector (currently
listing 400 jazz albums, of which I have 332; this list will
expand as I receive your lists: from past experience, about 30%
of the albums that show up in ballots are ones I hadn't previously
tracked; there's also a
no grade variant,
for those who don't want to see my grades).
The website
started off as a clone of last year's, with minor hacks. As I do
more work to it this week, it should become a more useful source
of information about the Poll and its progress. For instance, I
need to revise things like the FAQ and the Admin Guide. I also
hope to get some work done on the older parts of the website,
especially to fill in information that predates my involvement
(in administration; I've voted every year, from the founding).
I hope to make the website the best source for information about
the Poll. But if you wish to follow, check my Music Week posts, and
follow me on
twitter (or "X" if you prefer; I haven't jumped ship yet, although
at this point it's rare for one of my tweets to be viewed by as much
as a third of my nominal followers, so the returns seem pretty slim).
New records reviewed this week:
- Arooj Aftab: Night Reign (2024, Verve): [sp]: B+(***)
- Alan Braufman: Infinite Love Infinite Tears (2024, Valley of Search): [sp]: B+(***)
- Ani DiFranco: Unprecedented Sh!t (2024, Righteous Babe): [sp]: B+(*)
- Dayramir González: V.I.D.A. [Verdad, Independencia, Diversidad Y Amor] (2024, self-released): [sp]: B
- Morgan Guerin: Tales of the Facade (2024, Candid): [sp]: B+(*)
- Goran Kajfeš Tropiques: Tell Us (2024, We Jazz): [sp]: B+(***)
- Bill Laurance/The Untold Orchestra: Bloom (2022 [2024], ACT Music): [sp]: B+(**)
- Les Savy Fav: Oui, LSF (2024, Frenchkiss): [sp]: B+(**)
- Grégoire Maret/Romain Collin: Ennio (2024, ACT Music): [sp]: B+(*)
- Zara McFarlane: Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan (2024, Universal): [sp]: B+(**)
- Ngwaka Son Système: Iboto Ngenge (2024, Eck Echo): [sp]: B+(**)
- Normani: Dopamine (2024, RCA): [sp]: B+(**)
- Carly Pearce: Hummingbird (2024, Big Machine): [sp]: B+(***)
- Dave Rempis/Tashi Dorji Duo: Gnash (2024, Aerophonic): [cd]: B+(***)
- Sisso & Maiko: Singeli Ya Maajabu (2024, Nyege Nyege Tapes): [sp]: B+(*)
- Jason Stein/Marilyn Crispell/Damon Smith/Adam Shead: Spi-raling Horn (2023 [2024], Balance Point Acoustics): [sp]: A-
- Thollem: Worlds in a Life, Two (2024, ESP-Disk): [cd]: B+(**)
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:
- Alan Braufman: Live in New York City: February 8, 1975 (1975 [2022], Valley of Search): [r]: B+(***)
- DJ Notoya: Funk Tide: Tokyo Jazz-Funk From Electric Bird 1978-87 (1978-87 [2024], Wewantsounds/Electric Bird): [sp]: B-
- Charles Gayle/Milford Graves/William Parker: WEBO (1991 [2024], Black Editions Archive): [sp]: A-
- Ron Miles: Old Main Chapel (2011 [2024], Blue Note): [sp]: B+(***)
Old music:
- Collective 4tet: Orca (1996 [1997], Leo Lab): [r]: B+(***)
- Collective 4tet: Live at Crescent (1997 [1998], Leo Lab): [r]: B+(**)
- Collective 4tet: Moving Along (2002 [2005], Leo): [r]: B+(**)
- Collective 4tet: In Transition (2008 [2009], Leo): [sp]: B+(***)
- Marco Eneidi Quintet: Final Disconnect Notice (1994, Botticelli): [yt]: B+(***)
- Marco Eneidi/Glenn Spearman: Creative Music Orchestra: American Jungle Suite (1995 [1997], Music & Arts): [sp]: B+(**)
- Marco Eneidi: Cherry Box (1998 [2000], Eremite): [sp]: A-
- Marco Eneidi/Vijay Anderson: Remnant Light (2004 [2018], Minus Zero): [bc]: B+(**)
- Marco Eneidi Streamin' 4: Panta Rei (2013 [2015], ForTune): [sp]: B+(*)
- Heinz Geisser/Shiro Onuma: Duo: Live at Yokohama Little John (2007 [2008], Leo): [sp]: B+(*)
- The Ivo Perelman Quartet: Sound Hierarchy (1996 [1997], Music & Arts): [sp]: B+(*)
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
- Derek Bailey/Sabu Toyozumi: Breath Awareness (1987, NoBusiness) [05-27]
- Albert Beger/Ziv Taubenfeld/Shay Hazan/Hamid Drake: Cosmic Waves (No Business) [05-27]
- Karen Borca Trio Quartet & Quintet: Good News Blues: Live at the Vision Festival 1998 & 2005 (No Business) [05-27]
- Peter Brötzmann/Toshinori Kondo/Sabu Toyozumi: Complete Link (NoBusiness) [05-27]
- Alfredo Colón: Blood Burden (Out of Your Head) [06-14]
- Nick Dunston: Colla Voce (Out of Your Head) [04-26]
- The Sofia Goodman Group: Receptive (Joyous) [07-26]
- Monika Herzig's Sheroes: All in Good Time (Zoho) [07-22]
- Hyeseon Hong Jazz Orchestra: Things Will Pass (Pacific Coast Jazz) [08-23]
- Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre: Live From Studio Rivbea: July 12, 1975 [Rivbea Live! Series, Volume 1] (No Business) [05-27]
Monday, July 01, 2024
Speaking of Which
Blog link.
After missing last week, I knew I had a lot to catch up on here.
I also got interrupted several times. It took longer than expected
to wrap up my piece on bassist William Parker (see:
Celebrating bassist William Parker's lifetime of achievement).
I had two other internet projects that required significant amounts
of attention (one was an update to
Carola Dibbell's website,
announcing a new printing of her novel, The Only Ones; the
other was setting up a framework for a
Jazz Critics Mid-Year
Poll, which still needs more work). We also had trips to the
ER and various doctors (including a veterinarian). So no chance of
getting done on Sunday night. I'm not really done on Monday, either,
but I'm dead tired and more than a little disgusted, so this will
have to do for now.
That will, in turn, push Music Week back until Tuesday, which is
just as well.
Before I really got started, the debate happened -- I couldn't
be bothered to watch, my wife got disgusted and switched to a
Steve Martin movie -- and I haven't (yet, as of noon 06-28) read
any reviews, but I wanted to grab these tweets before they vanish:
Rick Perlstein: The main argument on the left was that he was
a bad president. That was incorrect.
Tim Price: The left is going to be in big trouble for being
right too early again.
Another scrap picked up on the fly from fleeting social media:
Greg Magarian: [06-27]
Democratic Party establishment, relentlessly, for eight months: "You
stupid kids need to stop criticizing Biden! If we get four more years
of Trump, it's all your fault!"
Democratic Party establishment, tomorrow morning, set your clock by
it: "You stupid kids need to fix this! If we get four more years of
Trump, it's all your fault!"
Because of course it's never their fault.
In a comment, Magarian added:
I don't know the best process for replacing Biden. There's no playbook
for this. The biggest question is whether the party should essentially
try to crown Harris, either by having Biden resign the presidency or
by having him stay and endorse her. But this is kind of the point of
my post: the onus here shouldn't be on Biden's critics. The party is
supposed to exist to win elections. They're royally screwing this one
up. I want to know what they're going to do.
Initial count: 290 links, 11720 words.
Updated count [07-03]: 320 links, 16021 words.
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
on music,
Christgau.
Top story threads:
Israel:
Mondoweiss:
Mariana Abreu/Aïda Delpuech/Eloïse Layan/Yuval Abraham: [06-25]
How Israeli drone strikes are killing journalists in Gaza: "Survivor
testimonies and audiovisual analysis reveal a pattern of strikes by
Israeli UAVs on Palestinian journalists in recent months -- even when
they are clearly identifiable as press.
Shoug Al Adara: [06-20]
A settler shot my husband. Then Israel bulldozed my childhood home:
"Zakariyah has suffered immensely since being wounded by an Israeli
settler. Yet his attacker roams free, and demolitions continue to
devastate our communities in Masafer Yatta."
Ruwaida Kamal Amer: [06-13]
'How is it reasonable to kill over 200 for the sake of four?'
"Relentless bombing, hospitals overflowing, soldiers in aid trucks;
survivors recount the massacre in Nuseirat refugee camp during
Israel's hostage rescue."
Tareq S Hajjaj:
[06-21]
Gaza's hospitals are empty, and patients die in silence: "This
genocidal war brings with it the systematic destruction of all of
Gaza's health system. This has created a new category of people who
die from preventable illnesses due to a systematic lack of access
to medical care."
[06-28]
The second invasion of al-Shuja'iyya is a war of attrition:
"Israel has been forced into a war of attrition as the Palestinian
resistance has reconstituted itself across Gaza. The scale of the
horrors perpetrated by the Israeli army in these battles only emerges
through testimonies after the fighting ends."
