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Blog Entries [140 - 149]

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Started early enough, but once again this is chewing up Sunday evening. While I'm having a lot of trouble getting my own projects organized, it's almost therapeutic to stumble across a piece and write a few off-the-cuff comments.

Here's a Patriotic Millionaires meme, picturing Ronald Reagan, saying: "In 1984 I lowered the top income tax rate from 70% to 28%. Then I imposed the first ever income tax on social security benefits to make up for it."

Top story threads:

Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans: I've generally ignored the horserace articles, even the snippy ones about DeSantis's faltering (or rebooting, take your pick) campaign. Trump got back into the news cycle, provoked with additional indictments, which elicited the usual vicious incoherence. Elsewhere, Republicans have been very busy in their endless quest to hurt people and screw up the future.

• Zack Beauchamp: [07-28] Republicans are threatening to sabotage George W Bush's greatest accomplishment: It's a program I admit I hadn't heard of, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which "has saved as many as 25 million lives," and "is currently supporting treatment for over 20 million people who depend on the program for continued access to medication." So, just the sort of thing today's Republicans want to kill, all the more so since it gives them an opportunity to repoliticize AIDS and trash Anthony Fauci as one of the great monsters of our time. And if Bush's legacy gets trampled along the way, well, it turns out that he was just RINO scum all along.

• Jonathan Chait:

  • [07-26] Ron DeSantis's Nazi outreach is a strategy, not an accident.

  • [07-26] Conservatives have a new master theory of American politics: I'm always intrigued by theories, as they imply thinking, even when they derive from the right, where such skills have atrophied if ever they existed. This one's based on what Chait's calling Longmarchism, which argues that the Left has, over decades, implemented a "long march through existing institutions," infiltrating and capturing them to such an extent that only a political revolt by right-thinking Americans can restore the nation as God intended. Chait points to Christopher Rufo's America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything (reviewed here) and Up From Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right After a Generation of Decay, an essay collection edited by Arthur Milikh. Chait does a decent job of debunking this nonsense, but a few points could be clearer:

    1. There is no control structure on the left -- nothing remotely resembling the cells Communists and Birchers tried to set up long ago, nor even anything similar to the economic ties Koch, Thiel, etc., have set up to direct the right. (Koch was a Bircher, so that kind of thinking comes naturally to him. The right would like you to think of Soros in those terms, but he's just an old philanthropist, throwing money at worthwhile causes, and not just political ones.)

    2. The ideas that the right so objects to are less the result of conscious political propaganda than common reactions to situations that most people face. People become anti-racist because they don't like the effects of racism. As America has become more diverse, tolerance and respect have become more necessary, if just to get by and to get along. Even businesses understand that. (If the left really had infiltrated corporate America, wouldn't we have also changed their views on profits, on unions, on pollution, etc.?)

• Tim Dickinson: [07-29] These Christian nationalists want to stone adulterers to death: "Aspiring theocrats want to install Old Testament justice in America." Interesting that the first person I thought of after seeing the headline was Newt Gingrich. Dickinson also wrote: [07-28] Vivek Ramaswamy is on the rise. So are Christian nationalist attacks on his religion: He's Hindu, but this is the first I've heard of anyone giving him grief for it. He seemed to get along swimmingly at a recent Christian confab in Iowa. I can remember when Protestants could get really worked up over points of theology -- my Grandmother, for instance, told me that the Lutherans she grew up with were "worse than the Catholics" -- but nowadays the only thing good Christians need to agree on is the others they all hate in common.

• Robert Downen/Carla Astudillo: [07-25] Ken Paxton's far-right billionaire backers are fighting hard to save him: Otherwise it's sunk cost: buying an Attorney General only to see him impeached.

• Kate Kelly/David Perlmutt: [07-30] Inside the party switch that blew up North Carolina politics: Tricia Cotham, who ran as a pro-abortion Democrat, then switched to the Republicans to override an anti-abortion bill veto. You've long known that there is little Republicans wouldn't do to steal elections, but Trojan horse candidates are a new low.

• Ed Kilgore: [07-24] First Republican debate: Who's in, who's banned, who's boycotting: The Fox News debate is on August 23. It shouldn't be hard to find something better to do on that day (though probably not outside).

• Kelly McClure: [07-29] Judge throws out Trump's lawsuit against CNN. Trump sued CNN for $475 million for defamation. For more details, see Andrew Zhang: [07-29] Judge dismisses Trump's 'Big Lie' lawsuit against CNN. Evidently "big lie" isn't recognized as a Nazi trademark, so can be used by others to refer to other big lies. Trump also objected to being called "Hitler-like," which either means he's a little touchy or he's holding out for something stronger. The lawsuit was dismissed "with prejudice," which is technical jargon judges use for "you're wasting my time." No mention in these articles for CNN's countersuit against Trump for calling them "fake news." Maybe they didn't feel like wasting the judge's time suing?

• Ian Millhiser: [07-27] What's new in the new indictment against Donald Trump? "Trump allegedly tried to destroy evidence in the federal case involving classified documents."

• Nicole Narea/Li Zhou: [07-27] Your 5 biggest questions about Trump's latest indictment, answered. Not really. My first one is whether the revised indictment would push his court date out, and that wasn't broached. I'd expect his lawyers to make such a motion. The whole thing about whether Trump might go to jail isn't very clear. My impression is that, unlike the New York hush money case, everyone who's been convicted of the crimes Trump is charged with here has gotten a jail term. (For a "legal scholar" view, see Tom Boggioni: [07-29] Trump 'may die in prison' if he doesn't strike a deal after 'shocking' new charges.) The authors ask whether it's even possible to jail Trump, given his Secret Service protection. But why does he even need extra protection if he's in jail? (Sure, laugh, but aren't jails supposed to be the safest places in America?) If not, maybe you can find a higher security facility, like Guantanamo? Or maybe cut a deal with the British and exile him to Saint Helena, like Napoleon? He might even like that idea, at least until he got there. (Maybe he could build a luxury golf resort there, and it would be a pilgrimage destination.)

• Tori Otten: [07-28] Madman Trump promises to run for President from prison if he's convicted. It's been done before (Eugene Debs in 1920), but "it is unclear how things would work if Trump won." Author also wrote: [07-28] Elise Stefanik wins the prize for stupidest Trump indictment reaction.

• Catherine Rampell: [07-27] A year after Dobbs, House GOP proposes taking food from hungry babies: The concerns of the "pro life" begin at conception, and pretty much end with delivery.

• Adam Rawnsley/Asawin Suebsaeng: [07-26] Trump struggles to find enough lawyers to handle his many indictments: Reminds me that when Duke Ellington was asked how he kept such a great orchestra together for so many decades, he confided a secret: "I pay them." Maybe Trump should try that. Maybe he should also try to be a better client. I heard somewhere that MAGA really stands for "make attorneys get attorneys."

• Zachary Siegel: [06-27] Their kids died of fentanyl overdoses. Republicans can't wait to exploit it. "Grieving parents are at risk of becoming mere props in the latest chapter of America's twisted war on drugs."

• Molly Taft: [07-21] The GOP darling who claims fossil fuels are good for humanity: Alex Epstein, who's written the books The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (2014) and Fossil Future, and insists that oil is "a wonderful, live-sustaining product," while deriding "wasteful, unreliable solar and wind schemes." Koch loves him.

• Michael Tomasky: [07-28] Trump is an extremely dumb fascist: "The latest criminal indictment highlights his idiocy -- but also the threat he still poses to American democracy." He points out that "fascism is a sensibility far more than it is a political program." Trump certainly has that sensibility, no matter how much one might quibble over his political alignment with historic fascists. And dumb? Very. The one thing he has is instincts, which are disturbingly popular, but not very original, given how easy they were to pick up from Fox and the like.

• John Wagner/Amy B Wang: [07-26] Giuliani not contesting making false statements about Georgia election workers.

• Scott Waldman: [07-26] Conservatives have already written a climate plan for Trump's second term. They call this "Project 2025," and describe it as not a white paper but a "battle plan," to implement as soon as a Republican is sworn in as president in 2025. "It would block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency's environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department's renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California's car pollution standards; and delegate more regulation of polluting industries to Republican state officials."

• Brett Wilkins: [07-26] DOJ sues Greg Abbott over "barbaric" Rio Grande buoy barrier: I'd be more inclined to charge him with attempted murder, then add further charges with each additional victim. That may not fly, given that those specific charges are usually filed by states, but the feds must have something along those lines. Or they could just extradite him to The Hague, to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Of course, he'd probably use that for a campaign ad. For more, see Nicole Narea: [07-25] Biden is taking Texas to court over its floating border barrier.

Biden and/or the Democrats: Note separate pieces on Hunter Biden and Robert F Kennedy Jr much farther down. There are also pieces under various topics, including Ukraine, Israel, and the military. Democrats have enough excess baggage without having to pile it all on here.

• EJ Dionne Jr: [07-30] The GOP pays a price for its extremism. But Biden does, too. He means, Biden pays a price for the GOP's extremism; not that there's anything extremist about Biden. He blames this on the media's habit of repeating whatever Republicans say, even if only to debunk it afterwards. "A two-minute report on a congressional hearing will inevitably air whatever charges some right-wing committee chair makes. They lodge in people's memories no matter what might be said during those 120 seconds to debunk them." Dean Baker suggests a better approach: "Actually, competent reporters would simply report that Republicans on a House committee repeated long-debunked lies about President Biden and son: full stop."

• Rebecca Leber: [07-26] Biden's $250 billion lure to clean up the dirty legacy of fossil fuels. One section here is subtitled: "Balancing ambition, exhaustiveness, and speed will make all the difference." Sounds difficult, and given the pervasive influence of moneyed interests in all facets of American politics, it will be a tough trick for Democrats to pull off, but at least they try to balance off a broad range of interests. Handing this over to the Republicans is a sure recipe for disaster.

• Eric Levitz: [07-28] The 'AOC Left' has achieved plenty. Rejoinder to Freddie deBoer: [07-25] AOC is just a regular old Democrat now, a piece that I found too cloying to cite on its own.

• Josh Marshall: [07-28] Age, the blue sky and that enduring question of 'is Joe Biden too old?' Of course he is. But it's not like with athletes, where losing a step off the dribble or a couple feet off the fastball can wipe you out. He needs to pace himself, surround himself with good people, get help when he needs it, and prepare to bow out if/when it gets to be too much. And if needed, there is a clear succession plan in place (which unfortunately involves a couple old-timers from Congress, but odds of getting to them are rather slim). Assuming Kamala Harris is his running mate again, it would be reassuring for her to step up, and for him to let her. But the underlying situation is that Democrats have decided not to risk another open primary in 2024. If they did, there would be a fight between left and corporate wings of the party, and Biden uniquely disarms that gap. The left has a lot of popular issues to run on, but the system (and not just the DNC) is rigged against them -- e.g., Bloomberg spent $500 million on a suicide mission just to keep Sanders from getting the nomination in 2020; this year No Labels is a ready-built stalking horse for the Bloomberg class -- and the risk of letting any Republican (much less Trump) back in so grave that few progressives are willing to risk backing anyone better than Biden. The age issue will fade in the general election, where Teams R & D will rally to their side. And if, perchance, Republicans wind up nominating someone younger than Trump, Biden can always roll out Reagan's disarming quip, that he "won't hold his opponent's inexperience against him."

The Supreme Court:

• Robert Barnes: [07-28] Alito says Congress has no authority to police Supreme Court ethics: So the President and members of Congress aren't above the law, but Supreme Court Justices are? But if that was obvious, why would they dissemble so much to hide their side deals? More on Alito:

  • Josh Gerstein: [07-28] Alito: Congress can't regulate Supreme Court ethics. A tweet from: Laurence Tribe: "Justice Alito should know better: The power of Congress to regulate the non-judicial conduct of all Article III judges, including the Supreme Court Justices, is grounded in the Constitution's Necessary & Proper Clause, Article I, Section 8, Clause 18."

  • Ruth Marcus: [07-30] No, Justice Alito. Congerss should not butt out on Supreme Court\ ethics.

  • Adrienne Masha Varkiani: [07-28] Alito to Congress: You have no business snooping into our ethics.

• Ian Millhiser: [07-26] How Alabama could get away with defying the Supreme Court.

Climate and Environment:

• Matthew Cappucci: [07-25] Violent storms tear through Europe with 'gargantuan' hail in Italy.

• Judith Deutsch: [07-27] What is the 'cost' of climate change? My eyes quickly glaze over when I read pieces like this, where the point seems to be: incalculable but certainly much more than we can afford. But it raises many more questions, like what is the distribution of costs? And how much of those costs are actually charged to those responsible for them? The answer to the latter is certainly very little. While one can imagine schemes to bring the two closer in line, I'm doubtful that they can ever get even moderately close.

• Laura López González: [07-25] What you need to know about killer humidity. Quotes Jeff Goodell, whose latest book is The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet: "A wet bulb temperature of 95 degrees -- which basically means both outdoor air temperature and humidity levels are high -- is the upper end of human adaptability to humid heat. Beyond that, our generates heat faster than it can dissipate it." You may be familiar with that wet bulb temperature (35°C) from Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, where it finally motivates a long list of reforms.

• Umair Irfan: [07-26] What "record-breaking heat" actually means.

• Pablo Manriquez: [07-27] 100 degree days, wildfires . . . to Congressional Republicans, nothing to see here.

• Bill McKibben:

  • [07-11] Is it hot enough yet for politicians to take real action? Not really, but that's mostly because politicians can't take real action on something as big and independent as the climate or the economy. They can, at best, nudge it a bit. The question is whether they can recognize the need, and find something they can do that might lead to that nudge. As far as I can tell, there is one party that sees the problem, and for them, virtually every bit of news reinforces that view. And there's one party that doesn't see the problem at all, or if they admit to, don't see any possible solution. (See Manriquez above.) The next question is, when new people start to see the problem, will they also be willing to select the one party that takes the issue seriously?

