Music Week

Expanded blog post, September archive.

Music: Current count 34098 [34056] rated (+42), 214 [216] unrated (-2).

Well, that's another month, not exactly wasted but not put to very good use either. I'm still reeling from recent deaths -- among friends, in my family, of semi-famous people I care about, and others I knew nothing of. I've never forgotten one of the late Diane Wahto's letters to the Wichita Eagle, probably right after the stolen 2000 election, where she bravely declared, "we survived one Bush; we can survive another." She did, but lots of people didn't, and she herself didn't survive Bush's partisan successor. Trump's death toll far exceeds the 204,888 Covid death count (as of today), and he's hurt millions more. Hurts my head just to think about it.

Rolling Stone published a third iteration (after 2003 and 2012) of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. I started to transcribe it with my grades, but didn't get very far. Robert Christgau and Carola Dibbell published their ballots (unranked top-50 lists) here. Greil Marcus published a top 40 ballot. Other ballots I've found: Stephen Thomas Erlewine; well, that's it (RS did publish a list of voters, but not their ballots; only 28% were identified as journalists). Wikiwand has some statistics. I wasn't invited. Thought I might edit down a list from my 1,000 Albums for a Long and Happy Life, but haven't found the time. If I do pursue this further, I'll probably listen to some of the ranked records I had missed/passed up (as far as I've checked, 24 of the top 240, so 10%).

Only anomaly in the list below worth mentioning is my dive into old Charles McPherson albums. Phil Overeem likes his newest album, Jazz Dance Suites. I wasn't able to find it, but did find a live album he released back in January, and that got me started. His 1975 album Beautiful! is a long-time favorite, and I also am a fan of his 2015 album The Journey, so I was primed to look for more.

Two grade changes this time, nudging up albums I thought were pretty good to start with. Better to recheck them before the month ends than to complicate my paperwork later.

Four week month, bumped the rated count up by 184 (so average 46/week, way above my long-term historic average) -- a bonus for not otherwise having much of a life, I guess. I haven't run the numbers yet, but I'm probably ahead on the year, even with more old music recently.

New records reviewed this week:

• Artemis: Artemis (2020, Blue Note): [r]: B+(**)
• Daniel Carter/Brad Farberman/Billy Martin: Just Don't Die (2018 [2019], Ropeadope): [bc]: B+(*)
• Regina Carter Freedom Band: Swing States: Harmony in the Battleground (2020, Tiger Turn): [r]: B+(*)
• Tyler Childers: Long Violent History (2020, Hickman Holler): [r]: B+(***)
• Cliff Trio [Pandelis Karayorgis/Damon Smith/Eric Rosenthal]: Precipice (2019 [2020], Fundacja Sluchaj): [bc]: B+(**)
• Conference Call: Prism (2020, Not Two): [bc]: B+(***)
• Chick Corea: Plays (2018 [2020], Concord, 2CD): [r]: B+(*)
• The Croaks: One of the Best Bears! (2018 [2020], Fundacja Sluchaj): [bc]: B+(*)
• Joe Farnsworth: Time to Swing (2020, Smoke Sessions): [r]: B+(**)
• Chad Fowler/WC Anderson: Lacrimosa (2020, Mahakala Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Frode Gjerstad/Fred Lonberg-Holm/William Parker/Steve Swell: Tales From (2019 [2020], Fundacja Sluchaj): [bc]: B+(**)
• Guillermo Gregorio/Joe Fonda/Ramón López: Intersecting Lives (2018 [2020], Fundacja Sluchaj): [bc]: B+(**)
• Diana Krall: This Dream of You (2016-17 [2020], Verve): [r]: B+(***)
• The Mark Lomax Trio: The Last Concert: Ankh & the Tree of Life (2020, CFG Multimedia): [r]: A-
• Charles McPherson Quartet: Live at San Sebastián Jazz Festival (2019 [2020], Quadrant): [r]: A-
• Joachim Mencel: Brooklyn Eye (2019 [2020], Origin): [cd]: B+(*)
• Vic Mensa: V Tape (2020, Roc Nation, EP): [r]: B+(**)
• Merzbow/Mats Gustafsson/Balász Pándi: Cuts Open (2018 [2020], RareNoise, 2CD): [cdr]: B+(*)
• Helen Money: Atomic (2020, Thrill Jockey): [r]: B+(***)
• Moor Mother: Circuit City (2020, Don Giovanni): [r]: B+(*)
• Public Enemy: What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? (2020, Def Jam): [r]: A-
• Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: Kites and Strings (2020, One Trick Dog): [cd]: B+(*) [10-16]
• Markus Rutz: Blueprints: Figure Two: New Designs (2018-19 [2020], OA2): [cd]: B+(*)
• Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley: Birdland, Neuburg 2011 (2011 [2020], Fundacja Sluchaj): [bc]: A-
• Chip Wickham: Blue to Red (2020, Lovemonk): [r]: B-
• Immanuel Wilkins: Omega (2020, Blue Note): [r]: B+(**)
• WorldService Project: Hiding in Plain Sight (2020, RareNoise): [cdr]: C+

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Rich Krueger: The Troth Sessions (2002 [2020], Rockin'K Music): [r]: B
• London Jazz Composers Orchestra: That Time (1972-80 [2020], Not Two): [r]: B+(*)
• Thelonious Monk: Palo Alto (1968 [2020], Impulse): [r]: A-
• Nublu Orchestra Conducted by Butch Morris: Live in Paris (2010 [2020], Nublu): [r]: B+(**)

Old music:

• Charles McPherson: Con Alma! (1965 [1995], Prestige/OJC): [r]: B+(*)
• Charles McPherson: Live at the Five Spot (1966 [1994], Prestige): [r]: B+(*)
• Charles McPherson: From This Moment On (1968 [1997[, Prestige/OJC): [r]: B+(**)
• Charles McPherson: Horizons (1968 [1998], Prestige/OJC): [r]: B+(**)
• Charles McPherson: Siku Ya Bibi (Day of the Lady) (1972, Mainstream): [r]: B
• Charles McPherson: Live in Tokyo (1976, Xanadu): [r]: A-
• Charles McPherson: Come Play With Me (1995, Arabesque): [r]: A-
• Charles McPherson: Manhattan Nocturne (1997 [1998], Arabesque): [r]: B+(***)
• Charles McPherson: Live at the Cellar (2002, Cellar Live): [r]: B+(***)
• Charles McPherson: What Is Love (2010, Arabesque): [r]: B+(*)
• Charles McPherson Quartet: Love Walked In (2015, Quadrant): [r]: B+(***)

Grade (or other) changes:

• Billy Nomates: Billy Nomates (2020, Invada): [r]: [was: B+(***)] A-

Grade (or other) changes:

• Elizabeth Cook: Aftermath (2020, Agent Love): [r]: [was: B+(***)] A-
• Billy Nomates: Billy Nomates (2020, Invada): [r]: [was: B+(***)] A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Mary Halvorson's Code Girl: Artlessly Falling (Firehouse 12) [10-30]
• Douglas Olsen: 2 Cents (self-released) [11-01]
• Edward Simon: 25 Years (1995-2018, Ridgeway, 2CD) [10-09]
• Amber Weekes: The Gathering (Amber Inn Productions) [10-01]

Weekend Roundup

Blog link.

Well, it's official now: as of September 22, 200,000 Americans are now confirmed dead from Covid-19. For more:

• Karen Attiah: Africa has defied the covid-19 nightmare scenarios. We shouldn't be surprised. Some numbers here: Liberia, with 5 million people, has had 82 deaths; Senegal, with 16 million, 302; Rwanda, with 12 million, 26. On the other hand, police in Kenya have killed 15 just enforcing curfew restrictions.

• Dean Baker: It's not vaccine nationalism, it's vaccine idiocy.

• Adam Cancryn: How Trump is undermining his own vaccine race.

• Dan Diamond: 'It's like every red flag': Trump-ordered HHS ad blitz raises alarms.

• Brianna Ehley: US coronavirus case count passes 7 million.

• Quint Forgey: 'It affects virtually nobody': Trump downplays virus threat to young people.

• Steve M: Ron DeSantis will get people killed -- and probably won't get Trump reelected: "This is insane."

• William Saletan: Trump is escalating his coronavirus lies: "As the death toll increases, so does his deceit."

• Dylan Scott: 9 experts reflect on the US reaching 200,000 Covid-19 deaths. Most say things like Tara Smith: "In February, I knew that 200,000 deaths were theoretically possible, but I honestly didn't believe we'd get to that point." David Rehkopf points out "that the US is currently 46th i the world in terms of life expectancy," adding that "all of these same factors that impact our COVID prevalence and COVID deaths also are in many ways similar to what leads to our higher overall deaths as well." He sees "lack of universal health care" as a major contributor.

• Peter Wade: With 200K dead, Trump spews lies then golfs for the 298th time during his presidency.

• Libby Watson: We'll never know the pandemic's true toll on the working class.

Let's start with overflow from the Supreme Court crisis, opened up by the death last week of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Some articles came out in anticipation, but it's now official: Trump selects Amy Coney Barrett to Fill Ginsburg's seat on the Supreme Court:

• Zack Beauchamp: RBG, the 2020 election, and the rolling crisis of American democracy.

• Daniel Block: Packing the court might work. Threatening to pack it did. Reviews Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 court packing proposal, which was ill-fated in the sense that it didn't get passed. But under pressure, the Supreme Court stopped invalidating major New Deal legislation, and gradually Roosevelt's appointees took over the Court. Block emphasizes similarities between now and 1937, but I'm more struck by two key differences: FDR and his Democrats had a huge electoral mandate after the 1936 election, whereas the most Biden can hope for is a slim majority; and while the majority on the 1930s Supreme Court was casually selected from upper class conservatives, the Trump Court is stocked with card-carrying Federalist Society cult members -- not just predisposed to right-wing sentiments but selected and cultivated for them.

• Ryan Bort: GOP scores huge victory over democracy, integrity as Trump announces pick to replace RBG.

• Katelyn Burns: How Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court could affect LGBTQ rights.

• John Cassidy: Trump's selection of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court is part of a larger antidemocratic project.

• Igor Derysh: Mitch McConnell rams through six Trump judges in 30 hours after blocking coronavirus aid for months.

• Garrett Epps: Amy Coney Barrett's stare decisis problem -- and ours.

• Burgess Everett: Republicans prep lightning-quick Supreme Court confirmation.

• Noah Feldman: Amy Coney Barrett deserves to be on the Supreme Court: "I disagree with Trump's judicial nominee on almost everything. But I still think she's brilliant." I doubt Feldman, a Harvard law professor and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice David Souter, wrote that headline. He does say that she's brilliant, and can be expected to produce carefully reasoned opinions -- "even if I disagree with her all the way." I find that degree of legalistic wiggle room disturbing. Note that this post bleeds into another unrelated one of interest: Timothy L O'Brien: Elections aren't the only things Trump thinks are rigged: "It's always somebody else's fault when things turn against him." By the way, another friend of Barrett's has chipped in: O Carter Snead: I've known Amy Coney Barrett for 15 years. Liberals have nothing to fear. I recall similar pieces popping up as soon as Cavanaugh got nominated. All nominees come with PR machines paving the way. Sooner or later we'll discover that millions of dollars have been raised to promote this and other nominations. And thanks to recent Supreme Court rulings, it will be impossible to establish criminal culpability when the new Justice rewards her benefactors.

• Matt Ford: Amy Coney Barrett wants felons to have guns, but not votes.

• Constance Grady: The false link between Amy Coney Barrett and The Handmaid's Tale, explained.

• Sarah Jones:

  • American women need a revolution. It has to be bigger than RBG. Most memorable line here, about Ginsburg's "improbable" friendship with Antonin Scalia: "There's no ethical disagreement so profound that a shared class position can't bridge it." How much harder is it to form an ethical bridge over a class difference?

  • Amy Coney Barrett and the triumph of Phyllis Schlafly.

    As embraced by jurists like Barrett and her old boss, Antonin Scalia, originalism is its own dogma; the extension of a political theology committed to an older and more exclusionary version of America.

    Barrett understands all that. She's exactly as intelligent as her advocates say, and she's made all her choices with a sound mind. Her reward is power. If she's confirmed by the Senate, she'll be able to finish what Schlafly once started. She could help lock in Trump for another four years. She'll be able to deal democracy and yes, the feminist movement the blows the Christian right has dreamed of landing for years.

• Noah Lanard: Amy Coney Barrett will strip millions of health insurance.

• Nancy LeTourneau: Meet the man who vets Trump's Supreme Court picks: Leonard Leo, of the Federalist Society. I've long found it peculiar how Republicans invariably wind up appointing conservative Catholics to the Court -- are Protestants, who long held sway but lately have become virtually extinct, too inclined to respect people as individuals?

  You might call it a coincidence that Leo is Catholic and all of the Supreme Court justices he has been involved with since the 1990s have been Catholic -- with the exception of Gorsuch, who was raised Catholic but attended an Episcopal church after he married an Anglican. At this point, the two women who appear to be in contention for nomination by Trump (and put forward by Leo and the Federalist Society) are also Catholic. What is of concern, however, is not their religion, but how it influences their view of the role of the courts. For example, while a professor at Notre Dame, Barrett said that a "legal career is but a means to an end . . . and that end is building the Kingdom of God."

  For more on Leo, see: Robert O Harrow Jr/Shawn Boburg: A conservative activist's behind-the-scenes campaign to remake the nation's courts.

• Eric Levitz:

  • Dems should turn Barrett hearings into an anti-GOP informercial. We've seen at least some of this starting, especially with the ACA case:

    This said, Democrats may be well-advised to make the ACA their number-one issue in the confirmation fight. The conservative legal challenges to Obamacare don't just constitute an attempt to strip millions of potentially life-saving insurance subsidies, or change health-care policy in a toxically unpopular manner; it also represents an assault on democracy itself. The American people's democratically elected representatives entertained the question of whether this law should exist twice, first in 2009 and then in 2017. The verdict is clear. The unpopularity of the conservative alternative is unmistakable. Nevertheless, the right has refused to take the electorate's "no" for an answer, and is now seeking to use its influence over the judiciary to override the will of the people. In this way, the Obamacare case conveniently weds the threat that Trump poses to the material interests of working people with the threat he poses to democracy itself.

    Democrats may have no real chance of blocking Barrett's confirmation. But the Senate's hearings will provide the party an opportunity to clarify the stakes of the impending vote that they can still win.

  • Would court packing be too slippery a slope? I think it's premature to talk about it. People need to understand two things: it's not such a radical idea; and it's necessitated by the Supreme Court's obstruction of popular and necessary policies. A good start would be to refer to Trump's appointments as "packing the Court" -- that is clearly the intention, and it's been happening for some time (a deliberate effort to install partisan ideologues, especially relatively young ones, to build up a long-lasting right-wing majority, and use that to radically change laws, subverting the normal processes of democracy). You can also start pointing out how this "packed" right-wing court has already broken with established norms to further their partisan schemes (e.g., campaign bribery = free speech, unlimited gun rights, allowing voting discrimination).

• Dahlia Lithwick: Trump kept the quiet part quiet about Amy Coney Barrett: In his announcement, Trump "stayed mum about the real reason he needs her."

  As has been noted many times over this past week, the GOP has lost the popular vote in six of the last seven elections and yet appointed 15 out of the last 19 justices. Barrett would make that 16 out of 20 seats. And that is why the people most assuredly cannot be allowed to decide the future of reproductive freedom, the future of health care, or even whether and how their own ballots will be counted in just over a month. Trump cannot talk about those things because they will further harm his own polling and will also reflect badly on GOP senators who pledged to vote for the nominee before they even knew whom she would be. They cannot talk about those things because minority rule doesn't poll as well in the U.S. as it does in, say, Hungary or medieval France. But minority rule is on the ballot. It may well be the only thing on the ballot. Because if, as the president promises, his independent justice needs to be seated to decide whose ballots count, this isn't merely a commitment to entrench unpopular, dangerous, and partisan policies into constitutional law. It's also a commitment to commandeering the high court itself into deciding whether and how to count votes, in an election in which a sitting president has already pledged that only some voters will be allowed to pick the winner.

• Dylan Matthews:

  • Court-packing, Democrats' nuclear option for the Supreme Court, explained: "Why an FDR plan from the 1930s is suddenly popular again."

  • The legal theories of Amy Coney Barrett, explained. An interview with Keith Whittington, a Princeton professor of politics, starting with "what is originalism?" When this was posted, Barrett was an oft-mentioned candidate for the appointment.

• Barbara McQuade: Amy Coney Barrett is even more extreme than Antonin Scalia.

• Ian Millhiser:

  • What happens to the law in a world without Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

  • Who is Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court?

• Nicole Narea: Amy Coney Barrett has a years-long record of ruling against immigrants.

• Ella Nilsen: How the coming fight over Ginsburg's SCOTUS replacement could shape the Senate elections.

• Anna North: What Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court would mean for abortion rights.

• Molly Olmstead: Conservatives are already playing up hypothetical anti-Catholic bias against Amy Coney Barrett: Because we all know how concerned conservatives are when it comes to prejudice against minorities? I'm old enough to remember the old protestant prejudice against Catholics -- my grandmother was a prime example -- but Catholics back then (like John Kennedy) disarmed the prejudice by emphasizing tolerance and the separation of church and state, not by forcing their most arcane beliefs on their subjects, as Barrett seems to want to do.

• Alex Pareene: McConnell will sacrifice anything to fill Ginsburg's seat -- even his Senate majority.

• Kim Phillips-Fein: Is Amy Coney Barrett joining a Supreme Court built for the wealthy? "Future decisions by a very conservative majority could give corporations even more weight and workers less."

• Joe Pinsker: RBG's fingerprints are all over your everyday life.

• David Rohde: A dangerous moment for the Supreme Court. Can we start referring to the Federalist Society as a cult?

  Trump and McConnell now stand poised to create a conservative majority on the Court that could last decades. The moment marks a triumph for the Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian legal group that has worked since the nineteen-eighties to recruit ultra-conservative lawyers to serve as judges. Republicans face a potential backlash in November, but a dramatic and historic change in American democracy and jurisprudence is under way that could vastly increase the power of the Presidency, corporations, and the wealthy, and curtail, or bring to an end, abortion rights, Obamacare, and expansive voting rights.

• Shaskar Sunkara: 'Scranton v Park Avenue' is Biden's best campaign issue -- not the Supreme Court. He has a point, but as Yglesias points out below, the two are not unrelated. The Supreme Court in itself is unlikely to persuade anyone who isn't already committed, but it doesn't hurt to point to the Republicans' hypocrisy viz. 2016, to the naked power grab, to the packing of the court with Federalist Society cultists. Also, the most immediately tangible case before the Supreme Court is a suit to throw out all of Obamacare on the thinest of technicalities, and Barrett could be the vote that decides to strip health insurance from millions of people. Still, the overriding issue of the election is the conflict between one party which blindly serves an unaccountable, unelected oligarchy and another party which at least recognizes and is accountable to the vast majority of Americans. Since winning elections depends on building a majority coalition, that seems like the obvious point to make.

• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: The case for ending the Supreme Court as we know it.

• Jeffrey Toobin: There should be no doubt why Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett.

  Still, it's worth remembering the real priorities of Trump and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, in this nomination. They're happy to accommodate the anti-abortion base of the Republican Party, but an animating passion of McConnell's career has been the deregulation of political campaigns. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision brought the issue to wide public attention, but McConnell has been crusading about it for decades. He wants the money spigot kept open, so that he can protect his Senate majority and the causes for which it stands. This, too, is why the Federalist Society has been so lavishly funded over the years, and why it has expanded from a mere campus organization into a national behemoth for lawyers and students. Under Republican Presidents, Federalist Society events have come to operate as auditions for judicial appointments. The corporate interests funding the growth of the Federalist Society probably weren't especially interested in abortion, but they were almost certainly committed to crippling the regulatory state.

  Barrett is a product of this movement, and not just because she clerked for Scalia. Her writings and early rulings reflect it. Her financial-disclosure form shows that, in recent years, she has received about seven thousand dollars in honoraria from the Federalist Society and went on ten trips funded by it. But it's not as if Barrett was bought; she was already sold. The judge has described herself as a "textualist" and an "originalist" -- the same words of legal jargon that were associated with Scalia. (She believes in relying on the specific meaning of the words in statutes, not on legislators' intent. She interprets the Constitution according to her belief in what the words meant when the document was ratified, not what the words mean now.) But these words are abstractions. In the real world, they operate as an agenda to crush labor unions, curtail environmental regulation, constrain the voting rights of minorities, limit government support for health care, and free the wealthy to buy political influence.

• Matthew Yglesias: The Supreme Court's role in economic policy, explained. Reminds us that the point of having a conservative majority on the Supreme Court is less to legislate from the bench than to veto efforts by Congress and the Executive to implement changes that regulate business, regardless of how popular those changes may be.

  It's a nice vision, in my opinion, and also a vision of a world in which the courts play a smaller role in the political process. It is not the way American politics works. When Alfred Stepan and Juan Linz surveyed the United States and 22 other peer nations to see how many electorally generated veto points each country had, they found the US to be a huge outlier. More than half their sample had just one elected body that could block policy change -- a parliamentary majority. Seven had two veto players. France often had one, sometimes two, but since then has tweaked its rules to ensure that it's always one. Switzerland and Australia had three. And the United States had four.

  Which is just to say it's really, really hard to change the law in America. In their magisterial work Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why, Frank Baumgartner and his co-authors find something superficially encouraging -- it's not the case that the side with more money backing it normally wins in Congress. The reason, however, is less encouraging. It simply turns out that there are so many veto points in the US political system that the status quo almost always wins. What the increasingly active conservative courts do, under the guise of aw-shucks balls and strikes refereeing, is essentially introduce yet another veto player into the system.

• Li Zhou: Senate Republicans were always going to do whatever they wanted with the Supreme Court vacancy: "Their actions are deeply hypocritical -- but unsurprising."

Some scattered links on other topics this week:

Bethany Albertson: Trump's appeals to white anxiety are not "dog whistles" -- they're racism. That's because Trump's no whistler. He's the dog. He isn't the leader of the Republican Party. He's just a guy who watches too much Fox News, but because he has money and has spent his whole adult life seeking fame, he's come to represent all the little people whose prejudices and fears and psychoses he embodies.

Zeeshan Aleem: Half of Americans who lost their job during the pandemic still don't have one.

Anne Applebaum: The complicity of Republican leaders in support of an immoral and dangerous president.

Associated Press: Trump and Nixon were pen pals in the '80s. Here are their letters. Just to creep you out, from the original CREEP.

Zack Beauchamp: The Republican Party is an authoritarian outlier: "Compared to center-right parties in developed democracies, the GOP is dangerously far from normal."

Hannah Beech: 'I feel sorry for Americans': A baffled world watches the US: "From Myanmar to Canada, people are asking: How did a superpower allow itself to be felled by a virus? And why won't the president commit to a peaceful transition of power?" The answer to both questions is hubris: the latter specifically by Donald Trump, the former much more generally. Even the Soviet Bloc, with nothing we recognize as democracy, generally allowed a peaceful transfer of power. (As Jeffrey St Clair mentions, in the piece below, the exception was in Romania, where Ceaucescu's generals took the leader out into a field and shot him, then outlawed capital punishment.) The US used to be better regarded, even more generously than was really deserved, but in the late 1940s Truman decided to kick the Soviet Union out of the coalition that had won WWII, and to direct US foreign policy against communists, socialists, labor unions, and anti-colonial resistance everywhere. When the Soviet Bloc collapsed, Washington doubled down on its economic program to impose capitalist austerity everywhere. Where Republicans differed from Democrats was in their insistence on treating their own folk as shabbily as the rest of the world. Trump's only innovation to this Washington Consensus was to stop pretending that the "medicine" was good for others. His vision is a world of oligarchs who can buy and sell whole countries. His "America First" is really just Trump First. Otherwise, if he really represented a system or a party, he wouldn't cling to power so desperately.

Julia Belluz: 156 countries are teaming up for a Covid-19 vaccine. But not the US or China. Interview with Seth Berkley, of "Vaccine Alliance, one of the partners behind Covax."

Russ Buettner/Susanne Craig/Mike McIntire: The President's taxes: Long-concealed records show Trump's chronic losses and years of tax avoidance: "The Times obtained Donald Trump's tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due." Major article, although it's still far short of what a full public release of Trump's tax records might show. Side articles: Charting an empire: A timeline of Trump's finances; 18 revelations from a trove of Trump tax records; An editor's note on the Trump tax investigation. For more:

• David A Farenthold/Yeganeh Torbati: Trump avoided paying taxes for years, largely because his business empire reported losing more money than it made, report says.

• Matt Stieb/Chas Danner: The key takeaways from the Times' Trump tax-return investigation.

Laura Bult: How the US keeps poor people from accessing abortion.

Katelyn Burns: Trump says he won't commit to leaving office if he loses the election because of a "ballot scam". I'm growing weary of repeatedly asking Trump about whether he'd agree to "a peaceful transition of power" if he loses the election. It should be obvious by now that his repeated refusals signify two things: he doesn't believe that elections in the US are fair, not least because he's spending a lot of effort and money in scamming them for his own benefit; and underlying that, he clearly doesn't believe that fair and open democratic processes are valuable in their own right. When Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 conceded, despite receiving more votes than Bush or Trump, they were showing their respect for a flawed but established democratic system. Trump has no such respect. He probably regards Gore and Clinton as suckers and losers for rolling over so easily. In contrast, he wants to appear tough, as someone who will fight for his beliefs down to the last technicality -- his dedication is something his supporters love about him, whereas the willingness of Democrats to back away from power fights has made them look weak and indecisive. Nor is this just Trump being his authoritarian bad self. Republicans have signalled their contempt for democracy for decades ago, as they've exploited every imbalance and loophole available to them to secure power far beyond their numbers. Indeed, their agenda is so tailored to narrow (and unpopular) special interests that it's hard to see how they could prevail in fair and open elections. (Indeed, it's easy to find instances where Republicans admit as much.) Still, I think a large part of Trump's refusal to say something as obvious as "of course, if I lose I'll respect the law" is that he feels obligated to project confidence in his electability -- especially given that polling has consistently shown him to be way behind. Muddying the waters, casting suspicion on the integrity of voting, is one of the few ways he can gain credibility for his campaign, even if it's as likely as not to backfire on him. Given all the horrors of the last four years, given his manifest ineptness for the job, given the malevolence of his administration, he should have no chance to win a second term. Yet your uncertainty just goes to show that his ploy is working. But it also adds to the sense of how ominously he looms over the future of the country, and how much of a toll even recognizing him as a legitimate political figure is taking from our psyches. [BTW: I previously wrote more on this, see Rupar below, which includes additional links on post-election worries.]