Reem A Hamadaqa: [06-28]
Stories of survival and suffering: Inside Gaza's Al-Aqsa Hospital:
"Reem Hamadaqa spent 96 days in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central
Gaza recovering from an Israeli attack that killed the rest of her
family. Here are the stories of women and children she met while she
was there."
Shatha Hanaysha:
Arwa Mahdawi: [06-27]
Nearly 21,000 children are missing in Gaza. And there's no end to
this nightmare.
Ibrahim Mohammad: [06-18]
Children starving, parents helpless as famine consumes northern
Gaza: "With aid blocked and stores empty of basic goods, dozens
of Palestinian chjildren have been hospitalized with malnutrition
and acute anemia."
Qassam Muaddi: [06-27]
Israel's leaked plan for annexing the West Bank, explained:
"Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's plan to annex the
West Bank would see over 60% of the territory becoming a part of
Israel. But Palestinian experts say it is 'already happening.'"
The 60% figure comes from the Oslo-era Area C, where the PA has
no authority at present, so most of that change would be nominal.
Israel has already set a model for this in their annexation of
greater Jerusalem, which took land but didn't extend citizenship
to the people who lived there. (They retained residency rights.
Smotrich would prefer to force them out, which may be what the
"plan" is really about.)
Nicole Narea: [06-24]
Israel isn't ending the war in Gaza -- just turning its attention to
Hezbollah: "The next phase of Israel's war in Gaza, explained."
I haven't put much thought into this, mostly because I consider it a
feint. Fighting against Hezbollah has several big advantages for
Netanyahu: for starters, they exist, hold territory, and have rockets
which pose a credible (if not very significant) threat to northern
Israel (as opposed to Hamas, which doesn't have much more than a PO
box in Damascus, and isn't any kind of threat); that keeps Israelis
fearful, which is the only thing keeping Netanyahu's government from
collapsing, and fuels the pogroms in the West Bank; it also gives the
Americans an excuse to keep the arms flowing, whereas in Gaza they're
just shooting fish in a barrel (to use a more colloquial term than
"genocide" -- the legal term which in theory requires the US to halt
arms shipments); for their own part, Hezbollah's intent is defending
Lebanon from Israeli aggression, not on attacking -- although they've
bought into the silly notion that their missiles help to deter Israeli
attacks, so Israel gets to push their buttons, elicit their kneejerk
response meant to restore credibility to their deterrence, post facto
justifying the Israeli attacks; because Hezbollah (and for that matter
Syria and Iran) don't want war, Israel has complete freedom to tune
the hostilities to a level that provides maximum propaganda value
with very little real risk.
Jonathan Ofir: [06-18]
The kibbutzniks blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza: "Complicity
in genocide is not confined tot he Israeli right. Members of the
liberal organization that spearheaded the anti-Netanyahu protests
last year are now blocking aid to Gaza."
James North: [06-25]
The mainstream media is setting the stage for an Israeli war on
Lebanon: "An unsourced article in the British Telegraph claiming
Hezbollah is storing weapons in Beirut's airport is the latest example
of the mainstream media setting the groundwork for an Israeli war on
Lebanon."
Hoda Osman/Firas Taweel/Farah Jallad:
Israel's war on Gaza is the deadliest conflict on record for
journalists.
Léa Peruchon: [06-26]
'The livestream was critical evidence': Tracing attacks on Gaza's
press buildings: "The Israeli army struck major media institutions
in Gaza despite assurances of safety, and appears to have deliberately
targeted camera that were broadcasting the military offensive."
Meron Rapoport: [06-24]
As Netanyahu abandons the hostages, Hamas may seek to extend the
war: Given the balance of forces, I don't see any point in
even suggesting that Hamas is even a conscious actor in this war.
As long as Israel vows to "finish" every one of them, of course
whatever's left of Hamas will fight back, because Israel isn't
giving them any other option. On the other hand, if Israel chose
to stop the war, would Hamas even have the wherewithal, even if
they still harbored the ambition, to "extend the war"?
Steven Simon: [06-28]
Will drafting ultra-Orthodox to fight upend Israel's gov't?
Baker Zoubi: [06-27]
'More horrific than Abu Ghraib': Lawyer recounts visit to Israeli
detention center: "At Sde Teiman, Khaled Mahajneh found a
detained journalist unrecognizable as he described the facility's
violent and inhumane conditions."
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Spencer Ackerman:
Nargol Aran: [06-29]
In Tehran, Gaza rekindles the revolution: "For some in Iran,
the West's relentless punishment has weakened the revolutionary
fires of 1979. But for countless others, they are being rekindled
by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza." I doubt the first part of
that: revolutionary fires expire normally as past complaints fade
into history, and changes become normalized. But "the West's
relentless punishment" just adds more fuel, which boosts the
hardest revolutionaries, while offering them excuses for any
shortcomings. On the other hand, Israel's atrocities in Gaza
are certain to inflame anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment
everywhere, but especially where people's own identities and
allegiances are most threatened. Iran has never been all that
committed to the Palestinians, but Israel's relentless efforts
to paint Iran as the mastermind of their enemy is bound to push
them more and more into opposition. This provocation is just one
of many ways Netanyahu is being very shortsighted and foolish.
Michael Arria:
James Carden: [06-24]
Trump cabinet hopeful wants the 'Israel model' for US China
polilcy: "Robert O'Brien just put forward a template, but
it's a proven failure." I've often noted that neocons suffer
from Israel Envy: the desire that the US should be able flex
its muscles on a global scale with the same impetuousness and
carelessness for consequences that Israel exercises in its
neighborhood. They bound their ambitions to a global ideology --
ironically called "neoliberalism," as its initial advocates
sought to entice rather than enforce compliance -- but the
new, Trumpian variant brings its self-interested motivations
closer to the Israeli model, or closer still to Alexander or
Britain, who sought empire for the sustenance of tribute.
These days, tribute is mostly collected through arms sales --
and as such is immediately shunted to private ledgers -- which
is why America demands that its allies be customers, and defines
its customers to be allies. Hence, O'Brien's plan is mostly
devoted to arms sales, advanced under the hoary slogan "peace
through strength," and advanced by magnifying recalcitrant hold
outs like Russia and China into existential threats.
Gregory Daddis: [06-25]
Stop listening to David Petraeus: "The self-promoting ex-general
continues to rewrite history, suggesting that Israel deploy an
Iraq-style 'surge' in Gaza.
Dave DeCamp: [06-30]
US has sent Israel 14,000 2,000-pound bombs since October 7.
Ben Freeman: [06-28]
Israel's covert info bots targeting America met with hypocritical
silence: "Will Tel Aviv get the same treatment as the Russians
and Chinese? Likely not." Based on a Guardian report:
Blaise Malley:
[06-27]
The craziest 'pro-Israel' budget amendments.
[06-28]
Trump says Biden has 'become like a Palestinian' in debate exchange:
"In a presidential debate marked by incoherence and lies, Donald
Trump attacked Joe Biden, saying 'he's become like a Palestinian'
for supposedly withholding total support for Israel's genocidal
assault on Gaza." More on the debate below, but for here just
note that Trump's solution is more war and more cruelty, not
less, with no concern for the consequences. That he took this
position in the debate doesn't just show us his true feelings,
but that he thinks his pro-war, pro-genocide position is the one
that most resonates with American voters.
Mitchell Plitnick: [06-23]
Republicans demonstrate their terrifying Palestine policy:
"Two 'must pass' House of Representatives bills to fund the State
and Defense Departments show how dangerous Republican Party views
on Palestine are."
Prem Thakker:
62 Democrats join 207 Republicans in vote to conceal Gaza death
toll.
Israel vs. world opinion:
Democracy Now!
Zack Beauchamp: [06-21]
Why Israel acts the way it does: "Its catastrophic war policy is
driven by a national ideology of trauma." I've recognized as much for
a long time now. That's been clear as far back as Richard Ben Cramer's
2004 book
How Israel Lost, and had significantly worsened by
the time (2011) Max Blumenthal wrote
Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. For further
details on how this psychology was deliberately engineered, see
Idith Zertal:
Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (2005),
and Norman G Finkelstein:
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish
Suffering (2000; looks like there's a 2024 reprint). Of
course, many other books touch on these issues, especially Tom
Segev's histories,
The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust (2000) and
1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle
East (2006). Also, Rich Cohen, in
Israel Is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and
Its History (2009) makes a very telling point about the exit
from
Yad Vashem, offering its panoramic view of Jerusalem.
By the way, in looking up my links, I ran across this old piece
on Segev's 1967:
David Margolick: [2007-07-15]
Peace for land: After praising the book as invaluable for its
coverage of the runup to the war, and complaining about being "way
too long" but still lacking in character insight, he notes:
By the time he gets to the Israeli occupation, which is what really
matters now, even the indefatigable Segev has run out of gas. Crucial
questions, like how the Six-Day War emboldened the messianic religious
right and Ariel Sharon to build settlements, are all but overlooked.
