Speaking of Which

Blog link.

PS: Added the Kessler piece below (under Trump).

Started early, mostly just to grab some of the early Tucker Carlson reactions. Then I focused more on the Book Roundup. I've been pretty unhappy the last couple days, but keep finding links, and things to write about. Hoping to wrap this up as soon as possible.

Although I say some nice things about Biden in his section, pay extra attention to the world sections. Biden's foreign policy is not an absolute, unmitigated disaster, but the mitigations are minor, especially compared to the threats that of so much focus on power, and the arrogance that comes from that.

Top story threads:

Fox and fiends (mostly Tucker Carlson): As you know, Carlson was fired Monday morning, effective immediately, with Brian Kilmeade lined up as a temporary replacement. CNN followed almost instantly by firing Don Lemon. A couple days later, ABC fired FiveThirtyEight guru Nate Silver. And there was more (see Stieb).

• Matt Stieb: [04-28] This Week's Media Massacre: A Roundup. About half of those seem to be further proof that the big money media world is suffering some form of heat death: companies are cooling off and cracking up, the firings merely symptomatic. In this, Carlson's firing is probably an outlier, if even an example at all.

• Sara Morrison/Aja Romano: [04-28] What we know about Tucker Carlson's shocking Fox News departure.

• Peter Kafka: [04-26] No, seriously, why did Fox News fire Tucker Carlson?

• Jonathan Chait: [04-24] Tucker Carlson, Fake Populist and Genuine Racist: "A TV character who exploited the worst impulses of the American right."

• Lee Harris/Luke Goldstein: [04-25] The Smuggest Man on Air: This tries to make a best case for Carlson as a populist, as someone "who punctured the lazy pieties of the media class." Still, slipping the occasional (and far from original) nugget of insight into a cloak of vitriol isn't all that helpful, let alone laudable. And even these authors had to conclude: "For a partial list of Tucker's noxious comments, see Mother Jones, New York magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, The Guardian, The New York Times, and others."

  PS: The publisher got a lot of flack for this piece, for which editor David Dayen apologized, and agreed to a rejoinder. It is here: Harold Meyerson/Tisya Mavuram: [04-27] The Real Tucker Carlson: "Carlson has been second only to Donald Trump in building a neofascist right that threatens American democracy." They also did a podcast, where Ryan Cooper is more explicit: Farewell to a Crypto Nazi Blowhard. These pieces, in turn, provide fuel for Andrew Prokop: [04-26] The new controversy on the left: Is it okay to say Tucker Carlson had some good ideas? Well, is it useful? It certainly doesn't work as an argument from authority. One could say that "even Tucker Carlson" conceded or tried to capitalize on some point, but then you're stuck suggesting that Carlson had some values or insights rarely in evidence elsewhere.

• Ed Kilgore: [04-25] Tucker Carlson for President? Not in 2024. "No lane," not that that's stopped anyone so far, although Carlson has long been a subject for speculation (see Politico: [04-24] The keys to a hypothetical Tucker Carlson 2024 campaign, which asks the question: "Will Don Lemon be his running mate?" As I recall, Lemon was on Trump's shit list, so not bloody likely. But I wouldn't rule out the other fired Fox host, Lou Dobbs, or even Geraldo Rivera. [PS: I've also seen a cartoon that pairs Carlson with Larry Elder, who announced his candidacy on Carlson's show.]

• Eric Levitz: [04-24] Fox News Could Be Just as Racist Without Tucker Carlson: Sure, they can always find another racist, but wasn't there something distinctive and unique (je ne sais quoi, but something) about Carlson's racism?

• Branko Marcetic: [04-28] Tucker Carlson Isn't an Anti-Imperialist -- He's a Rabid China Hawk.

• Andrew Prokop: [04-24] Tucker Carlson was doing something different -- and darker -- than most Fox hosts. For one thing, he had that super-creepy laugh (really more of a cackle).

• Jim Rutenberg/Jeremy W Peters/Michael S Schmidt: [04-26] On Eve of Trial, Discovery of Carlson Texts Set Off Crisis Atop Fox.

• Alex Shephard: [04-27] Tucker Carlson Has Already Lost His War With Fox News: "His hostage video on Wednesday proves it." Shephard also wrote: [04-26] Rupert Murdoch May Have Blown His Tucker Succession Plan; also: [04-24] Tucker Carlson's Firing Was Hilarious.

• Matt Stieb: [04-24] All the Things Tucker Carlson Said That Should Have Gotten Him Fired Already: Well, sure, not all of them, but some typical examples."

• Tatyana Tandanpolie: [04-28] Fox News loses more than half of audience after axing Tucker Carlson: "It's not just Tucker's slot -- Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham's ratings are falling too."

• Michael Tomasky: [04-28] Rupert Murdoch Must Be Totally and Utterly Humiliated. Sure, but Tomasky has been making a lot of bold, emphatic moral proclamations lately. Have any of them come true?

• Erik Wemple: [04-24] Tucker Carlson, a terrible individual, leaves Fox News.

• Jason Zengerle: [04-28] Fox News Gambled, but Tucker Can Still Take Down the House.

Trump: E. Jean Carroll's defamation case against Trump is in a court room, being argued. The case is a poor proxy for a charge of rape, which happened about 25 years ago.

• Li Zhou: [04-27] The E Jean Carroll lawsuit, and rape allegation, against Trump, explained: He argues that the "case renews the scrutiny on more than 20 sexual misconduct allegations that have been brought against Trump," it only litigates one, and indirectly at that.

• Jonah E Bromwich/Benjamin Weiser/Lola Fadulu: [04-29] Rape Case Places Trump in Legal Jeopardy. Politically, He's Thriving.

• Glenn Kessler: [04-25] Fact-checking Trump's reaction to Biden's reelection announcement: Filed under Trump rather than Biden, because every statement exposes Trump's mental incapacity while offering at best a very distorted view of America, and even less of Biden. The closest he comes to an accurate line is: "There has never been a greater contrast between two successive administrations in all of American history." But the contrast would be clearer if Trump had shut up after losing and the rest of the Republican mob given up their evil machinations. That we are still in trouble is largely because deluded Republicans are still a threat, and if anything have only grown more hostile and irreconcilable.

• Jason Linkins: [04-29] Trump's 2024 Republican Opponents Are Caught in His Trap.

• Heather Digby Parton: [04-28] Mike Pence finally takes the witness stand: How afraid should Donald Trump be?

• Jennifer Rubin: [04-30] E. Jean Carroll might deliver the first significant hit to Trump.

Kevin McCarthy, terrorist, sociopath, nincompoop: What else would you call someone who wants to destroy the economy along with the government?

• Alex Shephard: [04-28] Kevin McCarthy Is Not Good at This: "The 'budget' passed by House Republicans is terrible for the party politically." Well, he did get his hostage note passed by the House, but in no scenario will he come out of this looking like anything but a heel. Threatening to default, like shutting down the government, has backfired every time Republicans have tried it, but somehow Republicans like McCarthy can't resist the moment in the spotlight. If they could, they could quietly cut all the spending they wanted in the coming year's appropriations process. It might seem harder, because the lobbyists will be all over his case, but it's his leverage according to the constitution. But default over spending that's already been passed is just terrorism.

• Peter Wade: [04-30] Ted Cruz Maligns Biden, Claims He Is 'Behaving Like a Terrorist' with Debt Ceiling: Talk about the kettle calling the pot black. "The senator also called White House staffers 'little Marxists with no experience in the real world."

• Li Zhou::

  • [04-26] Why the debt ceiling problem never goes away. Of course, it could go away if Congress would simply repeal the requirement. Some people proposed this in 2022, when Democrats still had majorities in Congress, but they didn't act on this. Perhaps the Democratic Party leadership calculated that leaving the limit in place would let Republicans blow themselves up again, but it seems about as irresponsible as handing a gun to a four-year-old.

  • [04-27] What comes next in the debt ceiling showdown.

  • [04-27] The lessons of the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, explained by the negotiators who were there.

Other Republicans:

• Jamelle Bouie: [04-29] A Sinister New Page in the Republican Playbook: It's long been evident that Republicans believe that America is really home to, and should belong to, only a part of its people. The others have long been deprecated, disparaged, even rallied against. They wish to deny them rights, especially the right to vote. The "new page" is that they've started to use their power to deny others representation. You're probably familiar with many of these examples. One is here: Li Zhou: [04-26] Montana Republicans are punishing a trans lawmaker for criticizing their anti-trans bill.

• Fabiola Cineas: [04-28] The Ten Commandments could be in every Texas classroom next fall: Interview with Jonathan Zimmerman, on three bills Texas passed that almost certainly violate the 1st Amendment.

• Gabrielle Gurley: [04-27] Republicans Declare War on Young Voters: "The GOP answer to anger about its abortion, climate, and gun control crusades is to double down." Also: "Some Republican lawmakers have been very clear about views on suppressing the college vote."

• Ed Kilgore: [04-28] State Court Deals Big Blow to Dems' Chances of Retaking the House: The North Carolina Supreme Court blesses the Republican gerrymander.

• Dylan Matthews: [04-29] l The blithe cruelty of the GOP push for Medicaid work requirements.

• Nicole Narea: [04-28] The Florida legislature is working for Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign: "This legislative session has been all about Ron DeSantis."

• Timothy Noah: [04-27] Why Republicans Hate It When Poor People Have Food to Eat: "The House GOP's attacks on food stamps are part of a long history of conservative attempts to slash the program."

• Nikki McCann Ramirez: [04-28] DeSantis Suggests He Personally Prayed a Hurricane Away From Florida: Weirder, he had to go to Israel to make his prayers heard.

• Dylan Scott: [04-27] How Ron DeSantis transformed into an anti-public health crusader. Lots of things disturb me about the Republican Party, but the extent to which they've turned against public health is especially alarming. Hard to tell whether DeSantis is leading that turn, or just going with the flow.

• Tori Otten: [04-28] Ron DeSantis Explodes When Asked About His Role in Guantánamo Torture. This also leads us to Prem Thakker: [04-24] Ron DeSantis Short-Circuits When Asked About Dropping Poll Numbers. Incidents like these have led to a substantial thread of posts raising questions about DeSantis's deficiencies in social skills and manners:

  • Margaret Hartmann: [04-27] All of Ron DeSantis's Crimes Against Good Etiquette.

  • Eugene Daniels/Rachael Bade/Ryan Lizza: [04-21] Playbook: How to lose friends and alienate people, by Ron DeSantis.

  • Alex Henderson: [03-16] 'Like a starving animal': How Ron DeSantis' poor 'social skills' could give Trump the advantage.

  • Dan Ladden-Hall: [04-21] Former Colleagues Rip Ron DeSantis' Rude Behavior.

Biden: He announced that he is running for reëlection in 2024, so I figured I should give him a section, as I've been giving Trump (and sometimes DeSantis) for several months now. Surely there would be an outpouring of articles praising his accomplishments and auguring future hope? Well, not so much. One thing only I noticed is that this breathes a faint bit of hope into my theory about political eras: that each starts with a major two-term president (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Reagan) and ends with a one-term disaster (John Adams, Buchanan, Hoover, Carter, Trump). Biden still seems like a stretch, but he wouldn't be as much of an anomaly as Reagan, whose whole era is the only one to witness a retreat of fundamental rights. But also, Biden is the only president in my lifetime who has impressed me beyond expectations. (True, I have no memory of Truman, and was at best ambivalent about Eisenhower and Kennedy. Johnson I now see did some good, but far worse was his war in Vietnam. Nixon, well, you know about Nixon.)

• John Cassidy: [04-25] Joe Biden's 2024 opening argument: It's me or the abyss: "The President's calling card -- as a Trump-slayer, and an upholder of normality and sanity -- remains his biggest advantage."

• Ed Kilgore: [04-27] Will Biden Get Embarrassed in Iowa and New Hampshire? The problem here has less to do with Biden's popularity than with primary politics: Iowa and New Hampshire have repeatedly jumped through hoops to get to first slot on the schedule, and the decision to drop them in favor of South Carolina hasn't been taken lightly.

• Eric Levitz: [04-28] Trump Could Definitely Beat Biden: I'm filing this under Biden instead of Trump, because it's more about Biden's weaknesses. I know, never underestimate the ability of the American people to make stupid mistakes. But it seems like Levitz has been writing a lot of stuff lately just to trigger reactions.

• Harold Meyerson: [04-24] The Hedge Fund's Man at the Democratic National Committee: "Cedric Richmond backs a hedge fund takeover of 60 TV stations."

• Nicole Narea: [04-27] Will there be any presidential debates in 2024?: "It's looking like neither Trump nor Biden will have to participate in a presidential debate in 2024." While both have some skills at acting out, neither is much of a debater, so why risk a commanding lead? Biden has the least reason to, given that few in the press recognize Marianne Williamson and/or Robert F Kennedy Jr as serious candidates. Trump could take the same position, unless the polls tell him otherwise. As for debates between them after they get nominated (assuming as much), that's too early to tell.

• Katie Rogers: [04-28] Press Freedom! Celebrities! (Also, the President.) Get ready for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. One of the few Trump moves I approved of was to put this miserable exercise out of business. Sure, he only did it because he was too thin-skinned to take the heat. But the White House correspondents, or at least the news they reported, would have benefited from more objectivity and less clubbiness.

  PS: If you care, see Kelly McClure: [04-30] The White House correspondents' dinner highlights: Biden can make jokes as well as he can take them; also Hershal Pandya: [04-30] Roy Wood Jr's Best Jokes at the 2023 White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Ukraine War:

• Blaise Malley: [04-28] Diplomacy Watch: China seeks to portray itself as peacemaker in Ukraine.

• James Bamford: [04-27] The Most Dangerous Game: How Shadow War Over Ukraine Nearly Triggered Nuclear Holocaust; "Unnoticed among the trove of documents in the Pentagon leak is this account of how a miscommunication between a Russian pilot and his base came perilously close to starting World War III."

• Julia Conley: [04-27] Climate Groups Call on Biden to Support Peace Talksk in Ukraine.

• Fred Kaplan: [04-29] Why Did Xi Jinping Suddenly Call Zelensky? "Some guesses as to what's going on."

• Daniel Larison: [04-28] Lawmakers deploy 'Munich' trope to push dangerously hawkish Ukraine resolutions: "A bipartisan group of hawks in Congress" want to pass something they call the Ukrainian Victory Resolution, whereby the US -- and not Ukraine, which is actually doing the fighting -- will dictate the only acceptable terms for ending the war: "restoration of Ukraine's 1991 borders" and inclusion of Ukraine in NATO. And of course they're invoking the hoariest of pro-war tropes, the "Munich moment" (which was 1938, not 1939, and involved Czechoslovakia, not Poland). By the way, in 1939, when Hitler threatened to invade Poland, the UK and France did announce that they'd declare war on Germany if they invaded, and that had no deterrence effect whatsoever. So why does anyone think that a stronger stand in Munich would have frozen the Nazi war machine in its tracks?

• Nanjala Nyabola: [04-25] What the World Should Know About Sudan: "You need to understand European foreign policy."

• Olivia Rosane: [04-27] Investigation Details How Gas Industry Exploited Ukraine War to Boost LNG Expansion.

World at Large:

• Michael Barnett/Nathan Brown/Marc Lynch/Shibley Telhami: [04-14] Israel's One-State Reality: It's Time to Give Up on the Two-State Solution: Introduction to a new book, a collection of essays edited by the author, called The One State Reality: What Is Israel/Palestine?. Mitchell Plitnick wrote about it here: [04-21] The one-state reality goes mainstream, as did Philip Weiss: [04-26] White House officials know Israel is an apartheid state, but they can't say so. This insight isn't particularly new: it's hard to think of anyone other than Washington diplomats who've talked about "two-state solution" since 2012, which is the date of a book I read: Ariella Azoulay/Adi Ophir: The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine. As for "apartheid," Jimmy Carter: Palestine Peace Not Apartheid came out in 2006. So I'm not surprised to find that prospects for separating the former West Bank into an independent Palestinian state have been demolished: that's been the plan since 1967, as was made clear by Avi Raz: The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War. What does surprise me is that nobody talks about the obvious two-state division, which breaks Gaza off as an independent state. Palestinians don't like this, presumably because they see it as a divide-and-conquer policy, aimed as finalizing the subjugation of the Palestinian West Bank. And Israelis don't like it, because it would mean recognizing that there is a legitimate Palestinian state. But it would end the current "open air prison," and allow at least some Palestinians to get on the path of becoming a normal country. That at least is a separable, solvable problem. Sure, that would leave Israel's foundational problem (call it apartheid for lack of a sufficient alternative), with little chance of solution, but why not fix what you can do now?

• Tanya Goudsouzian: [04-28] What would it take to recognize the Taliban? While I would like to see many of the concessions the US and others are demanding, I doubt you get there in one initial step, or ever unless you offer some basic level of recognition.

• Michael T Klare: [04-26] A US-China War Over Taiwan? "What will happen when China invades Taiwan, as so many in Washington believe is inevitable?" But why should we credit anything people in Washington think about China? What gives them such special insight? One thing we should know is that China has been very patient as well as very stubborn about territorial claims. They patiently negotiated their takeover of Hong Kong and Macau, which they could easily have occupied (as India, for instance, grabbed Goa). I don't like the elaborate fiction they have insisted on regarding "one China" and/or their claim to Taiwan (which has only been part of China for 4 years since 1895, and a very divided China at that), but the push to arm Taiwan and turn it into a satellite dependent on the US for its security seems very clearly meant as aimed at China. And it is precisely the sort of move that could provoke China to unseemly action.

• Dan Lamothe/Joby Warrick: [04-22] Afghanistan has become a terrorism staging ground again, leak reveals. As Robert Wright points out, the headline here is misleading, in such a way as to imply "that this amounts to an indictment of President Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan -- that, just as his critics had warned, turning Afghanistan over to the Taliban has turned it into a playground for anti-American terrorists." The "terrorists" in question identify as ISIS, although how closely (if at all) they are affiliated with ISIS in Syria isn't clear. The enemy of the Afghan ISIS is the Taliban, if the US had any interest in countering ISIS terrorism, they would recognize and work toward stabilizing the Taliban regime. It is, after all, the de facto government there, and there's nothing practical the US can do to alter that, so huffing off in a snit helps no one. PS: See Robert Wright: [04-29] No, Afghanistan has not become a 'staging ground for terrorists'.

• James Park: [04-28] What the Biden-Yoon summit left out: "Nuclear saber rattling hasn't changed North Korea's behavior in the past and it likely won't now." As best I recall, it's mostly made it worse. One of the clearest lessons we should but haven't learned from Ukraine is that deterrence doesn't work: more precisely, it can be safely ignored by countries that have no interest in attacking you in the first place (which includes the Soviet Union for the entire duration of the Cold War), while it presses countries that think they can get away with it into acting more boldly (as Russia did in Ukraine). The lessons from North Korea itself should be even clearer. Ever since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and with it the security umbrella and life support Russia provided, North Korea has been desperately flailing, threatening at times and otherwise accommodating, trying to protect its security and enter into trade that could revive a moribund economy. The US and/or South Korea has sometimes started to engage, which lowered the threat level, then backed out and double crossed North Korea, which lead to increased threats. Why? This seems monumentally stupid to me, but the war gamers in Washington may figure a threatening North Korea is better for their budgets, plus it keeps Japan and South Korea in the US orbit, which matters when you're ulterior motive is to muscle China around.