Jonathan Chait:

• Trump says reporters covering protests deserve to be attacked.

• Trump: 'Get rid of the ballots . . . there won't be a transfer of power: "Trump, once again, did not commit to accepting the election resuts, and suggested throwing out mail ballots to ensure a 'continuation' of power."

• Trump finally releases fake 'plan' to protect preexisting conditions.

John Cassidy: Trump is attacking American democracy at its core.

Fabiola Cineas:

• Critical race theory, and Trump's war on it, explained: "Trump has attacked diversity training, critical race theory, the 1619 project, and anything that reckons with America's racist past."

• No cops were charged with Breonna Taylor's death. This is how the system was designed. Cineas also wrote: Demand grows for Kentucky AG to release the grand jury report in the Breonna Taylor case. More on this case (also see Jeffrey St Clair, below):

  • Anna North: Daniel Cameron, the Trump-supporting attorney general in the Breonna Taylor case, explained.

  • ZZ Packer: The empty facts of the Breonna Taylor decision: "There's a lot that is god-awful wrong with the grand-jury decision in the death of Breonna Taylor, not least what the state attorney general, Daniel Cameron, omitted."

Adam Clark Estes/Rebecca Heilweil: The most dangerous conspiracy theory in 2020 isn't about blood-sucking pedophiles: "QAnon is scary, but misinformation about voter fraud poses a bigger and more immediate threat to democracy."

Susan B Glasser: Here are twenty other disturbing, awful things that Trump has said this month, and it's not over yet.

Eric Goldwyn: Costly lessons from the Second Avenue Subway.

Thom Hartmann: Trump's destruction of America started with Ronald Reagan: "Why Reaganism needs to be ripped out by the root."

Umair Irfan: Scientists fear the Western wildfires could lead to long-term lung damage.

Malaika Jabali: Joe Biden is repeating the same mistakes that cost Hillary Clinton the election: "Biden is trying to woo unhappy Republicans, when he should be mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Democrats." Well, that's one way to get your attention -- Hillary Clinton is, after all, the only Democrats who's ever managed to lose an election to Trump -- but why should those options be either/or? No doubt the Biden campaign needs to put a lot of effort into getting out the base vote -- that's how Obama won two elections for Biden, and that's one place Clinton dropped the ball. On the other hand, I don't see any harm from touting a few Republican endorsements -- former Michigan governor Rick Snyder (of Flint water notoriety) is mentioned here. I would worry if Biden started tailoring his program to make vague cross-party appeals, but considering his opponent, he has a readymade case -- e.g., sanity.

Peter Kafka: Apple won't take a cut -- for now -- when Facebook sells online classes: The underlying story is that Apple currently claims 30% of all charges for digital services that occur using apps from their app store (thus exploiting their control over iPhone users). I wasn't aware of that -- I've studiously avoided doing business with Apple ever since my Apple II days, when I got disgusted over their pricing of hardware components -- but evidently Google does the same thing with Android apps (I have an Android phone, but don't think I've ever downloaded any apps from their store, and certainly haven't paid them any money for them).

Roge Karma: To achieve racial justice, America's broken democracy must be fixed.

Jen Kirby: Yes, Russia is interfering in the 2020 election. "It wants to cause chaos, again. But it's also learned some lessons from 2016." It's no secret that Russian hackers favor Trump, and reasonable to infer that's because Putin favors Trump. But why seems to be nothing but speculation: maybe it's to sow chaos, maybe it's because Putin thinks Trump will be easier to deal with, maybe it's because Russia just wants to be viewed as a serious player, maybe the Republicans are subcontracting (an angle Mueller doesn't seem to have considered, distracted as he was by high level contacts between people who don't really work).

Ezra Klein:

• David French and I debate polarization, secession, and the filibuster. French has a new book: Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. For a review, see Joshua Keating: David French's new book arguing that the US will break apart is too optimistic.

• When did good governance become an "armageddon option"?

• How Mitch McConnell is changing the Democratic Party. Republicans did a lot of things to gain the upper hand in politics, and McConnell has been just one cog in a big machine designed to grind up democracy and turn control of government over to autocracy and its self-appointed agents. Newt Gingrich and his crew transformed the House in the 1990s. Mostly for social reasons, the Senate has taken longer, but thanks to the greater visibility of individual Senators, the transformation looks even uglier.

  This is the true McConnell rule: What parties have the power and authority to do, they should do. And to give him his due: It is much stranger, by the standards of most political systems, for the reverse to be the case, for senators to refuse to use their power to pursue their ideological ends on a question as important as a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. But that's how American politics has traditionally worked.

Michael Kranish: Donald Trump, facing financial ruin, sought control of his elderly father's estate. The family fight was epic.

Eric Levitz:

• Trump's closing message to seniors: I don't care if you die.

• The economy of World War II proved a Green New Deal is possible. OK, but I don't see how you can built the political unity behind GND that WWII enjoyed, in part because climate change is never going to seem as palpably threatening as Germany and Japan were, in part because we're not coming out of the Great Depression, in part because business itself has changed in ways that makes it much harder for government to command. On the other hand, I doubt that GND can or should be as rushed or all-consuming as mobilization for WWII was. Cites a paper by JW Mason/Andrew Bossie: Public Spending as an Engine of Growth and Equality: Lessons from World War II.

Jane Mayer: A young Kennedy, in Kushnerland, turned whistle-blower.

Bill McKibben: A post-Ginsburg Court could be one more climate obstacle: Give him any arbitrary headline, and he'll write you a piece about how it threatens the planet, adding "any chance we still have will require abnormal action." Presumably, not abnormal as in McConnell's rush to approve Trump's pick. More like abnormal in attending demonstrations led by McKibben. I don't recall Ginsburg ever taking a stand on anthropogenic climate change, but I do recall the Supreme Court overturning EPA limits on greenhouse gases because they didn't consider the economic impacts. She may have dissented from that. Trump's next pick certainly won't, so I guess McKibben has a point. But it's always the same one.

Ian Millhiser: How the Supreme Court revived Jim Crow voter suppression tactics: Interview with Carol Anderson, author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy.

Sara Morrison: Section 230, the internet free speech law Trump wants to change, explained.

Nicole Narea:

• The Trump administration is challenging a court ruling that prevents it from ending the census early.

• Trump is proposing to limit student visas to two years for citizens of 59 countries: "It's only Trump's latest attack on foreign students."

Anna North: The Trump administration's war on birth control: "The Affordable Care Act made birth control more accessible than ever. Then came Trump."

Jeff Orlowski: We need to rethink social media before it's too late. We've accepted a Faustian bargain: "A business model that alters the way we think, act, and live our lives has us heading toward dystopia." Well, we never thought it through in the first place. Social media was created by private companies, and designed in ways to allow those companies to profit by taking advantage of their users, and delivering them to advertisers. There are as lot of problems with that, but giving the government more control over them, even if it's just regulating them as monopolies, isn't much better, and could be worse. I'd like to see non-profit entities set up to chip away at their market, with some kind of public funding replacing their need to sell things. One great thing about the Internet is that the marginal cost of data is nil, so there's no reason anyone has to excluded from anything. Working back from that point, it should be possible to subsidize content creation in ways that don't make it subject to political control. And all sorts of ancillary processes could be generated on the basis of what people actually want, as opposed to what a few entrepreneurs calculate can be turned into profit.

Evan Osnos: The TikTok fiasco reflects the bankruptcy of Trump's foreign policy.

JC Pan: Some rich people are hilariously freaked out about a Biden presidency: "The mere prospect of a Democratic president nominally meddling with their plunder has generated anxiety among the wealthy." The photo is of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, worth $1.3 billion, and among the seriously worried:

A bombshell report released last week by the RAND Corporation revealed an astonishing upward redistribution of $47 trillion from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent between 1975 and 2018. In their paper, authors Carter Price and Kathryn Edwards argued that if the country's economic gains over that time period had been distributed as they were in the postwar era -- that is, prior to the explosion of a bipartisan free market mania that slashed taxes, hobbled unions, and eviscerated public programs -- median worker pay today would be about twice what it is. "This really is the entire country versus a very small number of people," the Center for American Progress's Ben Olinsky said of the report. After nearly half a century of raking it in at the expense of everyone else, with the enthusiastic blessings of right-wing think tanks and policymakers from both major parties, it's no wonder that the one percent is now scandalized by whispers of even the mildest reforms.

Heather Digby Parton: Trump's eugenics obsession: He thinks he has "good German genes," because he's a fascist: "Trump's 'racehorse theory' of genetics is profoundly racist -- it's also why he thinks he's a natural-born genius."

Matt Phillips: China is on a building binge, and metal prices are surging.

Lili Pike: China's commitment to become carbon neutral by 2060, explained.

Andrew Prokop:

• Pennsylvania's naked ballot problem, explained.

• The past 48 hours of Justice Department political shenanigans, explained: "DOJ officials are making a series of statements and disclosures that advance President Trump's political narratives." More on Barr and DOJ:

  • Donald Ayer: William Barr, the fanatic.

  • David Badash: Barr to be honored for 'Christlike behavior' with award from right wing Catholic group with strong ties to Trump.

  • Ankush Khardori: When the rule of law turns into rule by law.

  • Noah Lanard: Federal prosecutor: William Barr has "brought shame" on the Justice Department.

  • Michael S Schmidt/Nick Corasaniti: Justice Dept. aids Trump's false narrative on voting.

  • Tasmin Shaw: William Barr: The Carl Schmitt of our time: Article dated 2020-01-15, about a speech Barr gave to the Federalist Society, dovetails with multiple themes this week. Also from the archives (2019-10-17): Peter Stone: William Barr, Trump's new Roy Cohn.

  • Mark Sumner: Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Andrew McCabe all get a win in court, and the loser is William Barr.

David Roberts:

• Noam Chomsky's Green New Deal: Interview with Chomsky and Robert Pollin, authors of a new book, Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal.

• On climate change, oil and gas companies have a long way to go.

Aaron Rupar:

• Trump's weekend rallies showed just how unhinged his campaign is: "Trump's Minnesota rally featured praise of 'good genes' and an extended apologia for Robert E Lee."

• "It affects virtually nobody": Trump erases coronavirus victims as US death toll hits 200,000.

• Kayleigh McEnany has made a mockery of her promise not to lie. Tuesday's briefing was case in point.

• "We're gonna have to see what happens": Trump's comments about the peaceful transfer of power, explained: "Trump won't commit because he's hoping the Supreme Court will save him." That does seem to be part of the rush to get a new Supreme Court Justice confirmed before the election. Still, I think he's overplaying a weak hand. Sure, there are people willing to fight to keep him as president, but they aren't organized, and won't be effective. If the election returns are decisive, there will be a lot of pressure on him to step down, and very little he can do about it. On the other hand, if it turns into a muddle (as 2000, 2004, and 2016 were), he'll have some options. On the other hand, Democrats are much less likely to roll over this time if the election counting looks to be crooked, and secured only by his packed Supreme Court. More post-election worries:

  • Nancy Cook: Trump's team plots his departure -- even if he won't: "One of the most organized parts of the White House these days is a surprising place -- the West Wing office planning a presidential transition." Well, for starters, they got a lot of pardons to write up, as well as last ditch executive orders, and other ways to muck up an incoming Biden administration.

  • Barton Gellman: What if Trump refuses to concede the election?

  • Joshua Holland: Here's the real reason Trump is being so open about his plot to steal the election.

  • Ed Kilgore: A nightmarish end to the 2020 elections is becoming all too plausible.

  • Andy Kroll: There's a right and a wrong way to talk about Trump's attempts to rig the election: Interview with Anat Shenker-Osorio.

  • Anita Kumar: Trump readies thousands of attorneys for election fight.

  • Nancy LeTourneau: How the merchants of doubt are planting the seeds of chaos about election results.

  • Alex Shephard: Senate Republicans have no intention of stopping Trump from stealing the election.

  • David Siders/Holly Otterbein: 'Everyone sees the train wreck coming': Trump reveals his November endgame.

  • Jennifer Steinhauer/Helene Cooper: At Pentagon, fears grow that Trump will pull military into election unrest.

  • Jeffrey Toobin: The legal fight awaiting us after the election.

• Trump made a rare public appearance in DC to pay his respects to RBG. It did not go well.

Jerry Saltz: I don't know where this ends. But I cannot stop panicking about November. Sounds like he's my age, or a bit more -- talks about being at Chicago in 1968, whereas I only watched it on TV. Still, I can relate to this:

Call it liberal bedwetting; being afraid, unable to maintain our emotional hull-structures and psychological balance. Of course, it is all of that. Our internal shields collapsed. Not just waking up in the middle of the night thinking about how bad Trump and the Republicans are and have been. (That's been a norm for four years, never being able to "normalize" the actions of this ruling class.) But feeling like we were staring in the face of something bigger. And personal. Something like . . . our faith in America -- our mealy-mouthed, privileged, naïve liberal conviction that the country would get better, erratically and only through fighting, but in some way that felt nevertheless reliable. I have always assumed that while the arc of history is long and hard and fraught, that in the end it really will arc toward justice. This was probably always foolish, but I felt it. The most pressing questions about progress always seemed to be when? and how fast? and over what obstacles? Not if.

I was pretty quickly disabused of the notion that America always does right -- the Vietnam War did that, but it was easy to find much more -- but it seemed like we always lucked out from the worst consequences of our deeds. After all, Americans are fundamentally practical people, so sooner or later you have to adjust to reality and go with something that works. Clearly, lots of things in America aren't working right now, and fixing them is going to be hard, in no small part because the solutions often run against myths right-wingers have propagated over the last 40 (to 75) years. Some such problems are subtle, intricate, difficult to see, and those will be the hardest. But some are as fucking obvious and transparent as Donald Trump, and can be solved as simply as voting him out (or if you're as angry as you should be, try this one). When I grew up, it was literally impossible to watch a movie or TV show that didn't inexorably lead to a happy ending, so you can see where my instincts came from. That started to change with the advent of "anti-heroes" (coincidentally with the Vietnam War), and has progressed to the point where villains are our heroes, and vice versa. And in this world, it's hard to believe that we'll catch a break, and see Trump and the Republicans caught up short.

Theodore Schleifer: This billionaire built a big-money machine to oust Trump. Why do some Democrats hate him? Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and investor in other ventures. Nicholas Lemann wrote about him in Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream, where he was profiled along with Adolf Berle and Michael Jensen to illustrate the business thinking aligned with FDR's New Deal (Berle), Reagan's right-wing reaction (Jensen), and the business-friendly New Democrats like Clinton and Obama (Hoffman).

Nancy Scola: "Holy s---" is what we're thinking': Inside Facebook's reckoning with 2020.

Jeffrey St Clair: Roaming charges: Simple twists of fate: Weekly column, one I long avoided but these days he's starting to feel refreshing. Starts with a series of bullet items on Breonna Taylor, ranging from "There were 146 arrests in Louisville on Wednesday, none for the murder of Breonna Taylor" to this:

It's tempting to think: so, this is what we've come to. Police can break into your house in the middle of the night on specious warrant, shoot you in your bed, smear you after you're dead, entice witnesses to lie about you, fabricate stories about their own actions and then, after it's all been exposed, just walk. Free of charges. Free of discipline. Free to do it all over again. Because they will and they have. Yes, it's tempting to think this is what we've come to in the age of Trump. But what if this is what we've always been? Since the first slave patrols busted into houses late at night, to drag human beings back into a state of enshackled property.

Also this on the Supreme Court, which could have added more old cases (hundreds, maybe thousands) but stuck with the most notorious ones:

I keep hearing about the "legitimacy crisis" that will engulf the Supreme Court if the Senate moves forward with Trump's expected nomination. Yet when did the institution that rendered Dred Scott (1857), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Korematsu (1944), Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding Georgia's sodomy statute (1986), Bush v. Gore (2000), Exxon Shipping v. Baker, revoking punitive damages for Exxon Valdez wreck (2008) and Citizens United (2010) acquire this glittering aura of legitimacy?

The answer is that the 1940s-1970s court did a few things (but not everything) right, which led people of my age to look to the Court for protection against unjust political power. That Court has been systematically undermined over decades, but three Trump appointments pushes it over the edge into the abyss of despotism. And, by the way, stopping Barrett won't save us. The Court is already packed. On a different subject:

COVID-19 mortality rates were 30% lower in unionized nursing homes in New York. When there was a union, workers had significantly greater access to N95 masks and eye shields, and infection rates were lower.

Emily Stewart: We can end America's unemployment nightmare: "The problem with our social safety net is clear. The solution is, too." This is part of a series of articles Vox calls The Great Rebuild. Others:

• Zachary D Carter: How to build a better American economy: "A blueprint exists for a more inclusive, successful nation that invests in the well-being of its citizens. We only have to look to the past."

• Sean Collins: The financial case for defunding the police: "It's time to ask why we continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on police misconduct lawsuits and billions more on policing that yields poor outcomes." Text is more nuanced than the headline. It would be a mistake to think of policing (and the rest of the criminal justice system) solely in terms of funding. Sure, there are things we spend a lot of money on that help little and in some cases are downright counterproductive. On the other hand, there are areas where spending more might be worthwhile.

• Anna North: The future of the economy hinges on child care: "We must bail out the industry that allows millions of parents to work."

• Andrew Yang: Young people are the new corps of engineers the US has been waiting for: "We have more than enough work to go around for the next generation if we address one of our nation's biggest problems: infrastructure.

• Matthew Yglesias: Building housing -- lots of it -- will lay the foundation for a new future: "A massive boom in new construction would create countless jobs and help finally end the legacy of racist housing policies."

Matt Stieb:

• The Pentagon reportedly spent pandemic funding meant for PPE on plane parts and body armor.

• Trump's plan to send seniors $200 in drug coupons is unlikely to come through. Trump has long promised lower prescription drug prices for seniors, and never lifted a finger to get it implemented. This may look like a one-time partial compensation, but it's really little more than a subsidy for an industry which is already ripping Americans off.

• 2020 presidential debates: What to expect and how to watch. There will, again, be three presidential debates, the first next Tuesday (Sept. 29), others on Oct. 15 and 22, with a vice-presidential debate on Oct. 7. More on the debate(s):

  • Richard A Friedman: How to debate someone who lies: "Truth sandwiches, ridicule and other tactis for Joe Biden when he faces President Trump."

  • Nicholas Kristof: To beat Trump, mock him: "The lesson from pro-democracy fighters abroad: Humor deflates authoritarian rulers." Not necessarily a good debate tactic, although even as hapless a wit as Hillary Clinton was occasionally able to get under his thin skin.

  • Gabby Orr/Nancy Cook: Trump falls into the trap he set for Biden: "Some on Trump's team are bracing for a humiliating loss at next week's debate -- after Trump lowered expectations for Biden by mocking his acumen for months."

  • Alex Thompson: Beware the 'Rebel Alliance': A new twist on post-debate spin.

Margaret Sullivan: Four years ago, Trump survived 'Access Hollywood' -- and a media myth of indestructibility was born. This fails to mention that the Wikileaks dump of DNC emails came out right after the 'Access Hollywood' tape, a feint the media readily fell for. Then came Comey's announcement that the FBI was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, which resonated with all the earlier email stories. On the other hand, Trump managed to suppress the Stormy Daniels story until well after the election, so we have no idea how it might have played out, especially coming after the "Access Hollywood" tape. It certainly was true that major mainstream media outlets thought playing Trump up was good for business, and the polls suggested there wasn't much risk in doing so. They're liable to think the same thing for the same reasons this time. But repeatedly letting Trump off the hook isn't the same thing as deeming him indestructible. They could just as well take that as a challenge, and demolish him completely by election time. Lord knows, they owe the public a break.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel: Stephen F Cohen, 1938-2020. Obituary of the late Russia scholar and noted critic of neo-Cold War jingoism, especially popular among Clintonist Democrats since Hillary got shafted, by his wife, aka editor of The Nation. Also on Cohen:

• Caitlin Johnstone: Stephen Cohen has died. Remember his urgent warnings against the New Cold War.

AJ Vicens: Republicans decry slow ballot counts while hampering efforts to speed them up. This is typical of everything Republicans have done on elections this round: they never offer anything to increase voting, to make sure voting is representative of the public, and/or to make sure the results are credible and trusted. They only work to scam the system, which makes sense given that their agenda is contrary to the interests of most people, and that most people recognize it as such.

Alex Ward:

• Trump says the US is "out of Syria." But more US troops are heading there. Several disturbing points here. US troops are currently "guarding" Syrian oil fields. In Trump's terms, "I kept the oil," but the oil is actually to the Kurds. Perhaps worse, US troops are directly opposite Russian troops, leading to clashes.

• Trump and Biden want you to believe they're more anti-war than they are.

• Trump at the UN: America is good, China is bad. More on UN speeches:

  • Michael H Fuchs: Trump's UN speech was a bizarre feat of gaslighting and fantasy.

  • Fred Kaplan: Trump's "address" to the UN was seven minutes of nonsense.

  • Jen Kirby: At the UN, China's Xi showed he understands the system better than Trump.

• Mike Pompeo and Robert O'Brien, top US officials, are campaigning for Trump in crucial states: "Some experts believe the speeches violate federal law."

Jason Wilson/Robert Evans: Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies.

Matthew Yglesias:

• Minority rule in America: "Our various undemocratic institutions are reenforcing each other in a deadly spiral."

• The battle to define the Biden economic team, explained.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, September archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 34056 [34007] rated (+49), 216 [217] unrated (-1).

I have very little to say here, so will keep it short. High rated counts continue, although some records below (Shipp, Pretenders) took 4-5 plays to settle down. Pretenders record is almost very good, but I shut it down on one song I lost interest in. That left me with some fairly obscure jazz titles for an A-list. Shipp and Bergman suggest it helps to actually send me the record. DMG sent me several records in the past, but I had no idea this Last Exit album existed. Stumbled on it by accident when I was following up on Piotr Orlov's Bandcamp piece, How South Africa's Blue Notes Helped Invent European Free Jazz. Otherwise, I just followed my nose. Especially looked through Music Tracking for priority picks.

Jazz critic Stanley Crouch died last week. I have a question pending on him, so will write more once I collect my few thoughts. Meanwhile, Robert Christgau wrote Appreciation: Stanley Crouch, a towering critic, loved a good fight. Christgau previously reviewed Crouch's book on Charlie Parker, Kansas City Lightning. Crouch tried his hand at writing a Jazz Consumer Guide, although I think he only got one published. (Gary Giddins and Francis Davis also tried their hands at the format, well before mine from 2004-10.) One thing I will say about Crouch is that he was more persuasive writing about what he liked* than what he hated. (Asterisk there is that I haven't read the Parker book. Parker is worshipped by all reputable jazz critics, no doubt including Crouch, but I've never given up my doubts.) By the way, Phil Freeman writes about Crouch in his Ugly Beauty column, along with notes on the late Gary Peacock and a bunch of new records I need to check out.

Haven't done this week's new releases in the metacritic file yet, but did catch up the previous week. That seems to be the new normal.

New records reviewed this week:

• Fontaines DC: A Hero's Death (2020, Partisan): [r]: B+(*)
• Robert Gordon: Rockabilly for Life (2020, Cleopatra): [r]: B+(*)
• Frank Gratkowski/Simon Nabatov/Dominik Mahnig: Dance Hall Stories (2017 [2020], Leo): [r]: B+(**)
• Gordon Grdina's the Marrow: Safar-e-Daroon (2018 [2020], Songlines): [r]: B+(***)
• Gordon Grdina: Prior Street (2019 [2020], self-released): [bc]: B
• Charlotte Greve/Vinnie Sperrazza/Chris Tordini: The Choir Invisible (2018 [2020], Intakt): [r]: B+(*)
• Tee Grizzley: The Smartest (2020, 300 Entertainment): [r]: B+(***)
• GuiltyBeatz: Different E.P (2020, Banku Music, EP): [yt]: B+(*)
• Haiku Hands: Haiku Hands (2020, Mad Decent): [r]: B+(*)
• Tigran Hamasyan: The Call Within (2020, Nonesuch): [r]: B+(*)
• Ray Wylie Hubbard: Co-Starring (2020, Big Machine): [r]: B+(**)
• I Think You're Awesome: Suite to Be You and Me (2019 [2020], Jaegar Community): [r]: B+(*)
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis: Sherman Irby's Inferno (2012 [2020], Blue Engine): [r]: B+(*)
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis: Black Brown & Beige (2018 [2020], Blue Engine): [r]: B
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis: Rock Chalk Suite (2019 [2020], Blue Engine): [r]: B+(**)
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra: Christopher Crenshaw's the Fifties: A Prism (2017 [2020], Blue Engine): [r]: B+(**)
• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra With Wynton Marsalis: The Ever Fonky Lowdown (2019 [2020], Blue Engine, 2CD): [r]: B-
• Vic Juris: Let's Cool One (2019 [2020], SteepleChase): [r]: B+(*)
• Kaze & Ikue Mori: Sand Storm (2020, Libra): [cd]: B+(***)
• La Lucha: Everybody Wants to Rule the World (2019 [2020], Arbors): [r]: B
• Jacám Manricks: Samadhi (2018 [2002], Manricks Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Adam Niewood: Blue as a Whistle (2018 [2020], SteepleChase): [r]: B+(**)
• Adam Nussbaum: Leadbelly Reimagined (2019 [2020], Sunnyside): [r]: B+(***)
• Pretenders: Hate for Sale (2020, BMG): [r]: B+(***)
• Psychedelic Furs: Made of Rain (2020, Cooking Vinyl): [r]: B+(*)
• Dan Reeder: Every Which Way (2020, Oh Boy): [r]: B
• Rumer: Nashville Tears: The Songs of Hugh Prestwood (2020, Cooking Vinyl): [r]: B+(**)
• Scenes: Trapeze (2020, Origin): [cd]: B+(**)
• Matthew Shipp Trio: The Unidentifiable (2019 [2020], ESP-Disk): [cd]: A-
• Greg Spero + Spirit Fingers: Peace (2020, Ropeadope): [r]: B+(*)
• Henri Texier: Chance (2020, Label Bleu): [r]: B+(**)
• Throttle Elevator Music: Emergency Exit (2020, Wide Hive): [r]: B+(*)
• Azu Tiwaline: Draw Me a Silence Part II (2020, IOT, EP): [r]: B+(*)
• Kali Uchis: To Feel Alive (2020, Virgin EMI/Interscope, EP): [r]: B
• Village of the Sun Feat. Binker & Moses: Village of the Sun/Ted (2020, Gearbox, EP): [bc]: B
• Greg Ward/Jason Stein/Marcus Evans/Chad Taylor/Matt Lux: 85bears (2020, Ears & Eyes): [bc]: B+(***)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Borah Bergman/Perry Anderson/Steve Swell/Ray Sage: Quartets Trios Duos (2007 [2020], Mahakala Music): [cd]: A-
• The Claire Daly Band: Rah! Rah! (2008 [2020], Ride Symbol): [cd]: B+(**) [10-02]
• Dudu Pukwana: Dudu Phukwana and the "Spears" (1968-69 [2020], Matsuli Music): [bc]: B+(***)

Old music:

• Frank Gratkowski Quartet: Spectral Reflections (2001 [2003], Leo): [r]: B+(***)
• Frank Gratkowski Quartet: FacioB+(***)
• Last Exit: Headfirst Into the Flames: Live in Europe (1989 [2008], DMG/ARC): [bc]: A-
• Selwyn Lissack/Friendship Next of Kin: Facets of the Univers (1969 [2014], Downtown Music Gallery): [bc]: B+(***)
• Gwigwi Mrwebi: Mbaqanga Songs (1967 [2006], Honest Jons): [bc]: B+(**)
• Pretenders: Break Up the Concrete (2008, Shangri-La Music): [r]: B+(***)
• Pretenders: Live in London (2009 [2010], E1/Stroboscopic): [r]: B+(***)
• Pretenders: Alone (2016, BMG): [r]: B+(*)
• Jim Waller and the Deltas: Surfin' Wild (1963 [1995], Sundazed): [r]: B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Osvaldo Golijov/The Silkroad Ensemble: Falling Out of Time (In a Circle) [10-09]
• Tobin Mueller: What Survives: Radio Edits (self-released)
• Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project: Kites and Strings (One Trick Dog) [10-16]
• Walter White: BB XL (Walter White Music)
• Nate Wooley: Seven Storey Mountain VI (Pyroclastic) [10-16]

Weekend Roundup

Blog link.