Nor is there anything about the electrifying effect the war had on
Jews throughout the world, particularly in the Soviet Union and the
United States. And there's no kind of summation or distillation at
the end, describing the Israeli character then and now -- something
that persevering readers deserve and that Segev, more than just about
anyone else, is eminently qualified to give.
The books I just mentioned address the psychology at least within
Israel, and touch on the rest, and there are other books that go into
more detail on every tangent -- especially the occupation, which has
gone through multiple stages of increasing brutality and carelessness.
The thing that most struck me about 1967 was the how much
terror Israel's political leaders instilled among their people, as
compared to how supremely confident the military elites were. When
the war so rapidly achieved its aims -- and make no mistake, it was
Israel which deliberately launched the war with just those aims in
mind, with the Arab states playing roles they had long been trained
for -- their "victory" came with an immense sense of relief and swell
of pride, which haunts us to this day. (Although, much like the US
triumph in WWII, it has never since been replicated, despite continuing
to animate the arrogance of invincibility.)
I imagine there is a good book on the reaction of American Jews to
1967, and the various reactions since -- if not, one is bound to be
written soon. Meanwhile, it's worth reading this (which includes an
excerpt from the Rich Cohen book above):
Reed Brody: [06-06]
Israel's legal reckoning and the historical shift in justice for
Palestinians.
Steve France:
The myth of Israeli democracy died in Gaza and Israel's hasbara will
never recover: Review of Saree Makdisi's recent book,
Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial.
"Israel today seems very far from finishing off the Palestinians
but appears to have finally destroyed any hope that it will evolve
toward honest history, or true democracy, diversity, or tolerance."
David Goldman: [06-20]
Wikipedia now labels the top Jewish civil rights group as an unreliable
source:
Wikipedia's editors declared that the Anti-Defamation League cannot
be trusted to give reliable information on the Israel-Palestine
conflict, and they overwhelmingly said the ADL is an unreliable
source on antisemitism. . . . That means that the ADL should
usually not be cited in Wikipedia articles on that topic except
for extraordinary circumstances. Other generally unreliable sources,
according to Wikipedia editors, include Russian state media, Fox
News' political coverage and Amazon reviews.
Michael Arria writes about this in his [06-20]
Shift piece, cited above. He also refers back to this old
article:
Yoav Litvin: [06-29]
Liberal Zionism and the woke facade of Israeli genocide: "Instead
of upholding a left-wing agenda and a critical lens, liberal Zionists
are a mouthpiece for Israel's occupation and genocide."
Mouna Madanat: [06-20]
'We're refusing to let ourselves live in comfortable complacency':
Scenes from the Cardiff encampment for Palestine.
Ayelet Waldman: [06-27]
My father and the withering of liberal Zionism: "Was my family's
dream of a Jewish socialist utopia all a lie?"
About last Thursday's debate:
When the Biden-Trump debates were announced, I jotted down
the following:
Ed Kilgore: [05-24]
Is Biden gambling everything on an early-debate bounce?
My read is that the June debate is meant to show Democrats that
he can still mount a credible campaign against Trump. If he can --
and a bounce would be nice but not necessary -- it will go a long
way to quelling pressure to drop out and open the convention. If
he can't, then sure, he'll have gambled and lost, and pressure
will build. But at least it will give him a reference point that
he has some actual control over -- unlike the polls, which still
seem to have a lot of trouble taking him seriously.
I'm writing this before I go through the paces and collect
whatever links I deem of interest, which will help me better
understand the debate and its aftermath, but my first impression
is that Biden failed to satisfy Democrats that he is really the
candidate they need to fight off Trump in November. I'll also
note that my expectation was to see a lot of confirmation bias
in reactions. I'd expect people who dislike Biden and/or Trump,
for any reason, to find faults that fortify their feelings,
while people who are personally invested in their candidates
will at least claim to be vindicated. Hence, the easy way to
scan this section is to look for reactions that go against
type.
538/Ipsos:
Who won the first Biden-Trump presidential debate: Crunch some
stats. First graphic compares expectations to results. Subhed there
is "Biden performed even worse than expectations." Likely voters
scored it 60.1% for Trump, 20.8% for Biden. Biden lost 1.5% (48.2%
to 46.7%). Of that, Trump gained 0.4% (43.5% to 43.9%), and Kennedy
gained 1.2% (17.3% to 18.4%).
Intelligencer:
The 'replace Biden' talk isn't going away after debate disaster:
Live updates.
Mike Allen: [06-29]
Biden oligarchy will decide fate: The most basic fact in American
politics is that people with money get to decide who gets to run for
office. Bernie Sanders is about the only exception to that rule, since
he figured out how to raise and thrive on small contributions, but
everywhere else you look, it's absolutely true. Often, the number of
people making those decisions is very small. I recall Newt Gingrich
explaining his loss to Mitt Romney as simple arithmetic: Gingrich
only had one billionaire backer, vs. four for Romney. As soon as a
candidate's backer gets cold feet, that candidate is gone. I don't
know who Biden's top backers are, but they're the ones who are going
to be making this decision, and Biden, as usual, will do what he's
told. I mean, isn't that why they backed him in the first place?
The only reason for the delay at this point is that they're angling
for the succession.
Maybe they realized that Biden couldn't win all along. If you're
one of Biden's oligarchs, this is the best possible scenario: no
one serious runs against him in the primaries, so he wraps up all
the delegates, at little cost, with no risk of the people thinking
differently (you know, democratically). That also produced the
benefit of Trump carrying the Republican Party: Biden made him
look electable, even though he's extremely vulnerable and easily
attacked, plus horrifying enough to keep the Democrats in line
behind anyone they anoint. (I mean, if you're going to vote for
Biden, literally any Democrats could fill in. [OK, maybe not Mike
Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton, or Andrew Cuomo.])
Then they nudge him out, replacing him with some maximally
pliable substitute. I'm not sure who they will pick, but one thing
for sure is that rank-and-file Democrats will have little to no say
over the process. And frankly, given how ugly the oligarchs won in
delivering their nominations to Clinton and Biden, I'm happy to
have missed primary season.
Zack Beauchamp: [06-28]
The silver lining to Biden's debate disaster: "The president's
performance prompted calls for a radical change. That might be just
what America needs."
Gabriel Debenedetti: [07-02]
The Biden panic is getting worse: "Anxious lawmakers can't reach
him. Donors are fighting over replacements. All of them are asking:
When will it end?"
Margaret Carlson: [06-28]
We watched Joe Biden struggle: "The incumbent president's painful
performance was no match for Trump's unabashed barrage of lies."
Zachary D Carter: [07-02]
The Democratic Party's double standard, or "Do not underestimate
the danger of a second Biden term": "Trump is not the only person on
earth who cannot be trusted with power."
Jonathan Chait:
Isaac Chotiner: [06-28]
Ezra Klein on why the Democrats are too afraid of replacing Biden.
Way back on [02-16] Klein posted his show on
Democrats have a better option than Biden; also on [06-28]
After that debate, the risk of Biden is clear. This led me to
more Klein interviews from early 2024:
Vinson Cunningham: [06-28]
The writing on Joe Biden's face at the presidential debate: "The
true locus of the President's humiliation onstage was not his
misbegotten words but the sorry pictures he made with his face."
Chas Danner: [06-29]
What the polls are saying after the TrumpBiden debate:
Democracy Corps/Greenberg Research/PSG Consulting's dial groups
recoiled a bit at Biden;
Data for Progress flash poll shows little if any advantage for
Biden alternatives;
Morning Consult poll suggests majority of voters want Biden
replaced;
Survey USA poll finds slight majority of Democrats think Biden
should stay the course;
538/Ipsos poll of debate watchers found little impact on votes.
David Dayen: [06-28]
Biden's inner circle deserves some blame too: "Even with perfect
delivery, the substance of the performance was not built for victory
in our terribly flawed modern political environment." Dayen explains:
Most first-term presidents lose the first debate of their re-election
campaigns, and they lose it in largely the same way. They have spent
nearly four years building a record, and they want to run on it. So
they lay out a blur of information about what they've done. Some
presidents trip over the details. Others just bore people with them.
Still others act like they're offended that the president of these
United States could be challenged on these points at all. Biden
slammed into all three of these obstacles, while being 81 years
old and rather feeble. . . . Biden was clearly fed way too many
figures and had way too many points to hit on his script for
someone with his difficulties in communicating.
Gabriel Debenedetti: [06-28]
Who can make Joe go? "Democrats watched the debate and stared
into the abyss. Now they ask if he's a lost cause."
Tim Dickinson: [06-28]
America lost the first Biden-Trump debate: "We just witnessed
the low-water mark in American electoral politics."
Moira Donegan: [06-28]
This debate was a disastrous opening performance for Biden.
Adam Frisch: [07-02]
Joe Biden should step aside now.
Susan B Glasser: [06-28]
Was the debate the beginning of the end of Joe Biden's presidency?
"Notes on a disastrous night for the Democrats."
Benjamin Hart: [06-27]
Biden, Trump have mortifying exchange about golf handicaps.
Jeet Heer: [07-01]
Dear Ron Klain: We need to talk about Joe: "To preserve President
Biden's legacy, the party has to find another candidate."