  • [07-26] Heat waves and the sweep of history.

• Alissa J Rubin: [07-29] A climate warning from the cradle of civilization: "Every schoolchild learns the name: Mesopotamia -- the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of civilization. Today, much of that land is turning to dust."

Ukraine War:

• Connor Echols:

  • [07-28]] Diplomacy Watch: Putin fights to keep friends in Africa. There's an enigmatic "Putin has rejected a US offer to discuss the war" here, but nothing of substance. Russia's popularity among neutral African leaders appears to be waning.

  • [07-25] Uber Russia-hawk Victoria Nuland rises to acting deputy secretary of state: She's been serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Here's her Wikipedia page. Her husband is prominent neocon historian Robert Kagan, who was one of PNAC (Project for a New American Century) founders in 1998. Nuland bounced back and forth between State and outside think tanks, always taking a hard anti-Russian line, most notably in 2014, when she was in Kyiv and caught on tape picking who should take over Ukraine as Prime Minister.

  • [07-27] Biden roils oversight community with nominations for Ukraine aid watchdogs.

• Dave DeCamp: [07-27] Ukraine's Parliament votes to extend martial law, pushing back elections: So Ukrainians, and by extension their supporters in the West, are fighting for democracy, but they can't have it until their present leaders have met their war aims?

• Fred Kaplan: [07-27] Ukraine's new stategy against Russia: "Why Ukraine had to reboot its summer offensive." So it hasn't worked, but they're making adjustments, and both sides continue to inflict damage. Kaplan's conclusion: "the war remains, in some ways, what it has been almost from the beginning: a competition to see which side gives up first." Unfortunately, that conception only gives both sides reason to keep fighting.

• Daniel Larison: [07-26] Did the US know the Ukraine offensive might fail, and if so, when? Some prominent Americans are still in denial: e.g., Democratic Senators Mark Kelly and Tammy Duckworth: [07-24] We've been on the front lines. We know what Ukraine needs. More and fancier weapons, of course. That piece in turn led me to David Axe: [02-20] Some of the best weapons in the world are now in Ukraine. They may change the war. They haven't, at least yet. Even if Ukraine, at considerable cost, manages to gain some ground back this summer, it's hard to see a military path to the "victory" they desire. And what about those "best weapons in the world"? They're not looking so hot -- more like what you should expect when the arms industry is in corrupt embrace with a military that has only tested their wares in places like Afghanistan and Somalia. "Refusing to negotiate with an adversary, whether out of pride or ideological hostility to diplomacy, is usually self-defeating."

• Eve Sampson/Samuel Granados: [07-22] Ukraine is now the most mined country. It will take decades to make safe. Maybe the US should have signed that international treaty outlawing the use of mines, which would have put some pressure on Russia and Ukraine to conform. Same for cluster bombs. The "ordnance contamination" map reminds us that the problem isn't just mines. All kinds of shells and bombs can fail to explode, lying in wait for a future disturbance. "The sheer quantity of ordnance in Ukraine is just unprecedented in the last 30 years. There's nothing like it."

• Katrina vanden Heuvel/James Carden: [07-28] When facts cut through the fog of war: "As the Ukraine counteroffensive grinds on, conditions on the ground are now too obvious to ignore. Is it time for talking, yet?" Of course. It's never not been time to talk. Just as it's always been obvious that no definition of victory could justify the costs war has exacted on both sides.

Israel:

• Peter Baker/Ronen Bergman: [07-29] Biden presses ahead with effort to broker Israeli-Saudi rapprochement. Wholly on Israel's terms, of course, because the US is no longer master of its own foreign policy re Israel. And those terms, as with Trump's Abraham Accords, are Saudi acquiescence as Israel tightens the screws on Palestinians.

• Zack Beauchamp: [07-24] What Israel's new judicial law reveals about its democracy. Even most technically, the idea that the ruling junta would pass a law that prevents the Supreme Court to considering whether its acts are "reasonable" strongly suggests that they are planning acts that are clearly unreasonable. Since the Court has rarely objected to anything the government has done to Palestinians, those planned acts may well be directed at Israeli Jews. At least, that's who are protesting.

• Jonathan Guyer: [07-26] What Israel's judicial overhaul means for Palestinians. Israel's Supreme court has been "no reliable supporter of Palestinian rights," but the bill's supporters, specifically Yariv Levin, cite cases the Supreme Court has blocked as "unreasonable," and they were all directed against Palestinians.

• Mitchell Plitnick: [07-24] Leading liberal Zionist voices call for ending US aid to Israel. They're thinking of military aid, which Israel doesn't need, and mostly uses against its own people (why not call Palestinians that? the phrase was used very effectively against Saddam Hussein for his attacks on Iraqi Kurds). Links provided, starting with Nicholas Kristof.

• David Remnick: [07-24] In Israel, a glimpse of a Trumpian future. Americans, not unlike people elsewhere, inevitably view the present through the prism of their own experience. Hence, the idea that Israel might become like Trump terrifies a long-time Zionist supporter like Remnick. I'm much more worried that America, Trumpy as it already is, might become even more like Israel. (By the way, that's long been the fantasy of neocons and Christian Zionists, so we've experienced a fair amount of that already.)

• Richard Silverstein:

  • [07-26] Israel is bullying progressives on borrowed time.

  • [07-27] Judicial crisis: An existential battle for Israel's future.

• Philip Weiss:

  • [07-24] New Israeli law is shock to US Zionists, who fear break with American Jews.

  • [07-26] Awareness grows that Israel's crisis stems from a core issue: it's an apartheid state.

Around the world:

• Priti Gulati Cox/Stan Cox: [07-27] The war you're not reading about: "Struggle and suffering in Sudan."

• Jody Ray: [07-29] How Tunisia became the EU's border guard.

• Nick Turse: [07-27] Niger coup leader joins long line of US-trained mutineers. Also:

  • Ellen Ioanes: [07-30] Niger's coup and the international community's opposition, explained.

  • Alex Thurston: [07-28] Niger becomes the latest domino falling to Western-trained militaries.

Other stories:

Dean Baker:

• [07-25] Why we do this crap: Review of The Ends of Freedom, by Mark Paul. Not a new idea -- Baker cites Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King as predecessors -- but the argument here is that a bunch of basic economic needs should be provided as rights (work, housing, education, health care, basic income and banking, a healthy environment), wrapping up with a final chapter ("How Do We Pay for It?").

• [07-21] The Chinese need to stay poor because the United States has done so much to destroy the planet: John Kerry went to China last week to scold them for not doing enough to limit greenhouse gases (see: China's Xi rebuffs Kerry's call for faster climate action), even though one may legitimately wonder what sort of example the US set during its period (now distantly remembered) of comparable economic growth. Although the Chinese economy has grown very fast in recent years, its per capita income is still way below the US, so it shouldn't surprise us that its political leaders feel the need to make up the difference. And in any case, China seems much more committed to reducing emissions than the US is -- what with the still-powerful Republicans actively sabotaging any effort the Biden administration makes. As Baker notes, "China is by far the world leader in wind energy, solar energy, and electric cars." He adds: "If we did want an opportunity to put our money where our mouth is, the United States could adopt a policy of making all the technology that is develops fully open-source, so that everyone in the world could take advantage of it, without concerns about patent monopolies or other protections."

Ben Burgis: [07-28] The Pentagon budget is obscene, even without the right-wing culture-war amendments. It's also untouchable politically, especially as Democrats have, for various reasons, become its biggest supporters.

• Connor Echols: [06-26] Proposed military slush fund would risk new boondoggles.

• Binoy Kampmark: [07-28] Dotty domains: The Pentagon's Mali typo leak affair.

• Branko Marcetic: [07-29] NATO's expansion into Asia is the mother of bad ideas: Not a fine turn of phrase, but yes, a very bad idea. I could easily list five, maybe ten, instances where NATO would only make the situation worse. Taiwan is the big one, as it would shatter the "one China" fictions that seem to be so important to the Beijing regime. I'd also worry about the bad smell of Europe's former imperialists joining together to "protect" their favored "allies" in Asia and elsewhere.

• George Will: [07-26] It's time to end the 'era of Great Distraction': I'm not suggesting you read him, but wanted to note that this is what they're calling the Global War on Terror these days: a Great Distraction that caused us to lose focus on the big threats we need to spend trillions preparing for war with: Russia and China. Ends with an ominous warning, so you'll know that he's serious: "Time will tell -- soon -- whether we have refocused too late."

John Ehrenreich: [07-30] The making of Robert F Kennedy Jr: A long, critical, but not totally unsympathetic review of the fringe presidential candidate's public life. (I went with the subtitle above; the actual published title suggests that someone at Slate is eager to throw both author and subject under the bus.)

Jonathan Guyer: [07-24] The dark -- and often misunderstood -- nuclear history behind Oppenheimer, explained by an expert: Christopher Nolan's new Oppenheimer movie, serendipitously paired with Barbie, produced a bunch of links last week. This interview with Alex Wellerstein, author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, adds substantially to the discussion. Turning to the present, he says: "If you disengage, then the only people who are really making decisions on this issue are going to be the people who have a lot to gain from it. And that's how you end up in a situation with arms races, when the military, Congress, and contractors are making a lot of the decisions."

• Kai Bird: [07-17] The tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer: By the co-author of the book the movie is based on.

• Aja Romano: [07-24] Barbieheimer: Destroyer of worlds, savior of cinema. Reminds me of an old Minutemen album, Project: Mersh, where the cover image is a bunch of marketing types sitting with coffee and charts, and one of them exclaims, "I got it! We'll have them write hit songs." After several years of doldrums, with big budgets going almost exclusively to superhero fantasies, it's like someone decided to roll the dice on making good films on topics people could take seriously. Sure, there have been some decent films the last few years, but I can't remember when two films like these were the industry's major product rollouts at the same time. Also see David Dayen: [07-28] Barbenheimer reveals the drastic choices of Hollywood executives: "The big opening weekend contrasts with everything the studios have been doing for the last couple of decades."

• Ryu Spaeth: [07-25] Who are the Japanese in Oppenheimer? I was intrigued by the title, as I was surprised that there were any. After reading the article, my surmise was right, unless they dug up some documentary reels of devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But if the question is about the decision to kill so many people with such a "cruel" (Hirohito's word) weapon, we should entertain the question of just who we thought they were. It's hard for Americans now to appreciate how racist Americans then were regarding all Asians (though perhaps a bit less hard than it was in the years BT [Before Trump]). John Dower wrote about this in War Without Mercy.

• Jonathan Stevenson: [07-28] Why 'Oppenheimer' matters: "The father of the atomic bomb still speaks to the danger of complacency."

• Alissa Wilkinson: [07-27] The nuclear bomb's enduring, evolving place in pop culture.

Sarah Jones: [07-27] Walking out of the Dream Factory: Writers and actors are still on strike, as are many others.

Elias Khoury: [07-28] Anti-imperialism is both morally correct and absolutely necessary for the left.

Eric Levitz: [07-25] Why elite colleges do affirmative action for the rich. He means why elite colleges perpetuate the elite class system by favoring the rich -- especially through legacy admissions -- but the affirmative action programs that were just outlawed also existed to benefit the rich, because that's what elite colleges are all about. Related:

• Fabiola Cineas: [07-25] Affirmative action for white college applicants is still here: I rather wish he wouldn't call it "affirmative action," which can be read as an attempt to score points by reassigning a deprecating term, like "corporate welfare" or "socialism for the rich." Most likely he just means it as irony, as Ira Katznelson did with his book title, When Affirmative Action Was White, which showed how many New Deal programs, including Social Security, were written to avoid benefiting blacks.

Carlos Lozada: [07-18] A look back at our future war with China: Lozada was book review editor at the Washington Post, since graduated to opinion writer at the New York Times, but he's still just digesting books. There are a lot of books on developing conflicts between the US and China, many assuming that superpower conflicts are inevitable and likely to blow up in war. The books he touches on here have titles like Destined for War, Danger Zone, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, and The Avoidable War. Also Party of One, whose loose cannon author argues that "Xi's China is brash but brittle, intrepid but insecure, . . . a would-be superpower in a hurry, eager to take on the world while wary of what may come."

Dylan Matthews: [07-28] How "windfall profits" from AI companies could fund a universal basic income: "Companies like OpenAI and Google could make unthinkable profits from successful AI. Will they share the wealth?" Silly question. Given his hypothetical, he probably means: "will we tax it from them?" Although the question too obvious to ask is: "why should we give it to them in the first place?" Such profits depend on monopoly pricing, and that is a grant the government gives to companies, for reasons that are increasingly difficult to explain let alone justify. The other point hardly anyone is making is that nearly all of the misuses we can envision for AI are tied to its commercial exploitation. There are lots of good reasons for slowing AI down, which is why lots of people are talking about regulations. But regulating AI monopolies is going to be incredibly difficult, both technically and politically. It would be much simpler to limit the money flow, which would allow us to make more judicious decisions on how we use it.

Note that I'm not arguing against the author's "global UBI" proposals. They have some merits, but aren't dependent on this particular tax stream.

• Alexander C Karp: [07-25] Our Oppenheimer moment: The creation of AI weapons. CEO of defense contractor Palantir Technologies, so he's selling, but mostly he's worried that engineers might grow a conscience, as Oppenheimer did (belatedly, maybe). "The preoccupations and political instincts of coastal elites may be essential to maintaining their sense of self and cultural superiority but do little to advance the interests of our republic." On the other hand, putting nukes on autopilot . . .

• Sara Morrison: [07-27] The tricky truth about how generative AI uses your data.