Aside from the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, my main takeaway for the week is that I'm seeing a lot of articles trying to promote the election chances of Donald Trump, or at least make you real nervous. One of the more self-consciously rational ones is Ed Kilgore: A rational case for Trump winning the election without stealing it. A bit less rational is Michael Kruse: Trump is riding high. Can he keep from blowing it?. I suppose this sort of thing is good for clicks, and may impress upon Democrats the need for extra vigilance. The "rational" basis seems to be that Trump's approval ratings are little (if any) worse than they've ever been, and there's also the Electoral College skew, the well-oiled Fox propaganda machine, and a lot of "dark money" up to "dirty tricks" (and I suppose you can throw the omnipotent Russians into the mix). But there's also a lot of irrational, often downright magical thinking involved. I cite a few articles in this cluster below, but I'm not in general interested in speculative paranoia. There are plenty of real things to fear these days. Nor do I wish to prejudge the malevolence and malignancy of the American people. If Trump wins, that case will be proven, and if not, faith in democracy -- even one as compromised as ours -- will be vindicated.

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg opens up a seat on the Supreme Court, which has emerged as the ultimate arbiter of vice and virtue in the nation today. The fact that at age 87, with a series of grave illnesses, she clung onto her "appointment for life" shifts our focus away from her life and accomplishments to the political import of allowing Donald Trump to appoint her successor, subject only to the confirmation of Mitch McConnell's Republican Senate. The politicization of the Court is not new, although it has taken on a heightened and more desperate tone with recent polarization. From roughly 1940-80, we were fortunate to have had a Supreme Court that interpreted the Constitution in ways that expanded personal freedom and promoted social justice. This was a consequence of Franklin Roosevelt's long tenure as president and the legacy he left, which Republican Dwight Eisenhower rarely challenged, and which John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson extended. The most important achievement of the New Deal Court was its rulings against Jim Crow laws, although it's worth noting that their effect was limited until serious civil rights legislation was passed under Johnson. This period lasted long enough to let people forget that before Roosevelt, the Supreme Court had been by far the most reactionary branch of government. Conservatives railed against the Court, and Richard Nixon mounted the first significant right-wing attack on the civil rights and social justice the New Deal Court promoted. Ever since, the right has mounted an hysterical campaign to take away the rights granted by the Court -- especially abortion, but also the constitutional right to privacy free choice is based on -- and to secure ever greater privileges for the rich (as evidenced most clearly by the Court's recent claim that unlimited campaign spending is protected "free speech").

In recent years, the Court has been precariously balanced between Republican-nominated conservatives and Democratic-nominated liberals, with the former holding a 5-4 majority. The vacancy caused by the death of Antonin Scalia in February, 2016 should have given Obama the chance to flip the court 5-4 in favor of the liberals, but Mitch McConnell's Republicans controlled the Senate and refused to even hold hearings much less risk a vote on Obama's nominee (Merrick Garland, actually chosen for his centrist credentials). Their argument then was that with the election on the horizon, the appointment should be reserved for the incoming president, not the outgoing "lame duck." Needless to say, that is an argument you won't be hearing McConnell make this time, even though the election is much closer now (46 days after Ginsburg's death, vs. eight months after Scalia's).

All of this (and more) is covered in the following links. Perhaps the best place to start is Ian Millhiser: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legacy, and the future of the Supreme Court, explained.

• Tim Alberta: The reason why Trump might delay replacing Ginsburg: "Keeping Republicans hungry for a more conservative court is the only guarantee of earning their support." I don't see any reason why this is true.

• Zeeshan Aleem:

  • Trump uses the promise of a woman Supreme Court justice to fire up a North Carolina crowd.

  • Schumer: "Nothing is off the table" in Supreme Court nomination fight.

• Frank Bruni: From Trump, no respect for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or the rules: "Once a cheater, always a cheater."

• Katelyn Burns:

  • Obama calls for Ruth Bader Ginsburg's successor to be appointed by the election winner.

  • Democratic donors raised millions after Ruth Bade Ginsburg's death: "Swing state polls show voters want Joe Biden to choose the next Supreme Court justice."

• Irin Carmon: The Glorious RBG: "I learned, while writing about her, that her precision disguised her warmth."

• John Cassidy: The Republicans are planning a shameless Supreme Court heist.

• Andrew Cohen: The mighty Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "The late justice's legacy is a towering monument to liberalism's quest for equal rights." Compare that to the likely obituary of her Trump-appointed replacement: "Another small cog in the conservative machine's efforts subvert equal rights, privilege the rich, and make everyone else's lives nastier, shorter, and more brutish."

• David Cole: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 1933-2020.

• Sean Collins: Murkowski and Collins: No Supreme Court vote before Election Day.

• Chas Danner: RBG's death: Latest updates on reaction, political aftermath. Many things, including this quote from Ronald Brownstein:

  If confirmed in 2020, a RBG successor would be third Trump nominee selected by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a GOP Senate majority that represents less than half of the public. George W. Bush initially lost the popular vote and named two justices. The senators who confirmed Clarence Thomas had less than half of the popular vote too. Majority rule frays.

  There's also a chart here showing that shortest vacancy before a presidential election where a replacement was nominated and confirmed was 144 days, in 1916, with the runner up at 228 days. Scalia died 269 days before the 2016 election. Ginsburg 46 days.

• Moira Donegan: Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed America long before she joined the Supreme Court.

• David Faris: Why Democrats shouldn't panic about RBG's death.

  The reality is that Ginsburg's passing actually creates a trap for the GOP. With court-expansion gaining steam on the progressive left, the last thing that Republicans need right now is to be confronted with the rank hypocrisy of their decision to block Merrick Garland's nomination by Barack Obama in 2016. Four years ago, the GOP unified around an obviously sham rationale for stonewalling the Garland nomination -- that Supreme Court vacancies shouldn't be filled in an election year. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn't even bother clinging to this fiction for very long.

• Matt Ford: The consequences of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death for American democracy: "There's no sugarcoating it: Republicans are going to make the court even more conservative. But Americans can limit the damage in November."

• Ben Jacobs: how the battle to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's SCOTUS seat could provoke a Constitutional crisis.

• Ezra Klein: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death is a tragedy. The Supreme Court's rules made it a political crisis.

• Jill Lepore: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the great equalizer. Lepore previously wrote Ruth Bader Ginsburg's unlikely path to the Supreme Court.

• Dahlia Lithwick: What Ruth Bader Ginsburg would want America to do now. I've seen a bunch of articles on this topic, and expect none of them to convince anyone.

• Amanda Marcotte: Mourn Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but don't give in to despair -- it's time to fight like hell instead.

• Harold Meyerson/David Dayen: Why Ruth Bader Ginsburg won't be replaced . . . until after the election. Of course, not pushing the vote before the election leaves two months for a lame duck session to do the deed. If the Democrats win big, that won't look pretty, but no reason to think optics will phase McConnell.

• Ian Millhiser:

  • The one thing Democrats can do to stop Trump from replacing Justice Ginsburg: "Court-packing may be the only solution." Title and subhed are at odds. The Democrats cannot change the number of Supreme Court justices to stop Trump from nominating and the Senate from confirming a successor to Justice Ginsburg. To do so would require legislation, passed by both houses of Congress, and signed by the president (currently Trump), or overriding a veto with a two-thirds majority of each Congressional body. The Democrats don't have the votes to even fantasize about this, and such an act would be pointless without a Democratic president. Court-packing is an option the Democrats might have after the 2020 election, but the only serious effort to use it was Franklin Roosevelt's in 1937, which failed even with Democrats holding the presidency and overwhelming majorities in Congress. While tradition and racist Southern Democrats had something to do with that, the Court helped save itself by starting to allow some New Deal legislation (this was "the switch in time that saved nine"). For Democrats to pack the Court now would require a sustained argument both that Trump's own packing of the Supreme Court (one-third of the Court in one term which he won only due to Electoral College malfunction) was unfair and that the resulting Court is way out of step with public opinion. The odds of that happening do go up if Trump manages to appoint Ginsburg's successor, but it's a pretty empty threat at the moment.

  • Trump's shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees, explained. Updated post: Trump released this list as a campaign stunt on Sept. 9, before Ginsburg died, but it obviously looms larger now.

• Samuel Moyn: Socialists have long fought to disempower the Supreme Court. That's more urgent than ever now. Interview by Branko Marcetic. Moyn is a historian, mostly writes about human rights.

• Alexander Nazaryan: A Ginsburg replacement is 'worth the White House and Senate': Why, and how, Republicans will push through Trump's Supreme Court nominee. One note here which confirms my impression but is still rather stark when expressed in numbers, is that Trump has appointed 216 federal judges so far, compared to 158 from Obama over two full terms. Those are the real numbers when it comes to "packing the courts."

• Libby Nelson: Trump tweets that he will fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat "without delay".

• Anna North: What Justice Ginsburg's death means for the future of abortion rights.

• William Rivers Pitt: With the passing of Justice Ginsburg, democracy just got harder, again.

• Andrew Prokop: What we know about a possible Senate vote to replace Justice Ginsburg.

• Dylan Scott: What Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death means for the Supreme Court's Obamacare case.

• Walter Shapiro: Can Senate Democrats run out the clock on Trump's Supreme Court nominee? This is the real question, and if there's one thing that Senators are well practiced at it's delaying.

• Alex Shephard: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the failure of Democratic politics.

• Jeffrey Toobin: Can Trump and McConnell push through a successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

• Rebecca Traister: It shouldn't have come down to her: "Some will try to blame Ruth Bader Ginsburg for not stepping down sooner. They are missing the point."

By the way, just read that Stephen F Cohen (81) died. He's written extensively on Russia and Putin, consistently arguing against restarting the Cold War and de-escalating the anti-Russia hysteria among Democrats since the 2016 election, without being uncritical of Putin. He will be missed, but if Trump is soundly defeated in November he may not be as essential as he's been over the last four years.

I'm also saddened to note that Diane Wahto (80) has died here in Wichita. She was a friend and an ally, a former chair of the Wichita Peace group.

Some scattered links this week:

Kate Aronoff: The Biden adviser who gives climate activists nightmares: Ernest Moniz, Obama's secretary of energy, nuclear physicist, "good friend" of the fossil fuel industry. Under Moniz, oil companies overcame Hubbert's Peak to increase US oil and gas production past its 1969 peak. Since then, he's cashed in on the favors he doled out to the industry.

Andrew Bacevich: The China conundrum: deterrence as dominance: "Does it really make sense to begin an arms race with China when there are so many other areas for competition and collaboration?" Democratic defense apparatchik Michele Flournoy, oft-touted as Biden's likely Secretary of Defense, thinks so. She is being provocative, as well as stupid.

Dean Baker:

• Robert Samuelson hangs it up. I said my piece about Samuelson last week. Still, more here worth pointing out.

  Samuelson notes the work that Treasury secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, along with Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke did to combat the Great Recession, and then says "but that doesn't excuse their failure to anticipate the housing boom and to preempt the bust." This is absolutely right. . . .

  Unfortunately, Samuelson also gives this trio credit for avoiding a second Great Depression. That's just a fairy tale they tell to children to justify shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars to the richest people in the country, to save their banks from their own incompetence. There is nothing about the situation in 2008-09 that would have forced us to endure a second Great Depression. We know the secret of getting out of a depression. It's called "spending money."

  Unfortunately, that trio made sure that most of the money went to bankers, which turned out to be a very inefficient use of stimulus cash (but nice for bankers, sure).

• Trade wars are class wars: Even more than Klein and Pettis say: A note on the book Trade Wars Are Class Wars, by Matthew Klein and Michael Pettis.

Moriah Balingit/Laura Meckler: Trump alleges 'left-wing indoctrination' in schools, says he will create national commission to push more 'pro-American' history. If anything, the opposite is the problem: "Yet educators and students say that Trump is wildly out of touch with what happens in public school classrooms, where the United States is still held up as a beacon of freedom and democracy, and a moral leader." That assertion was dubious even when I was growing up, which was one reason the more I read into US history, the more critical I became of American foreign (and for that matter domestic) policy. Trump is calling for more (not less) indoctrination, because he wants to make sure that Americans blindly follow leaders like himself. I find this proposal exceptionally horrifying, not just because it perpetuates a mythology which reinforces problems and issues we've failed to own up to but more basically it attacks the very principle that truth matters, and that historians are responsible for uncovering truth within the context of time past. It is, in short, a demand that we give up the ability to think critically and act morally.

Zack Beauchamp: Conservative media is setting the stage for delegitimizing a Biden victory.

Medea Benjamin/Leonardo Flores: The US needs a new 'Good Neighbor' policy toward Latin America: Reminds me how one of Mexico's 19th century presidents lamented: "Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States." For 30 years after the Spanish-American War, America treated Latin America with "gunboat diplomacy" -- repeatedly invading countries and installing puppet regimes. Franklin Roosevelt tried to turn this around with his Good Neighbor Policy, and generally did, until the Cold War spread and gave he US excuses to overthrow a dozen or more countries, starting with Guatemala in 1953.

Jonathan Blitzer: The private Georgia immigration-detention facility at the center of a whistle-blower's complaint.

John Cassidy:

• How Boeing and the FAA created the 737 Max catastrophe.

• Broadcasting Joe Biden's economic program.

Jonathan Chait:

• 'Stocks are owned by everybody,' says Trump. Not even close.

• A White House aide just warned us that Donald Trump is a sociopath.

Fabiola Cineas:

• Why some counterprotests to Black Lives Matter are turning violent.

• Louisville reaches $12 million settlement with family of Breonna Taylor: "In addition to the substantial payout, the agreement also includes policing reforms."

• The policing reforms in the Breonna Taylor settlement, explained.

Aaron Ross Coleman: Congress's failure to pass stimulus has had a devastating -- and predictable -- effect on minority groups.

Chas Danner: The 2020 hurricane season is officially out of names. Only other year when they "went Greek" for extra names was 2005, which wound up with 27 named storms, but took an extra month to get there (three storms were so large that year their names were retired: Katrina, Rita, and Wilma). For a full rundown on this year's storms, see Wikipedia. Since this article, Tropical Storm Beta was named, and is gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico as it heads for Texas and Louisiana. Hurricane Teddy, a Category 4 (the second largest this year, after Laura), is still active, but well off the Atlantic coast, threatening Bermuda, and likely to wind up hitting Nova Scotia. Tropical Storm Vicky petered out after hitting the Cabo Verde Islands, and Tropical Storm Alpha veered east into Portugal and Spain. Tropical Storm Wilfred is still active, well out in the Atlantic and slowly heading toward the East Coast. Because storms are named when they reach tropical storm level (tropical depressions are just numbered) the names sometimes seem out of sequence. The Atlantic hurricane season officially ends on November 30, but note that there were already 4 named storms (all tropical storms with 45-60 mph winds) before the season started, so norms don't seem to be working this year.

Katherine Eban: "That's their problem": How Jared Kushner let the markets decide America's COVID-19 fate. I was referred to this piece by Libby Watson: Jared Kushner's psychopathic incompetence: "The White House's most cynical opportunist can't even get amorality right." Eban wrote:

At the end of July, writing for Vanity Fair, I revealed that Kushner had commissioned a robust federal COVID-19 testing plan, only to abandon it before it could be implemented. One public health expert in frequent contact with the White House's official coronavirus task force said a national plan likely fell out of favor in part because of a disturbingly cynical calculation: "The political folks believed that because [the virus] was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy."

The story struck a nerve, partly because it painted a picture of what might have been: The administration could have invested in a national testing system at a scale that could have greatly limited the number of cases and deaths. Instead the U.S. is on track to pass the grim milestone of 200,000 official COVID-19 deaths this month. With just 4% of the world's population, we now account for 20% of global deaths from the virus. . . .

Part of the answer almost certainly lies in the deep-seated belief, held by Kushner, President Trump, and their loyalists, that the federal government not only should not, but cannot play an effective leading role in responding to the pandemic, owing to its lumbering bureaucracy and onerous rules. At almost each step they have ignored the expertise of career officials and dismissed those with relevant experience as counterproductive meddlers. Trump famously calls them the Deep State.

Tom Engelhardt: Fire and fury like the world has never seen: One thing I've never been able to fathom is why some people think the "second coming of Christ" would be a good thing. My grandfather was the first to broach that subject with me, when he asked me whether I thought the founding of Israel would harken the day (the only thing I can remember him ever asking me). I don't recall answering. He came from along line of farmers whose intellectual interests began and ended with the Book of Revelations. (My father was the last of that line, and his ideas were pretty unconventional. My own take was that Revelations was to the Bible what a punchline was to a joke: if somehow you managed to swallow the set up, something that would make you finally realize it has all been a farce.) As it turns out, David Lloyd George thought just that when he signed the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and British rule over Palestine seemed designed to further that scenario (to the extent it seemed designed at all). There are at least a dozen recent books on how Trump is paving the way for the end times -- and those are just the ones by his more fanatic supporters. As something of a born-again atheist, I have no faith in heavenly kingdoms, either on earth or elsewhere, but I do recognize the impulses of crazed leaders to burn and leave it all in ruins. Early in his term, Trump famously threatened "fire and fury" should North Korea defy him. As Engelhardt notes:

And in every way imaginable, Donald Trump delivered as promised. He's been uniquely fiery and furious. In his own fashion, he's also been a man of his word. He's already brought "fire and fury" to this country in so many ways and, if he has anything to say about it, he's just gotten started.

Don't doubt for a second that, should he be losing on November 3rd (or beyond, given the mail-in vote to come), he'll declare electoral fraud and balk at leaving the White House. Don't doubt for a second that he'd be happy to torch that very building and whatever, at this point, is left of the American system with it before he saw himself "lose."

Since he is, in his own fashion, a parody of everything: a politician, a Republican, an autocrat, even a human being, he sums up in some extreme (if eerily satiric) fashion human efforts to destroy our way of life in these years. In truth, fiery and furiously fueled, he's a historic cloud of smoke and ash over us all.

John Feffer: Trump's scorched-earth doctrine: "Trump is doing whatever he can to make it impossible for his successor to resolve some of the world's most intractable problems." This article could have been 5-10 times as long (for instance, it never mentions Venezuela or Cuba, Bolivia or Brazil, or Somalia, where Trump has now bombed more than Bush and Obama combined). Maybe he's making some progress on disengagement from Afghanistan and Iraq, although nothing you can bank on. And he does seem to have dodged the worst case scenario he was headed for with North Korea, but again he's failed to work out any form of deal. Feffer has been working up to this piece, as in his A memo to the next president.

Matt Ford: Bill Barr's titanic lack of self-awareness: I don't see why it's so hard to understand Barr. Subhed says "he claims to be just a public servant," but Republicans since Margaret Thatcher have repeatedly argued that there is no public interest, therefore no such thing as a public servant. All people are simply self-interested, and for Republicans self-interest means looking at everything purely in terms of political advantages. In Barr's case, "everything" is law, and law is simply a tool to be used for advancing his party and himself. He's smarter about it than Trump is, but that's a pretty low bar. More on Barr this week:

• Cristina Cabrera: Barr compares lockdowns to 'slavery' while COVID disproportionately kills Black Americans.

• Jonathan Chait: Barr lays out terrifying theory for corrupting Justice Dept.

• Andrew Prokop: The stunning hypocrisy of Bill Barr.

• Terry H Schwadron: Bill Barr goes full-in right-wing looney.

• Matt Stieb: Barr tells prosecutors to weigh sedition charge for violent protesters.

Susan B Glasser: "It was all about the election": The ex-White House aide Olivia Troye on Trump's narcissistic mishandling of Covid-19: "The first staffer on the coronavirus task force to go public tells The New Yorker that America's pandemic response was 'derailed by the person at the very top.'"

Glenn Greenwald: The US-supported coup in Bolivia continues to produce repression and tyranny, while revealing how US media propaganda works.

Benjamin Hart: Trump administration to ban WeChat and TikTok from app stores beginning Sunday. Allegedly there is a national security angle here, but it also seems likely that Trump is doing this just to force the apps to be sold to "American" companies, in which case it's hard to imagine that some sort of graft isn't involved. More:

• Peter Kafka: A US judge has blocked Trump's plan to ban WeChat.

• Matt Stieb: Trump wants $5 billion from TikTok deal to go to 'patriotic education'.

Pamela Karlan: Our most vulnerable election: Review of Lawrence Douglas: Will He Go?: Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020.

Stephen Kinzer: Back off Venezuela already: "The American campaign against socialist leader Nichoas Maduro is only hurting the people of the country." And reminding Venezuelans that the United States has always favored business interests over the people. [Unfortunately, the Boston Globe makes it impossible for occasional readers to access articles on their website.]

Jen Kirby: Are China and Iran meddling in US elections? It's complicated. I'm sure that nearly every government in the world sees their fate affected by US elections, but few can do anything about it, and little of what they do can have any real effect -- in part because "meddling" usually produces an adverse reaction. Israel is the only real exception inasmuch as they can appeal for support from two groups of voters: Israel-minded Jews, and (more significantly and successfully of late) Apocalypse-minded Christians. But nobody much talks about Israel's efforts.

Ezra Klein:

• There are no good choices: "In shifting so much responsibility to individual people, America's government has revealed the limits of individualism."

• Race, policing, and the universal yearning for safety: Interview with Phillip Atiba Goff, of the Center for Policing Equity.

• A progressive vision to make America great: Interview with Klein's partner at Vox, Matthew Yglesias, about his book: One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger. "In it, he argues that the path to ensure American greatness and preeminence on the world stage is a combination of mass immigration, pro-family policy, and overhauling America's housing and transportation systems." Yglesias is an often astute critic of right-wing political efforts, but he also won last year's "Neoliberal Shill" award, mostly for the sort of "policy vision" he presents in the book. I often cite Yglesias, but haven't rushed out to buy the book. Last week I cited a critical review: Jacob Bacharach: The emptiness of Matthew Yglesias's biggest idea. Bacharach's sharpest jibe:

  But what does it mean when a columnist or a pundit writes "a book"? Swift reads, even when they number in the many hundreds of pages, volumes like David Brooks's The Second Mountain or Paul Krugman's Arguing With Zombies or Thomas Friedman"s "flat world" diptych tend to collect a set of superficially counterintuitive arguments and insights that upon closer inspection almost always resolve themselves into the preexisting, commonsense notions that their intended readership already assumes to be true.

  I can see the argument that if America wants to "remain number one," it may be helpful to swell the population to a level comparable with China and India, but I don't get what's so important about "remaining number one." If America's self-appointed role as global hegemon is failing (as certainly appears to be the case), maybe the answer isn't to compete harder but to find a path to cooperation that precludes the need for anyone to be hegemonic? And while I'm open-minded about immigration, I don't see a tripling of the current population as necessarily good for our quality of life. Indeed, I'm inclined to be skeptical about the real value of growth -- which is, as always, the main thing "neoliberal shills" have to peddle. Here's another review of Yglesias' book: Felix Salmon: Matthew Yglesias thinks there should be 'One Billion Americans'.

Paul Krugman: The GOP plot to sabotage 2021: In refusing to even negotiate a new relief/stimulus package, Republicans are signifying two things: they don't think any new legislation will help them at the polls in November; and if they lose, their intention is to leave the nation in the worst possible shape for the Democrats in January. Of course, if the Republicans retain control of the Senate, they'll do all they can to make Biden look bad, much as they did to Obama in the recession he inherited. You'd think this calculation would be obvious -- and something Democrats could rally voters against. But Republicans were no less blatant in 2008-09, and somehow managed to ride obstruction to a major rebound victory in 2010. Even if they lose in November, they feel invincible, because no one really calls them on their most malevolent impulses. Even less remarked upon is how this works as extortion. The basic argument is that if you don't elect Republicans, they are going to cause so much destruction that you'll regret the affront. Of course, normal, sane people would never give in to that sort of bullying. Yet time and again the American voters do -- at least, enough of them in our severely skewed electoral system to let them claim victory and use their powers to profit the 1% and undermine everyone else.

Eric Levitz: It is not undemocratic to call Trump's presidency 'illegitimate'.

Martin Longman:

• Trump gets more extreme because his audience is addicted to outrage.

• Trump tries the town hall format and it doesn't go well. "It was so bad that Laura Ingraham of Fox News basically mocked Trump's judgment in participating and said the whole thing might as well have been organized by the Democratic National Committee.

German Lopez:

• Why Covid-19 case numbers are falling in the US. I compared this to New York Times' Covid in the US: Latest map and case count, a frequently updated file which on 9/16 showed 39,221 new cases (14-day change -10%) and 1,281 deaths (14-day change: flat), with total death count 196,605 (so probaby > 200,000 by the time I post this).