Seymour Hersh: [06-28]
Who is running the country? "Biden's decline has been known to
friends and insiders for months."
David Ignatius: [06-28]
Why Biden didn't accept the truth that was there for all to see:
"If he has the strength and wisdom to step aside, the Democrats will
have two months to choose another candidate."
Stephanie Kaloi: [06-30]
Pod Save America hosts defend themselves from Biden campaign's thinly
veiled 'self-important podcasters' attack. They had been among
Biden's most committed supporters in 2020, but turned on Biden for
their Thursday-night podcast. For more, see:
Ed Kilgore:
Robert Kuttner: [06-28]
A tarnished silver lining: "Biden was so inept that the case
for replacing him is now overwhelming." And: "If this had happened
in September, the usual month of the first debate, or if Biden had
been a little less pathetic and had landed a few punches, we truly
would have been screwed. Now, there is still time for Biden to step
aside, and little doubt that he must."
Chris Lehman: [06-28]
Biden's record won't win him the election if he can't make sense
for 2 minutes at a time: "At last night's debate, the president
could hardly get through an answer to a question without seeming to
get confused."
Rachel Leingang: [06-28]
'Defcon 1 moment': Biden's debate performance sends Democrats into
panic.
Eric Levitz: [06-27]
Democrats can and should replace Joe Biden: "A comatose Joe Biden
would make a better president than Donald Trump." "But Biden's senescence
spoke louder than Trump's mendacity."
Branko Marcetic: [06-28]
Democrats can no longer pretend Biden is fit to be president.
Harold Meyerson: [06-28]
The Democrats must dump Biden. Here's how.
Joe Navarro: [06-28]
A body language expert watched the debate. Here's what he noticed.
Subheds: Biden's age was clear from the first step he took onstage;
Trump's tan made Biden look pale; What can I even say about Biden's
body language?; Both candidates' eyelids fluttered -- but for different
reasons; Trump has a tell: his lips; Trump's fake smile is his shield.
New York Times: [06-28]
To serve his country, President Biden should leave the race.
A surprising lack of both-sides-ism from the "paper of record"
this time.
Heather Digby Parton: [07-01]
The drop out debate: Biden has already lost a big part of the
battle.
Justin Peters: [06-28]
The other disaster at the debate: "CNN has escaped much notice for
its performance on Thursday. It shouldn't."
Nia Prater: [06-27]
Biden stalls out in particularly bad debate moment.
Andrew Prokop: [06-28]
2 winners and 2 losers from the first Biden-Trump debate: "If
the debate ends with your own party debatign whether you should
quit the race, you lost." Aside from the obvious, the other Loser
was "Substantive issues," while for balance the other Winner was
"Kamala Harris."
David Remnick: [06-29]
The reckoning of Joe Biden: "For the President to insist on
remaining the Democratic candidate would be an act not only of
self-delusion but of national endangement." Editor of The New
Yorker and pretty staunchly in Biden's camp, breaks ranks but
decided to both-sides this, by also publishing:
Jay Caspian Kang: [06-30]
The case for Joe Biden staying in the race: "The known bad
candidate is better than the chaos of the unknown." Hard not to
laugh at this one. How much risk can their be in replacing Biden
with a younger but seasoned and predictable political hack? The
only "chaos of the unknown" (besides Trump) is never knowing
when Biden is going to freeze up or flub some line or trip and
fall, in certain knowledge that any time such a thing happens --
and it's almost certain to happen multiple times -- the media
are going to fixate on Biden's age. On the other hand, take
Biden out of the equation, and pretty soon Trump's going to
look awful old, and the media are already primed to focus on
that.
Eugene Robinson: [07-01]
Biden's 2024 survival requires a lot more than hope.
Nathan J Robinson:
[06-28]
Biden must go: "Joe Biden is simply not up to the task of taking on
Donald Trump. Trump presents a major threat to the country, and Biden's
insistence on running is risking a catastrophe."
[07-01]
The Biden excuse machine kicks into gear: "There is a massive PR
effort afoot to convince us to stay aboard a sinking ship."
David Rothkopf: [06-28]
It's time. Biden needs to say to Harris, "it's your turn now."
Greg Sargent: [06-28]
What Joe Biden really owes the country right now: "There's no
sugarcoating the debate, which was a disaster."
Walter Shapiro: [06-27]
Joe Biden is facing the biggest decision of his political career:
"Can he beat Trump and save American democracy? If not, he should step
aside."
Alex Shephard: [06-27]
Ditch Biden. That debate performance was a disaster. "He failed on
every level."
Bill Scher: [06-28]
A wasted opportunity for Biden (but still time for redemption):
"Ronald Reagan overcame a bad debate that triggered panic about his
age. Here's how Biden can do the same." He's long established himself
as Biden's most devoted advocate among the Washington punditocracy,
so any chink in his defense must be telling. He is surely right that
if Democrats stick with Biden, he still might win the election. But
the ticket to winning the election is to make it about Trump, and in
order to do that, the one thing he really has to do is to not let it
be about him. Moreover, if his ineptness is tied to age -- and that's
by far the easiest explanation, one that most of us understand to be
probable -- the expectation is that it will only get worse. It may
have been unfair and unreasonable to obsess so much over Biden's age
before the debate, but now that we've all seen him falter the way he
did, every future stumble is going to be magnified even more: it's
like the zit you never noticed before, but now you can't avert your
eyes from. Reagan may have been the closest analogue, but his case
isn't a very good one. Old as he was, he was still significantly
younger than Biden. He was much more practiced at wearing makeup
and delivering prefab lines. And he was just a front man for Evil,
Inc., whereas Biden's cast as the leader in the valiant struggle
to save democracy. So while Scher hasn't disappointed me in being
the last rat to jump ship, that even he is sniffing the panic is
surely telling.
Rebecca Solnit: [06-28]
The true losers of this presidential debate were the American
people: No more substance to this review than in the debate
she strained to lampoon, the sole point of comparison being their
voices: Biden "in a hoarse voice said diligent things that were
reasonably true and definitely sincere," vs. Trump "in a booming
voice said lurid things that were flamboyantly untrue." For the
latter, she cites the Guardian's
Factchecked: Trump and Biden's presidential debate claims.
Jeffrey St Clair: [07-03]
Biden in the Bardo.
Stuart Stevens: [06-29]
Democrats: Stop panicking. Lincoln Project adviser, still a
staunch "never Trumper."
Matt Stieb: [06-27]
Joe Biden's voice sounded horrible at the debate.
Margaret Sullivan: [06-28]
Even factchecking Trump's constant lies probably wouldn't have rescued
Biden.
Michael Tomasky: [06-28]
Is there a good reason not to panic? Well, no, not really.
"Sticking with Joe Biden always seemed like the least bad option.
Last night, that changed."
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [06-28]
Forget the old jokes, foreign policy was the real debate horror.
Washington Post:
Democracy Now! [06-28]
"Step aside Joe": After first pres. debate, Democrats reeling from
Biden's missteps & Trump lies: Interview with Chris Lehman
and Norman Solomon.
Debate tweets:
-
Zachary D Carter: Donald Trump is delivering the second-worst
presidential debate performance I've ever seen.
And more post-debate tweets:
Zachary D Carter: [06-30] If Biden refuses to step aside it
will not be an act of high principal or strong character. He did
not just have a bad night. He is not fit for the job and stayuing
in the race would be the worst kind of vanity and betrayal.
Laura Tillem: [06-30] He did terrible in the debate because he
gags when he has to pretend to support abortion rights or universal
health care.
holly: [06-28] If you want to see Joe Biden in his prime, just go
back and watch footage of him calling Anita Hill a liar and ensuring
that we'd have to deal with Clarence Thomas forever.
Moshik Temkin: [06-28] Worth recalling that the only reason Biden
is President now is because, after he finished 5th in NH Dem primary
in 2020, Obama persuaded all the other candidates to drop out and
endorse Biden in order to stop Bernie Sanders, who was in 1st place
(and crushing Trump in the polls)
John Ganz: Dude they just gotta roll the dice with Harris.
Plus I scraped this from Facebook:
Allen Lowe [07-02]:
Cold medicine my a##. On my worst day during chemo and radiation
I made more sense than Biden did at that debate; coming out of the
anaesthetic after a 12 hour surgery with half of my nose removed
I could have debated Trump more coherently; after they pulled a
tube out of of my arm at 4 in the morning after another (8 hour)
surgery, causing me to scream in the worst pain of my life and
curse like a sailor, I would have remembered more accurately what
I last said and organized my thoughts more clearly. The night I
was born and ripped from my mother's womb I was better prepared
than Biden was (my first words were "Henry Wallace!").
This guy must go. Go. Go.
This whole thing has, honestly, made me lose all respect for
Biden, as he continues to place his personal ego and "legacy"
ahead of the country. As Carl Bernstein reports [on
YouTube], aides have privately reported a Biden loss of
coherence and noticeable cognitive slippage occurring "15 to 20
times" in the last year.