Courts:

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [04-25] The real reason for the Supreme Court's corruption crisis.

  • [04-26] The Supreme Court's tone-deaf response to the Clarence Thomas corruption scandal: "The justices unintentionally make the case for more ethics rules that bind the Supreme Court." Notable subhed: "The Supreme Court is famously clueless about how corruption works." See, e.g., Citizens United v. FEC (2010).

  • [04-28] A new Senate bill would curb Trump's worst judges: And yes, looking at you, Matthew Kacsmaryk.

• Mattathias Schwartz: [04-28] Jane Roberts, who is married to Chief Justice John Roberts, made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms.

• Prem Thakker: [04-28] Congress Has Known About John Roberts's Wife's Shady Financial Dealings for Months.

Other stories:

Chas Danner: [04-29] Texas Family Gunned Down by Neighbor in Yet Another Horrific Shooting.

David Dayen: [04-18] Big Tech Lobbyists Explain How They Took Over Washington: "An amazing research paper unearths how the tech industry invented the concept of digital trade and sold it to government officials."

Daniel Gilbert: [04-29] Moderna's billionaire CEO reaped nearly $400 million last year. He also got a raise.

Ethan Iverson: [04-10] The End of the Music Business.

Jay Caspian Kang: [04-04] The case for banning children from social media: Not a subject I particularly want to think about, at least right now, but bookmarked for future reference. I will say that throughout history, banning something is a good way to get people to do it anyway, and make them more anti-social and anti-civil in the process. Also that we tend to be overprotective of children, while at the same time making it harder for people of all ages to overcome mistakes and recover their lives. Also that the real problem with social media is commercial capture, and if you want to work on something, start there: if, for instance, you severely limited data capture, banned selling it and/or using it for advertising, and made advertising strictly opt-in, you could drive most of the bad actors off the Internet, and solve most of the problems associated with them. Just a few thoughts off the top of my head. I'm sure much more could follow. And perhaps this is just me, but I was miserable as a child, in many ways that access to the Internet (even in the benighted form of today's social media) would probably have helped.

Robert Kuttner: [04-26] The Soaking at Bed Bath & Beyond: "Who bought yup all that stock, as the retailer was on the route to bankruptcy?"

Joel Penney: [04-29] Right-wing media used to shun pop culture. Now it's obsessed with it. I'm not so sure about the first line, given how popular music from rock and roll in the 1950s to hip-hop in the 1980s were met with hysterical denunciations from self-appointed guardians of decency, but sure, it seems to be getting both more trivial and more frantic. Part of that may be the perception that popular culture trends have become so broad, so ubiquitous that all the right can do is rant and rail -- also feeds into their general sense of victimhood and grievance. I remember back in the 1970s it seemed like a big insight to understand how politics permeated cultural artifacts. (One famous example was How to Read Donald Duck.) But while the right managed to claw back (or cling to) political power, culture has continued its popular (if ever more varied) drift, and "high culture" is hardly even a term anymore (maybe "highbrow," but even that may be showing my age).

Still, I can't help but be amused watching right-wingers discover bits of formerly left-wing methodology, exposing hidden political memes in everyday cultural artifacts. But haven't they been doing that all along? It's just funnier now that symbols of satanism have given way to the currently more alarming curse of wokeness.

Adam Rawnsley/Jim Laporta: [04-27] The Online Racists Stealing Military Secrets: Jack Teixiera: If he's to be believed, you can't call him a whistleblower, because he wasn't trying to expose secrets that needed further scrutiny. He was just showing off to his friends, which turns out to be a part of a broader complex of pathological personal traits: the guns, the racism, etc. People have wondered why the military gave someone like him such access to top-secret material. Perhaps they should wonder about the mutual attraction between the military and people like him, or, say, Timothy McVeigh, or Michael Flynn. I'm not a big fan of a culture where the most basic principle is the necessity of following orders, but at least that's an ordering principle. Just recruiting psychotics who think they should answer to "higher powers" is crazy.

And speaking of crazy, while I didn't think much of the revelations at first, the more we get into them, the more bizarre they become. I've long suspected that secret classifications were more meant to keep the truth from ourselves than from supposed enemies. And the big secret here is that nobody in a position of power seems to know what they're doing.

Jeffrey St Clair: [04-28] Roaming Charges: Nipped and Tuckered: Starts with Carlson, but has surprisingly little to add, other than his observation that: "Tucker Carlson seems to be a truly weird person. His obsessions -- filth, bizarre animal stories ('sex crazed pandas' and 'psycho raccoons'), obesity, bodily excrescences, the subliminal gender messages in candy, testicle tanning -- which he regularly inflicted on his audiences, range far beyond the usual tabloid grotesqueries and border on the pathological."

Book Roundup

Blog link.

Pick up text from blog link.

Daily Log

David Everall asked:

Any chance you could expand on why you don't like the Boygenius album which has had generally very positive reviews elsewhere?

I have no interest in playing the record again, but I did expand:

I wouldn't say I disliked the album. I just got to the end and found I had had barely noticed it. I landed on the same B for their 2018 EP, and their individual albums haven't fared much better. In general, I don't catch words well (or put much weight on them), and I'm not easily impressed by vocal harmonies, but I can't swear that is the case. The same desire to move on affected most of the week's non-reviews, including Lonnie Holley, Margo Price, Fever Ray, Mette Henriette, and Anat Fort; even some records I liked much more, like Belle and Sebastian, Slaid Cleaves, Hieroglyphic Being, and Karol G. I'm afraid that was the best I could do under the circumstances. B&S is the only one I feel a bit bad about. However, now that you mention it, Boygenius is rated 89/37 at AOTY, which is about as high as last year's Big Thief, nearly as high as Fiona Apple from a couple years back -- albums I got into much more immediately. Most of the reviews there strike me as bs ("nothing short of seismic" is totally wrong; "like ABBA and Fleetwood Mac" is something I would have noticed), but maybe there's a sociological angle worth further investigation. I'm not sure I care, but I'm pretty accustomed to critical favorites falling flat for me -- e.g., AOTY has Caroline Polachek (a * in my book) at 88/22; Cecile McLorin Salvant (another *) at 87/5; JPEGMafia/Danny Brown (*) at 85/13 -- each a different problem, and (yeah) probably mine. The only records in their top 100 that I have at A- are Iris DeMent and Yo La Tengo (although I haven't yet heard at least a third of their list, and I'm unlikely ever to check out the ton of metal that scores high only because those of us who dislike it have given up on reviewing).

Music Week

Expanded blog post, April archive (final).

Tweet: Music Week: 47 albums, 5 A-list,

Music: Current count 40078 [40331] rated (+47), 49 [54] unrated (-5: 21 new, 28 old).

Again, mostly new music, mostly attributable to the tracking file, which is usually the first thing I consult when I need a new record. Pace picked up considerably from Friday, when I started collecting Speaking of Which: at 5668 words, just a bit shorter than the previous week (5773 words). The difference (and much of the difference from the even longer previous weeks (of April 9 and April 2) is in the introductions, which I cut short this week.

It's a grind to pull those posts together in three days, which results in another grind as I process music in the background. I'm usually paying enough attention to form a reasonable opinion, but rarely have the time to write down much detail: hence, you get a bunch of reviews that hardly say anything. That probably says something about my priorities: I'd rather get to the next record than nail the one I just heard, and in any case I care more about making my political points than music crit ones: I feel like I have more to say, more that is original, and more that matters.

Unfortunately, few others feel that way. And frankly, I was rather gratified in a noticeable uptick of interest in last week's Music Week. That marked the week when my rated count topped 40,000, so it was as much a lifetime achievement as another weekly installment. My wife recently watched Sullivan's Travels for her film group, so for a week there I kept imagine people coming up to me and advising, "forget about the politics you can't do anything about anyway, and just write better record reviews." But here I am, still taking a half-assed stab at both.

I'm almost done with Brian T Watson's Headed Into the Abyss: The Story of Our Time, and the Future We'll Face. I'm not convinced that the forces he identifies will lead to the doom of civilization he predicts, but he got me thinking about other things he slights (war, guns, racism, civil strife, injustice, surveillance, repression) and in some cases misses completely (his book appeared just before Covid broke out). He is fairly good on climate change (without more than a few lines on how it might generate waves of emigration, resource conflicts, and war), a little both-sidesy on capitalism and politics, and way over the top on what he calls Webworld.

He understands that these "forces" interact and compound in ways that are hard to separate out -- his Webworld is largely a confluence of dangers he doesn't fully articulate in capitalism, technology, politics, and human nature. The latter is by far the trickiest to write about: even though we've been studying it for ages, it's almost impossible to generalize about in contexts that haven't yet happened.

What I do believe is that there are practical, technical solutions to virtually all problems we face, except that there is (and will continue to be) formidable political opposition to doing anything before it is much too late. So, I think it's ultimately very important to thoroughly critique those political opponents. Of course, it's also nice to have some nice music to play in the background. (I happen to be on an Ivo Perelman kick at the moment.)

Next book up is probably Kurt Andersen's 2017 book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. I read Andersen's later (2020) book, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America shortly after it came out, and consider it the single best book on the rise of the political right in recent America. The earlier book won't have the luxury of pointing to Trump (although it serendipitously arrived with America's most ridiculous fantasy president). I've long regarded Reagan's 1980 election as a decision to live in a fantasy world (his catchphrase was "morning in America") as the real one was becoming too grim, but when you think about it, everything from "city on a hill" to "go west, young man" to the "new frontier" was fantasy.

Maybe there's a fantasy for a political era that actually faces problems and turns them into opportunities for a better world, as opposed to the usual ones where you look away and pretend it's got nothing to do with you.

This is the last Music Week of April, so the monthly archive should be complete (see link above), but I decided to post this before I do all my usual indexing. I'll catch up later in the week. Meanwhile, the first nominal week of May has started, here.

New records reviewed this week:

• Susan Alcorn/Patrick Holmes/Ryan Sawyer: From Union Pool (2022 [2023], Relative Pitch): [sp]: B+(*)
• Ralph Alessi Quartet: It's Always Now (2021 [2023], ECM): [sp]: B+(***)
• Algiers: Shook (2023, Matador): [sp]: B+(*)
• Matt Barber: The Song Is You (2023, MB): [cd]: B+(*)
• Kenny Barron: The Source (2022 [2023], Artwork): [sp]: B+(***)
• Belle and Sebastian: Late Developers (2023, Matador): [sp]: B+(***)
• Boygenius: The Record (2023, Interscope): [sp]: B
• John Cale: Mercy (2023, Domino): [sp]: B+(*)
• Rodrigo Campos: Pagode Novo (2023, YB Music): [sp]: B+(***)
• Joe Chambers: Dance Kobina (2023, Blue Note): [sp]: B+(**)
• Slaid Cleaves: Together Through the Dark (2023, Candy House Media): [sp]: B+(***)
• Das Kondensat: Andere Planeten (2020 [2023], WhyPlayJazz): [cd]: A-
• Yelena Eckemoff: Lonely Man and His Fish (2021 [2023], L&H Production, 2CD): [cd]: B+(***) [04-28]
• Michael Feinberg: Blues Variant (2022 [2023], Criss Cross): [sp]: B+(***)
• Fever Ray: Radical Romantics (2023, Rabid/Mute): [sp]: B+(**)
• Anat Fort Trio: The Berlin Sessions (2022 [2023], Sunnyside): [sp]: B+(**)
• GoGo Penguin: Everything Is Going to Be OK (2023, XXIM): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mette Henriette: Drifting (2020-22 [2023], ECM): [sp]: B
• Hieroglyphic Being: There Is No Acid in This House (2022, Soul Jazz): [sp]: B+(***)
• Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My (2023, Jagjaguwar): [sp]: B+(*)
• Islandman Feat. Okay Temiz/Muhlis Berberoglu: Direct-to-Disc Sessions (2021 [2023], Night Dreamer): [sp]: A-
• Karol G: Mañana Será Bonito (2023, Universal Music Latino): [sp]: B+(***)
• Kate NV: Wow (2023, RVNG Intl): [sp]: B
• Kelela: Raven (2023, Warp): [sp]: B+(**)
• The Long Ryders: September November (2023, Cherry Red): [sp]: B+(**)
• Loscil & Lawrence English: Colours of Air (2023, Kranky): [sp]: B+(*)
• Brad Mehldau: Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles (2020 [2023], Nonesuch): [sp]: B
• Margo Price: Strays (2023, Loma Vista): [sp]: B+(*)
• Taiko Saito: Tears of a Cloud (2022 [2023], Trouble in the East): [cd]: B+(*) [04-28]
• Kendrick Scott: Corridors (2023, Blue Note): [sp]: B+(**)
• Slowthai: Ugly (2023, Method/Universal): [sp]: A-
• Wadada Leo Smith and Orange Wave Electric: Fire Illuminations (2023, Kabell): [sp]: A-
• Walter Smith III: Return to Casual (2023, Blue Note): [sp]: B+(*)
• Something Blue: Personal Preference (2021 [2023], Posi-Tone): [sp]: B+(*)
• Mark Soskin/Jay Anderson: Empathy (2022 [2023], SteepleChase): [sp]: B+(***)
• Ben Wendel: All One (2020-22 [2023], Edition): [cd]: B
• Buster Williams: Unalome (2022 [2023], Smoke Sessions): [sp]: B

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Chet Baker: Blue Room: The 1979 Vara Studio Sessions in Holland (1979 [2023], Jazz Detective, 2CD): [cd]: B+(**) [04-28]
• Bill Charlap: All Through the Night (1997 [2023], Criss Cross): [sp]: B+(**)
• Dream Dolphin: Gaia: Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works (1996-2003) (1996-2003 [2023], Music From Memory, 2CD): [sp]: B+(**)
• Dick Sisto: Falling in Love (1994 [2023], SteepleChase): [sp]: B+(**)

Old music:

• Das Kondensat: Das Kondensat (2016 [2017], WhyPlayJazz): [sp]: B+(**)
• Das Kondensat: 2 (2020 [2021], WhyPlayJazz): [sp]: A-
• Gebhard Ullmann: Kreuzberg Park East (1997 [2000], Soul Note): [sp]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Sylvie Courvoisier & Cory Smythe: The Rite of Spring/Spectre D'Un Songe (Pyroclastic) [05-19]
• Bruno Råberg: Solo Bass: Look Inside (Orbis Music) [05-19]
• Brandon Seabrook: Brutalovechamp (Pyroclastic) [05-26]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

Supposedly Obama's motto as president was "don't do stupid shit." Republicans this week, perhaps more than ever before, proved themselves to be his polar opposite.

Sad to hear of the death of Fern Van Gieson (1928-2023), a dear friend we met twenty-some years ago through the Wichita Peace Center.

Also passing this week was Australian comedian Barry Humphries, better known as Dame Edna Everage. I can't say as I've ever been much of a fan, but this reminds me how common, innocent, and downright silly drag has been going back longer than I can remember. Republicans want to vilify and criminalize drag. While it's always possible that their schemes are just some cynical plot hatched from Frank Luntz's polling, the deeper implication is that their fears are rooted in deep insecurities, as well as a defective sense of humor, and a general loathing not just for people who are a bit different, but also for people who are a bit too similar.

Top story threads:

Kevin McCarthy v. America: I don't have time to write more, but this reminds me of the scene in Blazing Saddles where the black sheriff escapes a lynching by threatening to shoot himself.

• Ben Jacobs: [04-19] Republicans finally have a debt ceiling plan. Will Democrats blink? Their plan is chock full of items only a Republican could love:

• EJ Dionne Jr: [04-23] McCarthy's debt ceiling plan is theater unworthy of a high school gym.

• Robert Kuttner: [04-19] McCarthy's Losing Game of Debt Chicken.

• Gideon Lukans: [04-23] McCarthy's Plan to Kick 10 Million or More People Off Medicaid.

• Alexandra Petri: [04-21] We will hold the country hostage until our demands are met -- once we know them.

• Dylan Scott: [04-19] Medicaid is popular. So why are Republicans still trying to cut it? One of those questions that answers itself. The Republican master plan is to make government unpopular. They can do that by making it do unpopular things, like starting wars and helping the rich screw you over, or by keeping it from doing popular things, like helping people in need. They do both.

• Prem Thakker: [04-19] House GOP's Debt Ceiling "Plan" Calls for Medicaid and SNAP Work Requirements.

Trump: No new indictments. E. Jean Carroll's defamation case against Trump is scheduled to start on April 25, with or probably without Trump's presence. I skipped over a bunch of articles on how Trump is polling (he seems to be burying DeSantis).

• Isaac Arnsdorf/Jeff Stein: [04-21] Trump touts authoritarian vision for second term: 'I am your justice': He goes on: "And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution." "The former president is proposing deploying the military domestically, purging the federal workforce and building futuristic cities from scratch." The latter are to be called "freedom cities": "with flying cars, manufacturing hubs and opportunities for homeownership, promising a 'quantum leap in the American standard of living.'" Stephen Moore wants to build them with tax incentives and deregulation, as well as a "super police force that keeps the place safe." Some ideas do suggest Trump input, like "classical-style buildings, monuments to 'true American heroes,' and schools and streets named 'not after communists but patriots.'"

• Sophia A McClennen: [04-22] Sick of Trump? Try laughing at him. Author wrote a book on the subject: Trump Was a Joke: How Satire Made Sense of a President Who Didn't (Routledge, rather pricey at $35.96 paperback). Author previously wrote [02-01] Donald Trump is the worst kind of fool.

• Luke Savage: [04-20] Donald Trump's NFTs Are the Perfect Symbol of American Capitalilsm in 2023.

Other Republicans: If you want an intro here, refer back to the top.

• Kate Aronoff: [04-21] Why Republicans Want to Keep Free Money Out of Their Districts: "The GOP wants to cut 24 clean energy tax credits -- that disproportionately benefit Republican districts."

• Zack Beauchamp: [04-21] Why so many top Republicans want to go to war in Mexico: "An astonishingly bad idea that's gotten popular very quickly." Trump wants "battle plans." Senators Graham and Kennedy, and some House Republicans, want to designate drug cartels as "foreign terrorist organizations," and are pushing an "authorization of military force" resolution, like Afghanistan and Iraq.

• Jacob Bogage/Maria Luisa Paúl: [04-23] The conservative campaign to rewrite child labor laws: "The Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based think tank and lobbying group, drafted state legislation to strip child workplace protections."