Rani Molla: [07-25] A UPS strike would have been worse than you think. I'm pleased to see this strike not happening. Of course, my sympathies would have been with the union members had they struck, as I am with all unions, almost all of the time. But I'm a bit worried that a rash of strikes could provoke a backlash, as happened in 1946, leading to a Republican Congress passing Taft-Hartley (with enough racist Democratic support to override Truman's veto; unfortunately, Truman spent a lot of his time leading up to 1946 badmouthing strikers, who had spent WWII under wage controls while defense contractors were guaranteed cost-plus-10% profits).

Sara Morrison: [07-24] Welcome to X, the wannabe "super app" formerly known as Twitter. It's not only hard to imagine Musk's "super app" taking off, it's hard to comprehend what kind of ego could think it has a chance. One of the core problems of capitalism is that people don't have enough money to satisfy all the people who want to take it away. Back when Microsoft was top dog, they spoke of a "vig," which is a piece of all the commerce on the internet, much like what you'd pay your local mafiosi for protection. That didn't go over well, then other companies came along, each with its own angle to take a cut.

Musk faces two big problems. One is "first mover advantage," which is the tendency of first entrants to dominate the markets they open up. This is especially true where network effects are critically important: Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many others became unstoppable once they gained enough users that their networks became their strongest selling points. (And mostly they did this by offering services for free, a point Musk doesn't seem to understand.) The other is coming up with a new angle that's so incredibly attractive that people will sell their souls and worldly possessions to get in on it. After 25 years of fevered competition, how many great, and exploitable, ideas are left? Facebook thought they had one in VR, but how's that worked out? And everybody's hot for AI, but that's many different things to various people -- many of them mere productivity enhancements, to be bundled into other products and services.

Also:

• Paul Krugman: [07-27] What's in a name? Musk/Twitter edition.

• Jill Lepore: [07-26] Elon Musk's X factor: "The surprising personal and cultural reasons for his 'X' affection and rebranding of Twitter."

• Aja Romano: [07-24] The weird sorrow of losing Twitter.

Nicole Narea: [07-26] What the new Fed interest rate hike might mean for the economy: For starters, it shows that Powell's still willing to give recession a chance? Related:

• Dylan Scott: [07-29] 3 reasons the US might actually fix inflation without a recession:

  1. Pandemic-related economic disruptions have dissipated
  2. The labor market has been gradually normalizing
  3. People didn't freak out.

  The latter point isn't totally true.

Claire Potter: [06-28] The right's campus culture war machine: "How conservatives built a formidable network for ginning up scandal in higher education." Review of Amy J Binder/Jeffrey L Kidder: The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today, and Bradford Vivian: Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education. One difference is that left student politics is spontaneous and local, whereas right organizes students for broader political purposes. As the pull quote puts it: "Conservatives are playing a long game that treats youth as junior partners in a larger political enterprise. They pay students more and invest heavily." A couple more quotes:

But what both books show is that the right is better positioned to take advantage of the scandals -- some provoked and others resulting from poor decisions -- that do erupt. National student organizations are better at channeling students with conservative leanings into professional activism aimed at creating bad press for higher education. Right-wing media is so effective at seizing on and amplifying controversies, making sure that the distortions that proliferate on social media become the focus of higher education coverage, that mainstream news organizations are often just covering the coverage rather than investigating events. The networks that sustain the campus culture wars are not only powerful and well-financed; they operate far beyond campus. . . .

As it turns out, however, conservatives are much better than liberals at recruiting and training students. Conservatives have "managed to build an elaborate, well-funded organizational space," Binder and Kidder write, "that galvanizes young supporters and grooms future leaders by pulling them outside the confines of campus" and into paid work that sets them up for postgraduation careers as movement conservatives.

Nia Prater: [07-24] Can last-ditch lawsuits kill congestion pricing in New York? I really hope so. I don't feel up to the full rant now, but I really hate the whole idea. (And to the extent that it is championed by liberals I fear it will be a political disaster, not unlike the 55 mph speed limit. On the other hand, I wouldn't be terribly opposed to the idea that Paul Goodman proposed in 1949: banning all cars from Manhattan.) For what it's worth:

• Paul Krugman defends the congestion pricing plan here: [07-24] An act of vehicular NIMBYism. I'm not convinced. For the case he's talking about, you could simply raise the existing toll, without having to do whatever they're planning on doing to collect and police the tax. If you carry this logic to extremes, everybody's car will have to be tracked everywhere, and everyone will eventually get billed for the congestion they cause. The effect is to turn every road into a toll road. There's a simpler way to tax people for road use, which is to tax gasoline, as we've done forever (but evidently it's more agreeable to levy phantom tolls than to raise the gas tax; there's also another whole scheme to tax miles instead of gas, arguing that only taxing gas would give electric cars a free ride -- why don't we just consider that a feature?).

It's no accident that the vogue for solving policy problems with economic cost-benefit solutions began when inequality started kicking off. Any time you make something depend on the ability to pay, you drive inequality upward. There may be cases where that's easier than other solutions, but as a general rule, it not only favors the rich, it drives people to become rich, by penalizing people who aren't. It also undermines the idea that government should provide free services. And if services for some reason have to be rationed for some reason, it makes their distribution unfair.

Andrew Prokop: {07-26] The drama over Hunter Biden's plea deal, explained. The judge threw Republicans in Congress a lifeline to continue their harping on the president's troubled son. Jonathan Chait [07-28] argues that The Democrats can't wave away their Hunter Biden problem, but why not? It's just noise coming from Republicans who have nothing better to rant about. It's not part of the value proposition to be decided in the 2024 elections. Hunter Biden is hardly the only presidential scion to trade on his family name while getting into drugs and other sleaziness. Consider George W Bush, who is arguably worse because he got into politics after he supposedly cleaned up. (You might say his past related to his character, and there's something to that, but it was really Dick Cheney's character that should have bothered us.) What's unique about Hunter Biden is that he's being prosecuted for infractions that would barely have warranted a wrist slap for anyone else (ok, at least for any wealthy, competently-lawyered white male). Of course, by all means, feel free to tackle such sleaze in general (which includes certain Supreme Court justices).

Jeffrey St Clair: [07-28] Roaming Charges: Fighting our real enemies. Starts with stories about the late Sinéad O'Connor. I don't have any, and barely remember her music, but they make for better reading than her obituary (or this one). He also reprinted her 2013 piece: It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

PS: I took a break from the above to read Phillip Maciak: [07-28] Behind the rage of Raylan Givens, on the TV series Justified: City Primeval (we've watched three episodes so far). The essay touches on race privilege, the sketchy relationship between policing and justice, and the deep anger of machismo, but it's also fiction, and entertainment (a lot of both).

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 24, 2023

July archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 40606 [40575] rated (+31), 10 [17] unrated (-7).

I published another Speaking of Which last night. With a couple edits today, it comes to 5,264 words (85 links). Big news since then is that Israel, under Netanyahu's far-right government, has passed its bill to curtail Israel's Supreme Court from overruling anything the government does. Presumably this will help keep Netanyahu, who has been fighting corruption charges, out of jail, and will further protect his allies, some of whom have long criminal records. Many Israelis, and many long-time American supporters of Israel, regard this law as an assault on what's long passed for democracy in Israel. Here are some New York Times reports:

• What's next for Israel's judicial overhaul?

• Protests intensify across Israel despite Netanyahu's offer to delay broader judicial overhaul: Live updates.

• U.S. confronts tight but turbulent relationship with Israel.

I'll probably have more to say about this next week. Meanwhile, for a more critical view -- which compared to the New York Times, also means a more balanced view -- Mondoweiss is a good source. The first article out there is: New Israeli law is shock to U.S. Zionists, who fear break with American Jews.

While looking at the Times, I noticed an obituary for Reeves Callaway (75). I'm not sure whether I ever heard of him, but he led pretty much the life I imagined for myself when I was a teenager (my actual models were Colin Chapman, Carroll Shelby, and Carlo Abarth -- I liked to imagine shutting down my neighbor's GTO with one of Abarth's souped-up Fiat 850s).

I don't have much to add about this week's record reviews, except that it's gotten hard for me to think of things I really want to listen to next. Not only am I playing more non-work CDs when I get up, I'm finding myself stuck in extended patches of silence (or tinnitus). Very little in my demo queue has been released, and I inadvertently jumped the gun on a couple items.

In the Old Music section, Allen Lowe has been rhapsodizing about Tony Fruscella. I previously gave his 1955 eponymous album -- the only one released under his name in his brief lifetime (1927-69) -- a B+(***), which on replay seems about right. I only found two more albums, and didn't bother with the one I couldn't date. Jazz Factory has boxes of everything, but I haven't heard them.

As you probably know, Tony Bennett died last week, at 96. I liked his big hit when it came out, and I've always thought he was a good singer and a generally cool guy, but stuck in a niche that was neither jazz nor rock. So I thought I'd try a few of his early albums, focusing on things that seemed closer to jazz, but that didn't last long. (Another Lowe favorite, Dave Schildkraut, showed up in the Bennett credits, but I can't say as I noticed him in the music.) I considered a 1987 compilation called Jazz, but didn't have the time to track down where it all came from, so passed for now. My grade list for Bennett is here. Nothing A-listed, or even close, I'm sorry to say.

Looks like the heat has finally arrived here in Wichita, with 100F forecast every day through Friday. Still not the worst we've ever seen. I still have a long list of domestic projects, which have been frustrating me no end. Despite service calls, I'm still not receiving server email. I did get the server admin messages rerouted, so that's manageable. I have a new scanner to set up. Also a broken CD player: if I can't fix it (and thus far I haven't even managed to take it apart), I'll need to find service. I did manage to get the car oil changed (a typically bad experience with this dealer). I still need to line up a new doctor, as mine quit. Probably much more I'm blotting out of my increasingly feeble mind. At least July has one more Monday, so I don't have to face wrapping up the monthly archive yet. Got a couple packages in the mail today, to be unpacked next week.

New records reviewed this week:

Blur: The Ballad of Darren (2023, Parlophone): One of the big britpop bands of the 1990s, with six albums from that decade, but this is only their third since (2003, 2015). Maintains an air of grandeur. B+(*) [sp]

The Cucumbers: Old Shoes (self-released, EP): New Jersey group founded in 1983 with Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried, released a delightful EP then, and an eponymous album in 1987 that remains a favorite. Since then, Deena has released several solo albums while occasionally reviving the group, as she does here, for a brief seven songs (23:11), as delightful as ever. Like old shoes, "I'm the one that fits you." A- [cd]

Sammy Figueroa: Something for a Memory (Busco Tu Recuerdo) (2022 [2023], Ashé): Percussionist (especially congas), from the Bronx, has led His Latin Jazz Explosion since 2006, before that had many side-credits, notably with pop bands like Chic. Thinking about his father here, a bolero singer named Charlie Figueroa, who died young, leaving no direct memories on his son. Featuring Gonzalo Rubalcaba (piano) and Aymée Nuviola (vocals), with Figueroa also singing, plus a sample from the father. B+(**) [cd]

Paulo Fresu/Omar Sosa: Food (2023, Tuk Music): Italian trumpet/flugelhorn player, in a duo with the Cuban pianist, playing a variety of keyboards, samplers, and effects, also credited with voice. Guest slots provide additional vocals, cello, and steel pan. The trumpet is very nice. B+(**) [sp]

Max Gerl: Max Gerl (2023, JMI): Bassist, electric and acoustic, with a nice solo album, ten originals plus a Monk. B+(*) [cd]

Jenny Lewis: Joy'all (2023, Blue Note): Singer for Rilo Kiley (2001-07), released a solo album in 2006, four more since. Nice enough. B+(**) [sp]

Doug MacDonald: Big Band Extravaganza (2022 [2023], DMAC Music): Touted as "the great straight ahead jazz guitarist," which means he probably wouldn't mind if I thought of Wes Montgomery (when I thought of anyone at all). B+(**) [cd]

Donny McCaslin: I Want More (2023, Edition): Tenor saxophonist, plays some flute, regular albums since 1998, as well as session work, notably for Dave Douglas, David Bowie, and Maria Schneider (for which he won a couple Grammys). Always impressive chops, but his slick postbop can be a turn off, especially when he goes with the synths as here. B [sp]

Lori McKenna: 1988 (2023, CN): Singer-songwriter from Massachusetts, 12th album since 2000, title refers to the year she got married, at 19, a union that endures, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and increasingly in well-observed song. A- [sp]

Near Miss: The Natural Regimen (2022 [2023], Kettle Hole): Chicago trio, with two tenor saxophonists (Rob Magill, also on soprano and bass clarinet, and Gerrit Hatcher) plus drums (Bill Harris). A bit rocky, but they may prefer it that way, at least to hitting some hypothetical bulls eye. B+(***) [cd]

Palehound: Eye on the Bat (2023, Polyvinyl): Indie band, fourth album since 2015, singer-songwriter El Kempner, trans pronouns but sounds female. B+(**) [sp]

Nate Radley & Gary Versace: Snapshots (2023, SteepleChase): Guitar and piano duo. B+(**) [sp]

The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Harvesters (2023, Aerophonic, 2CD): Saxophonist Dave Rempis, from Chicago, plays alto and tenor, assembled this two-drummer quartet (Tim Daisy and Frank Rosaly), with bass (Ingebrigt Håker Flaten), in 2006, and returns with their ninth album. I hit the second disc first, and thought it was nicely balanced, as cogent or more as anything they've done. The first was more typically aggressive, although it settled down after a nice bass solo. Next piece added Jean-Luc Cappozzo on flugelhorn. A- [cd]

Marc Ribot/Ceramic Dog: Connection (2023, Knockwurst): Jazz guitarist, although this group, with Shahzad Ismaily (bass) and Ches Smith (drums), dating back to 2008, is more rock-oriented (or maybe "post-rock"), with vocals. Also some fairly major guest spots, including James Brandon Lewis (sax) on two tracks, Anthony Coleman (farfisa) on three, and Oscar Noriega (clarinet) on one. Includes a noise blast I could do without, and ends on an instrumental romp I'd' like to hear more like. B+(**) [sp]