Election notes:
Trump:
Zack Beauchamp: [06-27]
Donald Trump is getting away with it: "The debate proved that
Donald Trump is still a threat to democracy. How have we lost sight
of that?" Maybe because we've forgotten what democracy means, because
we don't have one? What we have bears some resemblance to a market,
but one very skewed towards wealth and their ability to manipulate
consciousness through the media. Anyone can see that Trump would
skew it even further toward his personal and partisan power, but
the democracy he threatens is already gone -- so much so that lots
of people just laugh when you whine about his specific threat.
Jamelle Bouie: [06-11]
There's a reason Trump has friends in high places.
Jonathan Chait:
Dan Dinello: [06-26]
Wooing MAGA billionaires, fascist felon Trump holds a fire sale on
his potential presidency: Title language is a bit extreme, but
the author opens with five paragraphs on the donor-funded rise of
the Nazis in Germany, and you can't say that's irrelevant.
Margaret Hartmann:
The 6 most bizarre and baffling Trump-raly rants.
Chris Lehman: [06-25]
If leading CEOs aren't donating to Trump, it's because they don't
need to.
Will Leitch: [06-18]
The Apprentice is the skeleton key to understanding Trump:
Interview with Ramin Setoodeh, author of
Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took
America Through the Looking Glass.
Li Zhou: [06-26]
Trump's rumored VP shortlist, explained: "A rundown of the people
auditioning for the job and what they bring to the ticket." Story
updated from Feb. 9, still has seven candidates, although elsewhere
I've just seen it whittled down to three (Burgum, Vance, Rubio;
that omits the woman and three blacks). It's pretty clear Trump
is shopping for dowry. Burgum has his own money. Vance is a front
for Peter Thiel. Not sure who is behind Rubio, but it's pretty
obvious he's a kept man.
And other Republicans:
Zack Beauchamp: [06-18]
Taking the right seriously: "On the Right tracks how the dreams
of conservative intellectuals are becoming reality." This kicks off
a newsletter, "On the Right," with one Jonathan Mitchell, thanks to
whom "in just two years, the Comstock Act went from being a defunct
173 law to an existential threat to abortion rights in America."
See this link:
Sidney Blumenthal: [06-25]
Republicans have a ghoulish tactic to distract Trump's criminalilty.
Colin Gordon: [06-25]
The GOP attack on free lunch: "In an era of retrenchment in social
policy, food assistance is becoming more generous and inclusive. But
Republican politicians are attempting to gut one of the most popular
programs: free school lunch."
Sarah Jones:
Kim Phillips-Fein: [06-04]
The mandate for leadership, then and now: "The Heritage Foundation's
1980 manual aimed to roll back the state and unleash the free market.
The 2025 vision is more extreme, and even more dangerous." This leads
into a couple of related articles:
Nia Prater: [06-18]
Rudy Giuliani's financial woes are getting even worse.
Jennifer Senior:
American Rasputin: "Steve Bannon is still scheming. And he's still
a threat to democracy." Article from 2022, dredge up, no doubt, to
cheer him up
in jail. Also, I guess:
Rebecca Traister: [06-17]
How did Republican women end up like this? "The baffling,
contradictory demands of being female in the party of Donald
Trump."
Biden and/or the Democrats:
Jonathan Alter: [06-28]
How the Democrats should replace Biden: This seems ok to me,
aside from the snootiness of dismissing Sanders and Warren out
of hand and seeking to ban "anyone from the Squad." That they've
already limited the electorate to Biden's hand-picked supporters
is rigged enough without having to rub it in.
Aaron Blake:
Abdallah Fayyad: [06-29]
LBJ and Truman knew when to quit. Will Biden? "Some lessons from
the two presidents who walked away."
Margaret Hartmann: [07-01]
All the gossip on the Biden family's postdebate blame game.
David Klion: [06-19]
The lifelong incoherence of Biden's Israel strategy: "The
president's muddled policy course in the Middle East is angering
voters across the political spectrum -- and it could usher Trump
back into the White House."
Eric Levitz:
[06-19]
Biden's ads haven't been working. Now, he's trying something new.
Written before the debate: "President Joe Biden's odds of reelection
may be worse than they look. And they don't look great."
[06-28]
How Democrats got here: "Democrats really need to choose electable
vice presidents." This might have gone deep into the sorry history of
vice presidents and vice-presidential candidates, few of whom could
be described as "electable" -- at least as Levitz defines it to exclude
Biden and Harris, which is the point of his article.
Unfortunately, the last two Democratic presidents did not prioritize
political chops when selecting their veeps.
Barack Obama didn't choose Joe Biden because he thought that the
then-Delaware senator would make a great Democratic nominee in 2016.
To the contrary, by most accounts, Obama thought that Biden would be
a totally nonviable candidate by the time his own hypothetical
presidency ended. And he reportedly selected Biden precisely for
that reason. . . .
Biden's choice of Kamala Harris in 2020 was even more misguided.
When he made that choice in August 2020, there was little basis for
believing that Harris was one of the most politically formidable
Democrats in the country.
There's a lot that could be said about this, most of which comes
back to the poor conception of the office (both in the Constitution
and when revised after the emergence of political parties led to the
1800 fiasco and the 12th Amendment). The VP has to do three things,
which require three very different skill sets, especially since the
presidency has grown into this ridiculous imperial perch: they have
to add something to the campaign (e.g., "Tippecanoe and Tyler too");
once elected, they have to behave themselves innocuously, for which
they are sometimes given busy work (LBJ's Space Race, Pence's Space
Force, Gore's Reinventing Government) or sometimes just locked in a
closet (remember John Nance Garner?); and if the president dies,
they're thrust into a role they were rarely prepared for, with no
real, personal political mandate (some, like Tyler and Andrew
Johnson, were wretched; a few, like Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon
Johnson, thrived; but most were just mediocre, including the
two others who went on to win full terms: Calvin Coolidge and
Harry Truman).
I accept that Obama's pick of Biden was part of a deal to give
the 2016 nomination to Hillary Clinton. The Clintons had turned
the Democratic Party into a personality cult. Obama rode a popular
backlash against that, but Obama was no revolutionary: he wanted
to lead, but was willing to leave the Party to the Clintons. We
now know that wasn't such a good idea, but after a very divisive
primary, in the midst of economic and military disaster, it was
at least understandable.
The Harris nomination made at least as much sense in 2024. The
"little basis" line is unfair and inaccurate. She won statewide
elections in the most populous and most expensive state in the
country. Her resume entering 2016 was similar to and every bit as
strong as Obama's in 2008. She had enough financial backing to
organize a top-tier presidential campaign. She floundered, because
(unlike Obama) she was outflanked on the left (Sanders and Warren),
while hemmed in on the right (Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, and
Biden). But she wasn't incompetent (like Biden already was), and
her position and standing made her the logical choice to unite the
party. And sure, her affirmative action points may have helped a
bit with the left -- at least she wasn't another Tim Kaine, or Al
Gore -- without the tokenism raising any hackles with the donors.
Sure, Harris polls poorly now, but that's largely because Biden
never put her to good use: she could have taken a more prominent
role in cajoling Congress, which would have given her opportunities
to show her mettle fighting Republicans, and she could have spelled
Biden on some of those high-profile foreign trips (especially confabs
like G7 and NATO); instead, they stuck her with the tarbaby border
issue. Having wasted those opportunities, I can see wanting to go
with some other candidate, one with a bit more distance from Biden.
But I'm not convinced that she would be a weak, let alone losing,
candidate. And while I give her zero credit for those affirmative
action tick boxes, I can't see holding them against her, either.
And as for the people who would, well, they were going to vote for
Trump anyway, so why appease them?
Nicole Narea:
Evan Osnos: [06-29]
Biden gets up after his debate meltdown: Good. But are people
talking about that, or the meltdown? Even if they could flip the
message back to "Biden's really ok," that would still be a huge
deficit. We need people talking about how awful Trump is. Even if
you can't impress on many people how bad his policies are, he gives
you lots of other things you can fixate on.
Christian Paz:
[06-26]
We rewatched the 2020 Trump-Biden debates. There's so much we didn't
see coming. "The five most telling moments and what they foreshadow
ahead of this week's rematch."
- Trump calls the 2020 election rigged and doesn't commit to
accepting the results
- Roe v. Wade is nearly forgotten
- Trump gets defensive on immigration
- No one is worried about inflation
- Everyone is worried about Russia, Ukraine, or China, but for
the wrong reasons
[06-26]
What about Kamala? "The vice president has taken on an expanded
role in the last few months. Now Biden needs her more than ever."
Rick Perlstein: [07-03]
Say it ain't so, Joe: "With democracy itself on the ballot, a
statesman with charactger would know when to let go of power."
Andrew Prokop: [06-28]
Will Biden be the nominee? 3 scenarios for what's next.
Bryan Walsh: [07-01]
Democrats say Trump is an existential threat. They're not acting like
it. "If the stakes of the 2024 election are as great as the party
says, there's no excuse for inaction."
Legal matters and other crimes:
Ian Millhiser: He is my first stop for whatever the
Supreme Court does, so I figured I should list him first here,
especially as the last couple weeks have been exceptionally dreadful,
even for this Court. [PS: Note especially today's Trump immunity
decision.]