• Jonathan Chait: [04-21] Mitt Romney Thinks the Labor Secretary Shouldn't Represent Labor: Not a big surprise given that his 2012 running mate proclaimed that Labor Day should celebrate America's great entrepreneurs, who somehow built all of America's wealth through their hard work and ingenuity. Biden's nominated Julie Su for Labor Secretary, raising Romney's ire' because her "public calendar shows standing meetings with unions and only very recent engagement with businesses." On the other hand, he had no qualms about voting for Trump's pick of Eugene Scalia (yes, nepo-son of that Scalia), who was a "lifelong union-buster" and "has yet to find a worker protection he supports or a corporate loophole he opposes." By the way, on Su see: Timothy Noah: [04-20] Republicans Took Their Shots at Biden's Labor Nominee.

• Fabiola Cineas: [04-20] Ron DeSantis's war on "woke" in Florida schools, explained: "From book bans to a hostile campus takeover, here's a rundown of DeSantis's conservative plan for Florida education."

• Julia Conley: [04-20] 'Relentless' GOP Push Leads to Nearly 1,500 Book Bans in First Half of School Year.

• Josh Dawsey/Amy Gardner: [04-20] Top GOP lawyer decries ease of campus voting in private pitch to RNC: Cleta Mitchell.

• Cory Doctorow: [04-19] Iowa's starvation strategy: "When billionaires fund unimaginably cruel policies, I think the cruelty is a tactic, a way to get the turkeys to vote for Christmas. After all, policies that grow the fortune of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us have a natural 99% disapproval rating." And: "Pro-oligarch policies don't win democratic support -- but policies that inflict harm [on] a ginned-up group of enemies might. Oligarchs need frightened, hateful people to vote for policies that will secure and expand the power of the rich. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the strategy. The point isn't cruelty, it's power." But when such policies are implemented, they sure look like cruelty -- both to the sadists who relish them, and to the rest of us. Isn't one of the basic principles of ethics to draw the line well short of cruelty?

• Luke Goldstein: [04-21] Sen. Tim Scott's 'Land of Opportunity' (Zones).

• Margaret Hartmann: [04-21] All of Ron DeSantis's Crimes Against Good Etiquette: The worst of which are at least a hundred rungs down a ranked list of his bad personal and political traits.

• Rae Hodge: [04-21] Abbott pledges to pardon a groomer: Link title, actually the same murderer Abbott pledged to pardon a week or two ago, but now we're finding out more, like how he "chats to meet young girls."

• Ellen Ioanes: [04-22] As the end of Title 42 nears, Congress is no closer on immigration overhaul: The House GOP has a hideous bill ("too harsh, even for some Republicans").

• Greg Jaffe/Patrick Marley: [04-22] In a thriving Michigan county, a community goes to war with itself: The Ottawa County Board of Commissioners has eight new members, all Republicans, all insane right-wingers. Why? As Steve M argues: [04-22] Covid Made Right-Winters insane.

• Tori Otten: [04-19] Florida Republicans Pass Bill Allowing Trans Kids to Be Removed From Their Families. Otten also wrote: [04-19] Florida Passes Anti-Drag Ban So Extreme It Could Ban All Pride Parades. Also: [04-21] Texas Republicans Pass Bill Requiring Ten Commandments in Every Classroom.

• Maria Luisa Paúl: [04-21] Tennessee lawmaker resigns after violating harassment policy: Rep. Scotty Campbell (R), who voted to expel the "Tennessee 3," finds himself on the wrong end of the stick.

• Trudy Ring: [04-21] Kansas Gov. Vetoes Four Anti-Trans Bills; Republicans Will Try to Override: Which they'll probably do, given their veto-proof majority in the KS state legislature. Similar bills have recently been passed in Kentucky (over veto) and North Dakota (signed by a Republican governor), and Republicans in the US House also passed one.

• Alex Shephard: [04-19] Ron DeSantis Is Having an Epic Disaster of a Week: "The Florida governor made a pilgrimage to Capitol Hill to freshen up his moribund campaign. Things didn't go as planned."

• Matt Stieb: [04-19] Oklahoma Sheriff Says Recording About Lynching Black People Is 'Complex'.

• Michael Tomasky: [04-20] The (Republican) Party's Over: "We asked four recovering Republicans if the GOP is salvageable. Hint: They laughed." Interview with Michael Steele, Juleanna Glover, Max Boot, and Nicolle Wallace. Beyond laughing, they don't inspire much confidence. Their "center-right" platitudes and Reagan/Lincoln nostalgia miss the real problem with Republicans today, which is that they're all opportunistic propaganda and graft, with no clue how to formulate a viable policy to address a real problem. It isn't even clear that the interviewees have a problem with that. They mostly see Trump as a fountain of bad taste.

Guns: OK, this is the week I finally gave up on trying to rationalize a right to guns. Take them away. Consider "my cold dead fingers a taunt." I'm the first to admit that banning something people really want doesn't make it go away, but in this case it would certainly make it harder for a lot of very stupid people to do vicious things that are completely unjustifiable. Jeffrey St Clair (more on his piece below) offers a quick rundown:

In one 24-hour period last weekend, there were at least 15 mass shootings in the US, including 4 shot in Northridge, California, 6 in Louisville, 36 in Dadeville, Alabama, 6 in Cyrus, Minnesota, 3 in New Orleans, 6 in Paterson, NJ, 5 in Wiainai, Hawaii, 4 in Detroit, another 3 in Louisville, 4 in Phoenix, 3 in Los Angeles, 3 in Charlotte, 4 in Newark and 3 in Cincy.

This week in America . . .

1. A teenage boy was shot for ringing the wrong doorbell.
2. A teenage girl was shot for entering the wrong driveway.
3. A cheerleader was shot for going up to the wrong car.
4. A six-year old girl shot for rolling a ball into the wrong yard.

Globally, 87% of the children killed by gunfire were shot in the USA.

He also offers stats for mass shootings in US by year, rising from 272 in 2014 to 415 in 2019, then to 610-690 from 2020-22. This year's total of 164 in 108 days is actually a bit behind the recent pace (although 554 would be the 4th most ever). [PS: Others insist Frequent shootings put US mass killings on a record pace.] Further down, he also notes that "Boston cops shot two dogs this week while serving a warrant against a man for . . . driving without a license." I'm beginning to feel wistful for the threatened dystopia of a "world where only criminals have guns." For one thing, that would make it easier to identify the criminals. Some of these stories below (and by Sunday there'll no doubt be more):

• Nicole Narea: [04-21] It was a violent week in America. That's become the norm.

• Julie Bosman/Mitch Smith/Jesse McKinley/Jay Root: [04-19] Hundreds of Miles Apart, Separate Shootings Follow Wrong Turns.

• David French: [04-23] Gun Idolatry Is Destroying the Case for Guns.

• Amanda Marcotte: [04-21] The GOP war on youth: Spate of innocent stranger shootings shows perils of paranoid rhetoric. "In every case, we have angry, paranoid men with guns harming -- or killing -- innocent young people who are just trying to live their lives."

• Pram Thakker: [04-20] Cop City Protester Was Shot 57 Times; Had No Gunpowder Residue on Hands: So much for the claim that he had shot first. Thakker also wrote: [04-20] Tennessee Republicans Issue Stupidest Possible Statement on Gun Control.

• Li Zhou:

  • [04-19] The horror of Ralph Yarl's shooting.

  • [04-20] "Shoot first, ask questions later": The danger of stand your ground laws.

The Courts:

• Ian Millhiser: [04-21] The Supreme Court's new abortion pill decision, explained: Judge Kacsmaryk's ruling has been stayed pending appeal. As Millhiser put it somewhat more pithily in a tweet: "The Supreme Court did not do the most hackish, credibility-destroying thing it could possibly do." Although Samuel Alito sure wanted to. Another Millhiser tweet: "Sam Alito is such an asshole he just put us through a week of stress just so he could take his time writing a whiny three page dissent."

• Simon Lazarus: [04-21] The Democrats' Appalling Failure to Confront the Rogue, Right-Wing Supreme Court.

• Jennifer Rubin: [04-22] The Supreme Court delivers a sigh of relief -- and an outrageous dissent, following up on her [04-21] What is wrong with these people?

Fox: Just before the trial opened, Dominion Voting Machines agreed to settle their defamation suit with Fox, for a whopping $787 million (they had originally sued for $1.6 billion, so about half that).

• Matthew Dallek: [04-19] How Fox Helped Break the American Right: I'm more inclined to say that they took a right that was thoroughly discredited by the second Bush administration, and revived it as a fact-free revenge fantasy. It was a con, but a lucrative one for Fox, even if they wound up having to pay a little something for their lies years later.

• David J Lynch: [04-21] Dominion settlement tab may be just the start of Fox's financial woes: "Additional lawsuits threaten to erase more of its corporate giant's cash pile."

• Harold Meyerson: [04-20] It's Time for a Shareholder Suit Against Fox: "The squandering of nearly a billion bucks due to management's misconduct should prompt a shareholder revolt."

• Chris Lehmann: [04-19] It Costs $787.5 Million to Lie to the Public. Fox News Can Afford It. True enough, but most of the time Fox lies they make money doing so, so this settlement is a fluke exception, just part of the cost of doing business.

• Nicole Narea: [04-19] Why a record-shattering settlement might not change Fox News.

• Margaret Sullivan: [04-19] Dominion suit exposed how Fox damages democracy with lies.

• Michael Tomasky: [04-21] First Alex Jones, and Now Fox News -- Connect the Dots, People: Asks why "we don't see liberal media outlets paying huge settlements in defamation lawsuits," and answers that they don't lie brazenly like the right-wingers, who: "They lie. They lie all the time about practically everything." Still, it's very rare, and rather peculiar, for them to be held accountable for any given lie.

• Steve M: [04-20] Fox has plenty of ways to divide America that don't qualify as defamation. "Fox won't stop being Fox, because Fox doesn't need to put itself at legal risk to be Fox."

Next up, Mike Lindell: But even before he faces his own Dominion lawsuit, there's this:

• Ryan Bort/Asawin Suebsaeng: [04-20] Mike Lindell Ordered to Pay $5 Million to Trump Voter Who Debunked His Election Lies: I guess that's what happens when someone takes what Lindell says at its word.

• Chris Dehghanpoor/Emma Brown/Jon Swaine: [04-20] Mike Lindell's firm told to pay $5 million in 'Prove Mike Wrong' election-fraud challenge.

Earth Day:

• Elizabeth Kolbert: [04-22] It's Earth Day -- and the news isn't good: "New reports show that ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than anticipated, and other disasters loom."

• Kate Aronoff: [04-18] Is Jimmy Carter Where Environmentalism Went Wrong? "Carter's austerity was part of a bigger project. It didn't really have much to do with environmentalism." There is a lot to chew on here, but also more stuff the author doesn't mention, like the "Carter Doctrine" that committed the US to securing oil shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf -- the second of two major decisions in the 1970s to keep gas cheap (the other being Nixon's refusal to conserve oil after production peaked in 1969, leading to a trade deficit in 1970 that has only grown ever since).

• Liza Featherstone: [04-20] Nixon Was the Weirdest Environmentalist: "Richard Nixon, the original culture warrior, helped establish Earth Day and poured millions of dollars into conservation, despite his own ambivalence about the environmental movement." There was a brief period 10-20 years ago when some liberal pundits thought it would be clever to rehabilitate Nixon as a closet progressive, largely on the basis of a series of bills that he signed after Democrats in Congress passed them, including the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and OSHA. But the best you can say for Nixon is that he recognized that government needed to move left to even begin to deal with some pressing problems (and with the Cuyahoga River burning down bridges, the environment was the most obvious one). But Nixon rarely if ever cared about solving problems (one fine example of his indifference was making Donald Rumsfeld head of the EEOC). He just didn't want to lose any political power by taking the wrong side of an issue, and the one thing he really did care about was power.

Buzzfeed, Twitter, etc.:

• Kyle Chayka: [04-21] Buzzfeed, blue check marks, and the end of an Internet era.

• Jon Queally: [04-23] Experts Warn Musk Misleading Celebrity Twitter Blue Checks Are Violation: "Fake endorsements violate FTC rules, legally exposing Musk."

• Nathan J Robinson: [04-20] The Collapse of BuzzFeed News Shows Why For-Profit Journalism is a Disaster.

Ukraine War:

• Connor Echols: [04-21] Diplomacy Watch: US ignores calls for negotiations at its own peril: "Huge swathes of the world want the war in Ukraine to end as soon as possible. Can Washington afford to disregard them?" Brazilian president Lula da Silva "sparked a controversy" when he said the US "needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace." A US spokesman replied that "Lula's comments amounted to little more than 'Russian and Chinese propaganda.'" The Americans aren't even to the stage of pretending they' care about peace. Granted, Russia isn't at that stage either, but why should that stop the US from offering the prospect of a future where the present conflict is dead and buried? Failure to do so suggests that the real US goal isn't to defend Ukraine but to destroy Russia -- which is the belief, and fear, of most hawkish Russians. The Ukrainian position that they'll only talk after Russia fully withdraws is similarly unhelpful.

  Echols also interviewed John Sopko in: [02-21] Afghanistan watchdog: 'You're gonna see pilferage' of Ukraine aid. No doubt. It happens everywhere else -- the Pentagon is notoriously unable to keep track of their own allocations. Opponents of US support for Ukraine have latched on this, hoping to discredit the war effort by taint of scandal (see Kelly Beaucar Vlahos: [04-20] Republican lawmakers to Biden: no more 'unrestrained aid' to Ukraine. It doesn't mean there should be no aid, but it's always important to stay vigilant against corruption (Afghanistan and Iraq being prime examples, but same thing was endemic in Vietnam).

• Joshua Frank: [04-21] Will the West Turn Ukraine Into a Nuclear Battlefield? Specifically, he's talking about the use of depleted uranium shells, which are effective for penetrating tank armor, but are also radioactive and toxic ("depleted" means they are pure U-238, after the slightly more fissile U-235 isotopes have been removed). Depleted uranium was used extensively by the US in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, where it caused cancer, both in Iraqis and in US troops.

• Jen Kirby: [04-22] So what's the deal with Ukraine's spring offensive? While it can be said that both sides are refusing to negotiate based on the hopes that they can still improve their territorial positions with an offensive once conditions permit, Ukraine's hopes are slightly better grounded: they made net gains around Kharkiv and Kherson in the fall; they've withstood Russian efforts to capture Bakhmut (in one of those classic "destroy the village to save it" operations); they've gained tanks and other weapons for offensive operations. A year ago, Russia was on offense, and Ukraine was pinned down, focusing on defending its capital, Kyiv, while giving ground in the south, including Kherson and Mariupol. I question whether their offensive will be much more successful than Russia's, especially when it comes to areas that have been effectively part of Russia since 2014, but it's not unusual for people to have to learn their limits the hard way.

• Branko Marcetic: [04-21] Why is Facebook censoring Sy Hersh's NordStream report?

• Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [04-17] Lieven inside Ukraine: some real breaks, and insights.

Other stories around the world:

• Shireen Al-Adeimi: [04-20] With -- or despite -- US influence, Yemen appears poised for real peace. Unclear that there is any US influence here, other than to prolong war. UAE sponsored the walks between Yeman and the Saudis, and China brokered a thaw between Saudi Arabia and Iran -- the Saudis have long characterized Yemen as a war against Iranian proxies, which is all it took to hoodwink the Americans.

• Khalil al-Anani: [04-18] Sudan on fire: a tortuous transition and power struggle fueled by outsiders.

• Jacqueline Burns: [04-23] The Violence in Sudan Is Partly Our Fault.

• Ellen Ioanes: [04-23] In Sudan, a power struggle between rival armed forces turns violent.

• Eve Ottenberg: [04-21] Peacemaker No More: US Diplomacy in Decline.

• Ken Silverstein: [04-20] Inside the Right-Wing Campaign to Undermine Colombia's First Leftist Leader.

Other stories:

Kenneth Chang: [04-20] SpaceX's Starship 'Learning Experience' Ends in Explosion: Elon Musk's biggest erection yet blew up a few minutes after liftoff, but somehow nearly every article has followed the company line that the disastrous failure is really just a "learning experience." It's true that there is a hip management culture in Silicon Valley that sees taking risks as something to be encouraged, and it's always important to learn from mistakes, but you usually want to keep your test cases small and discrete, and do them in ways you can easily observe. Piling several billion dollars worth of hardware up and blowing it up 24 miles into space is far from ideal, which makes the spin seem a bit desperate.

• Ekaterina Pechenkina/Kayla Suo: [04-20] FAA grounds SpaceX's Starship rockets after explosion minutes into launch.

• Li Zhou: [04-21] Why SpaceX doesn't see its rocket explosion as a failure.

Jay Caspian Kang: [04-21] Has Black Lives Matter changed the world?: "A new book makes the case for a more pragmatic anti-policing movement -- one that seeks to build working-class solidarity across racial lines." The book is by Cedric Johnson: After Black Lives Matter.

Rebecca Leber: [04-19] Why Asia's early heat wave is so alarming: This should probably be the biggest story of the week. With no further references in my usual sources, I looked more explicitly and found:

• Stuti Mishra: [04-20] One in three people on the planet hit by 'monster Asian heatwave'.

• Rebecca Ratcliffe./Hannah Ellis-Petersen: [04-19] Severe heatwave engulfs Asia causing deaths and forcing schools to close.

• Dan Stillman: [04-17] Historic Asia heat breaks hundreds of records, with extremes in Thailand and China.

Will Leitch: [04-18] The Sports-Betting Ads Are Awful, and They're Not Going Away. Just because something is legal (in the sense of not being illegal), doesn't mean you should be able to advertise it everywhere (or for that matter, anywhere). One critical thing that distinugishes advertising from free speech is that it almost always appears as a sales proposition -- this is every bit as true for political as for deodorant ads -- which means that mistruths should be prosecuted as fraud. Still, the gray areas, where they dance around the truth, or say one thing while implying another (like when big pharma ads list side-effects while everyone keeps smiling), is often worse. I think this is basically true for everything, but gambling has got to be one of the worst things you could possibly advertise. It's not just that gamblers lose (while foolishly led to believe they won't), or that the people who take their money are among the most undeserving and unscrupulous of racketeers, but that the very idea that one should so disrespect one's hard-earned labor destroys the soul.

I should add a personal note: When I was a child, I noticed that most TV shows were sponsored ("brought to you by") big corporations, which splashed their names about, taking full credit for things I enjoyed, and mostly selling things I could imagine my family buying. Then I saw a list of America's biggest companies, and noticed that insurance companies were huge, but hadn't been buying TV advertising. So I wished that they would share some wealth and contribute to my entertainment . . . until they did, and I was shocked and disgusted by their sales pitch. That's when I decided some things should not be advertised. Of course, lots of services couldn't be advertised back then, like lawyers. Later, cigarette advertising was banned, and that turned out all to the good.