Arman Sangalang: Quartet (2022-23 [2023], Calligram): Tenor saxophonist, from Chicago, studied at Indiana and Northern Illinois, first album, with David Miller (guitar), Matt Ulery (bass), and Devin Drobka (drums). B+(**) [cd] [08-04]

Lisa Marie Simmons/Marco Cremaschini: NoteSpeak 12 (2023, Ropeadope): Poet, born in Colorado, "survived several troubled adoptions and foster homes," sang in church choir, moved to New York, wound up in Italy, with keyboardist Cremaschini providing music for her words. Has a previous NoteSpeak album from 2020. This one is supposedly captivated by the number 12 (as in the 12-tone scale). The music is full-bodied without drawing attention away from the words, and the speaker can sing as easily as speak, but holds your interest either way. A- [sp]

Tyshawn Sorey Trio: Continuing (2022 [2023], Pi): Drummer-led piano trio, with Aaron Diehl (piano) and Matt Brewer (bass). Four covers, none I immediately recognized as standards -- ok, I should have noted "Angel Eyes," but the others are composed by Wayne Shorter, Ahmad Jamal, and Harold Mabern -- ranging from 10:25 to 15:43. Sounds more together than your average piano trio, but I can't really tell you why. A- [cd]

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway: City of Gold (2023, Nonesuch): Bluegrass singer-songwriter, plays banjo and guitar, from California, fourth album after a 2017 EP. B+(***) [sp]

Paul Tynan & Aaron Lington: Bicoastal Collective: Chapter Six (2022 [2023], OA2): Trumpet/flugelhorn and baritone sax, respectively, backed by electric bass (Trifon Dimitrov) and drums (Joe Abba). B [cd]

Colter Wall: Little Songs (2023, Black Hole/La Ronda): Canadian country singer-songwriter, more western than most. Fourth album, songs advertised as "little" but carefully nuanced. B+(***) [sp]

Adrian Younge: Jazz Is Dead 18: Tony Allen (2018 [2023], Jazz Is Dead): Bandcamp page credits, Allen, Younge, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, but cover omits Muhammad, and 18 releases in I see no need to mess with the what's become canonical order. Nigerian drummer Allen is unusual in two respects: he's relatively famous, and he's dead (in 2020, at 78), so for once we get a date on the sessions. He also gives you more than the usual beat, along with organ vamps and section horns. On the other hand, the title has never been more à propos. Eight songs, 27:58. B+(*) [sp]

Nicole Zuraitis: How Love Begins (2022 [2023], Outside In Music): Jazz singer-songwriter, plays piano, at least four previous albums, starting in 2008. This is divided into "oil" and "water" sides. Co-produced by bassist Christian McBride, with Gilad Hekselman (guitar), Maya Kronfeld (organ/keyboards), and Dan Pugach (drums), plus guests. B+(*) [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: 60 Years (1961-2019 [2023], The Village): Six previously unreleased pieces (83:35) from Los Angeles pianist Horace Tapscott's community organizing project, dates not missing (at least from what I've found, which alludes to the group's founding in 1961, and continuation twenty years after Tapscott's death in 1999. I think of this as social music from the brief period when the avant-garde sought a deeper audience in black power, but in retrospect the vocals didn't always help. B+(***) [bc]

Old music:

Count Basie/Tony Bennett: Basie/Bennett: Count Basie and His Orchestra Swings/Tony Bennett Sings (1958 [1959], Roulette): Basie's "New Testament" band got very busy during this period, not just cranking out their own bombastic swing albums but appearing with others who wanted to sing or play along. Bennett recorded several albums with them, and the uplift helps on the fast ones, which makes me wonder why the singer decided to slow it down. B+(*) [r]

Tony Bennett: Cloud 7 (1954 [1955], Columbia): The late singer's first LP -- preceded by the 10-inch Because of You in 1952 -- offering ten standards, 33:05, with small jazz combos: two tracks with Al Cohn (tenor sax) and Gene DiNovi (piano), others with Dave Schildkraut (alto sax), Charles Panely (trumpet), and Chuck Wayne (guitar), among others. Good voice and nice band(s), but doesn't sound major. B+(*) [sp]

Tony Bennett: The Beat of My Heart (1957 [1996], Columbia/Legacy): One of the early albums treated to an expanded CD reissue, with six songs added (but one dropped). Mitch Miller remained the producer at Columbia, but British pianist Ralph Sharon, who would serve as Bennett's music director at least through 2001 (he died at 91 in 2015), took over the arranging, and was presumably responsible for the scattershot lineup of jazz notables, including six drummers (ranging from Art Blakey to Jo Jones to Candido), three each flutes and trombones, Nat Adderley on trumpet, and Al Cohn on tenor sax. One of his jazziest records, both by song selection and arrangement, but also a rather weird one. B+(**) [sp]

Tony Fruscella: Tony's Blues: The Unique Tony Fruscella (1948-55 [1992], Cool & Blue): Trumpet player (1927-69), from New York, recorded an eponymous album for Atlantic in 1955, another session that wasn't released at the time, and a few live sets, like this one: one 1955 track with Hank Jones, eight short tracks from 1948 (23:00) with Chick Maures (alto sax) and Bill Triglia (piano), and three long tracks (39:23) from 1955 with Phil Woods (alto sax) and Triglia. Fruscella has a reputation as a forgotten hero. He makes a fine showing here -- as does Woods -- but this doesn't feel all that unique. B+(**) [sp]

Shuckin' Stuff: Rare Blues From Ace Records (MS) (1955-81 [2002], Westside, 2CD): A r&b label run by Johnny Vincent in Jackson, Mississippi, from 1955-62, with a revival in 1971 (a few of these tracks are dated 1977-81, and more are listed as previously unreleased), before it was sold to Demon Music Group in the UK. A couple songs, including the title track, I know from elsewhere -- The Best of Ace Records, Vol. 2: The R&B Hits is one I play a lot -- but most cuts are fairly generic blues, and I like them just fine. B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• The Cucumbers: Old Shoes (self-released) [07-21]
• Mike Jones Trio: Are You Sure You Three Guys Know What You're Doing? (Capri) [08-18]
• Near Miss: The Natural Regimen (Kettle Hole) [07-07]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, July 23, 2023

I saw a headline in the Wichita Eagle on Friday -- the article was unsigned but attributed to Las Vegas Review-Journal -- that puzzled me: "Bidenomics is just tired liberalism on steroids." So what is it they're trying to say? It's rejuvenated liberalism? Maybe they want it banned for doping? The phrase "on steroids" has largely lost its literal meaning, in favor of "much larger, stronger, or more extreme than is normal or expected." So at the very least it should cancel out "tired," leaving us with "Bidenomics is just liberalism." That may be the author's complaint, but why is that such a bad thing?

Trump waxes nostalgically about "make America great again," but the closest America ever came to something resembling conventional notions of greatness was the period during and after WWII, when liberalism was most pervasive and hegemonic. In many ways, the original MAGA movement was Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, but unlike Trump, Johnson had no desire for nostalgia. His signature program meant to extend New Deal progressivism to all Americans.

Johnson isn't remembered especially well today because he blew so much political capital on the Vietnam War. One lesson we should draw is that it's always a mistake to assume military might is some kind of measure of greatness. Liberals made that mistake in WWII, partly because the enemies were so abhorrent, and partly because the war effort was led by one of their own (brilliantly, I might add). Vietnam started to divide liberals, but I'm old enough to remember when most were staunchly on board, and I've never really forgiven them for that war -- or for allowing themselves to be duped into thinking that communism was such a threat to freedom that they should kill or punish anyone tempted to think otherwise, or for becoming the unwitting victims of their own witch hunts.

Since the 1970s "liberal" has become little more than an epithet, thanks mostly to the relentless slanders of the right -- "tired" is just one of the milder ones, leaving us with this puzzle: if liberalism is so tired, how can it be such a threat?

Top story threads:

Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans:

• Zak Cheney-Rice: [07-21] What the most diverse GOP primary ever says about the GOP. Nothing, really, except that the media's preoccupation with looks is silly and stupid. (As, I might add, was Seth Meyers' endless riffs on Robert Mueller's look.) Not that I never wondered whether the more fervent racists in the Republican Party would find it hard to vote for a black Republican, but I got my answer when Jesse Helms voted for Clarence Thomas. Republicans will continue to vote for whoever they're told to, regardless of personal prejudices. And sure, Democrats can be every bit as dazzled by this skin game. Bill Clinton famously wanted a cabinet that "looked like America," and he got his point as far as looks go. But beneath that surface, damn near everyone in his cabinet had Ivy League degrees, which put them in a very small and exclusive minority, just like Clinton.

• Diana Falzone/Asawin Suebsaeng/Adam Rawnsley: [07-11] Murdochs start to sour on DeSantis: 'They can smell a loser'.

• Shane Goldmacher/Maggie Haberman: [07-23] A 'leaner-meaner' DeSantis campaign faces a reboot and a reckoning: So after a review of the candidate's "challenging learning curve" this is what his consultants advised: get meaner? Adam Serwer predicted as much when he titled his anti-Trump book The Cruelty Is the Point. For another view of this, see Nicole Narea: [07-20] Ron DeSantis is really bad at running for president.

• Margaret Hartmann: [07-14] Trump Super-PAC paid Melania $155,000 to choose tableware: May seem like something anyone could do, but economics teaches us that in a free market, marginal value is everything. But sure, if you aren't smart enough to understand that the market is perfect, this could just look like graft.

• Jeet Heer: [07-23] Young Americans for Freedom hates freedom: Interview with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd. Note that YAF also hate most Americans. Jeer also wrote: [07-21] Why Trump 2.0 would be much worse: You already knew that, didn't you? He's made it clear that this time he's out for revenge, and he won't accept staff that will get in his way, as many did in his first term. But also, what would a Trump win say about the electorate? In 2016, it was naive and foolish to view him as an outsider who would "drain the swamp," but at least he presented himself that way. This time he's a known quantity, and there's no excuse for thinking he'll ever be anything else (except worse).

• Shayna Jacobs: [07-19] DeSantis, others sued over alleged 'election police' voter intimidation.

• Hugo Lowell: [07-21] Fulton county prosecutors prepare racketeering charges in Trump inquiry.

• Charles P Pierce:

  • [07-21] Republicans will turn any anodyne bit of Congressional business into performative hatred.

  • [07-21] Thursday was a total crackpot day on Capitol Hill.

• Nikki McCann Ramirez:

  • [07-19] Trump is already fundraising off of his DOJ target letter.

  • [07-21] Michael Cohen settles lawsuit against Trump Organization days before trial: The suit was about unpaid legal bills. How much Trump settled for is unspecified.

• Jennifer Rubin: [07-23] Trump's made-for-MAGA arguments keep losing in court.

• Ashlie D Stevens: [07-18] Michigan attorney general charges 16 in 2020 Trump fake elector scheme.

• Tessa Stuart: [07-20] Nebraska teen sent ot jail over illegal abortion: "Celeste Burgess was arrested after Facebook turned over her private messages to police."

• Kevin Sullivan/Lori Rozsa: [07-22] DeSantis doubles down on claim that some Blacks benefited from slavery.

• Jonathan Swan/Charlie Savage/Maggie Haberman: [07-17] Trump and allies forge plans to increase presidential power in 2025: Much of this deals with the likelihood that the Republican-packed Supreme Court will allow a Republican president such license -- "the unitary executive theory" is basically a fancy term for dictatorship. Still, most ominous are the direct quotes from Trump, like his promise to "find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education," where "radicals" are pretty much anyone who believed in what used to be called "liberal education." (In typing that, I flashed on "liberal indoctrination," which is not what the phrase means, but testimony to the way conservatives see education as a process of indoctrination.)

  Even more striking is this Trump quote:

  We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class who hates our country.

  Aside from the red baiting, which just goes to show that Trump is always most at home with jingoism, the rest of that doesn't sound so bad. There certainly are warmongers, both deeply embedded in the state and in the revolving door businesses, foundations, and lobby shops that feed and further them. Same for globalists, although that's a fuzzier term: almost no one believes in "one world government," but lots of business interests promote global trade and finance, and they are well-represented in government, and among the donor class. As for "the sick political class that hates our country," that sounds like most Republicans. Still, I don't trust Trump to get rid of anyone who should be expelled. Rather, he seems to want a return to the spoils system, where everyone in the government works for the political interests of the president.

• Michael Tomasky: [07-21] McCarthy's vow to erase Trump's impeachment sums up the GOP's sickness. "It's a cult of one man -- not a political party anymore in any remote sense of the word. Trump says jump, and they ask how high. In fact, these days Trump rarely even has to say jump. A certain situation arises, and congressional Republicans anticipate that he's about to say jump, so they start jumping, trying to guess the height that will please him most." That's just the first of three reasons Tomasky gives why the Republican Party has become: "an extremist cult that has no incentive to behave otherwise."

• Mary Tuma: [07-21] Testifying against Texas, women denied abortions relive the pregnancies that almost killed them. No reason to file this elsewhere. It's not just policies that Republicans want to implement to make our lives more miserable. It's also about things they've already done.

Biden and/or the Democrats:

• Kevin T Dugan: [07-14] Biden's student-loan forgiveness program just got even bigger.

• Mike Konczal: [07-21] "Bidenomics" vs. "Reaganomics"

The Supreme Court:

• Ian Millhiser: [07-17] How the Supreme Court put itself in charge of the executive branch: "The major questions doctrine, explained."

• Walter Shapiro: [07-19] Sonia Sotamayor's book scandal is banal and troubling: "The Supreme Court justice's buckraking hardly compares to that of her conservative coleagues. But it still says a lot about how much Washington has changed." Well, it says two things: one is that no one in America thinks they're making enough money, even with a cushy lifetime job and pension; the other is that when other Justices are mired in scandals showing them to be truly corrupt, any innocuous bit of buckraking looks suspect.