• Trump's attempts to corrupt the CDC, explained.

• Trump says US Covid-19 deaths would be low if you excluded blue states. That's wrong.

Jane Mayer: For Mitch McConnell, holding the Senate is the highest priority.

Harold Meyerson: A Rorschach test for establishment liberalism. A note, which serves as an introduction, to a New York Times feature on the 50th anniversary of Milton Friedman's essay, "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits": Greed is good. Except when it's bad.

Ian Millhiser:

• 11 ways to fix America's fundamentally broken democracy.

  1. First things first: Get rid of the filibuster
  2. Stop voting rights violations before they happen
  3. Eliminate registration as an obstacle to voting
  4. Make it as easy as possible to vote
  5. Stop running elections on the cheap
  6. A tax credit for all voters
  7. Fix Senate malapportionment
  8. Allow the states to neutralize the Electoral College
  9. Stop gerrymandering
  10. Public financing for candidates
  11. Prevent Trump's judges from sabotaging voting reforms

• Chief Justice Roberts's lifelong crusade against voting rights, explained.

Kiana Moore: "They didn't see me as innocent": "Can you remember your first experience with the police? For these 9 Black and brown people, the encounters would shape their sense of safety forever." Also see Amber Ruffin shares a lifetime of traumatic run-ins with police, a week's worth of memoirs Seth Meyers broadcast the week after George Floyd was killed.

Nicole Narea:

• A federal court ruling could allow Trump to deport 400,000 immigrants next year: Or could allow Biden to deport them, by arbitrarily ending the Temporary Protected Status program for immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan.

• The outcry over ICE and hysterectomies, explained. More:

  • José Olivares/John Washington: "He just empties you all out": Whistleblower reports high number of hysterectomies at ICE detention facility.

Ella Nilsen: The ways Democrats could retake the Senate majority, explained. I rarely link to these horserace pieces, but flipping the Senate (and ending the filibuster) are essential for Biden and the Democrats to have any effectiveness at all. Would be especially delicious should South Carolina and Kentucky retire Graham and McDonnell.

Timothy Noah: The good life that Keynes promised America got stolen: "A new study shows in electrifying terms the extent to which 45 years of income inequality destroyed the prosperity we should all be enjoying."

Osita Nwanevu:

• The ridiculous war-gaming of the 2020 election: "Trump's opponents are so concerned that he might steal the election that they have forgotten to worry that he might simply win it."

• The cultural permanence of Donald Trump: "Trumpism has become America's latest civic religion, and it won't be voted out of office in November." Presumably what he means to say is that even if Trump is voted out of office in November, Trumpism will survive as a political legacy and continue to affect elections indefinitely into the future. I rather doubt that. A big part of Trump's allure is his reputation as a winner, and losing will wipe that out -- even if his apologists come up with lots of excuses. Also, although his retail political skills are pretty meager, it is really hard to think of anyone else who is seriously rich/successful yet with his slovenly reality TV persona seems approachable and acceptable to the clods who adore him. Mainstream Republican donors had no interest in Trump until he won, and will have no interest in him if he turns out to be a loser. They will carry on, looking for newer, more convincing cons to carry on their graft.

Trita Parsi:

• What Trump's troop withdrawal from Iraq means for ending America's endless wars.

• Is Mike Pompeo preparing an October Surprise? -- "a confrontation with Iran that will be cast as both defensive and lawful."

Deborah Pearlstein: How the government lost its mind: "Over the past 50 years, America has given up on the Enlightenment-era ideals of its Founders -- and the country's coronavirus disaster is the result."

Cameron Peters: Trump's Nevada rally was an exercise in delegitimizing voting -- and denying reality: "Trump keeps holding potential superspreader events in the middle of a pandemic."

Lili Pike: What wildfires in Brazil, Siberia, and the US West have in common: "Climate change and mismanagement are fueling large, uncontrolled fires around the world." More on fire:

• Anastasia Edel: The big smoke

• Kirsi-Marja Hayrinen-Beschloss: The wildfires changed how she sees life: "Carol Duncan's father almost died in Australia's fires. Now, she's angry at the government -- and has quit her job to focus full-time on relief work."

• Sharon Lerner: As the West burns, the Trump administration races to demolish environmental protections: "Polluters and their agents in government want to finalize as many environmental rollbacks as possible before the presidential election."

• Robert Mackey: Trump scoffs at plea to take climate change seriously amid fires, mocks science instead.

Katha Pollitt: Melania Trump really doesn't care: "A new book by her ex-best friend shows how the first lady sold her soul." The book is Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's "tell-not-quite-all" Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady. By the way, article opens with a picture of Trump and Melania kissing. Reminded me of the cartoon show Bojack Horseman. Weirdest thing about that show was when different species (e.g., with horse or dog heads) try to kiss.

Andrew Prokop: Bob Woodward's new book Rage, and the controversies around it, explained. "What did Trump know about the coronavirus? And what did Woodward know?" It's occurred to me that Woodward might have been trying to make Trump look more knowledgeable about coronavirus in February than he was, although when you listent to the tapes, you quickly realize that he didn't know much -- the value of the tapes was in contrast to the even dumber things he later said publicly. It's also possible that Woodward didn't grasp even what Trump said, and that the import of the quotes only became evident near publication time when publishers were searching through the book for tidbits they could market. It's even possible that Woodward's conclusions about Trump fitness were suggested by editors after having read the book. More on Rage:

• Jonathan Chait: Noted bibliophobe Donald Trump claims he read 466-page Woodward book in 1 night.

• Isaac Chotiner: Bob Woodward's bad characters: Evident sources include Robert O'Brien, James Mattis, and Dan Coats ("Of Woodward's three main characters, Coats's journey is the most pathos-filled.") The book starts with O'Brien:

  We are only two pages in, which is usually about the moment in a Woodward book when you can guess whether a subject has coöperated: if he has, he almost certainly comes out looking well. Three pages later, a week has passed, and Woodward casually notes that O'Brien, appearing on CBS, has just said about the virus, "Right now, there's no reason for Americans to panic. This is something that is a low risk, we think, in the U.S." Another author might note the dissonance between O'Brien's public and private statements; Woodward does not even allude to it. But this is typical of Woodward's White House-centric narratives: inconsistencies pile up; narrative threads are dropped and then recovered without any notice of the ways in which they have altered in the interim. In a 1996 review of his books, Joan Didion wrote, "Those who talk to Mr. Woodward, in other words, can be confident that he will be civil ('I too was growing tired, and it seemed time to stand up and thank him'), that he will not feel impelled to make connections between what he is told and what is already known, that he will treat even the most patently self-serving account as if untainted by hindsight." . . .

  And yet Woodward appears as unequipped to grapple with Trump as the erstwhile members of his Cabinet were. Whether Woodward and his sources are aware or disengaged, cynical or naïve, takes on extra importance because of the unique challenges and outrages of our era, in which a willingness to abide Trump has sat side by side with an inability to understand his malignancy. . . .

  One of the issues that marred Woodward's Bush books, despite their interest, was his willingness to believe less-than-honest people. That is an even bigger problem in the Trump era, which has outdone the Bush years in dishonesty and features an outrageous number of people whose only motive for serving in government seems to be personal glory or wealth. If this is not enough to make anyone pine for Dick Cheney, the lying at least makes it even more vital that journalists doubt what they hear and think carefully about what to weed out or explain. I somehow have trouble believing that Lindsey Graham is, as Woodward recounts, worried that the judiciary is becoming "too partisan" or that much can be gleaned from Jared Kushner's endless monologues on leadership. The problem goes beyond the details. In one conversation, Mattis and Tillerson discuss the importance of State and Defense working together and beefing up the diplomatic corps; a reader who did not follow the news in 2017 would be surprised to learn that Tillerson was simultaneously embarking on gutting the State Department. . . .

  Even Woodward's worst books contain an astonishing number of fascinating details, but those who have lamented the failure of our institutions to stand up to Trump are unlikely to be surprised by the mind-set of the people who populated them. Acceptance of how far we have fallen would have meant not only reappraising the country many of them loved but also the Party many of them belonged to. But the alternative explanation for their behavior is no better: they knew what was coming and -- whether out of a sense of decorum or partisanship or cowardice -- refused to say so.

• Constance Grady: Bob Woodward withheld his Trump revelations for months. Was that wrong? "Book publishing doesn't consider ethical questions to be its business. Increasingly, that's a problem."

• Fred Kaplan: Trump comes off even worse in Woodward's Rage than you've heard.

• Aaron Rupar: New Woodward audio is the starkest illustration yet of how Trump misled about coronavirus.

David Roberts: 4 astonishing signs of coal's declining economic viability: "Coal is now a loser around the world."

Aja Romano: What we know about a deadly shooting in Rochester, New York: "Two people are dead and 16 injured after a shooting at a party."

Aaron Rupar:

• "There has to be retribution": Trump's chilling comments about extrajudicial killings, briefly explained.

• Trump's ABC town hall revealed a president disconnected from reality: "He faced tough questions from voters -- and had few answers." Subheds: Trump won't even acknowledge that systemic racism is a thing; Trump has no shame about just making stuff up; This is your brain on Fox News.

  Along similar lines, Trump told a voter who asked him about immigration that he'll unveil new legislation "in a very short time" -- a talking point he often uses to buy time when he doesn't really have a plan.

  On the topic of law and order -- one that Trump is trying to make a centerpiece of his campaign -- Stephanopoulos grilled him on a disconnect between what he said back in 2016 and what he's saying now.

  "You promised four years ago at the Republican Convention, 'I'm gonna restore law and order in this country,'" he pointed out.

  Trump's response was that he has -- if you disregard all the large cities that are run by Democrats (so, most of them).

  Trump went on to compare the unrest that took place in American cities over the summer with the fall of Berlin in 1945, seemingly unaware of how that analogy reflects on his stewardship of the country.

• Trump's dark National Archives speech was white resentment run amok: "It's just nonsense to believe that America isn't racist." Related:

  • Nancy LeTourneau: Is America strong enough to confront its racist past? Clever of her to flip the tables and present Trump as weak, but the real issue with him is that he rejects Americans' common understanding of ideals: especially the central importance of equality.

    That is precisely what threatens both Trump and his supporters. To confront the role that racism plays in our society is a two-step process. First of all, we must recognize that, since our founding, U.S. institutions have been grounded in white supremacy. Secondly, in order to ensure that our principles of equality and justice apply to everyone, those institutions have to change.

    That first step presents an obstacle for people like Trump, who view any admission of error as a sign of weakness. During his speech on Thursday, the president said that the narratives being pushed by the left resemble the anti-American propaganda of our adversaries, concluding that "both groups want to see America weakened, derided and totally diminished."

    But Trump's approach is the one that broadcasts weakness. It takes strength to examine ourselves, identify shortcomings, and correct them to the best of our ability. . . .

    In many ways, what is on the ballot in November are these two views of what it means to be an American. Are we a country that is too afraid to even admit our shortcomings, or are we strong enough to be self-critical and seize our power to continue the process of aligning the country with our highest ideals?

Tom Scocca: Crowd cheers as the President gloats about this one time the cops shot a reporter with a rubber ballot for no reason.

Liliana Segura: Trump prepares to execute Christopher Vialva for a crime he committed as a teenager: "Vialva is the first Black man to face execution during Trump's killing spree. He is set to die on September 24." Vialva has spent more time on death row than he lived before he was sentenced to die.

Alex Shephard:

Why aren't voters blaming Donald Trump for the bad economy?: "Tens of millions are unemployed, hungry, and behind on the rent. But the economy is barely registering as an election issue." Just spitballing here, but Trump got no credit for the "great" economy because for most people it wasn't all that great, but has the "bad" economy since the pandemic broke out really been that bad? The massive first-round of stimulus spending made up for a lot -- one result being that Americans did a lot of saving during the lockdown. On the other hand, there's a tweet here based on an article interviewing construction workers in Ohio, which is totally deluded. Doesn't say much for the cognitive skills of the American people.

• Barack Obama's memoir is set to be the biggest book of this year. That's pretty depressing considering that his main claim to fame was providing us a brief and unhappy respite between two much more disastrous Republican presidents.

• Why does The Washington Post publish this Never-Trump drivel? Singles out a recent op-ed by AEI flunky Danielle Pletka, where her "principles" go into full wobble: "I never considered voting for Trump in 2016. I may be forced to vote for him this year."

Danny Sjursen: September 14, 2001: The day America became Israel: The date was when Congress voted, with just one dissent (Rep. Barbara Lee, D-CA) to give GW Bush a blank check for starting his Global War on Terror. Three days earlier, planes flew into the World Trade Center in NYC and the Pentagon near DC, killing close to 3,000 people. I was in Brooklyn at the time, visiting friends, and we watched a lot of TV that day. One thing I saw was stock video of Palestinians cheering and burning US flags, released by Israel shortly after the attacks. Later during the day, I saw the grinning mugs of Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres bragging about how good the attacks were for Israel, predicting that now Americans will see the world the way Israelis do. (Ariel Sharon was PM of Israel at the time, but his limited English didn't merit prime time, nor did his perpetual scowl.) 9/11 gave the neocons recently installed in key government positions by Bush and Cheney the opportunity they've been waiting for. The neocons may have started as fanatic Cold Warriors, but in the 1990s they formed an alliance with Israel's right-wing to scuttle the Oslo Peace Process and confront both the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors from a stance of absolute, uncompromising power. With Sharon's accession to power, their relationship to Israel shifted from support to envy: their most fervent hope was for the US to impose its absolute power on the world, as Israel was doing in its own little corner. Whence came mantras like "axis of evil" and "real men go to Tehran." You can argue about how well that stance has served Israel: the conflict with the Palestinians will never end until Israel grants them some semblance of justice, but the costs of dominance are within politically acceptable bounds, as long as BDS doesn't hamper business, and the next Intifada is no more efficient than the last. And for now, Israel has nothing to fear from formerly hostile neighbors. The thrust of Kushner's (which is to say Israel's) diplomacy has been to form a united political front between Israel and Arab despots who fear Iran and their own people and other Arabs and hope they will be more secure with hoards of sophisticated American and Israeli arms. Speaking of which, more on the Kushner deal:

• John Allen Gay: How the Israel-UAE deal can enable US military disengagement from the Middle East. A couple of delusions here. Increasing US arms sales in the Middle East is the opposite of disengagement. Even if those arms sales come with strings attached, the US cannot be assured that the weapons will be used as the US might wish. Israel has always followed its own security dictates, as when they supported Iran while the US was arming Saddam Hussein. While the UAE-Saudi war in Yemen presumably was approved by the US, the UAE went its own way in Syria, supporting Al-Qaeda-linked militias. Nixon/Kissinger had this idea back in the 1970s of handing security responsibilities off to regional powers, the track record was pretty abysmal. Their favorites in the Middle East were Saudi Arabia (who promoted Salafism and Jihadists), Iran (overthrown by revolution), and Pakistan (who gave us the Taliban). There is no reason to think that any "client" state in today's Middle East will prove any more subservient. On the other hand, Trump is doing us no favors by aligning with the most cruel and autocratic regimes in the region.

• Jefrey Goldberg: Iran and the Palestinians lose out in the Abraham Accords: Tries to tally "the winners and losers," imagining that there are winners without peace.

• Fred Kaplan: Trump's new Middle East accord is a big deal. It is not a peace deal.

• James North: The latest recognition deal is a win for Israel -- but it could provoke resistance inside Bahrain.

• Paul R Pillar: The political convergence of Trump and Netanyahu.

• Mitchell Plitnick: Israel, the UAE, & Bahrain didn't sign peace deals, they're military alliances to counter Iran.

• Jonah Shepp: Trump's 'peace' deal doesn't make Mideast conflict any less likely.

• Philip Weiss: Israel triumphant, Israel powerful, Israel soulless. Weiss also wrote: Up to 1 in 4 US Jews sees Zionism as racist, colonialist apartheid movement! (says rightwing Israeli thinktank).

Jeffrey St Clair: Roaming charges: Smoke on the water, lies burning in the sky. Starts with a bunch of photos of what Oregon looks like these days.

Matt Stieb: Federal officials considered using a 'heat ray' against DC protesters.

Farah Stockman: What I learned from a list of Trump accomplishments: "Facts are vital. But they are not sufficient." An introduction and executive summary of A fact-checked list of Trump accomplishments, where the list itself "consisted of 123 bullet points posted on the Conservative Hangout Facebook page in May." The thing I found most interesting here is that in order to make Trump look good, the listers most often selected "facts" designed to make Trump look more liberal than he is. Liberals may be embarrassed about using the word to describe themselves, but conservatives are shameless in recognizing that liberal policies are more popular than their own -- hence the need to hide and lie about them.

Once you strip away the misleading claims from this list of accomplishments, you are left with what Mr. Trump has delivered: tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations -- No. 84. Deregulation for banks and businessmen -- No. 97. Judges for the evangelicals -- No. 109. Tariffs on Chinese steel for the steelworkers -- No. 113. And after those tariffs sparked a trade war, bailouts for farmers -- No. 72. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem, for conservative Jews and evangelicals -- No. 110.

To Mr. Trump's supporters, those are real accomplishments. But are they worth more than Mr. Trump's failures, during a deadly pandemic? More than his broken promises? More than what he has destroyed? That's the question facing voters in November. Maybe this list of his true accomplishments needs to be weighed against a list of what he has dismantled over these last four years. Anybody got one? I'd be happy to fact-check it.

Derek Thompson: The reason Trump isn't trying to save the economy: "He is stuck in a Pollyannaish fantasy of his own making."

Alex Ward: The bogus Steve Bannon-backed study claiming China created the coronavirus, explained.

Matthew Yglesias:

• America needs a democratic revolution: "Fixing systemic inequities in voting power should be a high priority for Democrats." Sure, the Electoral College, the extreme rural skew of the Senate, the gerrymandering of House districts, are all structural defects that skew and deform democracy, but they are essentially impossible to fix without overhauling the Constitution, and that's impossible as long as one major party thinks those iniquities work in its favor, especially a party with no scruples for democratic process. By all means, feel free to shame the Republicans for attempting to undermine democracy and turn government into a self-perpetuating grift and patronage machine, but don't for a moment think Democrats can afford to wait until the structural problems are fixed before delivering better policy and service when and wherever they manage to win some power. Also, note that the biggest inequity in American politics isn't geographical. It is money, which cut across party lines deeply enough that Democrats in 2009 made no effort to limit campaign spending or lobbying, even though they had the presidency and large majorities in Congress. Sure, it's unfair that the Electoral College is so skewed that a Democrat might have to win the popular vote by more than 5% to break even, but presidential elections have swung as much as 22% (61%-39%). There's no reason Democrats can't formulate a winning campaign, especially given that Republicans seem to have deliberately chosen policies so extreme and unpopular they can only win by exploiting structural inequities. The Democrats' biggest problem has loss of credibility, caused by failing to deliver on the modest promises of their centrist leaders. Whining about how the system is stacked against them isn't a viable excuse. After all, stacked systems are something workers face every day. They don't need to be told the system is unfair. They need leaders who can challenge and beat it anyway.

• "Reopening" isn't enough to save bars and restaurants -- the US needs a bailout.

Li Zhou:

• A group of centrist lawmakers has a new compromise proposal for more stimulus: "The Problem Solvers Caucus is attempting to break the impasse on additional aid." Bipartisan legislators, balanced 25-25, took the Democrats' $3 trillion HEROES Act proposal and cut it in half, which is still a lot more than Trump and McConnell want -- since Wall Street rebounded they've lost their taste for government helping people through the pandemic/recession, although they can't quite admit as much in public. That's especially true for the 25 Republicans who signed on -- most of them hold seats that are very likely to flip to the Democrats in November.

• Former model Amy Dorris says President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her: brings the "known" total to 22. Article linked back to a 2018 piece I didn't recall: Laura McGann: Of course Ivanka Trump believes her dad's accusers. She just doesn't care.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, September archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 34007 [33954] rated (+53), 217 [212] unrated (+5).

Got a late start writing today. I had the idea yesterday that I'd finally try to make lasagna -- something I've never tried before, although I have been known to make a pretty awesome pastitsio. Back when I first had the idea -- well over a year ago -- most of the recipes I consulted called for oven-ready noodles, so that's what I bought and still had on hand. I started with Mark Bittman's classic lasagna recipe, and made the bolognese sauce yesterday, but ran out of time and saved it overnight. Bittman called for boiled noodles, but all I had was oven-ready, so I wound up mostly following the box recipe -- adding an extra cup of water to my reduced meat sauce to make sure the noodles had plenty of liquid. Made pretty much every mistake possible in assembling the loaf, and it looked pretty ugly when it came out of the oven. Not bad, but the noodles were the weak link.

A bit surprised the rated count is so high, but my method for getting there was pretty conducive to quantity over writing. I searched through my tracking file for records I had given a medium/high priority to (basically 2 vs. 1, on what I had originally conceived of as a 3-to-0 scale, but haven't been using the ends). Currently I have 164 records at priority 2, mostly jazz. I started the week adding Saving Country Music picks to my metacritic file, so there's a fair number of alt-country albums in this week's crop. I also stumbled my way onto the Aerophonic Records Bandcamp, where Dave Rempis has been releasing a lot of his old tapes (a fairly common strategy for musicians sidelined by the pandemic). I also rummaged through my Downloads directory, sorted out what I had accumulated, and created a log to manage it better.

My other splurge this week was from Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide, which aside from a few records I had previously given various B+ grades to (Chicks, No Age, No Joy, Taylor Swift -- I revisited No Age, see below), and Nat King Cole's Jumpin' at Capitol (released in 1990, an A- from way back, and not the only one), had a lot of things I hadn't heard. Only one I couldn't find was The Human Hearts, which back in 2012 released another Christgau A- I never managed to hear. Surprised I didn't like Billy Nomates more, especially given that I like Sleaford Mods a lot more than Bob does, but maybe that was the point?

Christgau, by the way, published his guide to volunteering to work on the side of sanity and civilization in the 2020 election today: Vote! It Ain't Illegal Yet!. He's practiced what he preaches for many years now. I know a couple others who volunteer regularly to help with campaigns, but no one who's put more into it. All I can manage to do is to write up some obvious truths (as I've been doing weekly in my Weekend Roundups; for the Trump era, you can download this [odt format], which isn't totally up to date).

I usually spend a fair amount of time updating the metacritic file on Mondays before posting this, but decided I'd rather get this out at a decent hour, and catch up later. Also thought I'd do a books post this week, but didn't make much progress on that, given the sheer length of yesterday's Weekend Roundup (1738 lines, 12816 words, making it the longest ever, eclipsing 1601/11281 from two weeks back)..

New records reviewed this week:

• The 81's: 2 Things & 118 Others (2020, The 81's): [r]: B+(**)
• 100 Gecs: 1000 Gecs and the Tree of Clues (2020, Dog Show): [r]: B+(**)
• Jessi Alexander: Decatur County Red (2020, Lost Creek Music): [r]: B+(*)
• Pedro Melo Alves: In Igma (2019 [2020], Clean Feed): [r]: B-
• American Aquarium: Lamentations (2020, New West): [r]: B+(**)
• Antibalas: Fu Chronicles (2020, Daptone): [r]: B+(***)
• Mulatu Astatke & Black Jesus Experience: To Know Without Knowing (2020, Agogo): [r]: B+(***)
• Teodross Avery: Harlem Stories: The Music of Thelonious Monk (2020, WJ3): [r]: B+(***)
• Jon Balke: Discourses (2019 [2020], ECM): [r]: B
• Ballister: Znachki Stilyag (2019 [2020], Aerophonic): [bc]: A-
• J Balvin: Colores (2020, Universal Latin): [r]: B+(**)
• Black Thought: Streams of Thought Vol. 1 (2018, Human Re Sources, EP): [r]: B+(***)
• Black Thought: Streams of Thought Vol. 2 (2018, Human Re Sources, EP): [r]: A-
• Afel Bocoum: Lindé (2020, World Circuit): [r]: B+(**)
• Bonjintan: Dental Kafka (2018 [2020], Trost): [r]: B+(**)
• Alan Braufman: The Fire Still Burns (2019 [2020], Valley of Search): [r]: B+(*)
• Steve Cardenas: Blue Has a Range (2019 [2020], Sunnyside): [r]: B
• Lynn Cassiers: Yun (2019 [2020], Clean Feed): [r]: B
• Ernesto Cervini: Tetrahedron (2019 [2020], Anzic): [r]: B+(**)
• Elizabeth Cook: Aftermath (2020, Agent Love): [r]: B+(***)
• Vladislav Delay: Rakka (2020, Warp): [r]: B+(*)
• Vladislav Delay/Sly Dunbar/Robbie Shakespeare: 500-Push-Up (2020, Sub Rosa): [r]: B+(**)
• Daniel Donato: A Young Man's Country (2020, Cosmic Country Music): [r]: B+(***)
• The Engines: Wooden Legs (2011 [2020], Aerophonic): [bc]: B+(***)
• Frazey Ford: U Kin B the Sun (2020, Arts & Crafts): [r]: B+(**)
• Arna Georgia: Yes Girl (2020, Arna Georgia): [r]: B+(*)
• Tom Guarna: Spirit Science (2019 [2020], Destiny): [cd]: B+(*) [09-18]
• Russ Johnson/Dave Rempis/Joshua Abrams/Isaiah Spencer/Jeremy Cunningham: Harmattan (2019 [2020], Aerophonic): [bc]: B+(***)
• Knxwledge: 1988 (2020, Stones Throw): [bc]: B
• The Magnetic Fields: Quickies (2020, Nonesuch): [r]: B+(*)
• Arlo McKinley: Die Midwestern (2020, Oh Boy): [r]: B
• Cahalen Morrison: Wealth of Sorrow (2020, self-released): [bc]: B+(**)
• Tatsuya Nakatani/Shane Parish: Interactivity (2018 [2020], Cuneiform): [r]: B+(**)
• Nas: King's Disease (2020, Mass Appeal): [r]: B+(**)
• Billy Nomates: Billy Nomates (2020, Invada): [r]: B+(***)
• Oddisee: Odd Cure (2020, Outer Note): [r]: B+(***)
• Gregory Porter: All Rise (2020, Blue Note): [r]: B+(*)
• Dave Rempis/Elisabeth Harnik/Michael Zerang: Triple Tube (2019 [2020], Not Two): [r]: B+(**)
• Rempis Percussion Quartet: The Long Haul (2011 [2020], Aerophonic): [r]: A-
• Eric Revis: Slipknots Through a Looking Glass (2019 [2020], Pyroclastic): [cd]: A-
• Bobby Rush: Rawer Than Raw (2020, Deep Rush): [r]: B+(***)
• Christian Sands: Be Water (2020, Mack Avenue): [r]: B+(*)
• Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah: Axiom (2020, Ropeadope): [r]: B+(***)
• Archie Shepp/Raw Poetic/Damu the Fudgemunk: Ocean Bridges (2020, Redefinition): [r]: B+(***)
• Gary Smulyan: Our Contrafacts (2019 [2020], SteepleChase): [r]: B+(***)
• Stillefelt: Stillefelt (2019 [2020], Stoney Lane): [r]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Peter Stampfel & the Bottlecaps: Demo '84 (1984 [2020], Don Giovanni): [r]: A
• Triage: Live at the Velvet Lounge (2005 [2020], Aerophonic): [bc]: B+(**)

Old music:

• Good Ol' Persons: Anywhere the Wind Blows (1989, Kaleidoscope): [dl]: B+(**)
• Devin Gray/Ryan Ferreira/Jonathan Goldberger/Chris Tordini: Devin Gray's Fashionable Pop Music (2012 [2016], Rataplan): [bc]: B+(*)

Grade (or other) changes:

• No Age: Goons Be Gone (2020, Drag City): [r]: [was: B+(**)] A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Borah Bergman/Perry Anderson/Steve Swell/Ray Sage: Quartets Trios Duos (2007 [2020], Mahakala Music)
• Chad Fowler/WC Anderson: Lacrimosa (Mahakala Music)
• Lafayette Gilchrist: Now (Lafayette Gilchrist Music, 2CD) [10-02]
• Hazar: Reincarnated (IAN Productions)
• Joachim Mencel: Brooklyn Eye (Origin) [09-18]
• Markus Rutz: Blueprints: Figure Two: New Designs (OA2) [09-18]
• Scenes: Trapeze (Origin) [09-18]
• Jim Waller Big Band: Bucket List (self-released)

Weekend Roundup

Blog link.