Back in the 1970s, I wound up doing a fair amount of work behind the scenes in advertising. I read numerous books on the subject (notably David Ogilvy). I came to respect the craft, creativity, art, and science of the industry -- the latter was built on the social sciences, which was my major in college, and something I viewed with an especially critical eye. Of course, I also came to be repulsed by the whole business. While there needs to be ways for honest businesses to make the public aware of their products and services, our current system of advertising does much more harm than good. And depending on advertisers to support essential public services like journalism (see Robinson below) does even more harm. So ban it all. But sports betting would be a particularly good place to start.

Jasmine Liu: [04-21] On the Road With the Ghost of Ashli Babbitt: "Jeff Sharlet saw close up how the far right has used grief and bitterness to grow its ranks." Interview with Sharlet, whose new book is: The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War.

Samantha Oltman/Brian Resnick/Adam Clark Estes/Bryan Walsh: [04-21] The 100-year-old mistake that's reshaping the American West: "What happens if the Colorado River keeps drying up?" Introduction to a new batch of articles.

David Quammen: [04-23] Why Dead Birds Are Falling From the Sky: Another pandemic may be just around the future (or if you're a bird, already here).

Nathan J Robinson: Also look for Buzzfeed above.

• [04-17] We Can't Overstate the Danger of Tom Cotton's "Might Makes Right" Foreign Policy: The Arkansas Republican Senator has a new book out, called Only the Strong: Reversing the Left's Plot to Sabotage American Power, arguing that "Democrats are insufficiently militaristic" (an argument Robinson derides as "laughable," citing examples from Truman to Obama). Given that US foreign policy is already massively, if not admittedly, tilted in the direction that Cotton advocates -- naked projection of power for purely selfish ends, the only thing extra he's advocating is that US power should be utterly shameless (regarding purely self-interested motives) and unapologetic (regarding collateral damages) -- a foreign policy which was only seriously attempted by Germany and Japan in WWII (although Israel seems to think in those terms, which is why American neocons are so enamored, but somewhat more limited given their lack of size). While there is something to be said for cutting out the hypocrisy about democracy and freedom -- things Cotton has no desire to preserve domestically, let alone anywhere else -- such frankness would make it even harder to command alliances, and would only increase the resolve of those inclined to resist US dictates. Cotton seems to think that the only thing that has held kept his strategy from dominating is the pathetic wobbliness of lily-livered Democrats.

• [04-19] Homelessness Is an Entirely Solvable Problem: "Whether we let people have houses is a choice we make." Also: "Shocking, I know. The more expensive a place is, the more people struggle to afford housing, and the more they struggle to afford housing, the more likely they are to be unhoused."

• [2022-02-11] On Experiencing Joe Rogan: This is a bit old, but probably all you need to know.

Priya Satia: [04-18] Born Imperial: The lingering ghosts of the British Empire. Review of Sathnam Sanghera: Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain.

Jeffrey St Clair: [04-21] Roaming Charges: In the Land of Unfortunate Things: Opens with a bit about Dr. Bruce Jessen ("the CIA's torture shrink"), before moving on to the Dominion-Fox settlement, which winds up noting Rupert Murdoch's lobbying the British to nuke China rather than giving up Hong Kong, and on to other topics. "[US Supreme Court Justice Clarence] Thomas isn't being bribed to make decisions; he's being rewarded for the fact that he'd make these decisions without being bribed. So would Alito." This is actually a common model, but is more conspicuous with Supreme Court justices, as their lifetime appointments don't allow a tasteful wait until retirement. Clinton and Obama earned their post-presidential fortunes for their service to an oligarchy they made all the richer.

Michael Tomasky: [04-23] Here's the Gutsy, Unprecedented Campaign Biden and the Democrats Need to Run: Here's the guy who thought Obama would be transformational. (Or was that Robert Kuttner? Similar thinkers who get a bit myopic when they get their hopes up.) The one thing Tomasky is right is that Democrats need to win big in 2024 in order to get a chance to deliver on whatever it is they campaign on, big or small. And while I'm reasonably comfortable that Biden can beat Trump, DeSantis, Pence, or the lower echelon of GOP apparatchiki, he's not very good at explaining why a solid majority of Americans should vote for him, and he's not what you'd call charismatic. The only thing that distinguishes him from the next 20-30 contenders is that he's acceptable to both the party rank-and-file and to the moneybags who'd sabotage the election to make sure no one too far left got in.

Still, two problems here. One is that the laundry list of bills isn't all that big or helpful. Free opioid clinics and adding dental coverage to Medicare are tiny compared to Medicare for All. New laws to limit monopolies and to encourage unions could help, but will take some time to gain traction. Why not a Worker's Bill of Rights, which would combine some of these things (minimum wage, overtime) with some other recent proposals (like parental leave and prohibiting NDAs) with some more ideas that are overdue (like rebalancing arbitration systems)? What about a Reproductive Health Act, which would guarantee the right to abortion, and also provide universal insurance for pregnancy and early infancy? And why not combine marijuana legalization/regulation with pain clinics that could finally make some headway on opioids (not that pot is a panacea here; sometimes opioids are needed, but legal ones, administered under care with counseling)? And there's still a lot more work to do on infrastructure, climate change, and disaster relief. And if you really want to wow minds, why not work for world peace, instead of dedicating US foreign policy to arms sales (like Trump did, although one can argue that Biden is even better at it)?

Still, I doubt that policy ideas, no matter how coherent and bold, are the key to winning elections. Sure, eventually you have to do something worthwhile (which is why Republican regimes never last: they get elected in a wave of good feeling, then invariably spoil it within 8-12 years), but first you need to get people (who don't understand much about policy) to trust you to do the right things, and not just sell out to private donor interests. Granted, like the campers running from a bear, the Democrat should only have to be faster than the Republican, but appearing less crooked is trickier than you'd expect, as proven by Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump on just that issue.

Brian Walsh: [04-19] Are 8 billion people too many -- or too few? Wrong question, as the writer (if not the titlist) realizes. No time for a disquisition here, but the goal should never be to see how many people you can cram into Malthusian misery, but to figure out how to reduce the misery of those who we do have, then try to sustain that.

Daily Log

Shopping for scanners:

• Brother ADS-2800W Wireless 50 sheet duplex: $549.99 [LH-3] [sane]
• Fujitsu fi800R dual auto feeders: $469.28
• Fujitsu ScanSnap ix1300 Wireless/USB double sided, auto and manual feeders: $269.99 (fujitsu-sane "good")
• Brother ADS-2200 Desktop: $? [LH.2]
• Brother ADS-4700W Professional wireless/ethernet duplex: $469.89 [LH-4]
• Brother ADS-1700W Wireless/USB: $269.99 [LH.1]
• Brother ADS-1250W Wireless/USB: $249.99
• Canon ?
• Canon imageFormula R10 duplex 20 page: $174.00

Legend:

• LH: Linuxhint: Best Linux Compatible Document Scanners in 2022

I also looked at a few flatbed scanners:

• Plustek OpticSilm 2700: $129.90

Music Week

Expanded blog post, April archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 63 albums, 5 A-list,

Music: Current count 40031 [39968] rated (+63), 54 [58] unrated (-4: 26 new, 28 old).

Not only hit but blew right past the 40,000 rated albums mark this week. I noted the moment in a tweet on Friday (4/14). The database introduction and genre breakdown is here. Most of this framework dates back to the early 2000s, when I was scouring the album guides for prospects. Perhaps some of the genres should be divided up more, especially by time, but I keep thinking that a better solution would be a better tagged database -- a project that always seems to be slipping away into the future.

Records below are primarily non-jazz: probably the first week all year. I added a lot of stuff to my 2023 tracking file, so I've had a lot to pick from. Given how many records by reputable artists I heard, I'm surprised that so far hit the A- mark -- especially the three A records from Robert Christgau's April Consumer Guide (which I played at least three times each). Some of those I had played earlier (recently: Willie Nelson, 100 Gecs; others way back: Oranj Symphonette, Wayne Shorter. By the way, my pick of the Shorter Blue Notes is Night Dreamer, although the one I really recommend is The Classic Blue Note Recordings (2-CD, 2002). My Shorter list is here. Beyond that, his albums with Art Blakey and Miles Davis are often great, and his albums with Weather Report never are.

Seems like a lot of musicians have been dying recently, but few as notable as Ahmad Jamal (1930-2023). He almost exclusively recorded in trios, something I'm not a big fan of, but if you look at my list, you'll find A- records scattered over four decades, and also notice that I missed a lot in between.

Technically, the Christian McBride album missed my cutoff, but I decided to include it here because I thought I should have more good new releases, and because it shows you what Marcus Strickland can do when he's not recording his own albums.

Rough day today, especially with eyes and allergies. Former will probably clear up (though cataract surgery is likely in the future), and latter will probably get worse.

Wrote another monster Speaking of Which over the weekend. Kicked out a tweet this morning when I saw a particularly laughable op-ed:

I see Robert M Gates has an op-ed called "US needs to relearn how to tell its story to the world." Actually, the US needs a better story. Like, one that doesn't start with: sanction our enemies, buy our arms, and if you do, we'll excuse any human rights offenses.

The US had a better (but still imperfect) story before WWII, when an elite group of foreign policy wonks decided that America should save the world by running it, or alternatively that America should save colonialism by converting it to global capitalism, allowing natives to hold "independent" political posts subject to the tight credit controls of the World Bank and IMF.

New records reviewed this week:

• 100 Gecs: 10,000 Gecs (2023, Dog Show/Atlantic): [sp]: B+(*)
• 100 Gecs: Snake Eyes (2022, Dog Show/Atlantic, EP): [sp]: B+(*)
• Arooj Aftab/Vijay Iyer/Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile (2023, Verve): [sp]: B+(**)
• Florian Arbenz/Greg Osby/Arno Krijger: Conversation #9: Targeted (2023, Hammer): [bc]: B+(***)
• Florian Arbenz/Jorge Vistel/Wolfgang Puschnig/Oren Marshall/Michael Arbenz: Conversation #8: Ablaze (2022, Hammer): [bc]: B+(***)
• Gina Birch: I Play My Bass Loud (2023, Third Man): [sp]: B+(***)
• Bktherula: LVL5 P1 (2023, Warner, EP): [sp]: B+(*)
• Peter Brötzmann/Heather Leigh/Fred Lonberg-Holm: Naked Nudes [Brötz 80th at ADA 2021] (2021 [2023], Trost): [bc]: B+(*)
• Tom Collier: Boomer Vibes Volume 1 (2023, Summit): [cd]: B+(*)
• Miley Cyrus: Endless Summer Vacation (2023, Columbia): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jesse Davis: Live at Smalls Jazz Club (2022 [2023], Cellar): [sp]: B+(**)
• Angel Bat Dawid: Requiem for Jazz (2019-20 [2023], International Anthem): [sp]: B
• Michael Dease: The Other Side: The Music of Gregg Hill (2022 [2023], Origin): [cd]: B+(*)
• Lana Del Rey: Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (2023, Interscope/Polydor): [sp]: B+(**)
• Marc Ducret: Palm Sweat: Marc Ducret Plays the Music of Tim Berne (2022 [2023], Screwgun/Out of Your Head): [cd]: B+(***)
• Bokani Dyer: Radio Sechaba (2023, Brownswood): [cd]: B+(**) [05-12]
• Vince Ector Organotomy Trio +: Live @ the Side Door (2020 [2023], Cabo Verde): [cd]: B+(**)
• El Michels Affair & Black Thought: Glorious Game (2023, Big Crown): [sp]: A-
• Emperor X: Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor (2023, Dreams of Field, EP): [bc]: B+(**)
• Nick Finzer: Dreams Visions Illusions (2022 [2023], Outside In Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Robbie Fulks: Bluegrass Vacation (2023, Compass): [sp]: B+(***)
• Girl Scout: Real Life Human Garbage (2023, Made, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
• The Hold Steady: The Price of Progress (2023, Positive Jams): [sp]: A-
• JPEGMafia x Danny Brown: Scaring the Hoes (2023, AWAL): [sp]: B+(*)
• Larry June and the Alchemist: The Great Escape (2023, Empire): [sp]: B+(*)
• Jason Kush: Finally Friday (2021 [2023], MCG Jazz): [cd]: B+(***)
• Julian Lage: The Layers (2022 [2023], Blue Note, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
• Las Vegas Boneheads: Sixty and Still Cookin' (2023, Curt Miller Music): [cd]: B
• Mark Lewis: Sunlight Shines In (2019 [2023], Audio Daddio): [cd]: B+(**)
• Brandon Lopez: Vilevilevilevilevilevilevilevile (2023, Tao Forms): [cd]: B+(**)
• Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra: Lightning Dreamers (2021 [2023], International Anthem): [sp]: B+(**)
• Christian McBride's New Jawn: Prime (2021 [2023], Mack Avenue): [sp]: A-
• Francisco Mela Featuring Cooper-Moore and William Parker: Music Frees Our Souls Vol. 2 (2020 [2023], 577): [dl]: B+(***)
• Gurf Morlix: Caveman (2022, Rootball): [sp]: B+(**)
• Gurf Morlix: I Challenge the Beast (2023, Rootball): [sp]: B+(***)
• Willie Nelson: I Don't Know a Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard (2023, Legacy): [sp]: B+(**)
• Billy Nomates: Cacti (2023, Invada): [sp]: B+(**)
• Grant Peeples: A Murder of Songs (2023, self-released): [sp]: B+(**)
• Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You (2023, Perpetual Novice): [sp]: B+(*)
• Quasi: Breaking the Balls of History (2023, Sub Pop): [sp]: B-
• Joakim Rainer Trio: Light.Sentence (2021 [2023], Sonic Transmissions): [sp]: B+(**)
• Rent Romus/Heikki Koskinen: Itkuja Suite, Invocations on Lament (2022 [2023], Edgetone): [cd]: B+(*)
• Ryuichi Sakamoto: 12 (2023, Milan): [sp]: B
• Cécile McLorin Salvant: Mélusine (2023, Nonesuch): [sp]: B+(*)
• Sleaford Mods: UK Grim (2023, Rough Trade): [sp]: B+(***)
• Peter Smith Trio: Dollar Dreams (2022 [2023], Real Magic): [cd]: B+(**)
• Bruce Springsteen: Only the Strong Survive (2022, Columbia): [sp]: B
• Marcus Strickland Twi-Life: The Universe's Wildest Dream (2023, Strick Music): [bc]: B+(*)
• Lukas Traxel: One-Eyed Daruma (2023, We Jazz): [sp]: B+(***)
• The Tubs: Dead Meat (2023, Trouble in Mind): [sp]: B+(*)
• Luis Vicente 4tet: House in the Valley (2021 [2023], Clean Feed): [sp]: B+(**)
• Waco Brothers: The Men That God Forgot (2023, Plenty Tuff): [sp]: B+(**)
• Yaeji: With a Hammer (2023, XL): [sp]: B+(*)
• Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy (2023, Ninja Tune): B+(***)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Jeff Johnson: My Heart (1991 [2023], Origin): [cd]: B+(**) [04-21]
• JuJu: A Message From Mozambique (1972 [2023], Strut): [sp]: A-

Old music:

• Mose Allison: The Word From Mose Allison (1964, Atlantic): [sp]: A-
• Mose Allison: Mose Allison Sings (1957-59 [2006], Prestige): [sp]: B+(***)
• Derek Bailey/George Lewis/John Zorn: Yankees (1982 [1983], Ceklluloid): [r]: B
• Jeppe Zeeberg: It's the Most Basic Thing You Can Do on a Boat (2014, Barefoot): [sp]: B+(***)
• Jeppe Zeeberg: Riding on the Boogie Woogie of Life (2015, Barefoot): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jeppe Zeeberg: The Four Seasons (2017, Barefoot): [sp]: B+(*)
• Jeppe Zeeberg: Eight Seemingly Unrelated Pieces of Piano Music (2018, Barefoot): [bc]: A-
• Jeppe Zeeberg: Universal Disappointment (2019, self-released): [sp]: B

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Richard X Bennett & Matt Parker: Parker Plays X (BYNK) [05-13]
• George Coleman: Live at Smalls Jazz Club (Cellar) [05-19]
• Les DeMerle: Sound 67: Once in a Lifetime (1967, Origin) [04-21]
• Lauren Henderson: Conjuring (Brontosaurus) [04-21]
• Jeff Johnson: My Heart (1991, Origin) [04-21]
• Jason Keiser: Shaw's Groove (OA2) [04-21]
• John Pizzarelli: Stage & Screen (Palmetto) [04-21]
• Alex Weitz: Rule of Thirds (Outside In Music) [04-28]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

While writing this, I threw out the following tweet:

Thinking about major patterns in American history: one is that progressive change often leads to reaction, which in turn inevitably falls into dysfunction and catastrophe, necessitating further progressive change.

First pass omitted "often" and "inevitably," but I had more characters to work with. I was thinking about adding a clause to the effect that the trick will be to sell progressive change so broadly and deeply that reaction won't be able to take root. Past progressive periods have had lasting impact, even once power shifted to opposing forces. Often, as in FDR's successful switch of focus to WWII or in LBJ's Vietnam War debacle, power shifted mostly due to other factors. Republicans have often been granted grace periods on the assumption that they wouldn't really do the awful things they campaigned for -- at least that they wouldn't do them to their own voters. On the other hand, reactionaries are directly responsible for their disastrous turns, because the stratified societies and repressive governments they favor are inherently destabilizing and suicidal.

This meme showed up in my Facebook feed, forwarded by a dear friend who's not known for lefty politics. Title is: "Shocking Things Liberals Believe." The list:

• People working 40 hours a week should not live in poverty.
• CEOs should not receive 3,000 times the pay of their workers.
• Wall Street gangsters should go to prison when they steal.
• No child should ever have to worry about being shot at school.
• No one, especially veterans, should be homeless.
• There should not be subsidies for profitable corporations.
• Equal rights and equal pay should be the benchmark for all Americans.
• Politicians should not dictate medical decisions for women.
• Lobbyists should not be allowed to bribe our representatives.
• Companies should not be permitted to trash the earth for profit.
• Healthcare should be given to all, not be a luxury for rich people.
• Everyone should have access to higher education.

That's certainly not an exhaustive list, but nothing there I'd nitpick much less argue against. I'm not sure I'd describe liberals thusly, but if liberals are serious about protecting their idea of individual liberty, they need to get behind an agenda that does a much better job of securing basic rights, including Roosevelt's "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear," than America does now.

Top story threads:

Trump:

• Mariana Alfaro: [04-12] Trump sues former counsel Michael Cohen for $500 million: This one is pretty extreme, even for Trump. Has any defendant ever sued a witness before the trial? For a follow up, see Igor Derysh: [04-14] Experts say Trump's lawsuit against Michael Cohen could badly backfire, where he quotes Cohen: "I can't believe how stupid he was to have actually filed it." Looking forward to the countersuit.