• Stephen Siegel: [07-21] Clarence Thomas's cherry-picked originalism on affirmative action: "Originalism" originally meant whatever Antonin Scalia wanted it to mean, because only he claimed unique, divine, infallable insight into the minds of the crafters of the Constitution. Since his death, other conservatives have stepped up as originalism's self-appointed oracles, no less dishonestly than Scalia.

Climate and Environment:

• Kate Aronoff: [07-20] America's deadly heat isn't (officially) a major disaster: "Why doesn't the federal government recognize that this extreme weather is a catastrophe?" Probably because catastrophes are supposed to be rare events, and this summer's heat wave seems inevitable, something that we can expect to recur every summer for the rest of our lives. But also note that the purpose of such declarations isn't simply to acknowledge reality, but to allow the government to act to help the victims of disasters, and Republicans really don't like that (except when hurricanes hit Florida, for some reason). See Julia Rock: [07-19] New GOP bill would curb Biden's power to fight climate change. Because, well, heaven forbid that he should do things that would help people.

• Umair Irfan: [07-21] It's even hot underwater.

• Rebecca Leber: [07-21] The invisible consequences of heat on the body and mind: "Heat has bigger effects on us than we may realize."

• Matt Stieb: [07-20] 7 eye-popping numbers from tghe worldwide heat wave.

• Dan Stillman: [07-19] With record heat expected, these 5 maps show what's to come across the US.

• Molly Taft: [07-14] The media has no idea how to cover extreme heat.

• Tish Harrison Warren: [07-23] Rising heat deaths are not just about the temperature: "While it is important to highlight heat deaths as another example of the devastating toll of climate change, it is also important to say that, often, when people die of heat, they are actually dying of poverty."

• Li Zhou:

  • [07-17] Why Canada's wildfires will affect air quality for weeks to come. As of Monday morning, there were 882 active wildfires in Canada, most in British Columbia (373) and Alberta (121), with 579 deemed "out of control." "Experts have warned that the rest of the season could prove as damaging as the first part."

  • [07-17] The "new abnormal": The rise of extreme flooding, briefly explained. Interviews with several experts.

Ukraine War: The great "counteroffensive" has been going for more than a month now, but the New York Times hasn't changed its maps page since July 9.

• Blaise Malley: [07-21] Diplomacy Watch: Russia plays hardball with Black Sea grain deal: Formal withdrawal from the deal was followed by bombing of the port of Odesa.

• Andrew J Bacevich: [07-17] Ukraine and the great revival of American empire: "Kyiv's fate has always been an afterthought. The real goal is reinvigorating NATO and, by extension, US primacy."

• Andrew Cockburn: [07-18] The $850 billion chicken comes home to roost: "The military industrial complex is not designed to actually fight wars. If so, you wouldn't see Ukraine struggling right now to win one." Quotes Jim Burton, who wrote the 1993 memoir Pentagon Wars, as saying the US defense system is "a corrupt business -- ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom."

• Daniel L Davis: [07-19] Why Ukraine's counter-offensive is failing.

• Tamar Jacoby: [07-17] Ukraine's other front: The war on corruption. Ukraine's reputation for corruption goes back to its founding, creating a clique of oligarchs and mobsters, much like Russia, so this is bound to be a sensitive subject as the country is being flooded with arms and other support.

• Jen Kirby: [07-19] How bad will things get now that Russia has quit its grain deal with Ukraine?

Around the world:

• Syrus Jin: [07-21] US-Korea policy is 'trapped in a pattern of cyclical amnesia': "After 70 years, Washington needs to escape this Sisyphean tragedy of tough talk without any results." Also:

  • Gabriela Bernal: [07-20] It's time to end the forever war on the Korean Peninsula. Author previously wrote: [2022-11-03] Is anyone else concerned that 'deterrence' isn't working with North Korea? I'd go farther and say that deterrence is a fundamentally flawed concept: that it hardens disputes, and risks provoking the very wars that it's supposedly meant to prevent.

• Jo-Ann Mort: Ehud Barak: There's a phrase for what Bibi wants -- "de facto dictatorship". Barak also added: "Never in our history as a state has Israel suffered such a destruction of value in such a short time." Still worth remembering how Barak walked away from deals with Syria and Arafat, paving the way for the long-term rise of the Israeli right.

• Eric Alterman: [03-22] The New York Times and Israel: What is (and isn't) fit to print: "Netanyahu accuses the paper of record of anti-Israel bias. But for decades now, the opposite has been true."

• Richard Silverstein: [06-26] Israel's creeping genocide: "Pogroms in 20 Palestinian villages targeted by masses of settler-thugs protected by the IDF."

• Li Zhou: [07-21] Vox, the far-right party making gains in Spain, explained: I've seen a number of pieces predicting a Vox breakthrough, but they wound up in third, with 12.39% and 33 seats (down 19 from before, so not enough to form a coalition with the conservative PP (33.05%, 136 seats, vs. 31.70%, 122 seats for PSOE).

Other stories:

David Byler: [07-17] 5 myths about politics, busted by data: Or proven, depending on how you read the data:

1. Democrats aren't young. Both parties are old. Their breakdown has 30% of Democrats 65+, 28% 50-64, 29% 30-49, and 14% 18-29. But the older cohorts lean Republican (+7 and +5), and the younger ones favor Democrats (+8 and +5). They don't give you the median, but the median Democrat is 5-8 years younger than the median Republican.
2. Republicans aren't rural. Democrats aren't urban. Both are mostly suburban (57-53, edge Democrats), but as they note, "Democrats fare best in neighborhoods that are close to the city center, while Republicans thrive in exurbs and small metros." As for the rest, the urban split is 27-11 Democrats, the rural 36-16 Republicans.
3. Religious Democrats and secular Republicans are both common. The secular ("unaffiliated," a somewhat broader category) split is 39-14 Democrats, with Republicans leading 59-33 among Protestants and 21-17 with Catholics ("other" splits 10-6 Democrats). But they also note that the number of Republicans who seldom or never attend church has shot up from 30-42% (time frame unclear), so while Republicans are more likely to identify as Christian, they may be less than committed.
4. Both parties rely on White college graduates -- not just Democrats. Democrats have an edge among "white, college educated" of 37-31%, which is surely higher than it was even 10-20 years ago, maybe a reversal, as Republicans have had a big advantage there.
5. The Hispanic vote is not the GOP's only route to victory. I don't really get this point: "Republicans could very well win in 2024 by building on recent gains with the White working-class and Asian American voters, regaining recently lost college-educated suburbanites or finally making inroads with Black voters." Really? Based on what policy mix?

I see lessons here for Democrats, in that they need to hold onto and expand their substantial share of mainstream voters, especially ones free enough of Republican prejudice as to still have options. Of course, it's also important to keep the groups Republicans offer no joy to, which means offering tangible benefits, and not just taking them for granted. (Failure there may not translate to Republican votes, but to non-voting.) But I also don't put much stock in multisectoral statistical breakdowns and their attendant identity politics

As for Republicans, they're already performing way above where they should be if voters were rational and voted their best interests. How they improve on that is hard to imagine. They're certainly not going to change course, at least as long as the current one seems to give them a chance to squeeze through on some technicality. Their only real hope is that Democrats discredit themselves -- a card they've been playing, with diminishing returns, since the check kiting scandal of 1993.

Robert Crawford: [07-20] How media makes impact of U S forever wars invisible: Review of Norman Solomon: War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine. An excerpt from this book is here: The convenient myth of "humane" wars. There's also an interview with Solomon: [06-23] How America's wars become 'invisible'.

Tyler Austin Harper: [07-19] 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' tell the same terrifying story: Author ties them both to the search for the Anthropocene boundary stratigraphy. Nuclear fallout is one obvious marker, as it was non-existent before the Trinity test in 1945 and the subsequent annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only to be followed by hundreds of further atmospheric tests (528, according to Arms Control Association, with 215 by US and 219 by USSR, 50 by France, 23 China, and 21 UK). But another marker would be to look for buried plastics, which are if anything more ubiquitous. The coincident release of two movies exploring such geologically important shifts is unlikely enough that some people have turned it into a thing. And many are writing on one, the other, or both. I should note that I haven't seen either movie, and I'm not likely to soon -- we just don't do that anymore, but I also gather that the formerly pretty good Warren Theatres we once had here have turned into rat traps under soon-to-be-bankrupt Regal.

• Siddhant Adlakha: [07-21] Who's who in Oppenheimer: A guide to 36 scientists, soldiers, and reds. One error here is under Edward Teller, where fission and fusion are reversed. Also, although Teller was the main proponent of a fusion bomb, I doubt that he would have insisted on doing it first, given that such bombs were more difficult, and depended on fission reactions to generate the heat to trigger thermonuclear explosion. Teller's "Super" wasn't tested until 1952, or weaponized until 1954.

• Haydn Belfield: [07-22] "Cry baby scientist": What Oppenheimer the film gets wrong about Oppenheimer the man.

• Jorge Cotte: [07-21] The many enigmas of Oppenheimer.

• Connor Echols: [07-21] What 'Oppenheimer' leaves out: Argues that the first victims of the nuclear age were New Mexicans exposed to nuclear fallout from the Trinity Test. There's a case to be made for that, and also for counting thousands (perhaps millions) of other exposed to explosions up to the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (many developing symptoms only later). Other victims of cancers eventually included virtually every Manhattan Project scientist of note. (I can't think of any exceptions.) I'm unclear on how much thought was put into the dangers of radiation before the bombs were developed and dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The dangers of radiation poisoning were recognized by then, if far from perfectly understood.

• Whizy Kim: [07-21] This summer's biggest hit? The Barbie marketing team.

• David Klion: [07-21] Oppenheimer is an uncomfortably timely tale of destruction.

• Tori Otten: [07-21] Barbie breaks box office records as conservatives keep whining about it.

• Alexandra Petri: [07-22] The Barbie movie, according to conservative criticism. The article is satire, I think, but starts with links to people you're unlikely to find interesting.

• Grace Segers: [07-20] Can Barbie have it all.

• Alissa Wilkinson:

  • [07-20] In the beginning, there was Barbie.

  • [07-20] Oppenheimer is an audacious inquiry into power, in all its forms.

Idrees Kahloon: [06-05] Economists love immigration. Why do so many Americans hate it? Well, economists think growth can be infinite. More practical souls ask: where are you going to put it all?

Dylan Matthews: [07-17] The $1 billion gamble to ensure AI doesn't destroy humanity: "The founders of Anthropic quit Open AI to make a safe AI company. It's easier said than done."

Matt McManus/Nathan J Robinson: [07-21] Are we in the grip of an 'American cultural revolution'? Christopher Rufo thinks it's already happened, but he's belatedly fighting back in his book: America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. Sounds like good news, at least until I read the fine print:

The "revolution," in Rufo's telling, is comprised of -- wait for it -- diversity programs at colleges, Black Studies departments, protests against police brutality, and corporations that tweeted pro-BLM platitudes in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing. His evidence for dangerous revolutionary changes in our society consists of things like the appearance of the term "institutionalized racism" in the newspaper.

Since "the radical left conquered everything," you might wonder if Rufo is smuggling his missives from jail or some cave, but he's actually been appointed by Ron DeSantis to the board of trustees of New College. I know Robinson's made it his life's worth to debunk the so-called thinkers of the right, but why bother with one this hallucinatory?

Jeffrey St Clair: [07-21] Roaming Charges: Political crying games. He starts with the Congressional smackdown of Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) for identifying Israel as "a racist state" -- a reaction so shrill Jayapal wound up voting for a Resolution proclaiming that Israel is "not racist or an apartheid state" and that "the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel." No doubt such eternal fealty will be tried repeatedly as Israel's state lurches farther and farther to the right.

St Clair offers two quotes, one from Prime Minister Netanyahu ("Israel is not a state of all its citizens but rather, the nation state of the Jewish people and only them") and former PM Ehud Barak ("who says that the current government is 'determined to degrade Israel into a corrupt and racist dictatorship that will crumble society'"). When it does, bank on Congress to pass another near-unanimous Resolution reassuring Israel of America's eternal submission. Israel is no longer an ally. America has become its vassal.

The only argument I can imagine against Israel being a racist state is to question whether Jews are a race. While that has been a common claim in the past, it makes no sense to regard Jews as a race in America or Europe. However, in Europe, government-issued identity cards specify who is a Jew, and who is not, with the latter group subject to further distinctions. And those cards determine the rights you have, and how you are treated by the state, and probably how you are treated by many other organizations. Maybe there's a fancier word for that system, like ethnocracy, but if you're an American, that system sure sounds like racism. And if you know anything about South Africa, you'll probably see affinities to their since-abandoned system of Apartheid.

St Clair also mentions on RFK Jr's attack on Biden for "threatening Israel with ending of the special relationship between our two nations," and his pledge, "As President, my support of Israel will be unconditional." And he quotes Nikki Haley: "The U.S.-Israel alliance is unbreakable because Israel's values are American values." I've long felt that American neocons were jealous of Israel's freedom to bomb their neighbors (and their own people; I'd say "citizens" but they aren't recognized as such) with no fear of repercussions, but I'm not sure most Americans actually share those values. Which ones they do share are hard to pin down, especially given that the most vehemently pro-Israeli Americans are hoping for a rapture which will, or so they believe, consign all Jews to hell. But if you're pro-Israel enough, you never have to worry about being tagged as anti-semitic. (Just consider RFK Jr.)

St Clair also includes more than you want to know about Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town," including a contrast to the late Tony Bennett, whose experiences in small town America included the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march.

More links related to the above:

• Jonathan Bernstein: [07-20] Here's what's wrong with Jason Aldean's vision of America.