I picked this up on Facebook, forwarded by a couple of friends. I thought it might do more good here:

If you're active in the BLM movement (or even if you're just Black), you're getting posts on your feed about Biden and Harris's pro-police records.

If you're an environmentalist, you're getting posts on Biden's past support of fossil fuels.

If you're LGBT, you're reading articles about Harris defending California's policy of not providing gender reassignment surgery to trans inmates.

If you want universal health care, there's a post on your page about how Bernie was robbed and Biden is in Big Pharma's pocket.

If you're for immigrant rights, there is an article in your top 20 right now about Obama being the "deporter in chief."

This is especially true if you live in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Arizona.

None of these articles are wrong. Most of them lack context, and may err by omission, but they're not fake news. The organizations paying Facebook to show them to you, on the other hand, or paying "influencers" to share them . . . those are fake. They don't care about Black lives, or the environment, or trans people, or health care, or immigrants. They only want one thing.

They want you to not vote in November. Or vote third party, which is the same thing.

Whether it's a troll cubicle farm in Novgorod or a right wing think tank in Richmond, microtargeting allows them to aim directly at your feels and feed your outrage, disgust and sense of powerlessness.

They can't get you to vote for Trump, but they might get you to not vote against him.

Don't fall for it. Elect Biden. Flip the Senate. Then get back to work in 2021. Elect more Bernies and Warrens and AOCs and Jamaals in the primaries. Keep moving the Overton window. Scare the lukewarm Democrats you've just elected into doing the right thing. Hold Biden to the platform commitments he made to Sanders delegates, and push him to go beyond.

Because unlike Republicans, Democrats CAN be steered, persuaded, shamed, flattered, or convinced to take action. Obama didn't start out favoring gay marriage, or cannabis legalization. Hell, LBJ wasn't for desegregation, until he was.

Put Trump where he belongs, in the hands of the SDNY attorneys. Let Ruth Bader Ginsberg retire. Vote. And wear your mask. Thanks.

Copy. Paste. Speak the truth to the world.

We're less than two months away from the election. An insane amount of money is being raised and spent to sway that election, and it will be used to try to manipulate you in all kinds of ways. Beware that most of the money comes from rich people with their own private agendas -- indeed, a lot of it is coming through "dark money" fronts intended to avoid transparency and accountability. Misinformation and dirty tricks are likely to come so fast and furious you'll never be able to sort them out. On the other hand, you really only have to know a few things to decide this election: we live in a very complex world which requires expertise and trustworthiness to function; trust depends on respect and empathy for other people; a democratic government ("of, by, and for the people") is essential because it is the only basis for fair and just management of this complexity. Republicans have repeatedly failed to run competent government, partly because they are hold many people in contempt, and partly because they see political power only in terms of their ability to reward their donors and lock in their own power. While conservatives have failed for many years, they have rarely exposed their own incompetence as blatantly and hopelessly as they have under the leadership and direction of Donald Trump. He is a disaster and an embarrassment. He and his party deserve to be driven from the halls of power, and the only way to do that is to elect Democrats: Joe Biden for president, and the other Democrats running for Congress and state and local office. The more complete the rout, the better. It's easy to say this is the most important election of our lifetimes, but it may be more accurate to say that if we fail to take our country back this time, this may be one of the last chances we get.

Some scattered links this week:

Danielle Allen: The flawed genius of the Constitution: "The document counted my great-great-grandfather as three-fifths of a free person. But the Framers don't own the version we live by today. We do. The document is our responsibility now."

Nancy J Altman: Trump really does have a plan to destroy Social Security. The linchpin here is eliminating the payroll taxes that fund Social Security. Trump has already suspended collection of those taxes until the end of the year, producing a short-term stimulus and a slightly longer-term liability. The idea is that when the bill comes due, people will feel the pinch, and demand relief from the tax. As half of the tax is deducted from workers' checks, they would see a slight increase in take-home pay, but few would manage to save enough to make up for the eventual loss of retirement income. The other half is paid by companies, who could use the savings to pay workers more, but more likely will pocket the profit. Franklin Roosevelt thought that the regressive payroll tax would protect the program against predatory business efforts, but he didn't anticipate the short-sighted nihilism of Trump's generation. By the way, Glenn Kessler tries to argue that Trump has no such plan: see Biden campaign attacks a Trump Social Security 'plan' that does not exist. The gist of Kessler's argument seems to be that Trump says so many incoherent things, and does so little to clarify them, that you can't attribute anything as deliberate as a plan to him.

Kate Aronoff: Trump's fire sale of public lands for oil and gas drillers: "The Bureau of Land Management is rushing to auction off sites ahead of a potential Biden presidency."

Peter Baker: More than ever, Trump casts himself as the defender of White America.

Katrin Bennhold: Trump emerges as inspiration for Germany's far right.

Megan Cassella: 'A tale of 2 recessions': As rich Americans get richer, the bottom half struggles. This goes far in explaining why the Republicans have no interest in another stimulus bill, while the Democrats see the need for something much more dramatic:

Recent economic data and surveys have laid bare the growing divide. Americans saved a stunning $3.2 trillion in July, the same month that more than 1 in 7 households with children told the U.S. Census Bureau they sometimes or often didn't have enough food. More than a quarter of adults surveyed have reported paying down debt faster than usual, according to a new AP-NORC poll, while the same proportion said they have been unable to make rent or mortgage payments or pay a bill.

And while the employment rate for high-wage workers has almost entirely recovered -- by mid-July it was down just 1 percent from January -- it remains down 15.4 percent for low-wage workers, according to Harvard's Opportunity Insights economic tracker.

Zak Cheney-Rice: Police riots and the limits of electoral solutions.

Matthew Choi: Trump says Pentagon chiefs are accommodating weapons makers. Once in a while he goes off on an antiwar lark, without recognizing any discrepancy from his actual record. Related:

• Jonathan Chait: No, Trump is not threatening the military-industrial complex's profits.

Jane Chong: Donald Trump, constitutional grift, and John Yoo: An overly long review of Yoo's Defender in Chief: Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power. You may remember Yoo as the lawyer in GW Bush's White House who came up with the most incredible legal rationalizations for Cheney's torture policy. "There isn't a lot more to Yoo's argument than his insistence that executive energy is a good and constitutional thing." Still, he usually waits until a Republican is in the White House before deciding for dictatorship.

Jane Coaston: The pro-Trump, anti-left Patriot Prayer group, explained.

Jelani Cobb: Our long, forgotten history of election-related violence: "President Trump has sparked dangerous lawlessness, but killing and destruction linked to political antagonisms are nothing new for this country." Still, I don't find it very reassuring that his first example dates from 1856.

Dan Diamond: Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19: "The politically appointed HHS spokesperson and his team demanded and received the right to review CDC's scientific reports to health professionals."

Anne Diebel: Trumps on the couch: Review of Mary L Trump's Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. Sooner or later, Donald Trump will no longer darken our doors, and from that point on I'll have no desire to ever read about him again. Indeed, the only one of a dozen books I've read to date that reveals much worth knowing about Trump is TV critic James Poniewozik's Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America, and that's because he bothered to sort out the meaning of so-called "reality TV" -- something I've never had the slightest interest in actually watching. The only other book that seems like it might be enlightening is his nieces's psychobiography, and that's largely because she takes a broader and deeper view of his family.

Jason Ditz: Biden says stay in Mideast, increase military spending: Well, that's not exactly what he said -- the only exact quote here is "forever wars have to end," but he isn't acknowledging that what makes them "forever" is America's military footprint in the Middle East. Ditz's subhed is also an exaggeration: "Biden wants to refocus on fighting Russia." He said that NATO has been "worried as hell about our failure to confront Russia," which could be ominous but is probably just a reflection on Trump's passive-aggressive stance. Still, statements like this give Trump some room to paint Biden as the warmonger in the campaign --l admittedly less credible than the same charge against Hillary Clinton, but the track record is that both have supported wars and the military pretty much in lockstep.

Nayantara Dutta: Neighbors are gathering online to give and get things they need right now: "In 'Buy Nothing' and gifting groups around the country, communities are connecting over free stuff." This is something I'd like to see happening, not least because I'm one of those guys (my wife calls us hoarders) who can't abide the idea of throwing things away that might be useful to other people, but who's too lazy to find people to give them to. I could imagine a neighborhood online exchange for browsing and ordering, with delivery so you don't have to go in to shop, and pickup of anything you care to pass on. You'd need a warehouse, a computer system, some sorters and deliverers, and someone would have to make decisions about recycling or trashing items that nobody wants. An open source software project could service many of these, and possibly add higher level interchanges to move surplus items into other locations with more needs. You could skim some stuff off to sell on the free market, and possibly finance some of the operation that way.

Steve Early/Suzanne Gordon: Under Trump, military veterans and service members have been 'losers': Trump's Secretary of Defense Mark Esper wants "to trim $2 billion allocated for direct care for 9.5 million active-duty personnel, military retirees, and dependents over the next five years." Gordon is the author of a book, Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation's Veterans.

Tim Elfrink: Police shot Portland slaying suspect without warning or trying to arrest him first, witness says. Michael Reinoehl was a suspect in the shooting of a pro-Trump "Patriot Prayer" counter-protester in Portland, making it hard to determine whether the shooting had been in defense (of self or others). By the way, Aaron Rupar quotes Trum on this: "This guy was a violent criminal, and the US Marshals killed him. And I'll tell you something -- that's the way it has to be. There has to be retribution." The thread I pulled this from disputes that federal marshals were the ones who killed Reinoehl. Dean Baker comments further: "I guess courts and trials are too complicated for little Donnie Boy to understand." As Richard Silverstein summed up this story, Trump urges summary execution of protesters.

Tom Engelhardt: The great, great fall, or American carnage from a pandemic President.

John Feffer: Trump and the troops: "The alternative to Trump is not the glorification of military service. It's promoting the kind of service that gets fewer people killed."

Thomas Frank: We need to reclaim populism from the right. It has a long, proud leftwing history. Excerpt from Frank's recent book, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, which I recently read, and generally liked. As a Kansan, I've spent a fair amount of time reading about the People's Party, and for that matter the Socialist Party (which one had a significant foothold in southeast Kansas). I appreciate Frank's brief history of the 1896 and 1936 elections. I do, however, think that there is a significant difference between the "liberal anti-populists" Frank attacks in the modern Democratic Party and the "anti-populism" of 1896 and 1936, and that difference matters going forward. I'll also note that part of the problem in 1896 was that silver wasn't a very good answer to the deflationary pressures of the time -- the Greenback Party of the 1870s was actually on a better track.

Andrew Freedman/Timothy Bella: Western wildfires break records as devastating toll on lives and homes begins to emerge.

Stanley B Greenberg: How Trump is losing his base: "Focus groups with working-class and rural voters show the deep health care crisis in America, and trouble for Trump's re-election." Makes sense, but the polls are showing Trump has a very consistent level of support, so if he's losing base votes, how is he compensating? Alexander Sammon argues that Trump's making up his losses among seniors with Latino votes -- see: The Biden-Trump demographic switcheroo.

Sue Halpern: How the Trump campaign's mobile app is collecting massive amounts of voter data. I didn't even know such a thing existed, but of course it does -- Biden has one, also, and the contrast is revealing:

By contrast, the new Biden app still collects data on users, but it outlines the specific uses of that data and doesn't automatically collect the e-mail and phone numbers of users' friends and family. "Unlike the Biden app, which seeks to provide users with awareness and control of the specific uses of their data, the Trump app collects as much as it can using an opt-out system and makes no promises as to the specific uses of that data," Samuel Woolley, the director of the propaganda research project at the University of Texas's Center for Media Engagement, told me. "They just try to get people to turn over as much as possible."

Also note:

The policy also notes that the campaign will be collecting information gleaned from G.P.S. and other location services, and that users will be tracked as they move around the Internet. Users also agree to give the campaign access to the phone's Bluetooth connection, calendar, storage, and microphone, as well as permission to read the contents of their memory card, modify or delete the contents of the card, view the phone status and identity, view its Wi-Fi connections, and prevent the phone from going to sleep. These permissions give the Trump data operation access to the intimate details of users' lives, the ability to listen in on those lives, and to follow users everywhere they go. It's a colossal -- and essentially free -- data-mining enterprise. As Woolley and his colleague Jacob Gursky wrote in MIT Technology Review, the Trump 2020 app is "a voter surveillance tool of extraordinary power."

I learned this firsthand after downloading the Trump 2020 app on a burner phone I bought in order to examine it, using an alias and a new e-mail address. Two days later, the President sent me a note, thanking me for joining his team. Lara Trump invited me (for a small donation) to become a Presidential adviser. Eric Trump called me one of his father's "FIERCEST supporters from the beginning." But the messages I began getting from the Trump campaign every couple of hours were sent not only to the name and address I'd used to access the app. They were also sent to the e-mail address and name associated with the credit card I'd used to buy the phone and its SIM card, neither of which I had shared with the campaign. Despite my best efforts, they knew who I was and where to reach me.

Rebecca Heilweil: Right-wing media thrives on Facebook. Whether it rules is more complicated.

Patrick Hingsley: Fire destroys most of Europe's largest refugee camp, on Greek island of Lesbos.

Umair Irfan: The orange skies and smoky air from Western wildfires, explained: "Air pollution may be the most dangerous element of the massive fires." Also: "Unprecedented": What's behind the California, Oregon, and Washington wildfires. More:

• Eliza Barclay/David Roberts/Umair Irfan: California's recurring wildfire problem, explained: "The state's weather is becoming warmer and more volatile due to climate change. And there are more people and buildings." I saw something in my Facebook feed insisting that the fires were not related to climate change, but it's hard to find much less believe articles claiming that. (Indeed, searching added to the load of articles asserting the link below.) This one has a chart showing that wildfire frequency and intensity has doubled due to climate change. This one also notes the building boom in areas prone to fire. That certainly increases the dollar cost of fires, just as building in flood and hurricane surge zones does. Maybe that makes the economic costs of climate change seem larger, but that's because they are.

• Kate Aronoff: Drilling for oil while California burns.

• David Atkins: As the West burns, Trump appoints a climate science denier to NOAA.

• Matthew Gault: Oregon's firefighting helicopters are deployed in Afghanistan as the state burns.

• Chas Danner/Matt Stieb: Wildfires: The West Coast crisis continues.

• Matt Ford: Does Trump care that the American West is aflame?

• Benjamin Hart: Photos: Wildfires generate apocalyptic skies across West Coast.

• Diana Leonard/Andrew Freedman: Western wildfires: An 'unprecedented,' climate change-fueled event, experts say.

• Carla Marinucci: The West is on fire. It took Trump 3 weeks to mention it.

• John Schwartz/Lisa Friedman: The 'straightforward' link between climate and California's fires.

• Rebecca Solnit: California's dark, orange sky is the most unnerving sight I've ever woken up to.

• Jeffrey St Clair: Roaming charges: Under furious skies.

• Matt Stieb: Wildfires: More than 10 percent of Oregon residents evacuate.

• James Temple: Yes, climate change is almost certainly fueling California's massive fires.

• David Wallace-Wells: California can't afford to wait for climate action.

• Anna Wiener: The crisis in the skies of San Francisco.

John Ismay: At least 37 million people have been displaced by America's War on Terror: A new report from Brown University's Costs of War project. "That figure exceeds those displaced by conflict since 1900, the authors say, with the exception of World War II." Also:

• David Vine: Millions displaced by US combat since 9/11.

Sarah Jeong: The Battle of Portland: "How mass protests against racist police brutality sparked a historic federal crackdown on dissent." Extensive report.

The responsibility to de-escalate the conflict lay on the side that had the guns, rather than the side that was hurling eggs by the carton. But the feds were being directed by officials who were ranting at Congress about violent anarchists and a president who was calling the dweebiest city in America a "beehive of terrorists."

Fred Kaplan: Is America in the early stages of armed insurgency? Counterinsurgency strategist David Kilcullen thinks so. I think there is a lot of potential for isolated violence from the right, certainly if Trump loses, perhaps as likely if he wins. The big uncertainty is how Trump, Republicans, and their propaganda network responds to the violence -- the full-throated support given for Kyle Rittenhouse is chilling, even hard to imagine a mere four years ago.

Aishvarya Kavi: 5 takeaways from Rage, Bob Woodward's new book about Trump: Bob Woodward's second book on Trump drops on Sept. 15, so the press is awash with publicity leaks. Like 2018's Fear, was based on personal interviews, its title reduced to a four-letter word the subject can relate to. This seems like the piece to start with. The big revelation appears to be that Trump was able to speak knowledgeably and coherently about the coronavirus threat in early February, at a time when he was downplaying it publicly and doing nothing to reduce the threat. Many people blame Woodward for not reporting what he knew at the time, suggesting the news might have helped save lives. Of course, saving lives isn't Woodward's idea of good journalism. Selling books is. Here are Kavi's 5 takeaways:

• Mr. Trump minimized the risks of the coronavirus to the American public early in the year.
• Two of the president's top officials thought he was "dangerous" and considered speaking out publicly. Jim Mattis and Dan Coats. "Ultimately neither official spoke out."
• Mr. Trump repeatedly denigrated the U.S. military and his top generals.
• When asked about the pain "Black people feel in this country," Mr. Trump was unable to express empathy.
• Mr. Woodward gained insight into Mr. Trump's relationship with the leaders of North Korea and Russia.

Offhand, I wouldn't rate any of these are breakthrough insights, but that's about par for Woodward, who regularly gets too close to his subjects to see them clearly. Other Rage pieces:

• Aaron Blake: 2 big problems with Kayleigh McEnany's Bob Woodward response.

• Jonathan Chait: The 5 wildest revelations in Bob Woodward's new Trump book:

  1. "I wanted to always play it down."
  2. "Putin had something on Trump."
  3. "I'm not feeling any love" from Black people.
  4. "I have built a nuclear -- a weapons systems that nobody's ever had in this country before."
  5. "I'm the only one he [Kim Jong-un] smiles with."

• Joe Cirincione: Why Trump's secret weapon isn't so secret and not much of a weapon. As Trump put it: "I have built a nuclear -- a weapons system that nobody's ever had in this country before. We have stuff you haven't even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There's nobody -- what we have is incredible." What is incredible is the "thinking" of the bomb builders:

  The weapon, the W76-2 warhead, is the brainchild of nuclear war fighters who want to make nuclear weapons more usable. They fear that military and political leaders are "self-deterred" from using nuclear weapons because of the huge destruction they cause. Instead of a weapon that would destroy all of New York, for example, they wanted a weapon that would destroy just midtown. Instead of killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, a smaller weapon would kill thousands. This, they believe, makes it more acceptable and could break the nuclear taboo that has held for 75 years.

• Robert Costa/Philip Rucker: Woodward book: Trump says he knew coronavirus was 'deadly' and worse than the flu while intentionally misleading Americans. Lots of writers jumped on this point. Somewhere I should note that Obama knew that the Great Recession was much worse than he let on, and that the stimulus package he signed was far short of what was needed, but kept up a charade of projecting confidence in the recovery, even after it became clear that Republicans were trying to slag the economy to make him look bad. So this notion that projecting confidence is part of the president's job runs deeper than Trump's vanity. On the other hand, if Trump really did understand the gravity of the pandemic threat when Woodward quotes him, there is a lot he could have done behind the scenes to better prepare, and when it did become public how serious the pandemic was, he could have addressed it directly and competently. He did neither of those things. Indeed, the only data point that is out of line with our understanding that he has been an utter moron at every step is Woodward's quote. I'll also note that many knowledgeable people believe (erroneously, I think) that confidence is an important factor in an economic recovery, no one thinks that positive thoughts can ward off a pandemic. On the other hand, I doubt that Trump ever worried about the pandemic per sé; only about how it affected his reëlection chances. And in a pinch, it shouldn't be surprising that he reverted to techniques that had seen him through past crises -- mostly bankruptcies and divorces (but then this was a guy who described avoiding STDs as "his Vietnam").

• David Dayen: Trump's lies on Covid were pretty transparent.

  First of all, Bob Woodward sitting on information about presidential lies until he has a book to promote is . . . well it's the difference between being a hungry reporter in 1973 and a palace courtier in 2020.

• David Faris: The staggering consequences of Trump's coronavirus lies.

• Susan B Glasser: Bob Woodward finally got Trump to tell the truth about Covid-19.

• Lloyd Green: Rage review: Will Bob Woodward's tapes bring down Donald Trump?

• Jeet Heer: Bob Woodward's accidental scoop: "Once an investigative journalist, Woodward is now just a court historian."

• Alex Henderson: Here's one of the most disturbing details from Woodward's Trump book that people are missing:

  One of the most disturbing revelations in Rage, which hasn't gotten enough attention, is how seriously Mattis feared a nuclear confrontation with North Korea. Mattis was so worried, Borger writes, that he "took to sleeping in his gym clothes and having a flashing light and bell installed in his bathroom in case a missile alert happened when he was in the shower."

  Mattis, discussing that possibility, told Woodward, "You're going to incinerate a couple million people. No person has the right to kill a million people, as far as I'm concerned. Yet that's what I have to confront."

• Steve M: There shouldn't be a debate about who is the greatest monster in the news today.

• Timothy L O'Brien: Of course Trump couldn't resist Bob Woodward: "Once again, he mistakenly trusted in his own ability to steer the story."

• Heather Digby Parton: Is Donald Trump mostly evil or mostly ignorant? Bob Woodward's book offers an answer: Both.

• David Remnick: Bob Woodward on a nightmare presidency.

• Frank Rich: Why Woodward's book won't break through. Interview with Alex Carp.

• Alex Shephard: Bob Woodward's critics are missing the point: "Yes, the legendary reporter's methods can be unscrupulous. But the latest findings speak for themselves."

  Joan Didion, in a scathing review of Woodward's account of the 1996 presidential race, referred to Woodward's method as a "scrupulous passivity" that results in "political pornography" -- an apt description of Fear. Trump's lawlessness barely factored into Woodward's account. . . .

  In Rage, however, he arrives at a very un-Woodwardy place: "I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job." It is, by far, the most damning portrait of a sitting president that Woodward has delivered in a long, long time.

  Criticizing Woodward is fair game, always. But a different criticism has taken hold, that Woodward harmed public health and the national interest by failing to report on his conversations with Trump sooner. . . .

  Woodward is no one's idea of a public interest journalist, but the notion that he played a significant role in the pandemic by not publishing his interview sooner simply doesn't track. The fact that the president was intentionally downplaying the danger of Covid-19 was both apparent and well documented in the spring; Trump himself admitted that he was privileging politics over public health. If Woodward had published this information in February (or May, when he says he confirmed it), would it have made a difference in fighting the virus? Back then, the president's unscientific approach and general dismissiveness was the story. Indeed, there are compelling reasons to believe that this information is more powerful now, with the election around the corner.

• Sonam Sheth/John Haltiwanger: 'I saved his a--': Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after Jamal Khashoggi's brutal murder, Woodward's new book says.

• David Sirota: Bob Woodward has let himself become Trump's human shield.

• Jamil Smith: The no lives matter president.

• Margaret Sullivan: Should Bob Woodward have reported Trump's virus revelations sooner? Here's how he defends his decision.

• Matthew Walther: There's nothing shocking about Bob Woodward's new book.

Ibram X Kendi: The violent defense of white male supremacy.

Glenn Kessler: Trump keeps bragging about imaginary auto plants in swing states.

Jen Kirby: The UK threatens to renege on the Brexit deal it signed with the EU just a year ago.

Ezra Klein: Black Republicans, Donald Trump, and America's "George Floyd moment": Interview with historian Leah Wright Rigueur, author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican.

John Knefel: Police and racist vigilantes: Even worse than you think.

Nicholas Kristof: 'We're no. 28! And dropping!': "A measure of social progress finds that the quality of life has dropped in America over the last decade, even as it has risen almost everywhere else."

The newest Social Progress Index, shared with me before its official release Thursday morning, finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America's.

"The data paint an alarming picture of the state of our nation, and we hope it will be a call to action," Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and the chair of the advisory panel for the Social Progress Index, told me. "It's like we're a developing country."

The index, inspired by research of Nobel-winning economists, collects 50 metrics of well-being -- nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health, education and more -- to measure quality of life. Norway comes out on top in the 2020 edition, followed by Denmark, Finland and New Zealand. South Sudan is at the bottom, with Chad, Central African Republic and Eritrea just behind.

What Brazil and Hungary have in common with the US is far-right government. That they've suffered a bit less than the US is probably because those far-right governments have been hegemonic for shorter times: the US has been controlled by conservative Republicans (and the occasional ineffective neoliberal Democrat) since 1980, so inequality has progressed further, especially in eating into the social fabric. Porter is wrong to say the US is like "a developing country." Developing countries are developing -- making progress, even if fitfully. The US is a devolving country, its industries devoured by predatory capitalists, its workers marginalized, its society wracked by fear and loathing. It's still in the top quarter of the list, because it was once on top, but declining steadily -- maybe never to the point of the bottom rung, of countries that aren't even developing. They are mired in war, which is even more corrosive than private equity. On the other hand, the right's fascination with guns and private militias suggests that too could befall us.