• Zack Beauchamp: [04-14] The far left and far right agree on Donald Trump's foreign policy legacy. They're both wrong. Not really a lot of evidence on either side -- his "far left" citation is Christian Parenti: [04-07] Trump's Real Crime Is Opposing Empire -- a ridiculous piece, but one could argue that "[Trump] has done more to restrain the US imperium than any politician in 75 years" is true if only by default. I cited a similar argument from Chris Hedges a few weeks back, but very few on the left see Trump as anything more than a reckless, incompetent blowhard. As for the right, there has long existed an anti-interventionist sentiment, with even the occasional odd member of Congress (like Ron Paul). While some of these people had a soft spot for Trump (one who tried very hard to like Trump was the late Justin Raimondo), they generally regard him as having been captured by the Deep State he supposedly opposes.

• Victoria Bekiempis: [04-13] Reid Hoffman Is Funding E. Jean Carroll's Lawsuit Against Donald Trump. Trump's lawyers are whining, but author points out that Hoffman's former business partner Peter Thiel has been doing the same thing: funding lawsuits against political foes. I'm reminded of Clinton-nemesis Richard Mellon Scaife. And since when does "a recent indictment" support delaying an unrelated trial?

• Jonathan Chait: [04-16] Why Liberals Should Hope DeSantis Beats Trump: "The phrase 'lesser evil' very much applies here." No, it doesn't. As evils go, this is a distinction not worth making. Humphrey v. Nixon was a "lesser evil"; Gore v. Bush was a "lesser evil"; Hillary Clinton v. Trump was another "lesser evil," perhaps with the gap growing. DeSantis v. Trump is like picking between Hitler and Goebbels (and note that you can argue who's who either way). Moreover, for those of us who are not Republicans, it's not our place or in our interest to favor one Republican over any other. Even if Republicans can't be sure of always nominating the worst possible candidate, they do hit that mark pretty often. What Democrats have to do is to prepare to beat anyone the Republicans throw at them.

• Josh Dawsey: [04-16] Trump, facing probes, seeks to assert dominance over GOP at donor retreat.

• Margaret Hartmann: [04-14] Trump's Ron DeSantis 'Pudding Fingers' Ad Is Disgustingly Good. For disgusting but less good, you can check out some anti-Trump ads from the pro-DeSantis PAC Never Back Down. Florida Politics reports that when someone types "Ron DeSantis" into Google, the first suggestion is "pudding."

• David Margolick: [04-14] Donald Trump Sinks to a New Low by Dog-Whistling an Old Racist Tune.

• Nikki McCann Ramirez: [04-11] Trump Says Court Staff at Arraignment Cried and Apologized.

• Kelly McClure: [04-14] Trump speaks at NRA convention days after mass shootings [and a day or two before the next]: Seems unfair to single out the timing of this speech given that there are more mass shootings than days, so you never have to look back more than one or two to find an inappropriate moment. More troublesome is the content of the speech. Link here to a related piece, by Amanda Marcotte: [03-29] Trump wants Americans to think society is an apocalyptic wasteland: Mass shootings help him.

• Chris Walker: [04-14] Trump made $160 million in foreign business deals as president: "Trump repeatedly broke his promise that his company wouldn't make new foreign business deals while he was in office." Bear this in mind next time someone complains that Trump's only being prosecuted for technicalities. He's lucky if that's all they get him for.

• Li Zhou: [04-12] The standoff between Jim Jordan and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, explained: "House Republicans are going after the DA's work on Trump's indictment. Bragg is fighting back."

Other Republicans:

• Ryan Cooper: [04-13] Republicans' Self-Inflicted Budget Impasse: "The GOP discovers that shouting lies on television is not a good way to figure out how to tax and spend." Further down: "It turns out to be quite difficult to operate a political party made up of 75 percent crack-brained yahoo attention hounds, whose voters are 'egged on by a media apparatus that has trained its audience to demand the impossible and punish the sell-outs who can't deliver,' in the words of Alex Pareene." Pareene also wrote (back in 2017): "Donald Trump today is a cruel dolt turned into a raving madman by cable news and Breitbart.com." Yeah, but four years later he's much further gone.

• Gabriella Ferrigne: [04-14] New docs reveal racist messages by man Abbott wants to pardon in BLM protester killing: "Daniel Perry repeatedly made racist comments and discussed plans to kill people."

• David French: [04-13] How Tennessee Illustrates the Three Rules of MAGA: I hadn't seen this formulation before: "First, that before Trump the G.O.P. was a political doormat, helplessly walked over by Democrats time and again. Second, that we live in a state of cultural emergency where the right has lost everywhere and must turn to politics to reverse this cultural momentum. And third, that in this state of emergency, all conservatives must rally together. There can be no enemies to the right." Like so much Republican drivel, it's hard to pick which thread to unravel first. But sure, I suppose you can divide the public sphere into economics and culture. The focus on culture is convenient for many Republicans because it distracts from the main thrust of Republican policy going back to Reagan, which has been economic: to shift power and wealth from labor and customers to business, leading to a massive increase in inequality. It's easy to understand why Republicans don't want people thinking about economics, except insofar as they can fob blame off on Democrats (gas prices works for this, even though most of the executives who profit from higher prices skew hard Republican). Culture change, on the other hand, happens irrespective of politics, which feeds into both their victimization complex and their sense of desperation.

• Gabrielle Gurley: [04-13] Tennessee Republicans Step Up Attacks on Democratic Cities: "States rights" supposedly tries to bring government closer to the people, but Republicans only want to decentralize power when the net flow is in their favor. That's led to many cases of Republican-controlled states limiting what mostly Democratic cities can do. Tennessee got a reminder of that when the state legislature expelled representatives from Memphis and Nashville, only to have them returned to office.

• Josh Kovensky: [04-16] Texas GOP Struggles Over What Crisis to Manufacture at Border. The state legislature is pushing a bill that would declare that Texas is being invaded from Mexico, authorizing a "state-run Border Patrol Unit, empowered to deputize and train citizens, and to 'repel' and 'return' undocumented migrants seen crossing the border" (or, as critics dubbed it, a "vigilante death squads policy").

• Eric Levitz: [04-13] Why the GOP Can't Moderate on Abortion Pill Bans: A big part of this is tactics: they decided to equate abortion with murder, which created a strong force dragging the law toward conception. And they threw in a few more axioms which, again, couldn't be compromised. And they billed themselves as the champion of the fetus, building up what is essentially a single-issue voting bloc, one they cannot afford to lose. They did pretty much the same thing with guns, so again they're incapable of compromise. Any time you adopt a moral absolute, you can only move toward that pure point. Any deviation is seen as a sign of weakness, and Republicans can't bear to show that. Their whole self-image is built up around resolute strength, no matter how stupid that gets.

• Jason Linkins: [04-15] It's Really Quite Simple: Republicans Hate Young People. Scott Walker blames "liberal indoctrination," but it's conservatives who are legislating curricula and banning books. And banning abortion: "Everywhere you look, Republicans are finding it very difficult to actually run on the post-Roe dystopia they've engineered -- so much so that they're now trying to get people to just stop talking about it."

• Nicole Narea: [04-11] Why these Democrats are defecting to the GOP: "Three Democratic lawmakers in Louisiana and North Carolina switched parties recently."

• Heather Digby Parton: [04-14] Republicans, facing devastating fallout from "Dobbs effect," refuse to quit abortion bans.

• Bill Scher: [04-14] Why DeSantis Should Take a Pass on the 2024 Presidential Election: "The idea that the Florida governor could cinch the GOP nomination by running as a competent, no-drama Donald Trump is fundamentally flawed." [For a counter argument, see: Ross Douthat: [04-15] Why DeSantis Has to Run.] I wouldn't presume to offer advice, but I do think that last week's Frank Luntz argument that Republicans want Trumpy policies without Trump's personality, which is DeSantis in a nutshell, is exactly wrong -- something which I think DeSantis realizes, which is why he keeps trying to fabricate media outrages like attacking Disney perks and trafficking refugees from Texas to Martha's Vineyard. I doubt he'll succeed, but if he has the money lined up, he might as well run. (Not that he needs to rush it, as he's already getting the sort of press few candidates other than Trump get.) If Trump beats him then loses, he'll have a case that it should have been him. If DeSantis gets the nomination, 2024 against Biden is probably his best timing.

• Dylan Scott: [04-13] Republicans want to force doctors to mislead patients about reversing abortions: Kansas, in particular, though why anyone would go to the trouble of taking a dose of mifepristone then change their mind and try to get the effect reversed is hard to imagine. The much more likely explanation is that Republicans just want to make the lives of women seeking abortions as miserable as possible. By the way, there's more evil brewing in the KS legislature, despite the fact that voters overwhelmingly rejected their anti-abortion constitutional amendment.

• Kyle Swenson: [04-16] Iowa to spend millions kicking families off food stamps. More states may follow.

• Michael Wines: [04-14] If Tennessee's Legislature Looks Broken, It's Not Alone.

• Li Zhou: [04-12] The return of two expelled Tennessee Democrats is a powerful rebuke to Republicans.

Matters of (in)justice: The long-brewing Clarence Thomas scandal got so big last week I moved it out into its own section. And, of course, other stories that could be filed here got slotted under Trump or Other Republicans. Still much to report:

• Rachel M Cohen: [04-14] The astonishing radicalism of Florida's new ban on abortion: "Ron DeSantis, gearing up for a presidential bid, signed the six-week ban late Thursday night." Also:

  • Ed Kilgore: [04-14] DeSantis Signs Radical Abortion Law but Won't Talk About It.

  • Nia Prater: [04-14] Florida's Abortion Law Is a Disaster for Access in the South.

• Caroline Kitchener/Robert Barnes/Ann E Marimow: [04-15] The controversial article Matthew Kacsmaryk did not disclose to the Senate.

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [04-12] A 19th-century anti-sex crusader is the "pro-life" movement's new best friend: Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), a US postal inspector and anti-sex crusader, for whom a broad, vaguely worded federal censorship law is named. Evidently, one thing he did was keep track of how many of his victims committed suicide.

  • [04-14] The Supreme Court hits pause on the abortion pills lawsuit: "Tonight's order doesn't mean much, but it does mean that mifepristone is still legal, for now."

  • [04-16] The Supreme Court takes up a messy, chaotic case about religion in the workplace: "Groff v. DeJoy could give religious conservatives unprecedented power to make demands from their employers."

Clarence Thomas:

• Li Zhou: [04-14] Clarence Thomas's brazen violation of ethics rules, briefly explained.

• Shawn Boburg/Emma Brown: [04-16] Clarence Thomas has for years claimed income from a defunct real estate firm: "The misstatements . . . are part of a pattern that has raised questions about how the Supreme Court justice views his obligation to accurately report details about his finances to the public."

• Jamelle Bouie: [04-14] Harlan Crow, Clarence Tomas's Benefactor, Is Not Just Another Billionaire: One thing that they're never perfectly clear on is that it appears that the "garden of evil," where Crow keeps his statues of fallen communist leaders, is distinct from where he keeps his Hitler memorabilia. Bouie also wrote: [04-11] Clarence Thomas Is as Free as Ever to Treat His Seat Like a Winning Lottery Ticket: "Our leaders should be shackled by the power they wield, not free to abuse it for their own interests and own pleasures."

• Justin Elliott/Joshua Kaplan/Alex Mierjeski: [04-13] Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn't Disclose the Deal..

• Ian Millhiser: [2011-06-23] Second Harlan Crow Connected Group Has a Perfect Litigation Record Before Justice Thomas. This should be old news, but Thomas continues to insist that he's not corrupt because Crow hasn't had any business before the Court. They're just, like, really good friends.

• Alex Shephard: [04-14] Conservatives Have Some Very Creative, Very Dumb Excuses for Clarence Thomas's Corruption.

• Michael Tomasky: [04-10] The Democrats Need to Destroy Clarence Thomas's Reputation: "They'll never successfully impeach him. But so what? Make him a metaphor for every insidious thing the far right has done to this country." I thought talking about expanding the Supreme Court a few years back was premature, not because I couldn't see the need, but Democrats lacked enough power to act, and most people weren't yet convinced of its necessity. As the bad rulings pile up, especially the loss of abortion rights, people are coming around to seeing the need, but we still have to translate that into political power. It's been pretty obvious to me for a long time that the secret to keeping justices like Scalia and Thomas true to the conservative cause has been back-channel payments, especially through Ginni Thomas's lobbying. (Scalia, you may remember, was off on one of his buddies' hunting safaris when he died.) So sure, pile on, especially when scandals like Harlan Crow's favors are so blatant. Even if you can't nail Thomas, you'll force other right-wingers to be a bit more circumspect. And if they don't, you'll be that much closer to rebalancing the Supreme Court.

  And pay some attention to terms: "packing" the Supreme Court is something the Republicans did over decades, without having to advertise it as such. The result has grossly distorted the court system, which is why rebalancing is what is needed. We don't need or even want an activist Court. We want one that is fair and flexible, one that defends the rights in the Constitution, based on the principles they aspire to. Republicans see their packed court system as a backstop in case they lose legislative power, to thwart democracy in favor of their peculiar interests.

  By the way, Tomasky also wrote: [2022-12-22] Clarence and Ginni Thomas Are The New Republic's 2022 Scoundrels of the Year.

Matters of economy:

• Dean Baker: [04-13] Can Jerome Powell Pivot on Interest Rates, Again? Reminds us of why Baker thought Powell deserved a second term, and offers hope that as inflation abates he will "buck the conventional wisdom" and lower interest rates to keep the economy strong. I felt that Biden made a mistake -- as did Obama and Clinton in renominating the Republican Fed chairmen they inherited -- in not picking a more reliable ally, and so far I feel vindicated in my position.

• Miles Bryan: [04-14] The real reason prices aren't coming down: "Excuseflation"; another new word here is "greedflation." Let me try: for many years now, at least since the Bork reformulation of antitrust rules in the 1980s and the mania of mergers and leveraged buyouts, markets have been becoming less competitive, which means companies could demand higher monopoly rents. But it didn't always happen, because price gouging ticks people off, and threatens a backlash. However, the pandemic produced a lot of supply-side glitches, which eventually coalesced into a plausible excuse for raising prices. When the expectation of higher prices sat in, the companies that could raise them without losing significant market share did so. To the extent this is true, the Fed isn't tackling the real causes of inflation. They're just trying to beat it with their stick.

• Meg Jacobs: [04-13] The Forgotten Left Economics Tradition: "In the Progressive and New Deal eras, there was a markedly different response to rising prices, and a different usage of economic theory." I missed this one in last week's batch of American Prospect economics articles (under Stiglitz).

• Robert Kuttner: [04-12] Will the Fed Wreck an Improving Economy? Fed chairman Jerome Powell says he's trying to control inflation, but sometimes he gives the impression that the statistic he's tracking to decide when to let up isn't inflation itself but unemployment. Kuttner also wrote: [04-13] A Revolution in Cost-Benefit Rules: "How Biden's new team at the Office of Management and Budget is reversing several decades of pseudo-technical right-wing mischief."

Ukraine War: As far as I can tell, the leaks don't amount to much. Granted, there are details they'd rather you not know, or not talk about, and there are things they should find embarrassing, but they don't amount to much.

• Blaise Malley: [04-14] Diplomacy Watch: Biden administration in 'damage control' after intel leaks: "Leaders in Kyiv 'suspicious' of Washington's commitment to Ukrainian counteroffensive." Little diplomacy to report, other than that Pope Francis and Lula da Silva came out in favor, while Charles Kupchan and Richard Haass have "laid out a plan" to get to negotiations later while escalating now. It amazes me that serious people can make such arguments. The only question on negotiation is figuring out what each side really needs and what they can reasonably give up. The big points -- that Putin's invasion failed, that neither side can prevail on the battlefield, that the US and NATO will resist any further Russian expansionism, and that sanctions aren't a very effective deterrent -- should be pretty clear by now. The only real stickler is territory, and there the offer has been obvious from the start: let people in each disputed territory vote to decide on their fate. There are a lot of technical problems with this: chiefly, what are the boundaries of the territories in dispute, how refugees from those territories can vote, timing, etc. But fair-minded people can solve technical problems. Granted, neither side qualifies yet, and that's something each needs to work on. But what won't work is thinking that if only "we" (and this applies to either "we") can grab a bit more leverage, we'll be able to bend the other side to our will. Even unconditional surrender only works when the winning side tries to do the right thing (as the US mostly did after WWII, but as France/UK didn't do after WWI).

• Chas Danner: [04-14] What Secrets Are in the Leaked Pentagon Documents -- and Who Leaked Them?

• Robyn Dixon: [04-15] Breaking up with Russia is hard for many Western firms, despite war: "Only a small percentage of the hundreds of companies that promised to leave Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have exited." The Kyiv School of Economics "follows 3,141 foreign companies through its Leave Russia project, reports that only 211 companies have exited -- fewer than 7 percent."

• Marc Fisher: [04-15] A new kind of leaker: Spilling state secrets to impress online buddies.

• Anatol Lieven: [04-10] Pentagon leak reinforces what we already know: US-NATO in it to win: "But revelations about American and European boots on the ground are new, and could prove a dangerous and so far unexplained wrinkle."

• Ashleigh Subramanian-Montgomery: [04-10] Even the Treasury Department admits sanctions don't work. As the last section puts it: "Time for a sanctions rethink."

Elsewhere around the world:

• Katharine Houreld/John Hudson: [04-16] 74 civilians killed in Sudan as military and rival group fight for control.

• Ellen Ioanes: [04-16] Myanmar's brutal, two-year war against its people, explained.

Other stories:

Dean Baker: [04-15] Quick Thoughts on AI and Intellectual Property: I haven't sorted through all of this, but I'll add a few more thoughts. A lot of what passes as creativity is really just the ability to pull disparate ideas out of the ether and reconfigure them in pleasing ways. AI may be hard pressed to come up with anything truly original, but it could swamp the market for "creative" recombination: all it needs to do is scan a lot of source material, then apply a few rules for sorting out what works and what doesn't. If you gave AI copyright standing, you could wind up with an automated trolling machine that would tie up honest work in endless litigation. If you don't, well, humans could use AI to vastly increase their production of copyrightable works, and they could become just as litigious. Either way, it's a mess, but the whole realm of "intellectual property" is a big legal mess even before you add AI to the mix. And as Baker knows, the whole system of enforcement is dead weight on the creative process.

David Dayen: [04-14] The Feinstein Affair: Senate Gerontocracy Reaches Absurd Heights: "Old senators, old rules, and old traditions all are cutting against what should be a simple task of confirming judges."

EJ Dionne Jr: [04-16] Gun absolutists don't trust democracy because they know they're losing: The NRA held another convention last week, attended virtually or physically by a phalanx of Republican presidential hopefuls (Pence, Trump, and Asa Hutchinson in person; DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott on video). "The nonsense floated in Indianapolis -- based on the idea that our national addiction to high-powered weaponry has nothing to do with America's unique mass shooting problem -- speaks to a deep ailment in our democracy." Oh, by the way:

• Maham Javaid/Paulina Villegas/Ben Brasch: [04-16] 4 dead, at least 15 hurt in shooting at teen's birthday party in Alabama. [PS: New York Times is now reporting 28 injured.]