• Julia O'Malley: [07-19] Starving orcas and the fate of Alaska's dispapearing King Salmon.

• Jonathan Ofir: [07-20] Yes, Israel is a racist state.

• Tori Otten: [07-21] Republicans rush to defend Jason Aldean for racist song filmed at lynching site.

• Mitchell Plitnick: [07-20] Herzog's bland speech shows Israel still has great power in DC. Also from before the speech: Richard Silverstein: [07-14] Israeli President Herzog to address joint session of Congress: "A kindler, gentler version of Israeli apartheid."

• Pram Thakker: [07-21] Never enough: Now Republicans want to censure Jayapal for Israel comments.

PS: While American politicians are tripping all over themselves to swear allegiance to Israel, note that American elites are starting to have second thoughts:

• Max Boot: [07-23] Israel's biggest security threat is Benjamin Netanyahu.

• Thomas L Friedman: [07-23] Only Biden can save Israel now.

Tweet from No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen:

Marjorie Taylor Greene warns Joe Biden is trying to "finish what FDR started" by trying to address problems related to "rural poverty," "education," and "medical care." She warns it's similar to when LBJ passed "Medicare and Medicaid."

The White House responded:

Caught us. President Biden is working to make life easier for hardworking families.

This may prove to be the silver lining in the right-wing bubble: that they can no longer hear themselves when they say things that are incredibly unpopular.

Biden also responded by using Greene as narrator for a 30-second political ad.

I've been reading Peter Turchin's End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, which is a comparative history of several millenia of revolution and civil wars, attempting to glean some quasi-scientific insight into the evident disintegration all around us. Thumbnail histories going back as far as Nero's Rome are always interesting, but his conceptual framework is rather oddly framed if not plainly wrong. He sees two forces that drive societies to the brink of disintegration. Mass immiseration is widely recognized as one. But his main one is what he calls "elite-overproduction," by which he a fractious rivalry between multiple aspirants ("elites," if you must, but limiting that term to the political arena). Whether this is caused by too many elites or simply by weak governing structures is less clear. If sheer numbers of princes were the problem, you'd expect Saudi Arabia to be the most fractious country in the world today, which it plainly isn't.

Given the key concern of immiseration, and his identification of a "wealth pump" driving it, much of Turchin's current political analysis is quite reasonable. But then I ran across this (pp. 219-220):

The Democratic Party has controlled its populist wing and is now the party of the 10 percent and of the 1 percent. But the 1 percent is losing its traditional political vehicle, the Republican Party, which is being taken over by the populist wing. Tucker Carlson, rather than Donald Trump, may be a seed crystal around which a new radical party forms. Or another figure could suddenly arise -- chaotic times favor the rise (and often rapid demise) of new leaders. Earlier I argued that a revolution cannot succeed without large-scale organization. The right-wing populists intend to use the GOP as an already existing organization to group power. An added advantage is that control of one of the main parties offers them a non-violent legal route to power.

Two fairly staggering problems here: if the Democrats are the party of the 1%, how come most known one-percenters are big Republican donors? And how come Republicans campaign for them -- especially with tax cuts, deregulation, and anti-labor measures -- so shamelessly? Given this, it's especially bizarre to paint the Republicans as opposed to plutocracy. Sure, they pander to prejudices and exploit the fears of some people who have not fared well under plutocracy, but where are their programs to shut down the "wealth pump" and offer help to reduce immiseration?

It is true that some of the very rich hobnob with Democrats, that many Democrats are very solicitous of their support, and that Democrats like Clinton and Obama have rewarded such benefactors handsomely -- including doing very little to slow down the wealth pump. Some rich Democrats may see the need for sensible reforms -- Franklin Roosevelt was called "a traitor to his class," but his New Deal did much more than just rescue the poor from the Great Depression: it also saved the banking system, rebuilt industry, and built a large amount of infrastructure, which led to the post-WWII boom. Some may simply be thinking about how much damage dysfunctional Republican ideas could do. And some may simply regard the Democrats as offering better service for their interests.

Turchin's fascination with Tucker Carlson may be excused as he wrote this book before Fox fired him. Still, I have to think that part of Turchin's confusion lies in his overly broad notion of elites, which at various times he divides into economic and credentialed classes. The Democrats have made gains among the latter, mostly because the Republicans have turned savagely against education and expertise, especially science. Still, characterizing this latter-day know-nothingism as "counterelite" conflict ignores who's really in charge, functioning mainly to deflect blame where it is due.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 17, 2023

July archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 40575 [40543] rated (+32), 17 [17] unrated (-0).

First up is a new Speaking of Which yesterday, with 75 links (2550 words). I do this every week, but like to provide the link here, partly because it takes a lot of work (even relatively short ones like this), and partly because my Twitter announcements for Music Week typically get more than twice as many views as my Speaking of Which announcements.

And yeah, I'm still on Twitter, and not on Mastodon or Blue Sky or (heaven forbid!) Threads (nor for that matter Instagram, or many other things I may not even be aware of; while I am on Facebook, my use is minimal, more to follow family and old friends, and not to promote my writings or even opinions; hence I rarely accept friend requests unless I know you personally). And (checking now) I see that my Twitter followers have dropped back under 600 (a pinnacle I thought I reached last week), and last week's Music Week announcement was viewed by half as many people used to be the case, so maybe it is true that Elon Musk has set fire to his $44 billion, or maybe he just wants me to take a hint.

I started yesterday's column with a pitch to ask me questions, or at least offer some feedback, only to discover that the form isn't working. That may explain why I haven't heard anything since February. The first obvious problem has to do with the captcha software, which has stopped serving images. (I just checked and the same software is till generating images on the Christgau website, so that may have just been a red herring.) I disabled it, then tried testing again, and while it seemed to work, I didn't get the forwarded mail, so there is an as-yet-undiagnosed server problem as well. So stand by, but know you don't have to use the form: regular email works.

I wrote a fairly long comment reply to one of Allen Lowe's Facebook screeds. I thought maybe I would expand it here, but don't feel up to it at the moment. A slightly better formatted version is in my notebook under "Daily Log." One point I do want to take exception to is Lowe's claim: "THERE IS NO LONGER ANY EXCUSE for critic/voters to be unaware of anyone, to just pull the lever for the same person year after year" (for which he then gives a fictional example). But there is a big excuse, which is the finite amount of listening time in each day, far short of what's available let alone of the still vast amount that isn't available (at least free, and who knows how much there is that isn't even that?).

Lowe's had a bug up his ass about jazz polls recently. I've been pretty explicit about the limits and biases built into even the best critics polls -- I also talk a bit about this in my JJA Podcast -- but please, we're doing the best we can, with limited hours and lots of other pressures (not least of which is money). (And let me add that the better I get to know my fellow critics, the more impressed I am with how much they know, and how hard they work to share their knowledge and understanding.)

Jazz polls will never give you a perfect accounting of genius (or whatever they're imagined to be measuring). What they do offer is a chance to learn something you don't already know. And that's a good thing, because the odds that you know it all are nil. As an example, at least 25% of the records that get votes in the Francis Davis Jazz Poll every year were previously unknown to me.

Also, for future reference, Phil Overeem reposted another Allen Lowe piece in response to Robert Christgau's A- review of Lowe's America: The Rough Cut. I think what he's trying to say is that roots are dirty, which is practically the definition everywhere but music.

Aside from Hwang, which I got in the mail, and who is one of those guys I've voted for "year after year" (at least since Billy Bang died), all of my picks below are someone else's recommendation. Most of the misses, too. That's just how it always works.

New records reviewed this week:

African Head Charge: A Trip to Bolgatanga (2023, On-U Sound): Dub group started in 1981, with percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and producer Adrian Sherwood. B+(**) [sp]

The Harry Allen Orchestra: With Roses (2023, Triangle7): Tenor saxophonist, retro swing, many albums since 1994, this a fairly large band -- eight pieces, not counting guests and singer Lucy Yeghiazaryan, who I'm not especially impressed with. B [sp]

Jeff Babko/David Piltch: The Libretto Show (2022 [2023], Tudor Tones): Piano-bass duo, four Babko originals, plus covers of pianists Mac Rebennack and Denny Zeitlin, and a Jobim with a bit of guest violin. B+(*) [cd]

Caterina Barbieri: Myuthafoo (2023, Light-Years): Italian electronica composer, sixth album since 2017, mostly works with minimalist synths. B+(**) [sp]

Selwyn Birchwood: Exorcist (2023, Alligator): Blues singer-songwriter from Florida ("down where rebel flags meet Mickey Mouse""), parents from Tobago and UK, plays electric guitar and electric lap steel guitar, sixth album since 2011. Guitar most impressive. Songwriting a little iffy, but I jotted down one line: "I love you baby, like the church loves money." B+(*) [sp]

Julie Byrne: The Greater Wings (2023, Ghostly International): Singer-songwriter from Buffalo, based in New York, third album (or second if you discount the cassette-only debut). Ballads singer, something I rarely tune in for, but I did notice the ghostly calm shift toward mesmerizing. B+(**) [sp]

Carook: Best of Carook (So Far) (2021-22 [2023], Atlantic): Nashville-based singer-songwriter Corinne Savage, several singles and EPs, has a substantial Wikipedia page, where I note 839.6K TikTok followers, but the only Discogs entry is one track on a label Record Store Day sampler. Signs of a cult figure, trendily trans, which I'm little inclined to indulge, so forgive the pronoun infractions, but "they" sound her to me, so let's go with that. Eleven songs, 34:07, the first couple and at least one more too slight to consider, but she learns some tricks along the way, after which the music more than suffices. And while I rarely catch words, I did jot down a couple lines: "hey, hey it's ok/everybody feels kinda weird some days"; and "lately the weight of the world is a lot." [PS: I've seen this described as "old music," but the singles start up in 2021, though they may have been recorded earlier. Everybody releases singles ahead of the albums they belong to, so despite its name this strikes me as more of a new release. I've seen a Nov. 2022 release date, but the label release is May 12, 2023, not that I know what, beyond digital, was actually released. I've noticed that whoever insists on "(So Far)" as part of their best-of title has been cursed to never have any more hits. I doubt that applies here.] B+(***) [sp]

Carook: Serious Person (Part 1) (2023, Atlantic, EP): Seven songs, 21:12, should be more consistent but isn't. Opens with two pretty good songs that could be more musical, then reverses the formula. Only one that makes me want to hear more is the closer, which isn't like any of the others. B+(***) [sp]

Alex Coke & Carl Michel Sextet: Emergence (2022 [2023], PlayOn): Tenor saxophonist, also plays flute, from Texas, played in Willem Breuker Kollektief in 1990s. Michel is a guitarist, who wrote four songs (to 3 from Coke, out of 12). Group also includes concert harp, pedal steel, bass, and vibes. B+(*) [cd]

Maria Da Rocha/Ernesto Rodrigues/Daniel Levin/João Madeira: Hoya (2022 [2023], Creative Sources): Portuguese string quartet: violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Starts off with a solo piece each (average 4:07), then six shorter duo pieces (2:15), then two quartet pieces (22:54 total). B+(**) [cd]

Oivia Dean: Messy (2023, EMI): British pop singer-songwriter, first album after several EPs. B+(*) [sp]

Deer Tick: Emotional Contracts (2023, ATO): Singer-songwriter John McCauley and band, a couple members going back to 2007, another to 2009. Eighth album, basic Americana. B+(*) [sp]

Gabriel Espinosa: Bossas and Boleros (2022 [2023], Zoho): From Mexico, based in New York, plays bass and sings, shares both roles with others, "with Kim Nazarian" noted on the cover. Five originals among ten songs. Touted guest spots include Anat Cohen, Fred Hersch, and New York Voices, none of which help much. B- [cd]

Orrin Evans: The Red Door (2020-22 [2023], Smoke Sessions): Pianist, from Philadelphia, has recorded quite a bit since 1995. Several lineups, half with horns added (mostly Nicholas Payton and Gary Thomas), three with vocals (Jazzmeia Horn, Sy Smith, and Alita Moses). B [sp]

Drayton Farley: Twenty on High (2023, Hargrove): Country singer-songwriter from Alabama, second album. B [sp]

Gel: Only Constant (2023, Convulse): Hardcore band from New Jersey, Sami Kaiser the singer, who previously fronted a band called Sick Shit. Calling them "punk" helped to get me curious, but the only resemblance is in their minimal song structures and times. First album, after a couple EPs, but at 16:29 this could be counted as another, despite ten "songs." B [sp]

Kevin Harris & the Solution: Jazz Gumbo (2023, Blujazz): Singer, no idea which of 33 of his name at Discogs might he be, but he's recovered impressively from throat cancer, and leads a band including Donald Harrison (alto sax), Will Lee (bass), and Jerry Z (organ/piano) through a list of r&b-to-jazz standards like "Yes We Can Can," "I Get Lifted," and "Freedom Jazz Dance." I'm not wild about any of them. B- [cd]

PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old Year Dying (2023, Partisan): English singer-songwriter, initials for Polly Jean, was a big deal in the 1990s -- I really disliked her first two albums, but was won over by To Bring You My Love, even though I've only intermittently enjoyed her since, liking but not being wowed by her 2011 album-of-the-year contender Let England Shake. Only her second album since, shows a lot of work, yet remains exceedingly difficult to get into. B+(*) [sp]

Jason Kao Hwang Critical Response: Book of Stories (2023, True Sound): Violinist, b. 1957 in Illinois, parents immigrated from Hunan after WWII, has spent considerable time mastering classical Chinese music but he's mostly recorded cutting-edge jazz, making him the heir apparent after the deaths of Leroy Jenkins and Billy Bang. Trio here with guitarist Anders Nilsson, who blends in beautifully, and drummer Michael T.A. Thompson. A- [cd]

The Japanese House: In the End It Always Does (2023, Dirty Hit): British singer-songwriter Amber Mary Bain, second album, after several EPs. B+(*) [sp]