Paul Krugman:

• Gross domestic misery is rising: "The recovery is bypassing those who need it most."

• Trump's coronavirus response was beyond incompetent: "He wasn't oblivious to the danger. He just didn't care." Could file this under the many Woodward responses, as that book provided the evidence leading Krugman to elevate his view of Trump culpability from "basically negligence" to "immoral, bordering on criminal."

Claire Lampen: The Justice Department is reportedly trying to shield Trump from a rape lawsuit. E Jean Carroll claims that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room 25 years ago. She sued Trump for libel, and a court ordered him to provide a DNA sample and deposition. The DOJ intervention has stopped the case, at least for now.

• Josh Gerstein: Feds take over defense in libel suit against Trump.

• Natasha Lennard: Bill Barr says insulting a rape accuser was part of Trump's official duties.

Rob Larson: A quick guide to what is going on with the economy: A pretty substantial review up through July.

Eric Levitz:

• The conservative case for organized labor: Interview with Oren Cass, a former Mitt Romney adviser who runs the think tank American Compass. Occasionally you run across Republican operatives who think that the Party needs to provide some economic aid for its working class voters, but those aren't the conservative ideologues who control the party. On the other hand, I don't see labor leaders abandoning their agenda to use government to extend worker rights -- unlike Samuel Gompers, who before the New Deal opposed laws regulating things like child labor because he felt they disincentivized workers from joining his union. One can imagine a few conservatives accepting unions as preferale to government regulation, but only the most elite-oriented unions are willing to overlook masses of non-union workers dragging the labor market down. And most conservatives are so invested in the notion that owners should wield absolute power that they're unwilling to consider any kind of power-sharing arrangement. Also note:

  • Harold Meyerson: Even half of Republicans like unions.

  • Steven Greenhouse: Anti-union progressives: "a number of institutions that proclaim themselves committed to social justice and enlightenment won't let their employees unionize."

  • JC Pan: There is no such thing as a conservative workers' movement: "Pundits and think tanks seem to love it, but it's a meaningless phrase in the modern Republican Party."

• The GOP is no longer the pro-business party. Levitz is one of New York most dependable left-wing writers, so he's on a rather strange kick now. But sure, business has actually done much better with Democratic presidents than with Republican ones. Clinton was especially proud of that fact, and that's probably why they feel so good about raking in all those lucrative speaking deals. It's also true that Obama, Hillary Clinton, and now Biden have been raising more money than their Republican opponents. On the other hand, Republicans still have a lot of business support, especially in old, reactionary and/or predatory industries, especially among capitalists who are more focused on power than wealth.

  To be sure, Trump has done a great deal to benefit corporate America's incumbent executives, especially those looking to maximize their own wealth in the run-up to retirement. Through his regressive-tax cuts and deregulatory measures, the president has saved major U.S. firms and their shareholders a bundle. The nation's six largest banks alone have pocketed $32 billion as a consequence of Trump's policies. And for America's most socially irresponsible enterprises, this administration has been a true godsend. Since taking power, the Trump White House has, among other things, expanded the liberty of coal companies to dump mining waste in streams, pushed to preserve the rights of retirement advisers to gamble with their clients' money, freed employers from the burden of logging all workplace injuries, and ended discrimination against serial labor-law violators in the bidding process for government contracts.

  But the Republican Party is too corrupted by rentier and extractive industries -- and too besotted with conservative economic orthodoxy -- to advance the long-term best interests of American capital. . . .

  Contra ruling-class reactionaries' self-flattering dogmas, private enterprise is -- and always has been -- reliant on competent statecraft. Conservatives recognize capital's reliance on "big government" in the realm of military defense. But in the Anthropocene, emergent diseases and climate change pose at least as large a threat to capital accumulation as any hostile foreign power. Meanwhile, in a globalized economy beset by chronic shortfalls of demand and periodic financial shocks, the GOP's resilient skepticism about economic stimulus renders the party an uncertain friend to corporate America in its times of need. Granted, the party has largely fulfilled its duty to reflate asset prices and shore up credit markets this year. But the strength of the recovery (such as it is) is at least partly attributable to policies that originated with Democrats, and which the GOP accepted only grudgingly in March and has since refused to renew. As is, there is every reason to think that American businesses (especially small ones) would be better off if Pelosi's caucus could set fiscal policy by fiat.

Martin Longman: We can't endure much more bad leadership. He starts with some examples of how little decisions by leaders add up, for some reason starting with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and tracing from there through 9/11 and the Global War on Terror -- things which indeed reflect bad leadership but really have more proximate causes. Trump gets several mentions later on, but his real example is SD governor Kristi Noem's decision not to cancel the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis. The result:

Nineteen percent of the 1.4 million new coronavirus cases in the U.S. between Aug. 2 and Sept. 2 can be traced back to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally held in South Dakota, according to researchers from San Diego State University's Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies.

That's more than 266,000 cases, with a public health cost of $12.2 billion. As for Trump, he's not just a bad leader in the sense that Clinton, the Bushes, and even Obama were -- by following conventional political "wisdom" into one cul de sac after another. He's bad on an absolutely cosmic scale. He's seeded the government with mini-versions of himself: pompous, arrogant, corrupt, vain, and stupid, and led them to believe that they are protected from legal and political consequences (even though he's ultimately had to fire many of them). One can imagine an inept leader surviving on the competencies of his staff, but Trump precluded that possibility both through his staffing -- sure, Pence was responsible for most of them, but over time Trump has managed to weed out most of the ones who weren't sufficiently sycophantic (or for that matter psycho) -- but also by insisting that nothing is real but in terms of its us-vs-them political impact. Trump's instinct was to look only at the political implications of coronavirus, to see how he could use it as a tool of divide and conquer. As such, he inevitably politicized things like mask wearing that most leaders would have taken pains to depoliticize. Longman stresses that many times he's argued that we need better leaders. What's more clear is that we need less bad leaders -- leaders who can put aside their political angles when the events dictate otherwise. However, Trump has gone way beyond such concepts as good and not bad. The problem with Trump's leadership is not just that it's bad; it's that he's so embarrassingly incompetent he's a distraction from everything.

German Lopez:

• Trump's criminal justice policy, explained.

• If the US had Canada's Covid-19 death rate, 100,000 more Americans would likely be alive today.

• New audio proves it: Trump deliberately deceived America about the coronavirus.

• How Trump let Covid-19 win: "Trump's magical thinking couldn't beat the coronavirus. America is stuck with the consequences."

Bruno Maçães: How fantasy triumphed over reality in American politics. Author has a new book, History Has Begun: The Birth of a New America, from which this is adapted. He is stuck with the idea of a "new world order," and flat out declares "the proposition that the whole planet is on a course to embrace Western liberalism is no longer credible," but doesn't seem to have any better suggestions. He is right that in voting for Reagan in 1980 America turned away from the limits of the real world and decided to live in a fantasy -- one that's become progressively desperate as evidenced by Trump's "make America great again."

Amanda Marcotte: Trump, you're no FDR or Winston Churchill -- but you're a lot like Charles Lindbergh: "Trump defends coronavirus lies to comparing himself to wartime leaders -- but he's closer to the Nazi apologists." This doesn't mention Nick Adams's recent book, Trump and Churchill: Defenders of Western Civilization, which is ridiculous enough (on both counts) to need no review, nor does it mention Fred Trump's attachment to Lindbergh's "America First" movement (although it does note Donald Trump's use of the slogan and penchant for evoking fascist memes).

Perhaps the difference between the two men is that Lindbergh, as despicable a person as he may have been, became famous for doing something that required courage, intelligence and skill, which was to become the first person to fly an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean.

Trump, on the other hand, has spent his life bouncing from one failed venture to another, cheating and grifting to create the illusion of enormous wealth and great success. And so while Lindbergh eventually had to concede reality, Trump will never quit believing he can flim-flam his way through this crisis, no matter how many corpses pile up in his wake.

Nolan D McCaskill: Trump team says history will vindicate him on coronavirus: "Top advisers blame everyone but the president for the nation's plight during the pandemic."

Media Matters: This group watches Fox News so you don't have to. I'm convinced that nothing affects politics more these days than Fox's hermetically sealed alternate universe. I saw Matt Taibbi complain recently that MSNBC is "even more partisan" than Fox, and that nearly everyone who says they trust the New York Times for news identifies as a Democrat, but the latter at least doesn't try to lock their readers in a bubble of misinformation. (I watch so little MSNBC I can't really speak of them.) Some recent headlines give you a taste both of what Trump says and (more importantly) what he hears:

• Donald Trump explains how he watched hours and hours of Fox News in the past day
• Fox is defending Trump's coronavirus deception because the network is complicit
• Fox News guest claims the "homosexual revolution" is part of a "dynamic movement in the culture toward evil at all levels"
• Tucker Carlson: Black Lives Matter is "poison," and "if we're going to survive as a country, we must defeat this"
• Tucker Carlson: "There's no evidence" climate change contributed to wildfires ravaging the West Coast
• How Fox News is dismissing the new DHS whistleblower report against Trump -- and covering up its own fake narratives
• Fox & Friends likens Trump downplaying the risk of COVID-19 to FDR's fireside chats during the Great Depression
• Fox contributor: Trump supporters "are less upset" at Trump downplaying virus than him talking to Bob Woodward
• After Trump pegs COVID-19 vaccine to the election, Fox's Dana Perino tells HHS secretary: "I know that you're not trying to peg it to the election"
• Laura Ingraham says story corroborated by Fox News reporter about Trump insulting troops is "now debunked"
• New FDA spokesperson Emily Miller is a pro-Trump sycophant who spreads COVID-19 misinformation

Ian Millhiser:

• The Supreme Court is already considering another threat to abortion rights: "The Trump administration could force abortion patients to have unnecessary surgeries."

• Trump's Supreme Court shortlist is an attempt to remind his base why they love him.

Tom Nichols: This Republican Party is not worth saving: "No one should ever get a second chance to destroy the Constitution."

Timothy Noah: Trump's OSHA is fining companies pennies for pandemic violations.

Olivia Nuzzi: There's still a reason for Trump rallies, for Trump at least: "The MAGA rallies -- which aren't technically MAGA rallies -- are helping the president workshop his campaign message in real time."

The rallies are a salve for the Tinkerbell syndrome that afflicts the president. He is first a showman, and his connection with an audience is life-sustaining -- a source of dopamine and a form of catharsis more powerful than any grenade-throwing exercise of a tweet. And they provide him with a sort of spiritual poll: a sense of how things are going, based on his animalistic crowd-aura-reading abilities.

On the other hand, you have to wonder about the quality of feedback he's getting from the small minority of Americans who adore him enough to risk their lives to gratify his ego.

Listening to him, it can sound like he's been unable to make sense of what has happened in America under his watch.

"This is the most important election in the history of our country. I wouldn't say that lightly," he said. "And frankly, I thought the last one was, and I said it, but they've gone to a level that nobody even thought possible. These people have gotten stone-cold crazy."

Antonio Olivo/Nick Miroff: ICE flew detainees to Virginia so the planes could transport agents to DC protests. A huge coronavirus outbreak followed.

George Packer: Are we on the cusp of an era of radical reform that repairs America's broken democracy? Alternate title: America's plastic hour is upon us.

Beneath the dreary furor of the partisan wars, most Americans agree on fundamental issues facing the country. Large majorities say that government should ensure some form of universal health care, that it should do more to mitigate global warming, that the rich should pay higher taxes, that racial inequality is a significant problem, that workers should have the right to join unions, that immigrants are a good thing for American life, that the federal government is plagued by corruption. These majorities have remained strong for years. The readiness, the demand for action, is new.

What explains it? Nearly four years of a corrupt, bigoted, and inept president who betrayed his promise to champion ordinary Americans. The arrival of an influential new generation, the Millennials, who grew up with failed wars, weakened institutions, and blighted economic prospects, making them both more cynical and more utopian than their parents. Collective ills that go untreated year after year, so bone-deep and chronic that we assume they're permanent -- from income inequality, feckless government, and police abuse to a shredded social fabric and a poisonous public discourse that verges on national cognitive decline. Then, this year, a series of crises that seemed to come out of nowhere, like a flurry of sucker punches, but that arose straight from those ills and exposed the failures of American society to the world.

Alex Pareene: What if Democrats just promised to make things work again? "It's actually a rarity to hear a politician explicitly promise to govern effectively." "Most Americans, like most people, simply want things to work."

Martin Pengelly:

• Trump uses Fox News interview to accuse Biden of taking drugs. Sez Trump: "That's what I hear. I mean, there's possibly drugs. I don't know how you can go from being so bad where you can't even get out a sentence . . ." Article continues: "Trump did not finish his own sentence."

• Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law if you lose election. Seems a bit fanciful, but David Atkins provides some context: The GOP is staging chaos on the way to a coup. Atkins also wrote: To save democracy, Democrats must hold Trump officials accountable. One should take care not to appear vindictive, but I've long felt that Obama's decision to let the Bush administration off the hook for their numerous errors, corruptions, and even crimes, was a strategic mistake. It is even more important now that people realize how mendacious, how malign, how corrupt, and how stupid not just Trump but his whole administration have been. I'm not sure they need to be locked up, but they certainly need to be exposed and shamed.

• Trump boasts about getting 'Bay of Pigs Award -- which doesn't exist: Tony Karon challenged this: "while it was certainly never awarded to Trump, Cuba has long had an Order of the Bay of Pigs medal for leadership in the struggle against imperialism."

Cameron Peters:

• Trump's Nevada rally was an exercise in delegitimizing voting -- and denying reality: "Trump keeps holding probable superspreader events in the middle of a pandemic."

• Why Mike Bloomberg plans to spend $100 million boosting Biden in Florida. Nothing to get excited about here -- no one has done more to discredit the idea of money's ability to influence elections than Bloomberg, but the main thing his spending couldn't overcome was the inherent weakness of the messenger. On the other hand, one could argue that his spending was very effective at getting people to vote for Joe Biden, who not only handily beat Bloomberg but won a bunch of states he didn't seriously campaign in. Florida was one of those states -- a particularly important one. Personally, I have no faith Florida will ever do the right thing, but it offers Bloomberg an opportunity to earn some favors with Biden. One thing about Bloomberg is that his motives are pretty transparent: he hates the left much more than he's bothered by the Republicans, and sees centrist Democrats as a much more effective prophylactic against popular revolt threatening his class privileges. If billionaires like Bloomberg can't deliver the presidency to Biden, their future in the Democratic Party will be as tarnished as Hillary Clinton's. Also see: Dexter Filkins: Who gets to vote in Florida? One reason Florida disappoints so often is that Republican jiggering of the election process there is often decisive. While there is little doubt that Republicans will try to cheat everywhere they can this year, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, and (of course) Florida are exceptionally vulnerable.

Lili Pike: China has quietly vaccinated more than 100,000 people for Covid-19 before completing safety trials. China was the first nation hit by Covid-19, and from that point seemed (to me, at least) likely to be the first nation to get a grip on the disease, possibly gaining some sort of strategic advantage vs. other countries (especially given the US obsession with "intellectual property" rents). Looking back, China was remarkably effective at containing the virus, with per capita infection rates so low one wonders if they've fudged the numbers. But also, unlike the US, the Chinese government retains the ability and will to direct private industry to further public goals, so they can pursue things like vaccine development much more aggressively than others can. Also, given their closed political system, they have little motivation to publicize developments before they are known to work -- compare to Trump's promises on a vaccine before the end of the year, or his touting of a plasma treatment that hadn't been cleared. So it's not a surprise that China seems to have jumped into the lead on vaccine development -- just news. Also, this should give you pause when thinking about Trump's plans for an "America first" vaccine controlled by corporate behemoths. From its inception, Covid-19 was a world pandemic, which demanded full international cooperation. Trump has repeatedly sabotaged that, and the US has suffered a lot as a result, and we're likely to suffer even more.

Paul R Pillar: Putting America on the wrong side of war crimes.

Michael Rea: How the evangelical movement became Trump's "bitch" -- and yes, I know what that word signifies: "As an evangelical myself, I can see how far the movement has sunk -- even to betraying its own ideal of masculinity."

James Risen: Senate report shows what Mueller missed about Trump and Russia. Also:

• Philip Weiss: Israel is cited often in Senate report as link to Russian interference (but our media ignore connection).

David Roberts: What's causing climate change, in 10 charts.

Nathan J Robinson: The case for degrowth: When the shutdowns happened back in March, a friend asked whether they would force us to start thinking about degrowth. The concept has been floating around for a while. Indeed, it's almost inevitable once you consider the impossibility of infinite economic growth, but it also builds on critiques of GDP -- turns out that measuring all economic activity fails to recognize any difference in value between activities (like building a house, or blowing one up and having to build another -- the latter produces more GDP, but one less house). Robinson reviews Jason Hickel's new book: Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, and also spend considerable time with Mariana Mazzucato's The Value of Everything.

Philip Rucker/Josh Dawsey/Yasmeen Abutaleb: Trump fixates on the promise of a vaccine -- real or not -- as key to reelection bid.

Aaron Rupar:

• Trump is making a mockery of public health. His rally in North Carolina demonstrated it. "Trump rallies have become a series of potential superspreader events."

• Trump's "no panic" Woodward tapes spin would be easier to buy if his campaign weren't all about panic.

Robert J Samuelson: Goodbye, readers, and good luck -- you'll need it: "What 50 years of writing about economics has taught me." Not much. He's been a hedgehog, his one big idea that inflation is bad. I read his book, The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath, where he insisted that the inflation of the 1970s was even worse than the depression of the 1930s. My parents lived through both, and while they may have been luckier than some in the 1970s, their view was the exact opposite. Perhaps because they learned to avoid debt and save in the 1930s they saw nothing but benefits from the 1970s: their costs were manageable (no debt, not even a mortgage), my father's wages grew substantially (thank God for unions), and their savings reaped pretty high interest (without having to become criminals). Samuelson's last piece before this one was Don't forget about inflation. I thought about complaining about it at the time but didn't, so when I saw this one, I figured I'd best get my last word in. I was pointed to this one by Alex Pareene, who tweeted: "this guy sucks and in incalculable but significant ways has made the future worse for all of us with his bad ideas and arguments dating back decades." Pareene also referred me to Brad DeLong: Carbon blogging/Robert J Samuelson is a bad person.

Jeff Satterwhite: The right-wing worldview is one of scarecrows and scapegoats. Argues that conservatives obsess over three "scarecrows": They will take out safety; They will take our liberty; They will take our culture. He doesn't offer a list of "scapegoats"; presumably they is all you need to know.

Jon Schwarz: 3,000 dead on 9/11 meant everything. 200,000 dead of Covid-19 means nothing. Here's why. "To America's leaders, our lives have value only insofar as they can be used to create a desired panic." Schwarz gives a number of examples of what were called cassus belli events -- excuses for launching wars. He mentions, for instance, the "Tonkin Gulf Incident" where US ships were fired on by North Vietnamese, but no one was injured. He doesn't mention Israel's sinking of a US ship during the 1968 Six Day War, where all Americans on board perished, but that wasn't a cassus belli, because the US had no desire to fight Israel.

Bush wanted a pretext to do a lot of things that were unnecessary, while Trump wanted an excuse to do nothing when, in fact, a lot really needed to be done.

Liliana Segura: Trump's execution spree continues at federal killing ground in Indiana: "More federal executions have been carried out in 2020 than in the past 57 years combined."

Adam Serwer: Will the United States belatedly fulfill its promise as a multiracial democracy?

Surveying the protests, Trump saw a path to victory in Nixon's footsteps: The uprisings of 2020 could rescue him from his catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. The president leaned into his own "law and order" message. He lashed out against "thugs" and "terrorists," warning that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Ahead of what was to be his comeback rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, Trump tweeted, "Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis" -- making no distinction between those protesting peacefully and those who might engage in violence.

In this, Trump was returning to a familiar playbook. He was relying on the chaos of the protests to produce the kind of racist backlash that he had ridden to the presidency in 2016. Trump had blamed the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri -- a response to the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer -- on Barack Obama's indulgence of criminality. "With our weak leadership in Washington, you can expect Ferguson type riots and looting in other places," Trump predicted in 2014. As president, he saw such uprisings as deliverance.

Then something happened that Trump did not foresee. It didn't work.

Trump was elected president on a promise to restore an idealized past in which America's traditional aristocracy of race was unquestioned. But rather than restore that aristocracy, four years of catastrophe have -- at least for the moment -- discredited it.

Christianna Silva/James Doubek: Fascism scholas says US is 'losing its democratic status': Interview with Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. I've read that book and think it's pretty good, finding a middle ground between accounts which take a overly strict historical definition (like Robert Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism) and leftists (like myself) who instantly smell fascism in every form of right-wing reaction. The NPR article links to Elias Bures: Don't call Donald Trump a fascist, which reviews Stanley's book and others (including one of Dinesh D'Souza's most ridiculous ones, accusing the left of fascism -- a trope Jonah Goldberg beat to death in Liberal Fascism). I think it depends a lot of who you're talking to. Many of us older folk on the left have a deep understanding of fascism, which provides a ready framework for recognizing much of what Trump and other conservatives say and do. Moreover, some Trump artifacts (like his ads where all the "bad guys" are Jews) echo fascist memes much too closely for comfort. On the other hand, more (mostly younger) people don't, in which case this quickly devolves to name-calling (which is all it ever was to Goldberg and D'Souza). Were I to construct a 0-10 F-Scale for how fascist politicians are, I'd peg Reagan and the Bushes in the 3-5 range, and Trump more like 7-8: too low to be a precise definition, but high enough one can't help but think about it. For a taste, here are some recent links that use the F-word:

• Ryan Cooper: Why Trump's invasion of Portland is textbook fascism.

• Anthony DiMaggio: Can we call it fascism? Trump's voter suppression project, 2020.

• Stephen F Eisenman/Sue Coe: Scoring Fascism: Offers 11 questions, scored 1-5 points. FWIW, I'd score Trump at: 2-1-1-2-4-3-2-1-5-2-2 = 25, which falls in the "quite fascist" range. If Trump had more power, or was more competent at wielding the power his office has, he'd rate higher, as most of the categories are things he'd like to do. Also note that the bottom rung of scoring, 5-10, is "just another asshole." You can be an asshole without being a fascist. That category is reserved for a special kind of asshole.

• Henry Giroux: Lawlessness in Trump's fascist state: Bill Barr and the ghost of fascism.

• Roger Harris: The specter of a fascist coup by Trump haunts the US, but there's worse to worry about. Harris previously wrote: Trump, racism, and fascism: More than just personality disorders.

• John Nichols: Call Trump's tactics what they are: Fascist.

• David Obeidallah: I've resisted calling Trump a fascist. Not anymore. Trump's huzzahs for 17-year-old murderer Kyle Rittenhouse was the straw that broke this particular camel's back. Note link here to Scott Bixby: Trump's new adviser Steve Cortes thinks he hasn't been 'fascist' enough.

• Alexander Reid Ross: Trump the fascist: Note this is old [2015-08-25], or prescient.

• Paul Street: Fourteen martyrs in the struggle against racist terror and Trumpism-Fascism. Street previously wrote "Time to say the F-word"? Why now? He cites increasing use by relatively mainstream authors: Michelle Goldberg, Masha Gessen, Robert Reich, and Mehdi Hasan.

• Richard Wolff: The US is borrowing its way to fascism.

Phillip Smith: Oregon is on the cusp of a major drug reform: Decriminalizing everything. It's likely that the number of states where marijuana is legal will increase this year, as it has nearly every election since Colorado voters approved. It's an easy call, given that it's arguably more benign than already legal alcohol and tobacco. Other drugs are a harder call, but prohibition hasn't worked any better with them than it did with alcohol or marijuana. I would go further than this proposal, but it's still much better than any state has yet done.

Roger Sollenberger: Tucker Carlson: "If we're going to survive as a country, we must defeat" Black Lives Matter: Excuse me, but what the fuck does this mean? What can "defeat" possibly mean? Arrest all the leaders and supporters of BLM? Wouldn't that just incite more people to pick up the struggle? What about anyone who even sympathizes with the notion that black people deserve the same rights and respect enjoyed by whites? Even if somehow you managed to do that, what kind of country would you have left? One with more people in jail than out? One the rest of the world -- which in case you haven't noticed is mostly non-white -- regards as an unspeakably vile rogue nation? Or maybe Carlson would be satisfied just to acquit all the cops who kill unarmed blacks, and beat back every effort to "defund" or otherwise reform the police? Wouldn't that just make BLM seem more important and more necessary than ever? The only way movements rooted in a fundamental quest for justice go away is when they achieve all or at least a significant chunk of their goals. Racist rants, even from perches like Fox News, just add to the conviction that movements like BLM are necessary.

Emily Stewart: Give everybody the internet. I agree, and would go a bit further. We also need public options to compete against all of the major commercial aps on the internet.

Matt Stieb:

• Boats keep sinking at the Trump boat parades.

• The 2020 Trump campaign is reportedly a financial mess. More on the Trump campaign:

  • Cody Fenwick: 7 details from new exposé on financial turmoil -- and bitter backstabbing -- in the Trump campaign. Cites Shane Goldmacher/Maggie Haberman: How Trump's billion-dollar campaign lost its cash advantage. The 7 details:

    1. The big takeaway: Trump has poured $800 million down the drain with little to show for it
    2. Parscale, meanwhile, is trying to spread the blame around
    3. Trump is a big part of the problem
    4. The campaign spent nearly half of its spending on more fundraising
    5. A lot of money is covering campaign-adjacent legal bills
    6. The pandemic -- and Trump's refusal to adapt to it -- has repeatedly thrown a wrench into the gears
    7. Much of the money remains mysteriously unaccounted for

  • David A Graham: Trump is running his campaign like he ran his businesses: "The president is again profiting handsomely at the expense of those trusting enough to give him money."

  • Amanda Marcotte: Death Star blows itself up: Trump ran his campaign finances like his businesses -- into the ground.