• Eduardo Medina: [04-16] 2 Dead and 4 Injured in Shooting at a Kentucky Park.

• Champe Barton/Tom Jackman: [04-11] Popular handgun fires without anyone pulling the trigger, victims say: SIG Sauer P320 pistols.

Karen Greenberg: [04-11] The Wars to End All Wars? In his introduction, editor Tom Engelhardt reminds us that he started TomDispatch in 2002 to protest the "unnerving decision of President George W. Bush to respond to the disastrous terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by invading Afghanistan," adding "even then, it seemed to me like a distinctly mad act." What's strange is that even though most observers admit that twenty-plus years of "war on terror" have hurt America more than they've helped, we seem to be further away than ever from a world where demilitarized peace is possible. Greenberg, who first got drawn into the legal morass of Guantanamo (I read her 2009 book, The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days), has a 2021 book, Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy From the War on Terror to Donald Trump, which connects the dots between 9/11 and such Trump abuses his Muslim ban, border policing, his killing of Iranian General Soleimani, his reaction to BLM protests, and his post-election insanity.

Elahe Izadi/Jeremy Barr/Sarah Ellison: [04-16] The Dominion vs. Fox defamation case is finally going to trial. As much as I hate defamation lawsuits in general, this one is exposing grievous malfeasance and public harm in a forums that will be hard to ignore. Key line here: "But First Amendment advocates aren't convinced that a Fox loss is bad for journalism -- and think Dominion has a much stronger case than most defamation plaintiffs." Also quotes Floyd Abrams: "The journalistic sins, which have already been exposed here, are so grievous and so indefensible that a victory for Fox will be hard to explain to the public." Also:

• Jeremy W Peters: [04-16] Fox News Is on Trial, and So Are Falsehoods About 2020.

Paul Krugman: [04-11] Inequality Ahoy! On the Meaning of the Superyacht. Krugman used yachts as a measure of inequality in his book The Conscience of a Liberal (2007), contrasting how much yachts had shrunk during the "great compression" of the 1930-60s, compared to the Gilded Age extravagances of J.P. Morgan. Well, yachts are back now, bigger and gaudier than ever, including the one Clarence Thomas has enjoyed. Also on yachts:

• Joe Frassler: [04-10] The Superyachts of Billionaires Are Sarting to Look a Lot Like Theft.

Eric Levitz: [04-10] Blaming 'Capitalism' Is Not an Alternative to Solving Problems. Basically, a brief for social democratic reforms as opposed to the belief that only a revolution can root out the core problem that is capitalism. I've long felt that revolutions only occur the old system is too rigid and brittle to adjust to popular pressure, and therefore shatters. Russia in 1917, for instance, was less the "weak link of capitalism" than an autocratic regime locked into a disastrous war and incapable of reforming. A second point is that violence begets violence, and the more violence continues beyond revolution, the more doomed a revolution is to recapitulate the old regime. Levitz cites a bunch of statistics to show that very few Americans are disposed toward revolution, but the more relevant point is that the American political system is flexible enough to reform, if not to a point we can recognize as social democracy, than at least enough to preclude the violent rupture of revolution. (Of course, if you allow Trump and the Republicans sufficient power, all bets are off.)

On the other hand, while "blaming capitalism" isn't a practical political program, it does give one some clarity. Capitalism may tout free markets and free labor and maybe even freedom as an ideal, but it simply means that the profits go to the owners of capital -- a class who of necessity seek insatiably to maximize their returns, not least by manipulating the political system. Every word in that sentence is important, but "insatiable" (i.e., the felt need for infinite growth) is the crux of the problem, as it leads to two things that destabilize and destroy their world: a class system and environmental degradation. It is, of course, possible to limit those catastrophes through political reform, but doing so detracts from pure capitalism. This is why true capitalists regard anything that stands in the way of their quest for profits as socialism, a betrayal of all they believe in.

• Dylan Riley: [04-04] Drowning in Deposits: Piece cited by Levitz, above, as an example arguing that "green industrial policies can't possibly succeed."

• Seth Ackerman: [04-14] Karl Marx Knew That the Struggle for Reforms Was Part of the Struggle for Socialism. Another response to the Riley article.

Adam Nagourney/Jeremy W Peters: [04-16] How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives: And elevated a political issue that could easily have been ignored into a defense of basic human rights. I've often wondered how many people we're talking about: "About 1.3 million adults and 300,000 children in the United States identify as transgender." That's about 0.5% of the US adult population, and 0.4% of 0-17 children (up to 1.4% of 15-17 children). That's not a lot of people to get so worked up about. But that's the point of the issue: it's a symbolic issue that a few Republicans seized on as a way to revitalize the cause of religious bigotry. And by the way, they've done more to publicize and promote acceptance of transgender people more quickly than any positive movement could.

By the way, if you'd like to meet some transgender people, take a look at: These 12 Transgender Americans Would Love You to Mind Your Own Business. This is part of a series I entered through What Happened to America? We Asked 12 People in Their 70s and 80s. The latter cohort was pretty evenly divided politically (although neither Donald Trump nor Diane Feinstein fared very well). But no Republicans in the transgender group.

Charles P Pierce: The Esquire columnist comments on a number of stories I've filed elsewhere:

• [04-14] Leaked Audio of the Tennessee Republican Dingbats Shows They're Really That Stupid.

• [04-13] Ronald DeSantis Once Called Measures to Curb Climate Crisis 'Left-Wing Stuff': "And now the state is threatening to float away." Twenty-five inches of rain in a 24-hour period, and it's not even hurricane season yet.

• [04-12] Fox News Looks Headed for Corporate Suicide in the Dominion Case. Politically, Fox News may well be the worse thing that ever happened to America. But it's sobering and a bit scary to discover that ideology had less to do with it than pure money-grubbing.

• [04-12] The Water Crisis Is Already Here: "And it's going to raise all kinds of political hell." The Colorado River was overallocated in the 1930s, and it's been overused since air conditioning made Phoenix and Las Vegas habitable, and it's only gotten worse as Lakes Mead and Powell have retreated to expose their canyons. Americans are notoriously averse to choosing among painful options, but the third (do nothing) has proven ineffective for decades.

• Benji Jones: [04-13] Colorado River states brace for the biggest water cuts ever.

• Bill Hatch: [04-14] The Elephant on the Banks of the Colorado River.

• [04-12] Jim Jordan's Ham-Fisted Attempt to Marshal His Little Committee for Trump Isn't Going Well.

• [04-06] Just Breathing Is a Risk in Parts of Texas: "A stunning amount of mercury is still being released into our atmosphere." But doesn't that stuff cause brain damage?

Ben Schwartz: [04-14] How Woke Bob Hope Got Canceled by the Right: "The conservative comedian spoke out for gay rights and gun control, and got boycotted and ostracized by friends on the right, including Ronald Reagan." I'm a little surprised to see Hope labelled a conservative. Sure, he was of a generation when it was easy to get jingoistic about America, and I got tired of his USO shows, as he continued to associate with a military that had gone off the rails in Vietnam, but he always seemed like a decent-enough guy. And one thing was pretty unique about him, which is that nearly all of his characters were shameless cowards. He was, in this, the antithesis of John Wayne, who really was a conservative asshole.

Jeffrey St Clair: [04-14] Annals of the Covert World: The Secret Life of Shampoo: "The surveillance state is both more sinister and much sillier than most of us imagine."

Music Week

Expanded blog post, April archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 41 albums, 8 (or 10) A-list,

Music: Current count 39968 [39927] rated (+41), 58 [52] unrated (+6: 30 new, 28 old).

I wrote a pretty long Speaking of Which yesterday. If you missed it, I suggest that you at least read the introduction, which starts to explain the psychotic breakdown Republicans suffered last week. There was a time when Republicans claimed to be the "law and order" party, as well as being staunch "defenders of freedom." But in following their single issue bets (e.g., on guns and abortion) to their logical ends, they've entered into territory that can only be called psychotic.

But don't get me started again here. Read the piece. And it wouldn't hurt to like, reply, and/or forward the tweet. View count is currently 127, whereas my Music Week tweets regularly top 300, probably because they do get the occasional like and retweet.

This week's haul continues recent week trends: lots of old jazz, mostly suggested by my Penguin Guide unheard 4-star list. I finished Z with John Zorn. (His Tzadik records were on Rhapsody for a while, but were taken down several years ago, and are well nigh impossible for me to come by these days.) That leaves eight various artists comps, which came from early editions of the Guide (as they stopped covering them), so they are probably impossible to find. That still leaves 615 albums unheard on the list.

Probably worth another pass, but most of them fall into big clusters: old comps of classic artists (Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Teddy Wilson; the French Classics label has disappeared from Napster), that I largely skipped because those editions are out of print, and in most cases I've heard other editions; lots of obscure free (AMM, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Cecil Taylor) and (mostly British) trad jazz records; boxes not deemed cost-effective; other labels that refuse to play ball with the streaming rackets (like Tzadik); and back catalog the cooperating labels haven't gotten around to (Concord is one that particularly bothers me). I did just find a Mose Allison album I had missed. Still unlikely I'l whittle the list down much more.

The Live at Dreher set led me to file separate grades for the earlier editions, especially as one appears under Mal Waldron and the other under Steve Lacy. Not really separate grades, as the four discs just delight on and on. But no point picturing the older edition covers.

Rated count could pass 40,000 next week. I'm currently 32 short, which is a fairly average week's work for me. Main thing that may distract me is that we're in the brief season between too cold and too hot, so it would be opportune to do some house/yard projects. In house it's mostly decluttering, starting with my desk.

I finished Michael Tomasky's The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity, which is one of the best recent books directly tied to current Democratic Party politics. In that same vein, I also recommend Ryan Cooper's How Are You Going to Pay for That? Smart Answers to the Dumbest Questions in Politics. Both books err on the side of optimism, as they lay out sensible policies that could be implemented and that could make a big difference going forward. Next up is a much more pessimistic book, one that predicts doom of civilization between 2070 and 2100: Brian T Watson's Headed Into the Abyss: The Story of Our Time and the Future We'll Face. If I ever write my book, it will land somewhere in the middle of this triangle. I wrote a Book Roundup piece on Watson a while back:

Brian T Watson: Headed Into the Abyss: The Story of Our Time, and the Future We'll Face (paperback, 2019, Anvilside Press): I could imagine writing a book like this, which starts with a long laundry list of systemic problems (Capitalism, Technology, Webworld, Politics, Media, Education, Human Nature, The Environment, Human Population, Transportation, Miscellaneous Forces) then winds up showing how any (let alone all) of them are unlikely to be solved (that chapter is called "Possible Reforms and Their Likelihood"). I'd shuffle the deck a bit -- in the 1990s, when I started thinking along these lines, I started with resources and environment, but back then I at least had some faith in reason to see a way through technical obstacles, but that idea has taken a beating ever since. So I see no more reason to be optimistic than the author, not that I would deny that the very act of looking into the abyss implies a certain unreasoned hope. Missing here is recognition of the unknown: e.g., no mention of pandemic a mere year before Covid-19 hit. While climate was most likely mentioned under Environment or Population, it's at least as much a headline as "Webworld." Another big topic is war: both as a cause of destruction and as a likely consequence, in both its conventional and annihilationist modes. Bibliography is just a list of mostly familiar books relevant to each chapter.

After I wrote that, I ordered a copy, then managed to lose it. Last week I found it, under a pile of crap. I've just started the chapter on capitalism, and it's not as sharp as it could be if he had a better understanding of Marx and Keynes (and Michael Hudson and George Brockaway, or maybe even Naomi Klein), but he's still hitting plenty of salient points. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with under "Human Nature." Can he, for instance, explain the schizophrenia of the current Republican Party?

New records reviewed this week:

• AVA Trio: Ash (2021 [2023], Tora, EP): [bc]: B+(*)
• Daniel Bingert: Ariba (2023, Moserobie): [cd]: A-
• Canadian Jazz Collective: Septology: The Black Forest Session (2022 [2023], HGBS Blue): [cd]: B+(*)
• Kaze & Ikue Mori: Crustal Movement (2020-21 [2023], Libra): [cd]: A-

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• The Birth of Bop (1944-49 [2023], Craft, 2CD): [sp]: B+(***)
• D.B. Shrier: D.B. Shrier Emerges (1967 [2023], Omnivore): [sp]: A-

Old music:

• Ralph Reichert Quartet With Randy Sandke: Reflections (2002 [2004], Nagel Heyer): [sp]: B+(**)
• The Ralph Reichert/Jerry Tilitz Quintet: Back to Back (2002 [2006], Nagel Heyer): [sp]: B+(***)
• Miroslav Vitous: Journey's End (1982 [1983], ECM): [sp]: A-
• Philipp Wachsmann/Paul Lytton: Some Other Season (1997 [1999], ECM): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mal Waldron/Reggie Workman/Billy Higgins: Up Popped the Devil (1973 [1974], Enja): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy: Live at Dreher Paris 1981 (1981 [2003], Hatology, 4CD): [sp]: A-
• Jack Walrath: Master of Suspense (1986 [1987], Blue Note): [sp]: A-
• Jack Walrath: Unsafe at Any Speed (2014 [2015], SteepleChase): [sp]: B+(***)
• Priska Walss/Gabriela Friedli: Intervista (2000-02 [2003], Intakt): [sp]: B+(***)
• Cedar Walton: Roots (1997 [1999], Astor Place): [sp]: B+(***)
• Weather Report: The Best of Weather Report (1973-80 [2002], Columbia/Legacy): [r]: B+(**)
• Weather Report: Live in Tokyo (1972, Columbia, 2CD): [sp]: B+(**)
• Eberhard Weber: The Colours of Chloë (1973 [1974], ECM): [sp]: B+(*)
• Eberhard Weber: Yellow Fields (1975 [1976], ECM): [sp]: B+(***)
• Eberhard Weber: Pendulum (1993, ECM): [sp]: B+(***)
• Bobby Wellins: The Satin Album (1996, Jazzizit): [sp]: B+(**)
• Bobby Wellins Quartet: Don't Worry 'Bout Me (1996 [1997], Cadillac): [r]: B+(***)
• Kate Westbrook: Cuff Clout (2001 [2004], Voiceprint): [r]: B+(**)
• Mike Westbrook Trio: Love for Sale (1985 [1990], Hat Art): [r]: A-
• Mike Westbrook: Westbrook-Rossini (1986 [1988], Hat Art): [sp]: B+(*)
• Mike Westbrook: Westbrook-Rossini, Zürich Live 1986 (1986 [1994], Hat Art, 2CD): [r]: B+(**)
• Mike Westbrook: Glad Day: Settings of William Blake (1997 [1999], Enja, 2CD): [r]: B+(**)
• Mike Westbrook: Chanson Irresponsable (2002 [2003], Enja, 2CD): [r]: B+(*)
• Mike Westbrook: After Abbey Road (1996-2009 [2019], Westbrook): [r]: B-
• Gerald Wilson: The Artist Selects (1961-69 [2005], Pacific Jazz): [r]: B+(**)
• Gerald Wilson Orchestra: New York New Sound (2002 [2003], Mack Avenue): [r]: B+(***)
• Steve Wilson Quartet: Four for Time (1994 [1996], Criss Cross): [r]: B+(***)
• Norma Winstone: Edge of Time (1971 [1972], Argo): [r]: B+(***)
• Nils Wogram: Root 70 (2000 [2001], 2nd Floor): [r]: A-
• Nils Wogram: Odd and Awkward (2000 [2001], Enja, 2CD): [sp]: B+(***)
• Nils Wogram's Root 70: Getting Rooted (2003, Enja): [sp]: B+(**)
• Boban Z Trio: Transpacifik (2003, Label Bleu): [r]: B+(**)
• Monica Zetterlund: Swedish Sensation (1958, Columbia): [r]: B+(**)

Grade (or other) changes:

• Steve Lacy & Mal Waldron: Live at Dreher Paris 1981, Round Midnight Vol. 1 (1981 [1996], Hat Art, 2CD): [sp]: A-
• Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy: Live at Dreher Paris 1981, The Peak Vol. 2 (1981 [1996], Hat Art, 2CD): [sp]: A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Mark Dresser: Times of Change (Pyroclastic) [05-05]
• Marc Ducret: Palm Sweat: Marc Ducret Plays the Music of Tim Berne (Screwgun/Out of Your Head) [03-10]
• Champian Fulton: Meet Me at Birdland (Champian) [04-07]
• Jason Kush: Finally Friday (MCG Jazz) [03-03]
• The Adam Larson Trio: With Love, From New York (Outside In Music) [04-07]
• Luiz Millan: Brazilian Match (Jazz Station) [04-21]
• Rent Romus/Heikki Koskinen: Itkuja Suite, Invocations on Lament (Edgetone) [04-04]
• Emilio Solla/Antonio Lizana: El Siempre Mar (Tiger Turn) [05-19]
• Ramana Vieira: Tudo De Mim/All of Me (self-released) [05-01]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

The Republican Party had what can only be described as a psychotic breakdown last week. Trump's arrest and arraignment was the big story. It could be read as a cautionary note that his contempt for law and order will not prevail, and indeed the muted response on the streets of New York suggests that he's on his way to being forgotten. But his post-arraignment speech at Mar-A-Lago, and the reactions of virtually all Republican speakers, show that the Party faithful still follow his lead. Not since the Confederate Secession of 1860-61 have so many showed such contempt for American and its people.

Many examples follow. Nor are they limited to the uncritical base of Trump supporters that are increasingly dubbed MAGAs, the slogan's former aspirations having turned into our current nightmare. We've long known that Republicans mentally divide the country into good and evil camps. But this week's stories show them acting on their prejudices, using whatever power they have to punish what they see as evil, and to pardon what we normally regard as criminal behavior when it's done by their side. Trump is an example, but an even purer one is Texas Governor Abbott's promise to pardon the murderer of a Black Lives Matter protester. The decision of Tennessee Republicans to expel two black Democrats from the state legislature was equally blatant.

There are a number of stories below on abortion politics. A Trump judge in Texas ruled invalid the FDA approval 23 years ago of a drug commonly used to induce abortions in early pregnancy. This is an unprecedented ruling, from a judge who is notorious for putting political ideology above the law -- an increasingly common practice among Republican judges. If upheld, this would force women even in states where abortion rights are assured to endure more invasive and expensive procedures. There are other abortion law stories in Idaho, Florida, and Kansas. We should be clear that these are not debates about philosophy or religion. These are attempts by one Party to use the law to deprive Americans of their rights, using the police and courts to intervene in the most private of affairs. Republicans may hate law when it holds them accountable, but they sure like to use it to punish others.