Meher Ahmad: [06-28]
The Court forces America's homeless to stay awake or be arrested.
Kate Aronoff: [06-28]
This is why the Supreme Court shouldn't try to do the EPA's job:
"Conservative justices this week confused nitrous oxide with nitrogen
oxides and then insisted that they, not the EPA, were the final word
on environmental regulations."
Rachel Barkow: [06-29]
The Imperial Court: "SCOTUS's decision to overturn Chevron
amounts to a massive power grab."
Rachel M Cohen: [06-28]
What a big new Supreme Court decision could mean for homeless
Americans: "The Grants Pass v. Johnson decision does not spell
the end to fights over ten encampments in America."
Moira Donegan:
Matt Ford: [06-28]
The Supreme Court upends the separation of powers: "Killing off
Chevron deference, the court moves power to the judicial branch,
portending chaos."
Steven Greenhouse: [06-28]
Most Americans have no idea how anti-worker the US supreme court has
become.
Elie Honig:
Ed Kilgore: [06-18]
Tax dollars are now funding Christian-nationalist schools.
Ruth Marcus: [07-01]
God save us from this dishonorable court: "An egregious, unconscionable
ruling on presidential immunity from the Supreme Court."
Anna North: [05-25]
Pregnancy in America is starting to feel like a crime: "The
ripple effects of the fall of Roe extend far beyond abortion."
Alexandra Petri: [07-01]
The Supreme Court rules to restore the monarchy. I've seen several
people make this allusion, but I think the inaccuracies undermine its
usefulness. If it sticks, I suppose I'll have to explain why.
James Risen:
The Supreme Court wants a dictator. Now this is more accurate.
Much of the right wants a dictator. How to get there from a nominal
democracy is what this is very much about. (That's why the Orban
model looms so large among right-wing sophisticates.) Monarchies,
on the other hand, are rarely anywhere near as dictatorial as the
right wants, but they are hereditary (which, as far as I can tell,
is attractive to Trump, but not on anyone else's agenda).
Jeffrey St Clair: [06-28]
The end of innocence: Railroading Marcellus Williams to death
row.
Jesse Wegman: [06-28]
Businesses cheer their new freedom to violate regulations.
Jason Willick: [07-03]
Don't like the Supreme Court's immunity ruling? Blame Merrick
Garland.
James D Zirin: [07-02]
This horrible Supreme Court term: "Kneecapping the administrative
state, making bribery great again, immunizing presidents, and legislating
from the bench -- the justices really earned their motorcoach and
fishing vacations."
Climate and environment:
Economic matters:
Dean Baker:
[06-17]
We can't have a new paradigm as long as people think the old one was
free-market fundamentalism. He's on solid ground pointing out that
most profits in our current economy are effectively rigged by monopolies
(either government-minted, like patents, facilitated through favors,
or just tolerated with lax enforcement), it's less clear to me what
this is about:
Farah Stockman: [06-17]
The queen bee of Bidenomics: On Jennifer Harris. Back when
Trump started flirting with tariffs, I tried to make the point that
tariffs only make sense if they are exercised in concert with a
coherent economic development plan. Biden has, somewhat fitfully,
moved in that direction, so that, for instance, tariffs and content
rules can be seen as nurturing domestic production of EVs, helping
the US develop them into world-class exports, as opposed to simply
providing shelter for high prices (which was the net effect of
Trump's corrupt favoritism). Whether this amounts to a paradigm
shift is arguable, as government sponsorship of private industry
has always been part of the neoliberal position (most obviously
in arms and oil).
[06-20]
NAFTA: The great success story: Compares Mexican-to-American
GDP figures since 1980, showing that the gap has increased since
NAFTA, putting Mexicans even more behind. What would be helpful
here is another chart showing income inequality in both countries.
It has certainly increased in the US since NAFTA, and probably in
Mexico as well.
Kevin T Dugan: [06-18]
Nvidia is worth as much as all real estate in NYC -- and 9 other wild
comparisons.
Corey Robin: [06-29]
Hayek, the accidental Freudian: "The economist was fixated on
subconscious knowledge and dreamlike enchantment -- even if he denied
their part in this relationships."
Ukraine War and Russia:
Blaise Malley:
Andrew Cockburn: [06-25]
In destroying Ukraine's power grid the Russians are following our
lead.
Ivana Nikolic Hughes/Peter Kuznick: [06-27]
Prolonging the Ukraine war is flirting with nuclear disaster.
Anatol Lieven: [06-19]
Yes, we can reconcile absurd Russian & Ukrainian peace plans:
"Details emerging about talks to end the war in 2022 highlight the
fact that time isn't on Kyiv's side."
Aaron Maté: [06-27]
New evidence US blocked Ukraine-Russia peace deal, and a new Ukrainian
excuse for walking away.
Zachary Paikin: [06-26]
US contractors in Ukraine: Another 'red line' crossing?
Trudy Rubin: [06-26]
Ukraine's head of military intelligence is behind Kyiv's biggest
victories this year. He sees no point in peace talks. I rarely
read her, because she's so ideologically pro-war, always flogging
hawkish propaganda lines, sniping at anyone who doubts her causes
or simply admits that they come with costs, disparaging any who
even consider negotiation. So it was no surprise that she jumped
on the Ukraine bandwagon. Nor am I surprised that she's going out
of her way to find kindred warriors in Ukraine to champion. But
I had to read this one, because I wasn't aware that Kyiv had any
"biggest victories this year," or, well, any victories. But if you
only care about war, and are utterly indifferent to costs, you can
celebrate the sort of stunts Kyrylo Budanov claims credit for. At
best, they are minor irritants that Putin should weigh in as one
more reason to negotiate peace. On the other hand, to whatever
extent Zelensky and Biden see them as "victories," they may harden
their resolve to prolong the war and not negotiate, and they may
also provoke further offenses by Russia.
America's empire and the world:
Gordon Adams: [06-21]
Time to terminate US counterterrorism programs in Africa: "They
don't work, they don't achieve the projected goals, they waste funds,
and they are counter-productive."
Zack Beauchamp: [06-28]
France's far right is on the brink of power. Blame its centrist
president. "How Emmanuel Macron accidentally helped the far
right normalize itself."
David Broder: [07-01]
Emmanuel Macron has handed victory to the far right: "Marine
Le Pen's allies celebrated a major advance in the opening round of
France's elections. Emmanuel Macron's snap election gamble was a
miscalculation -- but the far right's rise is also a product of his
whole presidency."
Dan Grazier: [06-27]
The US military chases shiny new things and the ranks suffer:
"We were told the Osprey, LCS, and F-35 were cutting edge, but they
turned out to be boondoggles and deathtraps." Possible saving grace
here is that the pursuit of profits among US weaponsmakers is making
their wares too expensive and inefficient to operate, even for
nations that got snookered into buying them as some sort of
tribute.
Marc Martorell Junyent: [06-26]
Europe: The onslaught of the far right.
Stavroula Pabst: [07-01]
Former NSA chief revolves through OpenAI's door: "General Nakasone
was just appointed tot he board."
James Park/Mark Episkopos: [06-19]
Putin and Kim in Pyongyang, making it 'strategic'. More proof
that even enemies want to have friends, and that the US is pushing
all of its "enemies" into each other's arms. Really, how hard would
it be to cut a deal with North Korea to isolate Russia? On the other
hand, keeping North Korea hostile seems to pay off in arms sales
to South Korea and Japan:
Trita Parsi: [06-28]
Iran elections hinge on price of meat not ideology: "Regardless
of who wins, the election will not likely have a significant impact
on Iran's regional policies."
More on Iran:
Ishaan Tharoor:
Nick Turse:
After training African coup leaders, Pentagon blames Russia for African
coups.
Other stories:
Noam Chomsky: Briefly in the news after false reports that
he had died at 95 -- see Brett Wilkins: [06-18]
Manufacturing Obituaries: Media falsely reports Noam Chomsky's death --
which led to a quick burst of posts, including a couple of his own,
still vibrant and still relevant:
William Hartung: [06-25]
An AI Hell on Earth? Silicon Valley and the rush toward automated
warfare.
Sean Illing: [06-23]
What nuclear annihilation could look like: "The survivors would
envy the dead." Interview with Annie Jacobsen, author of
Nuclear War: A Scenario.
Joshua Keating: [06-16]
The world is running out of soldiers: Good. Soldiering is a
losing proposition, no matter what side you think you are on.
I'm not sure that Keating is right that "wars are getting more
common and militaries are building up." I'll grant that war
business is booming, and that the costs -- both to wage and to
suffer war -- are way up, but aren't costs supposed to be
self-limiting? One cost, which is finding people dumb and/or
desperate enough to enlist, certainly is, and that's a good
thing. Somehow some related pieces popped up:
Jack Hunter: [06-18]
Congress moves to make Selective Service automatic: "Raising
the specter of the draft, this NDAA amendment seems ill-timed."
Actually, no one's advocating to bring back the draft. All the
amendment does is simplifying the paperwork by leaving it to the
government to sign people up, giving people one less awful thing
to do. Simpler still would be to eliminate registration, and the
whole useless bureaucracy behind it.