The Malpass Brothers: Lonely Street (2023, Billy Jam): Country duo, Christopher and Taylor Malpass, from North Carolina, fourth album. Trad, with an easy-going manner. B+(***) [sp]

Gretchen Parlato/Lionel Loueke: Lean In (2022 [2023], Edition): Jazz singer from Los Angeles, father and grandfather were musicians, sixth album since 2005, paired here with the guitarist and occasional vocalist from Benin, usually backed by drums (Mark Guilliana), sometimes bass (Burniss Travis). Not sure if this is intended to sound Brazilian, or that's just their natural fusion. B+(*) [sp]

Bruno Parrinha: Da Erosão (2023, 4DaRecord): Alto saxophone, solo, even with such a talented player always a difficult proposition, one that at 43:24 outlasted my patience. B+(*) [cd]

Kim Petras: Feed the Beast (2023, Island): German pop singer-songwriter, moved to Los Angeles at 19, by which point she was a celebrity as the "world's youngest transsexual." First album, after a couple mixtapes and the 2022 EP Slut Pop. I thought the latter was pretty great, but didn't care for her Grammy-winning duet with Sam Smith (which closes out this 15-song, 40:36 album). This has gotten savaged by critics (59 on Metacritic). Hard to tell whether that's prejudice -- or what kind, given that many pop albums get savaged when they fail to overwhelm. Especially given that this one does feel rote as often as not. B+(*) [sp]

Ernesto Rodrigues/Florian Stoffner/Bruno Parrinha/João Madeira: Altered Egos (2023, Creative Sources): Portuguese group: viola/crackle box; electric guitar; clarinet/alto sax; double bass. B+(***) [cd]

Ernesto Rodrigues/Fred Lonberg-Holm/Flak/João Madeira/José Oliveira: The Giving Tree Moving On (2023, Creative Sources): Viola/crackle box, cello, electric guitar, double bass, percussion. An extended piece in eight parts. B+(**) [cd]

Bill Scorzari: The Crosswinds of Kansas (2022, self-released): New York-based singer-songwriter, fourth album since 2014, before which he was some kind of hot shot attorney. Thirteen songs, stretched out to 71 minutes, has a long list of supporting musicians with a few tracks each, suggesting this was recorded over multiple sessions, perhaps going back to 2012. Christgau suggests reading along with the lyric sheet, but he has one, and would do that. Still mostly guitar and words, the latter almost talky. Seems like the surest way to a high grade around here is to remind me of John Prine, which happens when his usual Dylan gets off on a story. A- [sp]

Tiny Ruins: Ceremony (2023, Ba Da Bing): New Zealand singer-songwriter Hollie Fullbrook started this as an alias in 2011, grew it into a band. Fourth album, rather nice. B+(*) [sp]

Josie Toney: Extra (2023, Like You Mean It): Country singer-songwriter, plays violin, notably for Sierra Ferrell, first album. B+(**) [sp]

Young Thug: Business Is Business (2023, Atlantic): Atlanta rapper Jeffrey Williams, third studio album after a lot of mixtapes. [PS: Also available is (Metro's Version), where Metro Boomin' produced more tracks, but still not all of them.] B+(**) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy: Evenings at the Village Gate (1961 [2023], Impulse!): Recently discovered at the New York Public Library, "eighty minutes of never-before-heard music," and who isn't psyched to listen to more vintage Coltrane, especially his 1961 group with Dolphy? After all, the same group (give or take a bassist) recorded Live at the Village Vanguard in November, a career highlight which loses nothing even in its 4-CD Complete version. This goes back to August, and while the group isn't quite as together, the sound isn't nearly as great either. Granted, by the time they get into "Greensleeves" they've hit great, but you've heard that how many times before? B+(***) [sp]

L'Orchestre National Mauritanien: Ahl Nana (1971 [2023], Radio Martiko): Music from the northwest Sahara, recorded in Casablanca, Discogs and Bandcamp have group name and album title swapped, probably the label's mixup, but across multiple editions this way makes the most sense. I can't say much either for its "revolutionary" nature (unlikely) or its supposed influence on later "desert rock" (probably not directly, but similar bands of this vintage undoubtedly existed). Still, it is rather unique, as befits a discovery from a relatively unknown corner of Africa. B+(***) [sp]

Piconema: East African Hits on the Colombian Coast (1978-84 [2023], Rocafort): Various artists compilation, no idea when these nine tracks were recorded, or indeed whether the artists hail from Palenque in Colombia or from Kenya, the home of Benga with its sweet guitar and incessant rhythm. [PS: All groups appear to be from Kenya or Tanzania, active in 1978-84, plus or minus a couple years, with all songs available as singles or in some cases on albums, although Discogs provides few dates. But the compilers first heard these songs on Colombian sound systems.] A- [bc]

Old music:

The Ultimate College Party: 50s & 60s Party Anthems (1953-62 [2014], Jasmine, 2CD): London-based, Czech-manufactured reissue label, in business since 1982, cherry-picking through the past unencumbered by America's ridiculously extended copyright regulations. Clifford Ocheltree often showcases their wares in his daily featured recordings. He reckons this one has "48 A+ songs, 7 A and 4 more A-." That's a bit high, but it looked too good not to order (and that's something I almost never do these days). Half are hits I have in other often-played anthologies and never tire of, and the other half are items I remember from my misspent youth (except maybe for "To the Aisle," a real find). I sampled the dates, so I might be off a bit, but not by much: the few 1960s cuts are early, even "Surfin' Safari." Ignore the concept: the pivotal age here is 16, even when "Tequila" is served. Also, the print is damn near impossible to read. But those hardly qualify as quibbles. A [cd]

Grade (or other) changes:

Elle King: Come Get Your Wife (2023, RCA): Singer-songwriter from from Los Angeles or New York, daughter of comedian Rob Schneider, took her mother's name, started as an actress in 1999, recorded an EP in 2012, followed by an album in 2015, with this her third, and most country, right down to the trailer cliché, which she treats as a badge of honor. [was: B+(**)] A- [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Geof Bradfield Quintet: Quaver (Calligram) [08-04]
• Aldo Fosko Collective: This One Time (Hitchtone) [05-23]
• Max Gerl: Max Gerl (JMI) [07-28]
• Allan Harris: Live at Blue Llama Jazz Club (Love Productions/Live at Blue Llama) [07-28]
• Russ Johnson Quartet: Reveal (Calligram) [08-04]
• Low Country: Low Country (Ropeadope) [07-28]
• Chad McCullough: The Charm of Impossibilities (Calligram) [08-04]
• Arman Sangalang: Quartet (Calligram) [08-04]
• Mehmet Ali Sanlikol & Whatsnext?: Turkish Hipster (Dunya) [07-21]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, July 16, 2023

Too late for an introduction.

Top story threads:

Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans: Seems like a relatively tame week for evil, but there are always examples.

• Aaron Blake: [07-15] Indictment paints tale of Chinese interests and 2016 Trump campaign: This doesn't strike me as anything Trump was culpable for, but does offer a lot of juicy details on how influence peddling works in and around political campaigns. That "Individual-1" is James Woolsey just confirms that he's a sleazebag, which you must have already suspected.

• Philip Bump: [07-14] The staggering scale of Donald Trump's speaking fees.

• Ryan Cooper: The GOP's Tommy Tuberville problem: "The Alabama senator's blockade of military promotions reveals the party's real position on abortion."

• David Dayen: [07-14] Jim Jordan misfires in attacks on Lina Khan. Or, per Bradley Blankenship: [07-15] Corporate America really doesn't like FTC chair Lina Khan challenging . . . corporate America.

• Ed Kilgore: [07-15] Tucker Carlson hijacks Christian right confab in Iowa.

• Joan McCarter: [07-16] Greene owns McCarthy, and he doesn't even realize it: And the picture of them cuddling is much cuter than one I cited a couple weeks ago.

• Nicole Narea:

  • [07-13] The GOP's anti-FBI turn, explained. I have to chuckle a bit. Where where these principled opponents against politicization of the FBI when Hoover was targeting antiwar and civil rights movements?

  • [07-14] Iowa has implemented one of the strictest abortion bans in the US. The latest poll in Iowa showed that 61% supported abortion rights, but this is what you get when you elect Republicans.

• Li Zhou: [07-14] How Republicans turned a must-pass defense bill into an "extremist manifesto". Republicans have this bizarre idea that the US military should be a captive training ground for their future militia soldiers. There certainly are examples of right-wing fanatics with military backgrounds, in part because access to guns is a recruiting tool. But the military is also the most thoroughly integrated organization in America, and the importance of, for lack of a better term, wokeness hasn't been lost on their officers. But also, military service is one of the few occupations where public service is respected and admired, which is one reason many ex-military people are running for office as Democrats. Even the Supreme Court carved out an exception for the military from its recent ruling against affirmative action, citing "national security." For more on this:

  • Dan Balz: [07-15] House Republicans wage 'woke' culture wars with the military.

  • Robert Schlesinger: [07-13] Far-right Republicans' radical, bigoted attack on the Defense bill: "Even the military isn't safe from the GOP's war on wokeness."

  • Tessa Stuart: [07-10] Republicans push to strip abortion access for veterans.

• Alex Skopic: [07-13] The Espionage Act is bad for America -- even when it's used on Trump: Sure, I agree. I also think drug possession laws are bad for America, and should be repealed. If somehow the Espionage Act got repealed, I'd be happy to pardon anyone convicted under it, as I would anyone convicted under drug possession laws, including Trump and the Rosenbergs (not that we can bring the latter back to life). Until then, I don't much care. After all, Trump had plenty of opportunity to pardon people convicted under this act (or charged, like Julian Assange), and never did. He was too busy pardoning his cronies and fellow creeps.

Biden and/or the Democrats: Necessarily a grab bag, but we're probably stuck with it.

• Eric Levitz: He's one of the better writers at New York Magazine, but I find a lot to quibble with this week:

  • [07-11] Biden's unpopularity is more mysterious than it looks. Returns to the subject of his previous piece: [07-06] It makes sense that Bidenomics is unpopular (so far), admitting that "the unpopularity of both Biden and his economy are stranger than I'd previously allowed." I find both arguments unconvincing, but I'm not sure I got them right. One problem is that lots of things are only explicable with statistics, but they don't carry the same weight as experience. And even experience is subject to interpretation. By all objective measures, the 1980s were a great decade for me, but I didn't credit Reagan with any of that, and in fact I blamed him for a lot of problems that hadn't really materialized yet, but which seemed all but inevitable given his policies. If you expect the economy to go to hell when a Democrat or Republican takes over, it isn't hard to find evidence that you're right -- especially given that both have primarily given us more inequality.

  • [07-08] The 'greedflation' debate is deeply confused: Sure, he scores easy points against straw men or hacks -- Robert Reich is an example -- not least by pointing out cases where profits all but automatically rise when external events impact supply. (If you're as old as I am, you may remember the "windfall profits tax" passed in 1973, when OPEC forced oil prices way up, inadvertently making American oil men suddenly much richer.) On the other hand, I don't buy the argument that monopoly couldn't be raising prices now because if it existed, it would have raised prices previously. There are lots of reasons for monopolists not to fully exploit their power the moment they get it, but to do so when others give them cover for rising prices (as well as the incentive kick of raising costs). But also, "greedflation" provides an alternative to the cruel notion that inflation should be fought by taking away people's jobs.

  • [07-12] The case for Cornel West 2024 is extremely weak. But the case would be stronger if Levitz hadn't made a wrong turn in his first sentence: Cornel West recently decided that the best way for him to advance economic and social justice in the United States . . . thereby marginally increasing the odds of a second Trump presidency." I'm not interested in debating the last part, which as Levitz admits is a very marginal concern. The mistake is in thinking that West's campaign is only about "economic and social justice," and only in the US. If that's all that's at dispute, I'd happily concede that Biden is already making progress in that direction, and that West, no matter how much more he wants to achieve, isn't likely to do much better. If that's all he wants, he, like Bernie Sanders, would be better off working with Biden. But West has another major plank in his campaign, one that is diametrically opposed to both Republican and Democratic leaders, and that is foreign policy, and the almost certainty that current policies will lead to more wars that will eventually prove disastrous both for America and for the world. [E.g., see this interview; also another interview by Chris Hedges.] Not many people understand that, but that's all the more reason for West to stand up and argue the case. My biggest worry for 2024 is that some Biden miscalculation will throw us into a war, that will trigger a rebound for Trump, who is already arguing that only he can save us from world war. The rest of the article consists of minor arguments with a pro-West piece by Lily Sánchez, which pale in importance to this issue.

  • [07-13] A new order blocking Manchin's pipeline could hurt the climate: "Restricting Congress's authority to exempt energy projects from judicial review would undermine the green transition."

  • [07-15] Can extremely reflective white paint save the planet? If anyone does come up with a plausible geoengineering scheme for cooling the atmosphere, Democrats (in particular) will happily throw a lot of money at it. This is an example of a small hack that's unlikely to scale significantly, but at least it involves spending more to avoid simply cutting back on energy use -- one solution that no one serious considers plausible.

• Nicole Narea: [07-14] Biden's new plan to forgive $39 billion in student loans, explained: "More than 800,000 borrowers are now eligible for student loan forgiveness." Something else for Republicans to try to ruin.

• John Nichols: [07-14] Jesse Jackson's politics of peace: "His 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns called for ending military interventions, supported disarmament, and sought deep cuts in Pentagon spending." Not even Bernie Sanders has done that since, which is more evidence of how deeply rutted our thinking is on the military. I've long thought that Jackson would have won the Democratic Party nomination had he run in 1992, but he didn't, to avoid blame for losing a second term to GWH Bush. I also thought that Clinton owed him big time for not making the run, and I expected some kind of payoff for the favor, but never noticed one.