I could have assembled a comparable gallery of cruel Republican bills and maneuvers to harass and defame trans people, or indeed anyone who blurs their expectations of gender identity. As Nicole Narea and Fabiola Cineas point out below, their campaign is broad and coordinated, deceitful and inflammatory. It seeks to take away rights, to impose the police and courts in highly personal matters. It attempts to legitimize hatred, and it almost inevitably will wind up inciting violence.

This last point, of course, brings us back to Trump. From the very beginning of his 2016 presidential campaign, starting with his description of Mexican immigrants as "rapists and murderers," he has repeatedly encouraged his followers to commit violence and mayhem. The two most memorable Jan. 6 soundbites remain his "will be wild" and "hang Mike Pence." We are fortunate that new Trump fanboys have gone as far as Cesar Sayoc (who sent 16 mail bombs targeting Trump critics), but that hasn't dampened Trump's enthusiasm. Nor is it just Trump. Many Republicans pose with guns in their ads, some stalking liberals like they're in a video game, and the MAGA base eats that up.

This psychosis has been coming for a long time. Verbally it's been a fixture at Fox from the beginning. Bush's post-9/11 swagger was built on his presumed "license to kill." Conservative journalist wrote a book about his 2004 campaign called Voting to Kill. Obama and Biden abetted this toxic attitude by continuing Bush's wars, especially by claiming the scalps of Osama Bin Laden and Aymin al-Zawahiri, but it was the Republican-fueled lust for guns that brought the violence home. More than three times as many Americans have been killed by guns so far this year as were lost on 9/11, yet Republicans are so close-minded on the subject that they expelled legislators in Tennessee to shut them up. (We'll see how well that works.)

While gun terrorism is still infrequent enough it comes as a shock, other aspects of Republican governance are harder to ignore. I don't have time to list them all, but Republicans have perverted the fundamentals of democracy, our understanding of education, the notion that law should be just, and much more.

Top story threads:

Trump: Following last week's indictment, Trump was arrested and arraigned in New York on Tuesday, and managed to behave himself until he got home to Mar-A-Lago, and threatened the DA, the presiding judge, their families, and the whole country. It's too bad we can't just charge him with being a psychopath, and be done with it. Also see the Jeffrey St Clair entry below, especially the statistics on misdemeanor prosecutions in New York.

• Ryan Cooper: [03-27] Donald Trump Deserves to Be Indicted: "But not just for the Stormy Daniels affair; the most corrupt president in American history has gotten away with far too much." Written pre-indictment, but good to start off with a reminder why this matters.

• David Dayen: [04-06] Our Two-Tiered Justice System and the Trump Indictment: "Corporate crime enforcement in America has been pathetic for decades. One prosecution of a guy screaming to be prosecuted doesn't change that."

• Christopher Fettweis: [04-03] Ripping up Trump's 'battle plan' of attack on Mexico's cartels: "Chasing drug gangs and an endless rotation of kingpins into the cities and mountains -- do we really want another Afghanistan?" No. We shouldn't even want a repeat of the Pancho Villa Expedition, when US forces under Gen. Pershing invaded Mexico in March 1916 and spent 11 months trampling around northern Mexico, failing to catch a single "bandit." Of course, a repeat would be a much bigger mistake now: the area is much more populated now, everyone is much better armed, and the risk to civilian targets is much greater. The article gives many reasons why this wouldn't work, without even getting into the basic fact that American businesses have massive investments in Mexico that would suddenly become vulnerable, to disruption or worse.

• Richard Fausset/Danny Hakim: [04-08] Georgia Looms Next After Trump's Indictment in New York.

• Shirin Ghaffary: [04-05] Trump is no longer the social media king: "Why the former president's arrest was a whimper, not a roar, on Twitter, a platform designed for these moments." This may have less to do with refugee Trump than with Twitter itself, which Chip Goines tells us, "Twitter as a breaking news platform for news junkies like me is terribly broken at this point."

• Melissa Gira Grant: [04-04] The Weird Religious Fervor of the Trump Faithful:

• Maggie Haberman/Jonathan Swan: [04-08] Trump and His Lawyers: A Restless Search for Another Roy Cohn: The picture they released of Trump inside the court room mostly exposes how peculiar he is as a defendant. He sits in the middle of no less than four lawyers. Normally one would suffice, or two for the actual trial, but it's like he wants to impress upon the prosecution that he's got deeper pockets than they have. But the key quote here comes from William Barr, who "shook his head at the sight of the defense table on Tuesday," adding "Lawyers inevitably are sorry for taking on assignments with him."

• Martin Pengelly: [04-09] Trump's indictment and the return of his biggest concern: 'the women'. Pengelly also co-wrote, with Maya Yang: [04-06] New York judge in Trump arraignment reportedly receives 'dozens' of threats.

• James Poniewozik: [04-05] For Once, Donald Trump Did Not Enjoy the Show: "The ex-president's indictment put him in the rare position of being forced onto a public stage not of his own choosing." Last line: "As a TV draw, Donald Trump holding court is no competition for Donald Trump sitting in one."

• Nia Prater/Chas Danner: [04-05] Trump Attacks Judge and His Family: "His Mar-a-Lago speech was relatively short but packed with grievance." Various "live updates" pieces, including important links to: Ankush Khardori: [04-04] Prosecuted: What to make of the criminal case against Donald Trump; and Ben Jacobs: [04-04] Trump's Indictment Has Become His Platform. The former leads me to think that if/when the case is tried, Trump will be convicted (although a hung jury is not inconceivable), but that odds are not good that a conviction won't be overturned on appeal (there are technical grounds for that, but also the court system is littered with Trump appointees, who scarcely need grounds for anything they do).

• Joan Walsh: [04-06] There Was No Trump Violence This Week. But What's Coming? To answer, she interviews Jeff Sharlet, author of The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War. Cites a review of the book, by Adam Fleming Petty: [03-21] Exploring the crowds that gather for Trump -- and dream of civil war.

• Amy B Wang: [04-06] Trump ally Jordan issues subpoena to former N.Y. prosecutor: That would be Mark Pomerantz, who resigned after accusing Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg of sandbagging the case against Trump, and wrote a book, People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account. Jordan has been threatening to subpoena Bragg -- a move that would be blatantly illegal, but Pomerantz would seem to be fair game. Jordan will no doubt argue that the DA's office was on a "witch hunt" to get Trump, while Pomerantz will counter that Trump was so obviously guilty he should have been charged earlier, and possibly for more. One note here that I somehow missed is that Trump gave Jordan a Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 21 after Jordan refused a subpoena to testify before the Jan. 6 Committee. Of course, those medals were permanently tarnished back when Bush gave them to the three stooges of the Iraq War (Tommy Franks, George Tenet, and Paul Bremer). Trump has found even less worthy people to give the medal to. (List here, including conservative totems Antonin Scalia, Rush Limbaugh, and Arthur Laffer, as well as megadonor Miriam Adelson and Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes; nonetheless, Trump only handed out a below-average 24 medals, 14 of which were to athletes/sports figures. Obama was most generous, with 117 medals over 8 years. Biden has awarded 17 so far, 0.63 per month, compared to 0.50 for Trump, 1.22 for Obama, 0.86 for Bush, 0.93 for Clinton, 0.81 for GWH Bush, 0.93 for Reagan, 0.71 for Carter. The medals started with Kennedy in 1963. Two people turned the medal down, both from Trump: Bill Belichick and Dolly Parton.)

• Frank Luntz: [04-09] How to Make Trump Go Away: The GOP's language guru runs his focus groups and searches for a narrow path, concluding: "Republicans want just about everything Mr. Trump did, without everything Mr. Trump is or says." No doubt Luntz is one smart cookie, but I think he's got that exactly wrong. They don't know or care what he did, but they want his attitude and his mouth, his style. They want to piss off their nominal enemies, and nobody does that better. Luntz explains: "In 2016, the campaign was about what he could do for you. Today, it's about what is being done to him. If he becomes increasingly unhinged, or if his opponents focus on his tweets, his outbursts and his destructive personality, a sizable number of Republicans could choose someone else, as long as they prioritize core, time-tested priorities like lower taxes, less regulation, and less Washington." But those "core priorities" are killing us. Trump, almost uniquely, gives his followers someone else to blame for Republican failures.

And Other Republicans: Note that there was so much here that I wound up having to move several clusters of links into their own sections.

• Zack Beauchamp: [04-05] The last 48 hours revealed the GOP's intractable 2024 dilemma: "Trump and pro-lifers own the Republican Party."

• Paul Krugman: [04-07] The Weird New War on 'Woke' Money: Responds to DeSantis's rant on the Fed possibly issuing a "digital dollar." It hasn't happened, and he hasn't convinced me that it should (or indeed that it makes much sense), except that it would attract users away from crypto, leaving the latter even more the haven of "wiseguys to evade taxes, launder money, buy and sell illegal drugs, and engage in extortion." But at least nothing woke. Dean Baker adds: [04-08] Krugman Reminds Us That Protectionism for Bankers Is a Very Powerful Political Force.

• Eduardo Medina: [04-08] Texas Governor Says He Plans to Pardon Man Convicted of Killing Protester: "Gov. Greg Abbott said he would forgo a prison sentence for Daniel S. Perry, who was convicted on Friday in the murder of Garrett Foster at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020." As far as I'm concerned, this makes Abbott as guilty as Perry.

• Timothy Noah: [04-07] Ron DeSantis's Deranged Rant About the Fed Ought to Doom His Campaign. Noah gives examples of past gaffes, but they're inapplicable, because they involved saying things that were out of bounds, all the worse if they were partly true. But simply saying stupid shit only matters if you're trying to reach people who know better. When you're running in a Republican primary, that's not your audience.

• Prem Thakker: [03-07] Even Marjorie Taylor Greene Hates the Anti-Muslim Crank Whom Trump Wants to Hire: Meet Laura Loomer.

Tennessee:

• Claire Gibson/Praveena Somasundaram/Maria Luisa Paúl/Andrea Salcedo: [04-06] Tennessee House expels two Democrats in historic act of partisan retaliation. Expelled were Justin Jones (D-Nashville, by a vote of 72-25), and Justin Pearson (D-Memphis, 69-26). They also voted on expelling Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), a former teacher who lost a student to gun violence (and who also happens to be white), fell one vote shy of the two-thirds required (65-30).

• Li Zhou: [04-06] The Tennessee legislature's expulsion of two Black Democrats is unprecedented and undemocratic. "The treatment of two Black lawmakers echoes past Republican efforts to explicitly curb Black political power via bills that would gut local policies of Democrat-led cities like Nashville and Memphis." It also echoes the Jim Crow era, and begs for a return of Reconstruction.

• Matthew Brown: [04-08] Problematic things Tenn. Republicans have done without getting expelled.

• Jennifer Rubin: [04-07] Tennessee shows that guns might be the next disaster for the GOP.

• Greg Sargent: [04-07] The 'Tennessee 3' saga highlights the GOP retreat into Fortress MAGA.

• Zack Beauchamp: [04-07] A study confirms it: Tennessee's democracy really is as bad as the expulsions made you think. I'm skeptical of these studies, but looking at the maps, the bottom of the barrel in 2000 was South Carolina and Alabama; in 2019 it's Tennessee, North Carolina, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Georgia (with no noticeable improvement in South Carolina or Alabama).

Abortion: I started out collecting these under the stupid Republican stories section, but a couple stories are big enough to merit their own section. Still, no mistaking that this is what you get when you elect Republicans.

• Rachel M Cohen: [04-08] A Texas judge just issued a national ruling against medication abortion. What now? The judge is Matthew Kazsmaryk, who Ian Millhiser has long identified as Trump's worst judge. Millhiser also updated his pre-ruling piece: Will anybody stop that Trump judge from banning abortion pills? By the way, Ruth Marcus agrees with Millhiser: [04-08] The worst federal judge in America now has a name.

• Nia Prater/Chas Danner: [04-08] Dueling Orders by Federal Judges Block and Preserve Access to Abortion Pill.

• Mark Joseph Stern: [04-07] The Lawless Ruling Against the Abortion Pill Has Already Prompted a Constitutional Crisis: "This is all completely absurd, an outrageous abuse of power that no judge has ever even attempted before."

• Rachel M Cohen: [04-05] The astonishing radicalism of Florida's imminent ban on abortion.

• John Hanna: [04-05] Kansas lawmakers OK bill on live deliveries during abortions.

• Alice Miranda Ollstein: [04-08] Ignore the courts? Some Democrats say Texas abortion pill ruling demands it.

• Michelle Goldberg: [04-07] The Abortion Ban Backlash Is Starting to Freak Out Republicans: Some, maybe, but what's more evident so far is how intoxicating the power to impose their hate is. This should be a lesson against giving them power anywhere, over anything. They simply cannot be trusted to govern responsibly. Goldberg also wrote: [04-08] The Hideous Resurrection of the Comstock Act.

• Steve Shepard: [04-08] Abortion was a 50/50 issue. Now, it's Republican quicksand.

• David Ovalle/Laurie McGinley/Rachel Roubein: [04-07] Texas abortion pill ruling threatens FDA.

• Jake Johnson: [04-06] Idaho becomes first US state to restrict interstate travel for abortion care. Also see Gabrielle Gurley: [04-06] Idaho's Abortion Fixation Decimates Rural Health Care.

• Alex Shephard: [04-06] The GOP's Abortion Problem Is Only Getting Worse.

• Moira Donegan: [04-04] Power Struggle: "The 50-year fight over abortion." Review of Mary Ziegler's book, Roe: The History of a National Obsession.

A couple elections: The highly partisan state supreme court election in Wisconsin was won handily by a liberal Democrat, although the state legislature is so severely gerrymandered that they could conceivably impeach the winner out of spite (just as in Tennessee, they're expelling duly elected representatives they dislike). And in the nonpartisan Chicago mayor election, the more progressive candidate edged out a win against a guy the New York Times insists on calling "the moderate": his most conspicuous positions are in favor of undermining the public school system with charter schools, and of blind, reflexive support of the Chicago police union -- how do those positions, which align more closely with Republicans (think Nancy DeVos and Bernie Kerik), qualify as "moderate"?

• Luke Goldstein: [04-05] Brandon Johnson's Ground Game Defeats Obama Machine in Chicago: I wasn't aware that Obama had a pony in the Chicago mayoral race, let alone a machine, but Dick Durbin and Arne Duncan did endorse Vallas.

• Kari Lydersen: [04-05] Brandon Johnson Won the Race for Chicago's Mayor by Loving and Fighting for the City.

• Nicole Narea: [04-05] Why everyone should care about the new liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court: Janet Protasiewicz flipped the court by beating Dan Kelly by more than 10 points.

• Christian Paz: [04-04] The big upset in the Chicago mayor's race, explained.

• Alex Shephard: [04-05] The Key Lessons for Democrats in This Week's Elections.

• Samaa Khullar: [04-06] Wisconsin GOP supermajority already looking to impeach newly elected liberal Supreme Court judge.

Ukraine War:

• Connor Echols: [04-07] Diplomacy Watch: Macron pushes Xi on China-Russia ties: Macron and Xi talking is something, but not much.

• Julian E Barnes/Helene Cooper/Thomas Gibbons-Neff/Michael Schwirtz/Eric Schmitt: [04-08] Leaked Documents Reveal Depth of US Spy Efforts and Russia's Military Struggles. For more, see Eric Nagourney: [04-09] What Do Leaked US Intelligence Reports Say? Here Is a Quick Guide.

• Masha Gessen: [04-07] How Putin criminalized journalism in Rusia: About the case of Evan Gershkovich, which is not unlike what has happened to some (numbers unclear) Russian journalists.

• Andrew E Kramer: [04-08] Leaked document shows the dire nature of battle for Bakhmut. Kramer also wrote: [04-04] New Weapons Aren't Enough: The Challenges of Ukraine's Coming Assault.

• Paul Krugman: [04-06] Putin's Energy Offensive Has Failed. Before the war, Europe bought a lot of natural gas from Russia. The US worried, and Russia hoped, that cutting off the supply would weaken European support for Ukraine, which so far at least (and gas is mostly important for winter heating) hasn't happened.

• Ryan Martínez Mitchell: [04-04] What the US and its allies get wrong about Chinese neutrality: "Washington should allow room for non-alignment if it wants to keep Beijing from giving Russia arms to fight Ukraine."

Israel:

• Tareq S Hajjaj: [04-07] Palestinians fear war is near as Israel attacks Gaza during Ramadan yet again. "The escalation has so far resembled the prelude to the war in 2021, when Israeli forces stormed Al-Aqsa and detained over 200 people on the 25th night of Ramadan. At the time, Palestinian factions in Gaza responded to the provocation by firing rockets. This, in turn, led to a 10-day war on Gaza, which left 200 Palestinians dead and hundreds of families homeless." I was tempted to leave out the second line, because that's always the excuse. While rocket attacks always result in a disproportionate Israeli response, it's not like Palestinians have any other options to register their horror.

• John Hudson/Louisa Loveluck: [04-08] Israeli spy chiefs led secret revolt against Netanyahu reforms, leaked documents say.

• Jake Johnson: [04-07] Fears of 'Serious Escalation' Grow as Israel Bombs Lebanon and Gaza.

• James North: [04-07] The 'NY Times' deliberately distorts the news, to blame Palestinians for the Al-Aqsa mosque crisis. They're always running some version of this article, because the "paper of record" never gets the story straight.

• Yumna Patel: [04-08] Ben-Gvir's 'private militia' moves forward, and Palestinians are in the line of fire.

• Richard Silverstein: [04-07] Israeli Assault on Al Aqsa Is State Terrorism.

• Kelly Stancil: [04-06] Global Outcry as Israeli Forces Attack Al-Aqsa Worshippers for Second Night.

Elsewhere around the world:

• Zack Beauchamp: [04-08] Meet the MAGA movement's new favorite autocrat: El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, whose draconian "anti-gang" measures have resulted in the world's highest incarceration rates (edging out you-know-who). Before this, the only thing I knew about him was his advocacy of BitCoin, which he has made legal tender.

• Ryan Grim: [04-07] To help end the Yemen war, all China had to do was be reasonable: "With Joe Biden nowhere to be found, China's diplomacy set the stage for Saudi concessions and cease-fire talks." But what about the arms sales the US will be missing out on?

Other stories:

Sam Bell: [03-30] Democrats Slashed Medicaid and Food Assistance Because We Didn't Fight: So why is this our fault? The measures in question were smartly added to the CARES pandemic relief bill, which passed because Trump and the Republicans were panicking over the 2020 stock market collapse, and they needed Democratic support because Democrats controlled the House. But even though the policies were generally popular, Democrats didn't have sufficient majorities to keep them going. It may have been a tactical mistake to have conceded them instead of alternatives, but it's unlikely a demonstration or letter-writing campaign would have made any difference.

Paul Buhle: [03-30] Staughton Lynd: The Perils of Sainthood. Activist-scholar (1929-2022), this focuses on his book My Country Is the World: Staughton Lynd's Writing, Speeches and Statements Against the Vietnam War.