  • Sky Palma: Trump campaign ad misspells "Nobel" -- while touting Trump's nomination for the peace prize. Given that all a nomination took was one idiot with connections, this hardly seems like something to brag about. On the other hand, this does remind one of the structural divide between Republicans and Democrats on war and peace. Obama was embarrassed when he was given the prize, not because he hadn't done anything to deserve it (other than give a speech against Bush invading Iraq back when he was an Illinois state legislator), but because he was Commander-in-Chief in two active wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and in a dozen or more obscure conflicts (including the still-unsettled 1950 Korean War), and he was afraid the Nobel Peace Prize would make him look weak. As a Republican, Trump never has to worry about appearing weak (or, evidently, crazy). He can even point to the first American (Republican) president to win the Nobel, Theodore Roosevelt, who championed the Spanish-American War in 1898 and US entry into World War I, in between practicing "Gunboat Diplomacy" in Central and South America. Roosevelt got the prize for settling the 1905 Russo-Japanese War -- a good deed, but one that greatly favored his friends in Japan. For more, see Steve M: Racist serial nominator nominates Trump for a Nobel Prize.

  • Roger Sollenberger: Short on cash, Trump campaign appears to be hiding large-dollar payments to top staff.

• Whistleblower alleges DHS head tried to alter intelligence to fit Trump rhetoric: "A DHS official claims that acting director Chad Wolf told him to downplay Russia's election interference threat because it made Trump 'look bad.'"

• Federal report warns of financial disaster of climate change: It's about time for the party of oligarchy to own up to the fact that the rich have much more to lose to climate change than the middling or poor. For starters, who owns all that oceanfront property about to drown? (This article puts the value of such property at $1 trillion.) This report comes from the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), which mostly deals in agricultural produce (well, it mostly deals in money, but speculating about agricultural produce). Right now, agriculture has been finely tuned to produce the most profitable crops any given area can, but a changing climate will wreck all that optimization.

• Everything we learned from Michael Cohen's book: Trump's former lawyer/fixer's book, Disloyal: A Memoir, is out now. Stieb's subheds:

  • Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Trump endorsement was related to his fear of "personal" photos being released
  • Trump's coordination with the National Enquirer was more extensive than previously known
  • The Trump children wanted their father to end his campaign
  • Cohen details more allegations of racism

  More on the Cohen book:

  • Emily Jane Fox: With his tell-all on deck, Michael Cohen is plotting anti-Trump ads for Democrats.

  • Naomi Fry: Michael Cohen's memoir of jilted love.

  • Maggie Haberman: Michael Cohen's book says Trump held 'low opinions of all Black folks'.

  • Dan Mangan: Michael Cohen says book on Trump discusses Russia collusion, 'golden showers' at Vegas sex club, lying to Melania.

  • Alex Shephard: Why doesn't Michael Cohen get to be an anti-Trump crusader? "The drive to find the perfect contrast to Trump's selfishness and cowardice overlooks the fact that the clearest indictments of the president often come from people who resemble him."

Peter Stone: How William Barr is weaponizing the Justice Department to help Trump win.

David Swanson: In memoriam: Kevin Zeese is irreplaceable. Zeese, an activist lawyer, died last week. Includes some links, including two pieces co-authored by Margaret Flowers: We're in a recession, and it's likely to get worse (Mar. 19), and We don't have to choose between our health and the economy (May 19).

Astra Taylor: The end of the university: "The pandemic should force America to remake higher education."

Benjamin Wallace-Wells: How Trump could win: "The President consistently trails Joe Biden in polls, but political strategists from both parties suggest that he still has routes to reëlection." On the one hand, they're fucking with you. On the other, we have so little faith in our fellow voters, in the media that feeds them misinformation, and in the arcane system they have to navigate in order to vote, that we're full of doubts, and the fear of getting this wrong can be all-consuming.

Alex Ward:

• Top Putin critic Alexei Navalny out of a coma after suspected nerve agent poisoning.

• Trump loves sanctioning foreign countries -- but he's terrible at it. There is a chart here of "new additions to OFAC sanctions lists by year." Trump's totals are { 695, 944, 1474, 792 }. The only other year that came close to Trump's first year was 2004 (719). Major sections here explore Trump sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. Nothing on Russia, the other major target of US sanctions -- without a coherent strategy, it's hard to tell whether tactics are working.

• What to make of the DHS whistleblower's shocking complaint.

• Trump announced that Bahrain will normalize relations with Israel.

Libby Watson:

• Covid patients are receiving eye-popping bills. It's not all Trump's fault. "even a well-crafted plan would have been no match for our inept health care system."

• The two Joe Bidens: "One talks of an 'FDR-size presidency,' the other works to calm Wall Street nerves. Which one will create the post-pandemic future?" The one that gets elected? Otherwise, do we even have a future?

• America's callous indifference to death: "The Covid-19 pandemic serves as a reminder that even in an election year, our politics are ideologically predisposed to a malign neglect."

  Just two years ago, a hurricane in Puerto Rico killed at least as many people as died on 9/11, and our government's response was pathetic. The help provided has never come close to matching the need: As of July, the "first major program to rebuild houses hasn't completed a single one even though tens of thousands of homes still have damaged roofs nearly three years after Maria," according to NBC. Such neglect might be familiar to people in North Carolina or Texas, where people who had not yet recovered from one hurricane were upended again by another just a year or two later.

  The implication here is that government responded to 9/11 but not to "natural" disasters. True that victims of 9/11 received relatively generous compensation, but the overwhelming majority of what was spent following 9/11 did its victims no good whatsoever, and most of it created further problems -- even the toll of American soldiers killed in the subsequent wars far exceeded the number killed by terrorists, and the money spent, which gained us nothing, could have been put to good use at home. Politicians respond to deaths when it suits them, in ways that suit them.

Joshua Yaffa: Is Russian meddling as dangerous as we think? "The spectre of foreign manipulation looms over the coming election. But in focusing on the tactics of the aggressors we overlook out weaknesses as victims."

Jia Lynn Yang: Are we more divided now than ever before? Review of James A Morone's new book, Republic of Wrath: How American Politics Turned Tribal, From George Washington to Donald Trump. The two-party system has always been tribal, and always polarizing, but what's happened recently is that since 1980 the division has become increasingly right vs left. Before it was not uncommon to see greater diversity within a major party than between presidential candidates, but that started to change in 1980 when conservatives took over the Republican Party and won the presidency, using that success to sweep up all conservatives among Democrats. That was a winning formula for a while, but eventually turned GOP moderates into Democrats, and pushed the Democratic Party leftward (although so far you cannot say the left has come close to capturing the Democratic Party).

Matthew Yglesias:

• How forcing colleges to go online could change higher education for the better.

• What's really going on with the economy: "Things are looking better than was feared, but the case for more help is clear."

Yglesias, by the way, has a new book, One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger. For a review, see:

• Jacob Bacharach: The emptiness of Matthew Yglesias's biggest idea.

Li Zhou: The Senate just failed to pass more stimulus amid a struggling economy. Here's why. "Republicans were simply using the vote to send a message."

Further notes:

From Twitter:

• Sahil Kapur: It is remarkable how thoroughly "repeal and replace Obamacare" has been exposed as a policy mirage, after hundreds of millions of dollars poured into an assault that shaped countless elections and helped define U.S. politics in the 2010s.

• Mike Konczal: A bugaboo of mine: there is no noteworthy insider-access or policy-friendly conservative reporting, research, or books on why this collapsed in 2017. There's no Jacob S Hacker's Road to Nowhere[: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security] equivalent. Just nothing.

  There are dozens of reports on why cap-and-trade failed in 2010, marquee ones that break into schools of thought of where to go next.

  It's just silence on the Right. The two major recent initiatives, Social Security privatization and ACA repeal, gone as if they never existed.

Jacob Hacker later tweeted:

For what it's worth, Paul Pierson & I did write out own post-mortem -- though it's definitely not an insider-access or policy-friendly conservative account: The Dog That Almost Barked: What the ACA Repeal Fight Says about the Resilience of the American Welfare State.

From Michael Hull, on Twitter:

OTD 49 years ago the State of New York murdered 39 people at Attica prison.

They planned the brutality, tortured the survivors, and began destroying evidence the same day.

They've denied it for decades, but I got pictures.

The video will be posted to my Vimeo page and available for download by anyone who wants it.

That's the goal - we want writers, artists, thinkers, people of all disciplines and representing every pocket of society to use this material as a vehicle to talk about their town.

It's time for the rebellion and retaking at Attica prison to be reconsidered through the lens of the modern abolitionist movement. It's time for more people to have their say on this brutal event.

It's time for New York to stop hiding this evidence.

Mike also has a Facebook page on the archive and his movie based on the archive, Surrender Peacefully: The Attica Massacre, with a link to the trailer.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, September archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 33954 [33914] rated (+40), 212 [215] unrated (-3).

Another week that started slow but hit 33 records Sunday evening, before I realized I was going to take an extra day. Spent that extra time listening to bassist Gary Peacock, who died last week (85). Wikipedia credits him with a dozen albums as a leader. Discogs expands that list to 69, picking up collaborations with his name further down the artist line. Including side credits, Wikipedia winds up at 98. He started 1958 with Bud Shank, with Bill Evans in 1963, and on two landmark 1964 albums: Tony Williams' Life Time and Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity. He recorded 10 albums with Paul Bley (mostly after Bley married his wife, Annette), and 22 with Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio. His most impressive album as a leader was probably Tales of Another (1977), with Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette, well before Standards (1983). Ethan Iverson tweeted that he thought Mr. Joy was a masterpiece. I checked it out, under far from ideal circumstances, and concur.

Running into technical problems with Napster, which may mean I need to consider a new streaming provider. I have two computers, and Napster is behaving badly on the new one: search and selection are very slow, actually streaming music virtually impossible. Rebooting offers a temporary workaround. On the other hand, the older computer plays it fine, but the speakers have some unexplained static. Haven't spent any serious time debugging this, but it's one reason I spent more time on Bandcamp this week.

I don't have much more to say at this point. I do have a new batch of answers to reader questions. Ask more.

New records reviewed this week:

• The Blam Blams: Opening Night (2020, LunaSea Media): [bc]: B
• Bully: Sugaregg (2020, Sub Pop): [r]: B+(*)
• Burna Boy: Twice as Tall (2020, Atlantic): [r]: B+(**)
• Hayes Carll: Alone Together Sessions (2020, Dualtone): [r]: B+(**)
• Kathleen Edwards: Total Freedom (2020, Dualtone): [r]: B
• Joe Fiedler's Big Sackbutt: Live in Graz (2019 [2020], Multiphonics Music): [r]: B+(**)
• John Finbury: American Nocturnes (2019 [2020], Green Flash Music): [cd]: C+
• Jason Foureman and Stephen Anderson: Duo (2020, Summit): [cd]: B+(**)
• Jacob Garchik: Clear Line (2018 [2020], Yestereve): [r]: B+(*)
• Karen Jonas: The Southwest Sky & Other Dreams (2020, Yellow Brick): [r]: B+(**)
• Sukyung Kim: Lilac Hill (2019 [2020], self-released, EP): [cd]: B+(*)
• La Pingo's Orquesta & Todd Clouser: Midwest/Bajio (2020, Ropeadope Sur): [bc]: B+(*)
• Bettye Lavette: Blackbirds (2020, Verve): [r]: B+(***)
• Dua Lipa & the Blessed Madonna: Club Future Nostalgia (2020, Warner): [r]: B+(***)
• Meridian Brothers: Cumbia Siglo XXI (2020, Bongo Joe): [bc]: B+(***)
• Vee Mukarati: Vital Signs (2020, Primrose, EP): [r]: B+(*)
• No Joy: Motherhood (2020, Joyful Noise): [r]: B+(*)
• Zephaniah OHora: Listening to the Music (2020, Last Roundup): [r]: A-
• Okuden Quartet [Mat Walerian/Matthew Shipp/William Parker/Hamid Drake]: Every Dog Has His Day but It Doesn't Matter Because Fat Cat Is Getting Fatter (ESP-Disk, 2D): [cd]: A-
• Old 97's: Twelfth (2020, ATO): [r]: B+(***)
• Angel Olsen: Whole New Mess (2020, Jagjaguwar): [r]: B
• Ryan Porter & the West Coast Get Down: Live in Paris at New Morning (2020, World Galaxy): [r]: B+(***)
• PVRIS: Use Me (2020, Warner): [r]: B
• Dan Rosenboom: Points on an Infinite Line (2020, Orenda): [r]: B+(**)
• Sara Schoenbeck/Wayne Horvitz: Cell Walk (2020, Songlines): [r]: B
• Sneaks: Happy Birthday (2020, Merge): [bc]: B+(***)
• South Florida Jazz Orchestra: Cheap Thrills: The Music of Rick Margitza (2020, Summit): [cd]: B+(**)
• Fumi Tomita Featuring David Detweiler: Celebrating Bird/A Tribute to Charlie Parker (2020, Next Level): [cd]: B+(***) [09-25]
• Toots & the Maytals: Got to Be Tough (2020, BMG): [r]: B+(*)
• Ulf Wakenius: Taste of Honey (2019 [2020], ACT Music): [r]: B

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe/Four Men Only: Complete Recordings (1968-73 [2020], NoBusiness -3CD): [cd]: A-

Old music:

• Paul Bley: Mr. Joy (1968, Limelight): [yt]: A-
• EABS: Repetitions (Letters to Krzysztof Komeda): Live at Jazz Club Hipnoza (Katowice) (2018, Astigmatic): [bc]: B+(***)
• EABS: Slavic Spirits (2019, Astigmatic): [bc]:
• Gary Peacock: December Poems (1977 [1979], ECM): [r]: B+(*)
• Gary Peacock/Art Lande/Elliott Zigmund: Shift in the Wind (1980 [1981], ECM): [r]: B+(**)
• Gary Peacock: Voice From the Past - Paradigm (1981 [1982], ECM): [r]: B+(**)
• Gary Peacock: Guamba (1987, ECM): [r]: B+(***)
• Gary Peacock/Ralph Towner: Oracle (1993 [1994], ECM): [r]: B+(**)
• Wayne Shorter: The Best of Wayne Shorter (1964-69 [1988], Blue Note): [r]: B+(***)

Grade (or other) changes:

• EABS: Puzzle Mixtape (2012-15 [2016], Astigmatic): [bc]: [was: B+(*)] B+(**)
• Wayne Shorter: Adam's Apple (1967 [1987], Blue Note): [r]: [was: B] B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Kaze & Ikue Mori: Sand Storm (Libra) [09-18]
• Jacám Manricks: Samadhi (Manricks Music)
• Okuden Quartet [Mat Walerian/Matthew Shipp/William Parker/Hamid Drake]: Every Dog Has His Day but It Doesn't Matter Because Fat Cat Is Getting Fatter (ESP-Disk, 2CD)
• Matthew Shipp Trio: The Unidentifiable (ESP-Disk)

Weekend Roundup

Blog link.

Nearly everything here was complete late Sunday night, but I was having trouble framing the comics, and felt the need to write a bit of introduction, so I decided to sleep on it. Found the Trump tweet and the Carter quote after I got up. Added a couple links while wrapping up, but all articles that date from Sunday or earlier. I managed to find a few pieces on the late David Graeber, but none yet on Kevin Zeese, a lawyer and (like Graeber) another prominent Occupy figure, who died suddenly on Sunday. Music Week will probably be delayed a day this week. These delays weren't planned, but happy Labor Day.

Here are a pair of New Yorker cartoons that go a long ways toward illustrating and explaining the cognitive disconnect between Republicans and Democrats these days. The third was posted by Mary Anne Trump (her caption), and picked up from a friendly Facebook feed:

Having family and friends in the Portland area, I've seen numerous contrasting pictures like this, which makes the news media fixation on fires and looting seem all the more anomalous. I wrote a comment under the latter picture:

What terrifies Republicans isn't chaos, which they think they can bludgeon into submission, but the prospect of diverse people living together and enjoying richer and more rewarding lives as a result. Why they find this threatening has never been clear to me. In my experience, and I come from a long line of farmers and small town folk, when given a welcoming opportunity, most actually enjoy themselves.

I suppose I may sound condescending or patronizing, but I started narrow-minded and provincial and made my own way into and around the cosmopolitan world, often finding open doors and welcoming faces -- a tendency toward kindness which my old world actually prided itself on. I won't deny that cosmopolitans have their own prejudices, which may appear as hostile but more often sympathetic. It's as easy to find liberals who accept the idea that their opposites are clinging to a way of life threatened by the modern world. I don't think that is true. At any rate, I don't see the gap as unbridgeable, although one needs to reject the political incentives that drive us apart. And while both sides have attempted to make hay by appealing to the prejudices of their bases, as we see above, it's the Republicans who have most gravely distorted reality.

One more clause I wish to draw your attention to is "they think they can bludgeon into submission." It doesn't work like that. The world we live in is so complex and interconnected that the only way we can manage it is through massive cooperation, which depends on good faith and respect, which depends on justice for all. No people submits forever, but all people can join together in an order which is universally viewed as fair and just. Might doesn't make right, and the more brutally and viciously it is employed, the more resistance it generates, the more harm it winds up doing to all concerned. I could cite hundreds of examples. I doubt I could find an exception. Even seemingly complete domination either perpetuates indefinitely (e.g., Israel over Palestine) or ends with integration (America and the Indians, albeit imperfectly).

I'll add one more related point to this: there has been much talk recently about democracy ending in America, but note that such an end would not ensure that the immediate victors will stay in power and enjoy their privileges indefinitely. It merely means that change can only occur through violence, at great collateral cost. As I recall, Winston Churchill used to say "democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the rest." What he meant was that while he didn't like having to submit to the will of the people, he preferred that to losing his head (the pre-democratic method of disposing of unwanted monarchs). The British people regularly grew tired of Churchill and voted him out, only to vote him in again as their memories faded. Democracy in America has worn thin and ragged over recent decades, with most of the blame due to the influx of money -- something both parties bear responsibility for, but only the Republicans defend the practice as a class prerogative, and Republicans have made the most conspicuous efforts to tilt the table in their favor, exploiting the unequal representation locked into the Constitution, and using their legislative clout to further gerrymander districts. And this year, Trump has created doubts about the integrity of the voting process, such that neither side is likely to believe the count, no matter what it is.

One thing you won't see much of below is reports on polls and other voting irregularities. Partly because there is a lot of wild-eyed speculation going on, but mostly because I have little faith that anything we say now will have any predictive significance for November. One thing that was interesting was that the contested Massachusetts Democratic primary brought out an unprecedented huge vote for a primary. That is one data point suggesting that the November vote won't be significantly suppressed by the pandemic.

Got up this morning and first thing I read was this paragraph from Zachary D Carter: The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, which does a nice job of framing what I wrote above:

Keynes had crafted an innovative philosophical cocktail. Like Burke, he feared revolution and social upheaval. Like Karl Marx, he envisioned a great crisis on the horizons for capitalism. And like Lenin, he believed that the imperialist world order had reached its final limits. But alone among these thinkers, Keynes believed all that was needed to solve the crisis was a little goodwill and cooperation. The calamity he foresaw in 1919 was not something inevitable, hardwired into the fundamental logic of economics, capitalism, or humanity. It was merely a political failure, one that could be overcome with the right leadership. Whereas Marx had called for revolution against a broken, irrational capitalist order, Keynes was content to denounce the leaders at Versailles and called for treaty revisions. As with Burke, it was revolution itself that Keynes hoped to avert. But he was optimistic, blaming capitalist instability and inequality as the fuel for social upheaval rather than democracy.

I took a shine to Marxism back in the late 1960s, but gave up on it by the mid-1970s, not because I changed my mind but because the insights I had gained there had become second nature, while I lost anything more than a passing commitment to the political program. I moved from opposition to one specific war (Vietnam) to a general pacifism, and I increasingly appreciated the value of incremental reforms versus sharp breaks. I became more tolerant, which is not to say uncritical, of liberals, and I found much that I actually liked in Keynes. (Robert Skidelsky's 2009 book, Keynes: The Return of the Master, offered a good introduction.) He sought to resolve conflicts by arguing ideas, and he retained a radical understanding of the good life which has eluded most economists -- so much so that they refer to their trade as "the dismal science." The quote above was in the section discussing his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). Reading Keynes on the arrogant, ignorant, and pompous politicians of the day sheds comparable light on Trump today. Looking forward to discussion of Keynes' view of the future of work, which somehow still remains in our future, assuming we get that far.

Some scattered links this week:

Kate Aronoff: Elon Musk thinks his treatment of workers is a "trade secret".

Dean Baker: Trump's 'America First' vaccine agenda may leave us last: "By using the usual patent monopoly framework rather than international open-source collaboration, the coronavirus vaccine may prove both elusive and more costly for Americans."

Peter Baker/Maggie Haberman: Trump fans strife as unrest roils the US.

BBC: International Criminal Court officials sanctioned by US. "The Hague-based ICC is currently investigating whether US forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan."

Zack Beauchamp: Donald Trump is inciting violence. "His audience is tens of millions of people. Only a tiny percentage need to act to severely disrupt this country's politics."

Riley Beggin:

• Trump eliminates federal antiracism training, calling it "a sickness": "A White House memo directing an end to the programs said the trainings are 'anti-American propaganda' and must stop." Trump means to stamp out "critical race theory," or more generally anything that impugns white people as ever having been racist, as benefiting from racism, or that just hurts their feelings. On the other hand:

  Trump has said the Black Lives Matter movement is a "symbol of hate" and has called those protesting police brutality "thugs." He's threatened to end protests by sending US troops into American cities, saying ongoing antiracism protests amount to "domestic terror."

  Throughout his presidency, Trump has vehemently opposed protesters' and officials' efforts to take down Confederate statues and has begun to promote a "law and order" campaign message that has included a racist dog whistle pledge to protect "suburban housewives" from "inner city" crime.

  And the president has consistently declined to condemn brazenly racist comments or actions. For instance, when a supporter in a retirement community was filmed shouting "white power" while driving a golf cart bedecked with Trump memorabilia in June, he retweeted it.

• Jacob Blake speaks about being shot by a police officer: "It's nothing but pain".

• The fight over defunding Stars and Stripes, explained. I've seen articles both blaming Trump for shutting down the Pentagon's house propaganda organ and crediting Trump for saving it.

Jake Bittle: This is what Trumpism after Trump looks like: Profile of Laura Loomer, "proud Islamophobe," QAnon supporter, Republican nominee for Congress.

Bob Brigham:

• Trump boat parade swamped: Multiple MAGA vessels sink in Texas lake. For more, here's the NYT report: Bryan Pietsch/Aimee Ortiz: At least 4 boats sink during 'Trump Boat Parade' in Texas, officials say. Later reports confirm 5 boats sank. Matthew Yglesias tweeted:

  Trump in a nutshell: Boat Parade is supposed to be a good time for everyone, but actually the guy who own really big boats come out fine while the smaller boats -- including the ones owned by die-hard Trump fans -- sink in the wake.

• Trump hired an Obama impersonator to yell at and "fire," according to Michael Cohen's book: You probably thought racism just comes natural to some people, but evidently even they have to train and practice to get really good at it. Cohen's book Betrayal is scheduled for Tuesday, and leaks so far have been limited. Here's one I noticed on Twitter, evidently from Wall Street Journal:

  Michael Cohen says Trump personally approved the Stormy Daniels hush money, saying $130,000 "is a lot less than I would have to pay Melania" and mused that if it got out, his supporters might "think it's cool that I slept with a porn star."

  Another link based on the Cohen book (very likely this will be a section next week): Michael Stone: Trump mocks evangelical supporters and their Christian prayers.

Rosa Brooks: What's the worst that could happen? This is rather ridiculous: war gaming various election scenarios, under the aegis of a group that calls itself the Transition Integrity Project, hiring "players" like Bill Kristol and John Podesta to simulate how R and D strategists would react to the various scenarios.

John Cassidy: Donald Trump's incitements to violence have crossed an alarming threshold.

Fabiola Cineas/Sean Collins/Anna North: The police shooting of Jacob Blake, explained: "Blake's shooting has inspired intense protests, a professional sports strike, and fiery rhetoric from President Trump."

Patrick Cockburn: Trump at the RNC: Echoes of Saddam.

Aaron Ross Coleman:

• Kenosha's looting is a symptom of a decrepit democracy. "This summer's unrest comes after years of failure by democratic institutions to respond to police violence." Best subhed here: "Nothing extinguishes a burning skyline like equality and justice for all."

• The Black lives that don't make headlines still matter: "More than 80 black people have been killed by police since Breonna Taylor died in March."

Summer Concepcion: Ex-staffers at DeJoy's former business say he reimbursed them for donations to GOPers.

Chris D'Angelo: Trump is trying to greenwash his appalling environmental record before the election.

Jason Ditz:

• Pentagon accuses China of massing anti-satellite weapons:

  This is the latest in a series of Pentagon reports on what China "probably" intends, which are all policies which would justify the various US military programs associated with them. In this case, the formation of Space Force was done with an eye toward China threatening US satellites.

  Problem is that while Space Force could destroy Chinese satellites, it is not capable of protecting US ones, and the US has many more, and depends on them for offensive weapons systems like the "precision bombs" it employed in Iraq. As Chalmers Johnson noted over a decade ago, all China (or any other nation) would have to do to wipe out all US satellite resources would be to "launch a dumptruck full of gravel" into space. The only "defense" the US has against such threats is not to provoke the Chinese (or others) into feeling the need to level the playing field against an obvious US military advantage. For another US China scare report, see Pentagon: China could pull ahead of US military by 2049. Hard to say which is the more ridiculous presupposition: that "pulling ahead" of the US military is something that has any practical import, or that with Donald Trump president now we seriously need to worry about things that might happen as far away as 2049. For another one of these, see Alex Ward below, on China possibly doubling its nuclear arsenal in ten years.

• Pompeo: Whole world uniting against China.

• Israel attacks airport in Syria's central city of Homs.

• Pompeo tells Venezuela opposition to boycott election.

Adam Eichen: The GOP remains loyal to corporations and lobbying groups over Americans. Covid hasn't changed that.

Paul Farrell: David Graeber dead: Anthropologist & anti-capitalist thinker behind 'we are the 99%' slogan dies at 59.

• Benjamin Balthaser: A Jewish goodbye to David Graeber.

• Richard Eskow: David Graeber, 1961-2020: History is a living weapon: "David looked to the distant past, and to the future, to imagine truly radical changes in the human community."

• Joshua Frank: David Graeber is gone: Revisiting his wrongful termination from Yale.

• Andrej Grubacic: In loving memory of our friend, comrade, and mentor . . . David Graeber. Includes an introduction Graeber and the author co-authored for a recent edition of Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: An Illuminated Factor of Evolution, and a "mini-bio" written by Graeber.

• Stuart Jeffries: David Graeber obituary.

• Lenart J Kucic: David Graeber on harmful jobs, odious debt, and fascists who believe in global warming: Interview [2020-05-16].