Edward Hasbrouck: [06-29]
A war draft today can't work. Let us count the ways.
Jacob Kushner: [06-23]
The best plan to help refugees might also be the simplest:
"More refugees live in cities. Could cash help them rebuild their
lives?"
Dave Lindorff: [06-28]
Assange is finally free as America, Britain, Sweden and Australia
are shamed.
Robert Christgau: [06-26]
Xgau Sez: June, 2024: Several things of possible interest here,
but I wanted to comment on this interchange:
[Q] On October 18, you tweeted a defense of Israel citing a well
written piece which postulated that the hospital bombing committed one
week after 10/7 was actually not committed by Israel. You stated that
prior to this evidence, you were "profoundly disturbed" that such a
thing could happen. So now here we are, over half a year later, after
tens of thousands of deaths and countless hospital bombings which have
all undeniably been committed by Israel--and you haven't said a single
word? It's one thing for you to have stayed quiet on the issue
completely, but you only speak up when Israel can be protected? Bob,
what is wrong with you? How are you not profoundly disturbed as the
death toll of innocent civilians reaches nearly 40,000 with no clear
end in sight? The last thing I ever expected from my decades of
following your works was for you to be so spineless. I refuse to
believe you only actively stand for something when the narrative suits
your desires. -- Brandon Sparks, America
[A] Anyone but a genuine expert who writes about the appalling Gaza
war risks being incomplete and probably wrong. I cited that hospital
bombing story because that early there seemed some reason for hope
that the war would resolve itself with a modicum of sanity. It wasn't
yet clear just how appalling Netanyahu would prove to be--or, I will
add with my hands shaking, Hamas either. The "lots" I know is too
little and in public at least I intend to say as little as
possible. I've long believed in a two-state solution and this war is
easily the cruelest and most gruesome international conflict of my
adulthood. But it hasn't yet turned me into a full-bore anti-Zionist,
because as an American of German extraction with many dozens of Jewish
friends, I've spent too much of my life taking anti-Semitism seriously
to put it on any sort of back burner now.
Christgau has been a good friend for close to fifty years, and
a friend of my wife's even longer (he introduced us), and we're
generally pretty simpatico politically, drawing on similar class
and cultural backgrounds and experiences -- although he's eight
years older than I am, which is enough for him to look up to other
people as mentors (especially Greil Marcus, whose view of Israel
and Gaza I wrote about
here, and probably the late Ellen Willis, who was left of Marcus
but still a devoted Zionist) and to look down on me as a protégé
(not that he doesn't respect what I have to say; he's often a very
astute reader, but still doggedly fixed in his beliefs).
After what Marcus wrote, we gave him credit for publishing this
letter, and not for simply shirking it off. But while his cautious
and self-effacing tone evaded our worst expectations, nearly every
line in his answer is wrong in some fundamental sense, just not in
the manner of Marcus (ridiculous, hypocritical accusations cloaked
in a storm of overwrought emotion and self-pity), but mostly by
pleading ignorance and accepting it as bliss. To wit:
"Anyone but a genuine expert . . . risks being incomplete
and probably wrong." If you know any history at all, you must know
that in 1948 Israel expelled 700,000 Palestinians, driving many of
them into Gaza (more than the previous population of Gaza), leaving
them under Egyptian rule until Israel invaded and occupied Gaza in
and ever since 1967, and that under Israeli rule, they were denied
human rights and subject to multiple waves of violent repression,
a dire situation that only got worse when Israel left Gaza to the
circumscribed gang rule of Hamas. Under such circumstances, and
having repeatedly failed to appeal to Israel's and the world's sense
of justice, it was only a matter of time before Hamas resorted to
its own violence, since nothing less could move Israel.
If you don't know the history, you might not have
understood the Hamas revolt on Oct. 7, but you would have observed
that the revolt was limited and unsustainable, because Hamas had
nothing resembling a real army, few modern arms, no arms industry,
no safe haven, no allies. It may have come as a shock, but it was
no threat. Israel killed or repelled the attackers within a couple
days. After that, virtually all of the violence was committed by
Israel, not just against people who had desperately fought back
but against everyone in Gaza, against their homes, their farms,
their utilities, their hospitals. Since Hamas was powerless to
stop Israel, even to make Israel pay a further price for their
war, the only decent choice Americans had was to inhibit Israel,
to back them down from the genocide their leaders openly avowed.
There was nothing subtle or complex about this.
"There seemed some reason for hope that the war would
resolve itself with a modicum of sanity": Really? Israel,
following the example of the British before them, has always
punished Palestinian violence with disproportionate collective
punishment. The Zionist leadership embraced what is now commonly
called "ethnic cleansing" in 1937, as they embraced the Peel
Commission plan to forcibly "transfer" Palestinians from lands
that Britain would offer for Israel. From that point on, genocide
was woven into the DNA of Zionism. The only question was whether
they could afford to discredit themselves to the world (which,
by 2023, really just meant the US). When Biden vowed unlimited,
uncritical support, Israel was free to do whatever they wanted,
sane or not, with no fear of reprisal, isolation, and sanctions.
"It wasn't yet clear just how appalling Netanyahu would
prove to be": Granted, few Americans have any real appreciation
for Israeli politics, especially given the extent to which most
Israeli politicians misrepresent themselves to Americans. Still,
you have to be awful naïve not to understand where Netanyahu
came from (he was born royalty on the fascist right: his father
was Jabotinsky's secretary) and where he would go any time he
got the chance (ever farther to the right). Sure, he was more
circumspect than his partners Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who were
free to say what he actually wanted to do. Even before the Oct.
7 revolt, their coalition was curtailing Palestinian rights
within Israel, and was encouraging and excusing a campaign of
terror against Palestinians in the West Bank, while Gaza was
being strangled, and the only relatively liberal courts were
being neutered. Outrage over Oct. 7 was immediately turned into
license to intensify operations that were already ongoing.
"I've long believed in a two-state solution": "Two states"
isn't a belief. It's just something people talk about to keep
people separated into rival, hostile blocs. Give them equal power
and they would be at each other's throats, but with unequal power
you have one standing on the other's neck. "Two states" started
out as a British idea, tried disastrously first in Ireland then
in India. Israelis endorsed the idea in 1937 (Peel Commission)
and in 1947 (UN Partition Plan), but when they had the chance to
actually build a state, they went with one powerful state of their
own, and prevented even a weak Palestinian state from emerging:
Jordan and Egypt were given temporary control of chunks of
Palestine, their population swelled with refugees from ethnic
cleansing in Israel's captured territories, then even those
chunks were regained in 1967, when Israel was finally strong
enough to keep their people confined to impoverished stans.
True, the "two state" idea recovered a bit in the 1990s, as
bait to lure corrupt "nationalists" into policing their own
people, but few Israelis took the idea seriously, and after
Sharon in 2000, most stopped pretending -- only the Americans
were gullible enough to keep up the charade. You can dice up
territories arbitrary to provide multiple states with different
ethnic mixes allowing multiple tyrannies, but that kind of
injustice only leads to more conflict. The only decent solution
is, as always, equal rights for everyone, however space is
allocated. Imagining othewise only shows how little you know
about human nature.
"Easily the cruelest and most gruesome international
conflict of my adulthood": The American wars in Indochina and
Korea were worse by almost any metric. The oft-genocidal wars
in and around India and the eastern Congo certainly killed
more people. Even the CIA-backed "white terror" in Indonesia
killed more people. Israel's wars are more protracted, because
they feed into a self-perpetuating culture of militarism, but
while the latest episode in Gaza is off the charts compared to
any of these catastrophes, but averaged out over the century
since British imperialism gave force to the Balfour Declaration,
Israel's forever war has been fairly well regulated to minimize
its inconvenience for Israelis. It persists only because Israelis
like it that way, and could be ended easily if they had any
desire to do so.
"But it hasn't yet turned me into a full-bore anti-Zionist":
You don't have to be an anti-Zionist to oppose genocide, or to
oppose a caste system where given or denied rights because of
their birth and parents. Admittedly, those behaviors are deeply
embedded in the fabric of actually-existing Zionism, but there
have been alternative concepts of Zionism that do not encourage
them, and even actual Zionists have resisted the temptation to
such barbarism more often than not. You can be Israeli, or you
can love Israel and Israelis and wish nothing more than to keep
them safe and respected and still oppose the racist and genocidal
policies of the current regime. Indeed, if you are, you really
must oppose those policies, because they do nothing but bring
shame on the people you profess to love and cherish. And you can
do this without ever describing yourself as pro-Palestinian, or
in any way associating yourself with Palestinian nationalists --
who, quite frankly, have made a lot of missteps over the years,
in the worst cases acting exactly like the Israelis they claim
to oppose.
"Because as an American of German extraction with many dozens
of Jewish friends, I've spent too much of my life taking anti-Semitism
seriously to put it on any sort of back burner now." Again, you can
be Jewish, or you can love and respect Jews, and still oppose Israel's
policies of racism and genocide. You can find ample reason within
Judaism, or Christianity, or any other religion, or secular humanism,
socialist solidarity, or simple human decency, to do so. And you can
and should be clear that if the roles were reversed you would still
oppose racism and genocide, and seek to protect and sustain victims
of those policies.