• Timothy Noah: [07-12] You'll be very surprised who's benefiting most from Bidenomics: Not really. "Red states, not blue ones, are seeing the biggest income gains." Isn't it always like that? Poor states vote Republican, and better off states bail them out.

Climate and Environment:

• Matthew Cappucci/Tamia Fowlkes/Shera Avi-Yonah: [07-16] Relentless heat wave reaching maximum strength. Phoenix hit 118°F; Sardinia 117°F, Sanbao (China) 126°F. Miami has "seen a record 36 days in a row with heat index value above 100 degrees."

• Julia Conley: [07-14] Death Valley expected to record highest temp ever on earth as climate crisis roars.

• Rachel DuRose: [07-13] There's no such thing as a disaster-resistant place anymore. Photograph is from flooded Montpelier, VT, but other examples abound

• Benji Jones/Umair Irfan: [07-12] 3 reasons why this summer is so damn hot: How many ways can you say "climate change"?

• Umair Irfan: [07-13] It's even hot in Antarctica, where it's winter. Map shows "record-low early winter sea ice around Antarctica."

• Viviane Callier: [2020-04-08] The Story of More: Five Questions for the Lab Girl, Hope Jahren: I recently read the paleobotanist's memoir Lab Girl, so when I saw she had a book subtitled How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go From Here, I dug up this interview, and eventually ordered the book.

• Nathan J Robinson: [07-14] The world needs many new climate activists right now: Interview with philosopher Henry Shue, author of The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now, who likens the task to "the World War II generation's duty to stop fascism."

Ukraine War: Conspicuous by absence is any news on how well Ukraine's "counteroffensive" is going, which suggests it isn't. On the other hand, NATO met, and continues to rack up milestones, which as usual mostly involve arms sales. Wake me when we see some diplomacy, because once again nothing else matters. The Gessen piece is historical, stuff you should know. It doesn't mean that Putin's invasion was in any way justifiable, or that sending arms to help Ukraine fend off that invasion is bad policy, but understanding America's deep culpability for the conflict would go a long way toward negotiating a way out of it. Conversely, not recognizing how this all went wrong prevents us from understanding the chief lessons of this war: that deterrence and sanctions are more likely to provoke war than to prevent it; and that not just the combatants but the world cannot afford for wars like this to go on and on.

• Connor Echols: [07-14] Diplomacy Watch: Sweden gets NATO, Turkey gets F-16s? Hard to see how anything accomplished at the Vilnius NATO summit last week brings us an inch closer to peace in Ukraine, while the continued posturing gives Russia all the more reason to hold out.

• George Beebe: [07-14] America's strategy for the NATO alliance is failing.

• Keith Gessen: [06-12] How Russia went from ally to adversary: A valuable bit of history, referencing on several recent books: Vladislav Zubok: Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union; Mary Elise Sarotte: Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate; Philipp Ther: How the West Lost the Peace: The Great Transformation Since the Cold War; Philip Short: Putin; and William Hill: No Place for Russia: European Security Institutions Since 1989, where the argument is that Russia was too big to integrate into Europe, so had to be pushed outside. These books cover ground I know well enough to have jumped ahead and wrote the following based on one anecdote, but the piece both confirms what I already knew and adds more telling detail.

  This starts with what we might view as the original disconnect: Gorbachev decided that the Cold War was a stupid and dangerous waste, so he offered not detente but cooperation; Bush saw Gorbachev's offer as a surrender, and demanded spoils, starting with East Germany. Americans saw the Cold War as not only justified but as victorious. When the Soviet Union dissolved, Americans saw more opportunities to press their advantage. Well into the Putin years, Russia tried to accommodate American hubris, but eventually they realized that American ambition was insatiable, and that it was increasingly directed at painting Russia as their enemy. That, after all, was key to NATO's eastward expansion. The pro-West coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the event that snapped Putin's tolerance, and the pro-Russian revolts in Crimea and Donbas allowed Russia to push back. This led to a significant rethink of how Russia could reassert its dignity, the invasion in 2022, and the current war quagmire. Of course, in the minds of Americans and their European allies and clients, this only confirms their fears and their commitment to deterrence as the only way to contain Russia. As this history makes clear, it didn't have to wind up like this. But the whole history of the Cold War was based on equally spurious assumptions and misreadings, lessons which given the vogue of triumphalism Americans have still refused to learn.

• Jen Kirby: [07-12] What Ukraine did -- and didn't -- get from the NATO summit.

• Anatol Lieven: [07-11] The case for Ukraine's NATO membership is the zombie that won't die: Written pre-Vilnius. Also Ivan Eland: [07-11] Ukraine should never be admitted to NATO.

• Suzanne Loftus: [07-13] Rise in German far-right reflects growing sentiment against Ukraine war: This should be accounted as a risk of continuing the war, of not moving as quickly as possible toward a negotiated agreement. Even if the far right only favors Russia as a fellow fascist, it is a bad look for the left to be seen as warmongers.

• Bryan Metzger: [07-13] Here are the 70 House Republicans who voted to cut off all US military aid to Ukraine. Lest you think that Republicans are turning to pacifism and/or isolationism, consider Kwan Wei Kevin Tan: [07-13] Matt Gaetz is back on the anti-Ukraine hamster wheel and floating the suggestion that Russia, not Ukraine, should be part of NATO so the organization can become an anti-China alliance.

• Nathan J Robinson: [07-11] Biden's provision of cluster bombs to Ukraine is illegal and immoral. So is the use of those same weapons, and for that matter mines, by Russia and Ukraine. That none of the three have signed international treaties banning their use is no excuse. But the US sending such weapons into a war zone does make it hard for the US to condemn Russia's use of them.

• Kelley Beaucar Vlahos:

  • [07-12] Riddle this: How many casualties are there, truly, on both sides of Ukraine war? Estimates are all over the place, and none of them are credible.

  • [07-14] Biden taps US reserves for NATO mission in Europe.

Around the world: But mostly Israel, again.

• Basel Adra/Juval Abraham: [07-10] The destruction of this Palestinian community was green-lighted by Israel's Supreme Court.

• James Bamford: [07-07] In Jenin, as elsewhere, Netanyahu knows he can count on Washington's complicity.

• Jonathan Guyer: [07-11] The Biden administration's remarkably unambitious approach to Israel: "What we learned from Ambassador Tom Nides's exit interview with the Wall Street Journal."

• Mitchell Plitnick: [07-14] As the US-Israel relationship is questioned, its 'shared fictions' remain strong. Refers to a column by Thomas Friedman: [07-11] The US reassessment of Netanyahu's government has begun.

• Jeff Wright: [07-16] Israel has turned all of Palestine into 'an open-air prison' to further annexation plans: So concludes the UN Special Rapporteur.

Other stories:

Kai Bird: [07-07] Oppenheimer, nullified and vindicated: Co-author of the biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Bird explains the campaign to get the federal government to admit that they erred in 1954 in revoking Oppenheimer's security clearance, thus excluding the director of the Manhattan Project from any further role in atomic weapons planning. The vindication didn't come until December 18, 2022, and serves as another example of something Biden's administration has done that Obama's was too chickenshit to venture. I will quibble with the assertion that Oppenheimer was "the chief celebrity victim of the national trauma known as McCarthyism." Sure, he was the bigger celebrity, but the execution of the Rosenbergs was a graver miscarriage of justice. But Oppenheimer is a clearer example of how McCarthyism worked: it meant that anyone with a vaguely leftist past could be crucified as a traitor, and hardly anyone would dare come to their defense -- especially liberals who could themselves be tarred as "fellow travelers."

Jonathan Chait: [07-11] In defense of independent opinion journalism: "The 'hack gap' between right and left has been closing." I'm not convinced. I won't deny that there are hacks on the left, but they differ significantly from hacks on the right. For one thing, they're not all aligned against their partisan enemies. Take Chait, for instance, who only seems truly happy when he's attacking people to his left -- a considerable number, given his support for the Iraq war, his pimping for charter schools, and his "Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination." But even when leftists slip into hackdom, they still start with commitments to truth and justice that are utterly alien to the right. Then, by the way, there is the deeper problem of objectivity, which is impossible, making it a claim one should always be suspicious of.

Bob Harris/Jon Schwarz: [07-04] Carl Reiner's life should remind us: If you like laughing, thank FDR and the New Deal: "Their comedy descends directly from the Works Progress Administration." The WPA did a world of good for America, but much of what they did, especially in the arts, would be considered too frivolous, and in many cases too controversial, for "taxpayer" funding these days. Until that attitude changes, we're stuck with a government distinguished mostly by misery: how miserable its workers feel, and how miserable they make the rest of us.

Noasm Hassenfeld: [07-16] Even the scientists who build AI can't tell you how it works: Interview with Sam Bowman.

Oshan Jarow: [07-14] Poverty is a major public health crisis. Let's treat it like one. You'd think that such an argument would make people more inclined to support anti-poverty measures, but Republicans have aligned themselves pretty firmly against public health (or at least doing anything about it).

Jess Lander: [07-13] What led to Anchor Brewing's downfall? Sapporo, some workers say. America's oldest craft brewer is going out of business, supposedly a victim of Covid or maybe bad marketing, but I'm suspicious of two ownership changes: in 2010, owner Fritz Maytag, who had rescued the brewery after prohibition, sold to Griffin Group ("a local beverage consulting company," which smells a lot like private equity even if they're not a big name), and in 2017 Griffin pawned the carcass on to giant Japanese brewer Sapporo. It's easy enough to say that the latter didn't understand American craft brewers, and to illustrate this with various marketing blunders, but the deeper truth is that they simply didn't care, especially after the workforce unionized in 2019. After all, it's not unusual for big companies to buy up small ones only to shutter them, leaving the larger company with one fewer competitor (even if, as in this case, one that barely mattered).

Back when I worked for a high-tech startup, where most employees owned a small sliver of stock, I concluded that the world would be much better if employees owned a controlling share of stock, thus resolving conflict with management. (Unions, valuable as they are as a balance against management power, usually increase conflict, especially when they lack legal rights, as is often the case in the US; on the other hand, in Germany, where "co-determination" gives workers a stake in management, unions align more closely with management.) I'd like to see many policies that help facilitate employee ownership. One of the most obvious ones would be to allow employees to claim defunct businesses, wiping out the company's previous debt obligations, and providing funding for a fresh start. I have no doubt that a company like Anchor could be revived, if handed over to workers who care about the product and the customers, and about their own jobs.

Shira Ovide: [07-14] We must end the tyranny of printers in American life: "Printers cannot be reformed. They must be destroyed, once and for all." I had to include this because my latest printer purchase, a HP OfficeJet Pro 9010, is the biggest purchasing mistake I've ever made. They insisted that I use a wireless connection, and while it is recognized by my Linux computers, I'm not able to send any jobs from them to be printed. (At one point, this worked, but even then scans couldn't be uploaded, at least not using sane.) One main reason for the wireless connection is the need to reorder ink as part of a subscription program that was originally offered for $2.99/month, then immediately raised to $4.99/month. Of course, they haven't sent me any ink, because I haven't been able to print. I've owned several HP printers going back to their LaserJet II in the 1980s, but they've never pulled anything like this before. At last, as Ovide will be happy to hear, I'm learning to live without printing. Now I need to figure out how to stop paying for nothing.

Kelsey Piper: [07-12] Stop looking to Mother Nature for answers to resource questions: "The silly way we think about resource scarcity." Followed, sad to say, by an equally silly answer. While it's true that we haven't discovered every earthly resource we might eventually manage to exploit, that's mostly because people keep assuming that only very short terms matter: a "50 year" phosphorus find may be a big deal for 50 years, but 50 years is a pretty short time frame.

Sigal Samuel: [07-11] Scientists unveil the key site that shows we're in a new climate epoch: Title has it backwards: some scientists decided we are in a new climate epoch, then looked for a geologic site that could be used as a marker between the old Holocene epoch and the new Anthropocene. They found one, but it's not based on climate change. Rather, what it marks is the appearance of fallout from nuclear bombs testing, which increased significantly around 1950. On the other hand, human impact on the geostratigraphic record goes back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, eventually becoming dramatic enough to justify the term Anthropocene (much like the Cambrian is sometimes called the age of trilobites).

Jeffrey St Clair: [07-14] Roaming Charges: Clusterfuck in Vilnius. He's in a bad mood, starting with cluster bombs for Ukraine.

Two subjects I didn't want to say anything about are No Labels and RFK Jr. -- among other things, do I file them under Republicans, who they effectively work for, or Democrats? -- but if you want some well-reasoned analysis, turn to No More Mister Nice Blog:

• [07-16] Be very afraid of No Labels (unless you're Donald Trump).

• [07-16] I hope the mainstream media is proud of all the attention it gave RJF Jr.; also [07-14] Among dangerous bullshitters, game recognizes game; and [07-10] RFK Jr. doesn't have to try very hard to out-debate David Remnick.

An old piece I ran across, still worth mentioning:

• Alex Pareene: [2017-04-05] The long, lucrative right-wing grift is blowing up in the world's face.

• Rick Perlstein: [2012-11] The long con: Mail-order conservatism.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 10, 2023

July archive (in progress).

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

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

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

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

New records reviewed this week:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

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

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

Old music:

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

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

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

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

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, July 9, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top story threads:

Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Courts and Law:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine War:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other stories:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nathan Robinson:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 3, 2023

July archive (in progress).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New records reviewed this week:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

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

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

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

Old music:

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

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

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

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

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

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, July 2, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

Top story threads:

Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Supreme Court:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Jay Michaelson:

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

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

• Ian Millhiser:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Climate and Environment:

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

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

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

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

Ukraine War:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the world:

• Lee Hockstader:

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

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

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

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

Other stories:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nikki Haley tweeted this:

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

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

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

St Clair's response to the Haley tweet:

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

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 26, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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