• Sam Roberts: David Graeber, caustic critic of inequality, is dead at 59.

• Nathan J Robinson: What David Graeber noticed.

• Astra Taylor/David Weingrow/John Jordan/Isabelle Frémeaux (and others): David Graeber, 1961-2020.

• Matthew Zeitlin: How David Graeber changed the way we see money.

Also worth linking to some of David Graeber's work (also see the listing at The Anarchist Library):

• Dead zones of the imagination: On violence, bureaucracy, and interpretive labor (2006).

• Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you! (2009).

• On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs: A work rant. (2013)

• What's the point if we can't have fun? (2014).

• Against economics (2019).

Matt Ford: The Republicans' absurd quest to turn Biden into Trump: "The president's reelection campaign is now an obsessive exercise in psychological projection." Another way to look at this: has there ever in history been a better time for someone like Trump to run against an incumbent president like Biden? Only one problem with that scenario.

Andrew Freedman/Diana Leonard: Heat 'rarely ever seen' is forecast to roast West by the weekend, with wildfires still burning. Freedman followed this up with: California faces record-setting 'kiln-like' heat as fires rage, causing injuries.

Susan B Glasser: The 2020 election, a race in which everything happens and nothing matters: "If a pandemic that has killed nearly two hundred thousand Americans can't significantly hurt Trump's support, can anything?"

Hallie Golden/Mike Baker/Adam Goldman: Suspect in fatal Portland shooting is killed by officers during arrest. Of course, unlike, Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three and killed two BLM protesters in Kenosha, but was taken into custody live. Michael Forest Reinoehl, "antifa supporter," now unable to testify what happened in the shooting he is accused of. Article quotes Attorney General William Barr: "the streets of our cities are safer." Isn't that what they always say after the police kills a "suspect"?

Elizabeth A Harris/Alexandra Alter: Trump books keep coming, and readers can't stop buying. Picture collects 19 book covers. I haven't read any of those, although I have read a dozen others (see below). The article notes that "in the last four years, there have been more than 1,200 unique titles about Mr. Trump, compared to around 500 books about former President Barack Obama and his administration during Mr. Obama's first term." I tried to publish a fairly exhaustive list of Trump books on May 16, including a few advance notices on books that were scheduled up through October, but my list ran out at 294. Some they mentioned that I missed:

• Michael Cohen: Disloyal: (2020, Skyhorse)
• Edward Klein: All Out War: The Plot to Destroy Trump (2017, Regnery)
• Carlos Lozado: What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era (2020, Simon & Schuster)
• Lee Smith: The Permanent Coup: How Enemies Foreign and Domestic Targeted the American President (2020, Center Street)
• Mary L Trump: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (2020, Simon & Schuster)
• Stephanie Winston Wolkoff: Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady (2020, Gallery)
• Bob Woodward: Rage (2020, Simon & Schuster)

Most of those are recent releases (Woodward's is due Sept. 15, Lozado's Oct. 6), but Klein's screed simply slipped my net. I should do another books post. Not sure what more there is to net, but there is: John W Dean: Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers, and (of course) Donald Trump Jr: Liberal Privilege: Joe Biden and the Democrats' Defense of the Indefensible. For whatever it's worth, here are a few books I did read (on Trump, his administration, and/or the 2016 election, as well as a few less Trump-centric but still topical tracts, most recent first):

• Thomas Frank: The People, NO: The War on Populism and the Fight for Democracy (2020, Metropolitan Books)
• Jacob S Hacker/Paul Pierson: Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Economic Inequality (2020, Liveright)
• David Bromwich: American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us (2019, Verso Books)
• Sarah Kendzior: Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America (2020, Flatiron Books)
• Joan C Williams: White Working Class: |Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (2020, Harvard Business Review Press)
• Ezra Klein: Why We're Polarized (2020, Simon & Schuster)
• Stanley B Greenberg: R.I.P. G.O.P.: How the New America Is Dooming the Republicans (2019, Thomas Dunne Books)
• James Poniewozik: Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America (2019, Liveright) -- the most insightful book on Trump per sé.
• Tim Alberta: American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump (2019, Harper)
• Alexander Nazaryan: The Best People: Trump's Cabinet and the Siege on Washington (2019, Hachette Books)
• Michael Tomasky: If We Can Keep It: How the Republic Collapsed and How It Might Be Saved (2019, Liveright)
• Michael Lewis: The Fifth Risk (2018, WW Norton) -- a brief and understated exposé of what Trump has done to the ability of government to function.
• Ben Fountain: Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution (2018, Harper Collins)
• Timothy Snyder: The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018, Tim Duggan Books)
• Katy Tur: Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History (2017, Dey Street Books)
• Allen Frances: Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump (2017, William Morrow)
• David Frum: Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (2018, Harper)
• Jonathan Allen/Amie Parnes: Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign (2017, Crown)
• Mark Lilla: The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (2017, Harper Collins)
• Mark Singer: Trump and Me (2016, Duggan Books)
• Matt Taibbi: Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus (2016, Spiegel & Grau)

More pieces on Trump books:

• Gabriel Debenedetti: How has Donald Trump survived? Review of Michael S Schmidt: Donald Trump V. the United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President, on the Mueller investigation and especially the events that led up to it.

• Elisabeth Egan: 7 takeaways from Melania and Me, by the First Lady's former friend.

• Inae Oh: How broken do you have to be to buy a Trump book?

Benjamin Hart: Black man died of asphyxiation after officers placed hood on him: "Rochester police put a 'spit hood' over Daniel Prude's head, then pinned him to the ground for two minutes. Seven officers have now been suspended."

Eoin Higgins: The Bush rehabilitation trap: "Democrats' insistence on redeeming pre-Trump Republicans will corrupt the party's agenda and spoil the chance for real social reform." Another excuse to link to: Will Ferrell returns to SNL as George W Bush, with a reminder: "I was really bad." Maybe I'd start cutting Bush some slack if he goes on air and admits as much. Still, such contrition wouldn't erase his actual record -- especially the warmongering, which is the one trait of his presidency he can't fob the blame off on the far-right Republicans Cheney staffed his administration with. Still, even his efforts to work with Democrats to solve common problems, like No Child Left Behind and Medicare D, have proven disastrous. Laura mentioned an article about Obama's "biggest mistake," and I immediately thought of several, most importantly his reluctance to repeatedly blame the damaged conditions he inherited on Bush. Not doing so gave Republicans a pass, allowing them to paint the fruits of their failed ideology as somehow being Obama's fault. That doomed Democrats in the 2010 elections, and all the Republicans had to do from then on was to obstruct -- which he also failed to clearly pin responsibility for. Obama's second biggest mistake was proclaiming Afghanistan "the right war," and wasting his first term trying to get it on track. Third was failing to repeal the Bush tax cuts in 2009 when he had the votes to do so. He spent the rest of his terms fighting debt fear and austerity pressures that would have been greatly relieved if he had restored those taxes. But the "biggest mistake" the article pointed to was the bombing of Libya -- see Stephen Kinzer: Obama's 'Biggest Mistake' is still wreaking havoc. The quotes actually come from Obama, but all he meant was "his failure to anticipate the after-effects," not the bombing itself. In failing to appreciate that belligerent acts have logical consequences, Obama proved to be as ignorant and reckless as his predecessor.

Michael Hudson: How an "act of God" pandemic is destroying the West: The US is saving the financial sector, not the economy. In fact, now that the financial sector appears safe from its March panic, the Republicans seem to be done with everyone else.

Harmeet Kaur: Covid-19 has killed more law enforcement officers this year than all other causes combined. "At least 101 officers have died from Covid-19, while at least 82 have died by other means, as of Thursday, according to ODMP. . . . Gunfire is the second-highest cause of death, which has killed at least 31 officers this year." Meanwhile, the number of people killed by police: 679 so far this year, 1,013 in the past year.

Sunil Khilnani: Isabel Wilkerson's world-historical theory of race and caste: Review of Wilkerson's new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, where a central argument is that India's long-established caste system -- outlawed in the Indian Constitution of 1950 -- provides insights into racism in America (and, what the hell, Nazi Germany).

Ezra Klein:

• Can anything change Americans' minds about Donald Trump?: "The eerie stability of Trump's approval rating, explained."

  On August 27, 2019, President Donald Trump held a 41.3 percent approval rating and a 54.2 percent disapproval rating, according to FiveThirtyEight's poll tracker. During the 365 days that followed, Trump became the third president impeached by the House of Representatives; America assassinated Iranian general Qassem Soleimani; more than 200,000 Americans died from the disease caused by the novel coronavirus; the unemployment rate rose from 3.7 percent to 10.2 percent; the US banned incoming travel from Europe, China, and Brazil; an estimated 12 million people lost health insurance coverage; Trump pardoned Roger Stone, who was facing jail time for dirty tricks on the president's behalf; and George Floyd's murder sparked a nationwide movement protesting for racial justice -- to which officials responded by tear-gassing demonstrators in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, so Trump could pose for a photograph holding a Bible.

  That is, of course, a bitterly incomplete list of a grimly consequential year in American history. But you'd never know it simply by following Trump's poll numbers. On August 27, 2020 -- one year later, and the day Trump used the White House as a backdrop for his convention speech -- FiveThirtyEight had Trump at 42.2 percent approval and 54.3 percent disapproval. Everything had happened, and politically, nothing had mattered. Or, at the least, not much had changed.

  "It's really remarkable," says Jennifer Victor, a political scientist at George Mason University. "The stability of Trump's numbers are almost unbelievable."

  Trump's approval ratings have ranged a mere 14 points (35-49%), compared to a range of 27 for Obama (40-67%), 65 for Bush II (25-90%), 36 for Clinton (37-73%), 52 for Bush I (29-81%), 33 for Reagan (35-68%). The Bush high marks were inflated by war, and deflated by recession. Reagan, Clinton, and Obama each started in recession, and presided over sustained recoveries. Trump was the first president not to get a "good will" bump after taking office, largely because of the way he campaigned and won. He was, instead, met with unprecedented demonstrations and vows of resistance, the first "women's march" overshadowing his poorly-attended inauguration. That may have helped to lock in his supporters, who viewed his regime as embattled from day one, and have since stubbornly resisted news of disasters that many of us considered inevitable consequences of his election.

• What the Iraq disaster can teach us about Trump. Interview with Robert Draper, author of To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq.

Natasha Korecki/Christopher Cadelago: With a hand from Trump, the right makes Rittenhouse a cause célèbre.

Paul Krugman:

• QAnon is Trump's last, best chance: "The only thing he can hope for is fear itself."

• April was Trump's cruelest month: "Covid-19 won when he tweeted LIBERATE MINNESOTA.

• Trump had one good response to Covid-19. His party killed it. "Aid to the unemployed saved us from disaster. Now it's gone."

• Trump and the attack of the invisible anarchists: "Lurid fantasies about urban hellscapes are all he has left."

Robert Kuttner: The Biden do not reappoint list: "A third succession of Wall Street Democrats would be a disaster. Here are the names to look out for." Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Mike Froman, Steve Rattner, Jeff Zients, Bruce Reed, plus a list of big names like Mike Bloomberg and Jamie Dimon and another of "lesser names." Since this piece was published, Zients was added as "co-chair" to Biden's transition team. See: Alex Thompson: Biden transition team shapes up with Obama-Biden alum hires.

Nancy LeTourneau: Trump's attack on Booker would be laughable if it wasn't so racist.

Eric Lipton: How Trump draws on campaign funds to pay his legal bills.

Martin Longman:

• Trump's visit to [Kenosha] Wisconsin is not welcomed by state and local officials. On the other hand, it set up a contrasting visit by Biden: Biden, in Kenosha, says US confronting 'original sin'.

• Why did Trump suddenly visit Walter Reed Medical Center last November?

• Trump's steadfast campaign of White nationalism. It's almost a commonplace that Trump's reelection strategy is to double down on racism. For an added air of desperation to this, see Robert J Shapiro: White voters are turning away from Donald Trump.

Michael Luo: American Christianity's white-supremacy problem: "History, theology, and culture all contribute to the racist attitudes embedded in the white church." There's plenty of this to go around, but Christian churches were incubators for abolitionism in the 19th century, and committed clergy and laity have been prominent in every antiwar and civil rights movement since.

David J Lynch/Carol D Leonnig/Jeff Stein/Josh Dawsey: Tactics of fiery White House trade adviser draw new scrutiny as some of his pandemic moves unravel. Fiery? Some new euphemism for "full of shit"?

Bill McKibben: How fast is the climate changing?: It's a new world, each and every day: Is McKibben's flair for hyperbole really helping? He has a knack for taking an isolated insight and blowing it up into a gross generalization, effectively obliterating his insight. Something a reasonable person could argue: practically every day we discover some new incident that helps reveal the greater depths of climate change. That's not the same as saying the world is changing every day. For most of us, most of the time, that's simply untrue, or at least untrue in terms that register with our senses. McKibben got into this habit with the title of his first book on climate change, The End of Nature. His argument there was that we can never know nature because we've changed the climate. In some sense he was onto something, but that's because humans have used technology to alter and dominate nature in many ways -- releasing greenhouse gases to raise air temperature was merely one of many ways, if anything, one of the least conscious of the many changes. On the other hand, he totally loses track of one of nature's most significant characteristics, which is its ability to evolve in response to changes, ranging from astronomical to human. Of course, he isn't the only environmentalist to have such anthropocentric conceits about the world. The very phrase "save the Earth" has all sorts of hidden assumptions about what kind of Earth it is one wants to "save." Surely you know that the Earth is almost all rock, and totally oblivious to changes on its surface. Surely you realize that life didn't need human beings for nearly four billion years, and could carry on happily should humans disappear.

Ian Millhiser:

• A Trump judge's attempt to bail out Michael Flynn ends.

• A new poll shows rank-and-file Democrats finally realize the Supreme Court is important.

• Trump's authoritarian "anarchist jurisdictions" memo, explained: "This is what a president does when he thinks he can do whatever he wants." Trump is assering that he has the power to cut federal funding to cities and states that do not do what he wants. He's made threats like that many times, starting with attacking "sanctuary cities" for not cooperating with ICE enforcement, and more recently threatened to withhold education funds from school districts that did not reopen fast enough. He thinks that if he declares cities to be "anarchist jurisdictions" he can impose order on them with federal troops. As Millhiser points out, there is no legal basis for any of this.

Max Moran: Mick Mulvaney: A frustrated wrecking ball: "The former top Trump official is seething that civil servants want to do their jobs well."

Mick Mulvaney's career reached its logical endpoint last week when he announced he'd started a new hedge fund focused on exploiting deep knowledge of regulatory trends in the financial services sector. "I can't think of anyone better to read the tea leaves, if you will, of what is going to come next from Congress or any one of the slew of federal regulators out there," said Mulvaney's new business partner Andrew Wessel, lending high praise to what amounts to official corruption.

There are few public sycophants quite as shameless as Mulvaney when it comes to doing the bidding of financial loan sharks. Thanks to his slavish devotion to the cult of personality around a president he once called "a terrible human being," Mulvaney has gone from being the payday-loan industry's favorite congressman to Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's internal destructor, the acting White House chief of staff, and finally, the prestigious and rarefied job of Special Envoy for Northern Ireland.

Yet Mulvaney seems to be leaving public service unsatisfied. You see, despite his best efforts, financial regulation still, well, exists. And annoyingly, it seems there are hardworking people who still want it to, you know, exist.

I would have edited that last line to say "work" instead of repeating "exist." Also:

For too long, we've denigrated civil servants as lazy, wasteful, and parasitic -- terms and frames which are wrongheaded and highly racialized. The resulting anti-government fervor gave us the catastrophes of the Bush and Trump presidencies. It's an important point that bears repeating: People who hate government tend not to be very good at it.

If Biden wants to prove that he won't be like Trump or Mulvaney, if he wants to prove that his government will indeed restore dignity in America, there's a simple and powerful step he can take: Trust in government, and commit to appointing career civil servants to top jobs running the agencies they understand. If nothing else, it will severely piss off Mick Mulvaney.

Nicole Narea: How Trump made it that much harder to become a US citizen.

Ella Nilsen: Joe Biden makes the case Donald Trump has already made America more dangerous.

Timothy Noah: Wall Street's greedy indifference to human misery: "The disparity between the soaring stock market and struggling Americans perfectly epitomizes the country's grotesque inequality."

JC Pan: Rotting produce, vacant luxury apartments, and fake scarcity in a pandemic: "Leaving essentials like food and shelter to the whims of the market produces an extreme kind of disorganization." At the very least, this shows that markets don't respond very quickly or aptly to unpredicted events.

James Pasley: Trump frequently accuses the far-left of inciting violence, yet right-wing extremists have killed 329 victims in the last 25 years, while antifa members haven't killed any, according to a new study. I suppose the killing of a Trump militia man in Portland might be the first, if not self-defense, which will be hard to prove after police killed the alleged shooter.

Kevin Peraino: When America's Cold War strategy turned corrupt: Pretty much from its inception. After all, the point was to defend and promote business around the world, not least against its foes in labor. Review of Scott Anderson: The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War -- a Tragedy in Three Acts. Covers the years 1944-56; the spies are Michael Burke, Edward Lansdale, Peter Sichel, and Frank Wisner.

Cameron Peters:

• What we know about a deadly shooting in Portland, Oregon: "One person is dead in Portland after a pro-Trump caravan descended on the city."

• Poll: Biden's approval rating for a convention bounce. Trump's didn't.

Daniel Politi: Trump took art from ambassador's home in Paris, but pieces were fakes and replicas.

Andrew Prokop: The debate over whether unrest will help Trump win, explained.

John Quiggin: The economic consequences of the pandemic: Title for a book he's working on, which has recently spawned two articles: Have we just stumbled on the biggest productivity increase of the century?, on shifting work from office to home, and The end of the goods economy. Two more recent notes by Quiggin: What's with the stock market?, and Intangibles = monopoly.

Emily Rauhala/Yasmeen Abutaleb: US says it won't join WHO-linked effort to develop, distribute coronavirus vaccine.

Kate Riga: In first interview since FBI firing, Strzok frets about Trump-Russia unknowns; and Eric Tucker: Strzok calls attacks from Trump 'outrageous' and 'cruel'. Fired FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok starts to flog his Sept. 8 book: Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J Trump. More:

• Anne Applebaum: Will Americans ever learn the full story about Trump's relationship with Russia?

David Roberts: Big Oil's hopes are pinned on plastics. It won't end well. "The industry's only real source of growth probably won't grow much." Related:

• Kate Aronoff: Big Oil's evil, stupid plan to drown the world in plastic.

Aaron Rupar:

• Biden accused Trump of fomenting violence. Trump spent the rest of the day proving him right. Subheds: Trump just keeps pouring fuel on the fire; Trump won't even condemn murder if it means distancing himself from his supporters.

• Bill Barr's interview on CNN was a train wreck: "From Black Lives Matter to election fraud, Barr didn't seem interested in even pretending he's doing anything other than Trump's bidding." Subheds: Barr's comments about Jacob Blake and Black Lives Matter revealed how unserious he is about racial unrest; Barr wouldn't even acknowledge that voting twice is a crime; The attorney general has been reduced to something akin to a fixer for the president.

Giovanni Russonello: Jazz has always been protest music. Can it meet this moment? Related: Alan Scherstuhl: Jazz is built for protests. Jon Batiste is taking it to the streets.

Michael J Sandel: Disdain for the less educated is the last acceptable prejudice: He's talking about among Democrats. As Donald Trump and many more attest, prejudices are rampant within the Republican Party -- maybe more against the highly educated but against the less educated as well, even as Republicans occasionally flatter the latter in order to con them. Sandel wrote The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good, the latest of a series of books that debunk the idea that we should be ruled by "the best and the brightest" (as David Halberstam dubbed the Kennedy meritocrats) -- Chris Hayes' Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy is the one I read and recommend, but Daniel Markovits: The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite adds to the critique. One thing Sandel notes is that Joe Biden "is the first Democratic nominee in 36 years without a degree from an Ivy League university." Still, he seems to be confusing education with "credentialism" -- his word, an interesting choice given how Jane Jacobs took the shift in focus from education to credentials to be a sure sign of Dark Ages Ahead. While many Democrats have made the mistake of seeing education as the key to advancement and therefore a painless answer to inequality -- Robert Reich was a pioneer in this regard -- but what makes that a mistake is ignoring all other factors. For instance, it's safe to say that the dearth of blue collar workers in Congress has more to do with lack of money and connections than prejudice. At least most Democrats see education as a universal desire and opportunity, and knowledge and science as general virtues -- unlike many Republicans, who find free thinking suspiciously dangerous. Also see:

• Dean Baker: Seeing the last acceptable prejudice clearly: The more educated screwed the less-educated. "Sandel is exactly right, but his case is even stronger than he presents here. Not only do the elites have contempt for the less-educated, but they actively designed policies to screw them."

Greg Sargent: These old quotes from Trump make his attacks on Biden look even more pathetic: "Violence on a president's watch is only his fault when that president is Barack Obama."

Walter Shapiro: America is not reliving 1968: "Sure, Donald Trump is harnessing Richard Nixon's law and order rhetoric, but that doesn't mean it will work."

Alex Shephard: The media is falling for Trump's law and order con.

Matt Shuham: With itchy trigger fingers, some right wingers predict the next civil war has finally arrived.

Timothy Snyder: What ails America: Specifically, a diary of botched medical care.

Roger Sollenberger: Ted Cruz seeks abortion pill ban, claims pregnancy is not "life-threatening".

Jeffrey St Clair: Roaming charges: Sometimes they choke: Usual grabbag of points and asides, but I was struck by the chart (from 538) which argues that Biden has to win the popular vote by more than 3 points to reach a 50% chance of winning the electoral college. Next item shows the gerrymandered map of a "suburban Houston" House district. Then after some Markey-Kennedy points, he notes that the Postal Servie paid $14M to XPO Logistics, a company USPS head Louis DeJoy has a significant stake in, over the last 10 weeks. Also, I wanted to quote this:

MAGA loves America. MAGA hates the government. MAGA loves the man who runs the government they hate. MAGA loves history. MAGA hates the State. MAGA loves the statues of the historical figures who built the State they hate.

Other notes include that the US trade deficit reached its highest level in 12 years, and that "peak oil" is back, with US production on the decline again, after reaching its second peak (the first was in 1969).

Margaret Sullivan:

• Trump is 'Fox's Frankenstein,' insiders told CNN's Brian Stelter -- and here's the toll it's taken. Also on Stelter's book Hoax: Eric Alterman: The sycophants at Fox News.

• Kellyanne Conway undermined the truth like no other Trump official. And journalists enabled her.

• Fact-checking Trump's lies is essential. It's also increasingly fruitless.

• Here's what the media must do to fend off an election-night disaster.

Emily VanDerWerff: One good thing: Stephen Colbert is looser, funnier, and angrier in quarantine.

Alex Ward:

• Top Putin critic Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, German government says. Novichok is a nerve agent, developed in Russia,

• Voice of America reporters: Trump-backed CEO "is failing" the US.

• Trump went full authoritarian in his latest Fox News interview.

• China may double its nuclear arsenal in just 10 years. Don't panic. That would increase China's stockpile of warheads to 400-500, compared to 3,800 at present for the US.

• Did Trump call US war dead "losers" and "suckers"? The controversy, explained. "It's the word of reporters relaying what unnamed people are saying against the word of untrustworthy people being open about where they stand." I'm more bothered by politicians and pundits who use memory of the war dead as an excuse to perpetuate wars and promote future ones. Still, I'd be more inclined to call them "victims." Wars result from bad political decisions, usually long series. Even when the US was backed into a war -- WWII, the Civil War, maybe the War of 1812 -- one could look back on a long series of unwise decisions that paved the path to inescapable grave consequences. And even when the US could justify going to war, atrocities inevitably followed. So Trump's riposte that all war dead are "heroes" troubles me more than his slurs, not least because it's the kind of blanket generalization no one in the media would object to. Still, it must be admitted that part of the reaction to "losers" and "suckers" is that such terms convey the prejudices and privileges of a class that sees itself above the fray. It doesn't bother me that Trump uses his privileges to steer clear of the carnage in Vietnam, but it is typical of him that he sees those who lacked his advantages as "losers" and "suckers." That's at least part of this fracas, even if no one wants to talk about it. Related:

  • James Laporta: Two senior officials confirm Trump's remarks about fallen soldiers to AP.

  • Jonathan Chait: Here's all the corroboration for the Atlantic story on Trump attacking troops.

  • Juan Cole: Trump popularity with military was already cratering before Belleau-gate.

Libby Watson: Covid patients are receiving eye-popping bills. It's not all Trump's fault. "His plan to help with hospital charges is poorly designed. But even a well-crafted plan would have been no match for our inept health care system."

Peter Wehner: Why Trump supporters can't admit who he really is:

During last week's Republican National Convention, speaker after speaker insisted that life under a Biden presidency would be dystopian. . . . "They're not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether," a St. Louis couple who had brandished weapons against demonstrators outside their home, told viewers. "Make no mistake, no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats' America."

One does not have to be a champion of the Democratic Party to know this chthonic portrait is absurd. But it is also essential, because it allows Trump and his followers to tolerate and justify pretty much anything in order to win. And "anything" turns out to be quite a lot.

Michael Patrick Welch: Lake Charles was destroyed by Hurricane Laura. America has already moved on. "Like Katrina before it, Hurricane Laura has exposed disturbing inequalities -- and the rest of the nation's fundamental indifference."

Ben White: Trump's rebound story meets mounting bankruptcies: "Local business site Yelp found that 55 percent of the firms that closed during the worst of the pandemic beginning in March are now permanently shuttered."

Jill Wine-Banks: Don't forget about the Steve Bannon indictment. Seems like there may be more to come.

Matthew Yglesias: Donald Trump is the president: "Whose America is it, explained." After noting that while campaigning in 2016, Trump said: "the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored." Trump never explained how he would work his magic, but he didn't. "Murder is on the rise again after ticking down for a few years, and acts of looting and vandalism are occurring in cities across the country." Subheds:

• Trump is defunding the police
• Trump encourages bad policing
• Trump leaves no way out

Conclusion:

But what does Trump have on tap beyond angry tweets and absurd posturing? He's been the president for years, and he's flailing even with the issues he does want to talk about. Vice President Mike Pence ended his speech last week by asking the American people to let him and Trump "Make America great again, again." In context, it was essentially a request for a mulligan on Covid-19, which is absurd. But it's exactly what Trump is pushing on crime as well -- that we should just ignore the parts of the presidency where his ideas don't work and his administration fails on its own terms.

Aug 2020