This is actually quite easy for people of the left to do, because
the definition that identifies us on the left is that we believe that
all people deserve equal political, economic, and human rights. It
is harder for people on the right, who again by definition believe
that some people are chosen to rule and that others are commanded
to serve, or at least not annoy or inconvenience their betters by
their presence. They are likely to be divided, depending on whether
they identify with the people on top or on the bottom, and they are
likely to be the worst offenders, because they also believe that
the use of force is legitimate to promote their caste and to subdue
all others.
There is a form of gravity involved in this: if you're under or
excluded from the dominant hierarchy, you tend to move left, because
your self-interest is better served by universal rights and tolerance
than by the slim odds that you can revolt and seize power. This is
why almost all Jews in America lean left -- as do most members of
most excluded and/or disparaged minorities, pretty much everywhere.
Israel is different, because right-wing Jews did manage to seize
power there, and as such have become a glaring example of why the
right is wrong.
Zionists have worked very hard to obscure the inevitable divide
between rightist power in Israel and left leanings in the diaspora,
and for a long time, especially in America, they've been remarkably
successful. I'm not going to try to explain how and why, as the key
point right now is that it's breaking down, as it is becoming obvious
that Israel acts are contrary to the political and moral beliefs of
most Jews in America -- that there is any significant support for
Israel at all can only be attributed to denial, lies, and the rote
repetition of carefully crafted talking points.
One of those talking points is that opposition to Israel's wars
and racism reflects and encourages anti-semitism, thus triggering
deep-seated fears tied back to the very real history of racism and
genocide targeting Jews -- fears that, while hard to totally dismiss,
have been systematically cultivated to Israel's advantage by what
Norman Finkelstein calls "the holocaust industry." Some people (and
Marcus presents as an example) grew up so traumatized that they are
completely unreachable (which is to say, disconnected from reality)
on Israel. Others, like Christgau, are just enmeshed in sympathy
and guilt -- although in his case, I don't see what other than his
name binds him to German, much less Nazi, history and culture (for
instance, the Christian church he often refers to was Presbyterian,
not Lutheran, not that Lutheranism is all that Teutonic either; in
music about all I can think of is that he likes Kraftwerk and Kurt
Weill, but who among us doesn't?).
That Zionists should be accusing leftists, including many Jews,
of being anti-semitic is pretty ripe. Zionism was a minority response
to the rising tide of anti-semitism in 19th century Europe, which
insisted that anti-semitism was endemic and permanent -- something
so ingrained in Euopean culture that could never be reformed by
socialist political movements or tolerated by liberalism, a curse
that could only be escaped from, by retreating to and fortifying
an exclusively Jewish nation-state, isolated by an Iron Wall.
But along the way, Zionists learned to play anti-semitism to
their advantage. They pleaded with imperialists to give them land
and to expel their unwanted Jews. They pointed Christians to the
prophecy in Revelations that sees the return of Jews to the Holy
Land as a prerequisite for the Second Coming. (David Lloyd George
was one who bought that line. In America today, Postmillennial
Dispensationalists are the staunchest supporters of Zionism, and
every last one of them relishes the Final Solution that eluded
Hitler.) They negotiated with Nazis. They lobbied to keep Jews
from emigrating to America. They organized pogroms to stampede
Arabic Jews to ascend to Israel. They stole the shameful legacy
of the Holocaust and turned it into a propaganda industry, which
plies guilt to obtain deferrence and support, even as Israel
does unto others the same horrors that others had done to Jews.
Opposition to anti-semitism is a core belief of liberals and
the left in America. This is because such forms of prejudice and
discrimination are inimical to our principles, but it's gained
extra resonance because Jews tend to be active in liberal/left
circles, so non-Jews (like Christgau and myself) know and treasure
many of them. Nearly all of us are careful, sometimes to the point
of tedium, to make clear that our criticisms of Israel are not to
be generalized against Jews. In this, we are helped by the many
Jews who share our criticisms, and often, like the group Jewish
Voice for Peace, lead the way. But not everyone who criticizes
Israel exercises such care, and not everyone does so from left
principles, and those are the ones who are most likely to fall
back on anti-semitic tropes and popularize them, increasing the
chances of an anti-semitic resurgence. That would be bad, both
politically and morally, but no form of opposition to tyranny
justifies the tyranny. We need to understand that the offense
is responsible for its opposition, and to seek its solution at
the source: Israel's racist and genocidal behavior.
So if you're really concerned that this war may make anti-semitism
more common, the only solution is to stop the war: in practical terms,
to demand a ceasefire, to halt arms deliveries to Israel, to insist
that Israel give up its claims to Gaza (if anything is clear by now,
it's that Israel is not competent to administer Gaza), to organize
aid and relief, and to open a dialogue with Israel to come to some
sort of agreeable solution where everyone can live in peace, security,
and hopefully prosperity with full and equal rights. The main reason
for doing this is that it's the right thing to do, for pretty much
everyone, but if you're primarily concerned about anti-semitism,
that is one more reason to sue for peace.
In this age where kill ratios exceed 100-to-1, and the starvation
ratio is infinite, I'm not going to pretend that the psychic trauma
the war is causing for Israelis, for Jews, and for philo-semitic
Americans somehow balances off against the pain and suffering that
is being inflicted on Palestinians, but that traums is real, and
needs to be addressed and relieved, and only peace can do that. And
in this particular conflict, only Israel can grant peace. Until
they choose to do so, all focus should be directed on those who
are responsible for this war: for fighting it, for supporting it,
for excusing it, and for letting them get away with it.
I guess that last point ran away from me a bit, while still
leaving much more to be said. More succinctly: to whatever extent
Israel is able to identify its war with Jews in general, and to
equate opposition to its war with anti-semitism, the prevalence
and threat of anti-semitism will grow. To stop this, stop the war.
If anti-semitism is the issue you really care about, stopping the
war is the only thing that will help you.
People on the left, by definition, are opposed to the war, and
are opposed to anti-semitism, and see their opposition to both as
part of the same fight. People on the right are often confused,
crazy, and/or sick. You may or may not be able to help them, but
know that they are much less dangerous in times of peace and good
will than in times of war and turmoil, so again the imperative is
to stop the war. And if you, like Christgau (and even Marcus) hate
and fear Donald Trump (who's firmly on the right for all three
reasons), same prescription: stop the war.
One last point: you don't have to specifically care about Jews
on this matter. I'm addressing these points to people who do. While
I think it would be more helpful to protest in ways that help gain
support from people who are initially sympathetic to Israelis --
e.g., I think a lot of Palestinian flag waving isn't very helpful --
I understand that people can come to the right conclusion from all
sorts of reasoning. What matters most is that we all demand a
ceasefire, and an end to Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians.
David A Graham:
Doug Emhoff, first jazz fan: "The second gentleman gets the beauty
and meaning of the genre."
Chris Monsen:
[06-19]
Midweek pick, June 19th, 2024: Okka Disk: A reminder of Bruno
Johnson's Milwaukee-based avant-jazz label, noting that "perhaps a
deep dive into their output would be in order at a later date."
For what little it's worth, I started working on
Ken Vandermark & Friends: A Consumer Guide back around 2004,
as it seemed like a good follow up to my
A Consumer Guide to William Parker, Matthew Shipp, et al.,
but I didn't get very far. My
database does contain 66 albums
released by Okka Disk, 55 with grades, of which the following rated
A- or higher:
- Jim Baker/Steve Hunt/Brian Sandstrom/Mars Williams: Extraordinary Popular Delusions (2005 [2007])
- Peter Brötzmann/Toshinori Kondo/Massimo Pupillo/Paal Nilssen-Love: Hairy Bones (2008 [2009])
- Caffeine [Ken Vandermark]: Caffeine (1993 [1994])
- FME [Vandermark]: Underground (2004)
- FME: Cuts (2004 [2005])
- Triage [Dave Rempis]: Twenty Minute Cliff (2003)
- Triage: American Mythology (2004) [A]
- School Days [Vandermark]: Crossing Division (2000)
- School Days: In Our Times (2001 [2002])
- Steelwool Trio [Vandermark]: International Front (1994 [1998])
- Ken Vandermark/Kent Kessler/Ingebrigt Håker Flaten/Nate McBride/Wilbert De Joode: Collected Fiction (2008 [2009])
[06-26]
Midweek pick, June 26th, 2024: Gayle, Graves and Parker's WEBO:
What I'm listening to to calm my nerves while writing about Gaza
and Biden.
Phil Overeem:
June 2024: Halfway there + "old reggae albums I'd never heard
before were my June salvation."
Robert Sullivan: [06-24]
The Sun Ra Arkestra's maestro hits one hundred: "Marshall Allen,
the musical collective's sax-playing leader, is celebrating with a
deep-spacey video installation during the Venice Biennale."
Werner Trieschmann: [06-20]
Fox Green score hat trick with excellent third album, Light
Over Darkness.
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