Matthew Cappucci: [04-07] Earth has second-warmest March even before arrival of planet-heating El Niño: "It was the 529th consecutive month to feature temperatures above the 20th-century average." More climate change:

• Graham Readfearn: [04-07] 'Headed off the charts': world's ocean surface temperature hits record high: "Scientists warn of more marine heatwaves, leading to increased risk of extreme weather."

Kyle Cheney/Josh Gerstein: [04-07] Appeals court ruling puts hundreds of Jan. 6 felony cases in limbo. The authors previously wrote about a similar case: [03-07] Judge tosses obstruction charge against Jan. 6 defendant. By the way, Rachel Weiner reads this case somewhat differently: [04-07] Jan. 6 rioters can be prosecuted for obstructing Congress, court rules.

Kate Conger/Ryan Mac: [04-07] Twitter Takes Aim at Posts That Link to Its Rival Substack. I know some people who mostly use Twitter to post links to their articles on Substack. In fact, I mostly use it to notify readers of new pieces on my blog. Matt Taibbi posts 5-10 tweets linking to each and every one of his Substack pieces. He now says he will be leaving Twitter. More on Twitter:

• John Herrman: [04-07] Twitter Builds a Wall: Elon Musk's platform will take its cut or die trying."

• Mike Masnick: [04-06] Free Speech Absolutist Elon Musk Reminds People He Laid Off That If They Disparage Him He May Sue Them: "Musk is yet another rich and powerful person with a fragile ego who can't take even the slightest bit of criticism, and feels the need to intimidate people into silence."

• Prem Thakker: [04-07] Why Elon Musk Is Nuking Substack on Twitter.

• Emine Yücel: [04-07] Elon Musk Admits Labelling NPR 'State-Affiliated Media' Might Not Have Been Accurate.

Hannah Crosby: [04-08] How Many More Years of Living Dangerously: "The National Flood Insurance Program can't keep pace with the challenges posed by climate change and insuring oceanfront homes in Scituate, Massachusetts."

Timothy Egan: [04-03] What we can learn from the Midwestern war against the Klan 100 years ago. It's only been 100 years, but we're unlikely ever again to witness 25,000 hooded klansmen marching through Washington, DC. On the other hand, that anyone still considers this history relevant to now is disturbing. It may still be interesting that what destroyed the 1920s Klan wasn't repression, or that racism went out of fashion, but internal power struggles: to the end, assholes be assholes.

Amanda Holpuch: [04-07] New Mexico Police Fatally Shoot Man After Responding to Wrong House. The person they killed was armed, not that he had a chance to defend himself. So tell me again how the Second Amendment works? Note that they were able to fill up a whole sidebar under "New Mexico Gun Violence."

Heather Souvaine Horn: [03-31] Fight Climate Change by Doing Less: "Resist the misconception that sustainable living means more work." Spend less. Work less. Why make this any more complicated than it has to be?

Sarah Jones: [04-08] Children Are Not Property: "The idea that underlies the right-wing campaign for "parents rights." It's hard for me to read this without trembling, as it reminds me of psychic trauma from my own childhood that still haunt me. I wouldn't even concede that "only the unborn are spared the right's cruelty." (Remember the title of Adam Serwer's book: The Cruelty Is the Point.) I'd add that the old term for "property in people" is slavery.

Joshua Kaplan/Justin Elliott/Alex Mierjeski: [04-06] Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire: This is a major report on how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been the beneficiary of numerous gifts, especially from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. You know, for many years conservatives complained that seemingly solid Republicans would be nominated to the Supreme Court, then somehow transform into starry-eyed liberals. Eventually, they came up with a way to keep Justices true: they pay them, under the table or off on the side, especially by doling lucrative jobs out to their families. No one has raked in more cash this way than Ginni Thomas. And here we find her husband skating around the world in private planes and superyachts. Some further comments:

• Emma Brown/Shawn Boburg: [04-06] Clarence Thomas has reported receiving only two gifts since 2004: a bronze bust of Frederick Douglass (from Crow, valued at $6,484), and a glass medallion and brass plaque from Yale (valued at $530). Not reported was the financing of Ginni Thomas's political groups, including $500,000 for Liberty Central (2009), and $600,000 for Crowdsourcers (2019-21).

• Jonathan Chait: [04-06] Clarence Thomas and the Ethical Disaster of the Supreme Court: "Undisclosed gifts from billionaires won't even embarrass the right."

• Aaron Gregg/Rachel Lerman: [04-06] Who is Harlan Crow, the GOP megadonor who vacations with Justice Thomas? Not a lot of surprises here. To the question, "where did he make his money?" the answer starts: "His father . . ."

• Glenn Kessler: [04-07] Parsing Clarence Thomas's statements on the gifts he didn't disclose.

• Daniel Kreps: [04-08] Clarence Thomas' Billionaire Buddy Has a Vast Collection of Hitler Paintings, Nazi Memorabilia.

• Dahlia Lithwick/Mark Joseph Stern: [04-06] Clarence Thomas Broke the Law and It Isn't Even Close.

Mike Masnick: [04-07] Mehdi Hasan Dismantles the Entire Foundation of the Twitter Files as Matt Taibbi Stumbles to Defend It. Includes video of a 30-minute interview, which I haven't watched yet. Given that Taibbi's work on the Twitter dump is mostly behind his paywall, and that the hype he's been giving it on Twitter rarely makes much sense, I haven't made any real effort to follow the story. But the article here seems to demolish if not everything at least the hype about its importance. Hasan, by the way, has a new book out, called Win Every Argument: The Art of debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking. Trashing Taibbi should help promote that book.

Elie Mystal: [03-22] Corporate America Is No Longer Pretending to Care About Diversity: Following the outcry over the murder of George Floyd, many companies resolved to hire DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) officers. A new study shows that "the attrition for DEI officers was 33 percent at the end of 2022, compared with 21 percent for non-DEI roles."

Nicole Narea/Fabiola Cineas: [04-06] The GOP's coordinated national campaign against trans rights, explained: The key word here is "coordinated." This is not an issue I'm inclined to get involved in, but Republicans have taken such a vile stand that we're being forced to respond. It wouldn't be hard to come up with ten more examples:

• Chris Walker: [04-07] Kansas ban on trans athletes could include "genital inspection," critics say. Jeffrey St Clair (link below) described this law as "a clear case of actual child sex abuse in the name of fighting imagined child sex abuse."

Nicole Narea/Ian Millhiser/Andrew Prokop: [04-06] The multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits against Fox News, explained. As a general rule, I hate defamation lawsuits, which tend to be attacks on free speech, brought on by rich blowhards who want to stifle criticism. For example, when Trump first ran for president, one of his greatest hopes was to change the law so he could sue more people who prickled his thin skin. This one is a little different, inasmuch as it is helping to expose the inner workings of Fox and its right-wing propaganda machine. Whether Dominion deserves billions can be debated, but anything that helps reveal Fox for what they really are should be applauded. Also:

• Jim Rutenberg: [04-07] How Fox Chased Its Audience Down the Rabbit Hole.

Richard Sandomir: [04-08] Mel King, Whose Boston Mayoral Bid Eased Racial Tensions, Dies at 94. A legend a bit before my time in Boston, so I wanted to note him but didn't have much to say. Title point is certainly true, at least compared to his opponent (Raymond Flynn). Among my friends, he is regarded as a pathbreaking progressive. As Linda Gordon put it: "How I wish Mel King was with us now. I'm not sure I know of another activist/politician I have more respected and loved."

Nicholas Slayton: [04-07] 'How to Blow Up a Pipeline' and the Case for Radical, Direct Action on Climate: "A new film considers what to do when those in power fail to take the problem seriously." The film is about "a diverse group of activists banding together to blow up an oil pipeline in West Texas." Look, I don't approve, and I emphatically reject that people who would do such a thing are coming at the problem from the left, but it's only a matter of time until things like this happen, with some frequency. In Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, which is set in the future but not very damn far, extraordinary things we call "ecoterrorism" happen frequently -- e.g., hypersonic missiles blowing up tankers -- and are shown to contribute significantly to the powers around the world finally addressing the problem. To set such violence in motion, you need three factors converging: (1) the perception that climate change is destroying our way of life; (2) the common, routine resort to violence as a way of coping with problems; and (3) the demonstrated failure of normal politics to address the problem. If I had to put a bet on how far each of these has progressed, it would be somewhere between 30% and 60%. The Ukraine War, to pick one example, has boosted each of these factors. (The NordStream pipeline could conceivably have been an ecoterrorist operation, except that there was little reason: it was already shut down, and it was a difficult target, when many other targets would be much easier -- like the one in the movie.)

Also on this:

• Kate Aronoff: [04-05] Is Environmental Radicalism Inevitable? "It would be ludicrous, Malm acknowledge, to expect saboteurs to systematically dismantle the fossil fuel economy one homemade incendiary at a time. In this and other work, he's emphasized that only states can do that. Both he and the film's protagonists, accordingly, articulate eco-terrorism as a kind of DIY market signal meant to force states' hand into doing something they otherwise wouldn't."

• Peter C Baker: [04-05] Will We Call Them Terrorists? A review of How to Blow Up a Pipeline. "We do not know how the future will see us."

Jeffrey St Clair: [04-07] Roaming Charges: Broken Windows Theory of Political Crime: "People griping about the trivial nature of the charges against Trump seem to have forgotten that the aggressive enforcement of trivial offenses has been the hallmark of American policing for 40 years, put into vicious deployment by Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani with Trump cheering him on. With hundreds of thousands of people arrested and jailed for minor offenses like subway fare evasion, loitering, jaywalking, or selling single cigarettes, isn't it time we applied the Broken Windows Theory to political crimes and hold to account the people who enforced it on others?"

St Clair quotes Stephen Miller asking "What is Donald Trump's crime?" Miller's answer is: "His crime is refusing to bow or bend to the corrupt and rotten foreign policy establishment that is used to always getting their way in this country." Nice way of trying to hide a lie (Trump's refusal to bow or bend") behind a truth that is rarely acknowledged. But St Clair show how little resistance Trump offered to the "foreign policy establishment" (he even added a few wrinkles that were uniquely his own):

Let's review: Trump appointed the Deep State's top torturer to run the CIA, put 1000s of troops on the ground in Syria and stole their oil, broke Obama's drone strike record, sanctified Israel's illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, separated children from their parents at the border, extracted pledges of higher military spending from NATO countries, plotted to kill Julian Assange then indicted him on espionage charges, wanted to bomb and invade Mexico . . .

Some head-scratchers here, including most of his section on the extramarital sex lives of various presidents (which Harding had, but I doubt it was as described). One link struck me as strange: Oregon will become 1st state in nation to allow children who enroll in Medicaid at birth to stay to age 6. This is some kind of great liberal accomplishment?

Joseph Stiglitz: [04-03] How Models Get the Economy Wrong: "Seemingly complex and sophisticated econometric modeling often fails to take into account common sense and observable reality." There are a lot of smart points in this piece, but mostly they read as refutations of dumb platitudes. Here's a line I like: "Can it possibly be the case that the most efficient use of our limited research resources should be directed toward making an ever-better advertising machine (the business model underlying Facebook and Google) aimed at better exploiting consumers through discriminatory pricing and targeted and often misleading advertising?" Capitalism sometimes gives us things we want, even if we didn't know that we wanted them, but in this example it's pursuing and refining something we don't want at all, something designed only to make our lives more miserable. Further down, after disposing of the NAIRU model, he points out that advocates of the model wrongly attributed inflation to excess aggregate demand, when it was "clearly the result of a series of pandemic-induced supply-side shortages and demand shifts." This is part of a series of articles on bad models:

• Robert Kuttner: [04-07] Is Economics Self-Correcting? "Economists are made to learn long-discredited modeling, and then the safe way to win promotion and tenure is to publish articles in the same genre."

• Rakeen Mabud/David Dayen: [04-03] Hidden in Plain Sight: "The distorting power of macroeconomic policy models."

• Philip Rocco: [04-06] Prisoners of Their Own Device: "Once computed, the 'hard numbers' found in CBO's baseline tables conceal all the assumptions and uncertainties involved in producing them."

• Elizabeth Warren: [04-04] How Policymakers Fight a Losing Battle With Models: "Reforms are needed to ensure that inaccurate budgetary math doesn't take precedence over maximizing long-term prosperity."

Matt Stoller: [04-06] Federal Reserve Independence Is the Problem: "A weird, secretive, and unaccountable institution organizes our society, and nobody wants to talk about it." I remember Clinton complaining about how the "fucking bond market" runs the country, but then he turned around and nominated Alan Greenspan for two more terms as Fed Chair. Like Clinton, Obama and Biden both reappointed Republican Fed Chairs, who then turned around and screwed them.

From my Twitter feed:

Dare Obasanjo: Carnage4Life Kyle Rittenhouse was a turning point where Republicans started openly celebrating murdering people whose politics you disagree with.

Turning literal murderers into heroes because you dislike the politics of the victims and government officials normalizing it is a dark place.

Tikun Olam @richards1052 Latest poll shows Likud would lose 12 seats from its current 32 if election was held today. An utter disaster. Opposition parties led by Gantz and Lapid would double their seats to 50.

Also this meme: "The road to fascism is lined with people telling you to stop overreacting."

Daily Log

As of 14:03 today, Twitter view count for Sunday's "Speaking of Which" announcement is 120, and for Monday's "Music Week" is 215. Follower count is 588.

Posted this as a comment on Facebook:

After NYC, first a few blocks from 6th St/1st Ave, then a few blocks from Lexington/28th St, I moved deep into NJ, and couldn't find any Indian (this was 1981-83). I tried cooking my own, and failed horribly (but had some success with Chinese). I tried again a couple years later, and eventually got the hang of it. Second time in NJ (not as far out), we didn't have much trouble finding good Indian. But I did Indian there for one of my birthday dinners. Fixed 20 dishes on a stove that looked like it had been ripped out of a trailer. Assuming you can buy onions and yogurt locally (and a few other common vegetables and optionally some meat), stock a pantry a couple times a year with spices and stuff, and you can do pretty much anything. (Also note that you can get pretty decent frozen paratha and naan.)

Letter from Rick Mitchell on the JJA podcast he wants me to do on jazz polls:

we are on for 2 central wednesday. susan will send link. i will send an email tomorrow with suggested lines of discussion. basically, we will be talking about your particular polls, why polls in general have endured through jazz history, how they may have impacted the careers of individual artists (ie cecile), recent trends you've noticed (women artists), historical trends favoring white artists, for downbeat, do results affect coverage and what to make of with readers poll vs. critics poll, with both polls who participates, how do the artists themselves, both winners and those who may feel always overlooked, relate the polls. open to suggestion. also i need to briefly introduce both of you. i will turn it by you tomorrow night.

To quickly break this down:

• about your particular polls: Francis Davis started his poll at the Village Voice in 2006. The Voice had a history of running critic polls on films and pop music, so he decided to do one with 30 or so critics centered on New York. I had nothing to do with it, other than being invited to vote -- I wasn't in New York, but wrote a "Jazz Consumer Guide" column for the Voice, so that qualified me. I got more involved later, when I took over publishing the ballots, even before we both left the Voice. When he moved to poll first to Rhapsody, then to NPR, and in 2021 to ArtsFuse, I continued to help out, until last year when I wound up running it.
• why polls in general have endured through jazz history: Francis's original idea was to collect input for his year-end essay, but he soon found that it felt like a community, and he wanted to grow that and give the voters more visibility and respect, and I think he's done that -- that's why the poll, regardless of how it is branded, continues to garner support. Aside from participation of our critics, it's hard for me to quantify how much interest or impact our poll has. I suppose that's because we're not trying to sell a product (like a magazine) with it.Most other polls are basically in-house surveys that reinforce their brand and audience (examples include JazzTimes, Cadence, and Free Jazz Collective). DownBeat's polls are different in that they focus on musicians rather than on albums, and also in that they invite more outside critics (at least they invite me, and I've never written for them).
• how they may have impacted the careers of individual artists (ie cecile): I have no idea. Most of our winners were already well-established (Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, and Wayne Shorter since the late 1950s; they've won 5 times, out of 17 polls). Most younger musicians have a decade or more of placing high in the poll before winning, the closest to an exception being Maria Schneider in 2007 (of course, we don't know how her earlier albums would have placed, but there weren't many of them). Steve Lehman and Kris Davis weren't especially famous when they won, but both had a decade-plus of superb records before they won. Same for James Brandon Lewis, who has a new record out on Anti-, which is potentially a much bigger deal than TAO Forms or Intakt. Same and then some for Halvorson, who got on the bigger label (Nonesuch) and then won. I don't know anything about Cécile McLorin Salvant, other than that she's swept the vocals category with every record. I don't even know why does her PR, since I never get any. I've written about the influence of PR on polls, because I usually have a good sense of that, but her case is an exception.
• recent trends you've noticed (women artists): Three of our last four winners have been women, so that could be a trend, but Maria Schneider won in the second poll (2007). I don't doubt that there is a longer-term trend toward more major women artists with more durable careers, stretching back into the 1990s, but three out of the last four could just as well be random, like three heads in four coin tosses.
• historical trends favoring white artists: Well, in 17 polls, we've only had one white male winner (Steve Lehman in 2014, and barely at that). That's probably less than random, but I'm not inclined to read anything into that. It should cast doubt on the notion that whites get preferential treatment, although if you look down to top-ten, -twenty, etc., you'd find a more representative sampling of whites males (Charles Lloyd, Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano, Dave Douglas, etc.). White women have won more (Schneider, Davis, Halvorson), but again, no big deal.
• for downbeat, do results affect coverage and what to make of with readers poll vs. critics poll: Not my question, but every poll results in features on the poll winners. Beyond that it would be surprising not to find a correlation.
• with both polls who participates: I sent out 200 invites last year, and got 150 ballots back (plus or minus). I haven't compared my list to DownBeat's critics list (but probably should, if only to find a few names I should have invited). We've never requested any demographics data, so I'd rather not guess about that stuff -- other than the obvious points that our voters are mostly American (probably close to 90%), and mostly male (more like 75%). Our voter lists intersect heavily with most of the US jazz pubs (DownBeat, JazzTimes, NYC Jazz Record, All About Jazz; we have more than 50% of the JazzTimes voters). Broadcast (radio) journalists make up something like 25-30% of our voters. I know virtually nothing about that world. I've invited a few more critics from Free Jazz Collective and El Intruso (a Spanish site that runs its own critics poll; about half of their invitees are American). But I got a late start last year, and wanted to maintain continuity with previous polls.
• how do the artists themselves, both winners and those who may feel always overlooked relate the polls: The winners are happy, but I rarely hear anything from anyone else. I doubt there's a lot of money riding on the results.
• i need to briefly introduce both of you

Microwave shopping notes: main limitation is 12.25" max height, 16" max depth.

• Samsung 1.1 cu ft, grilling element, ceramic inside, 1000 watt, 15.8x20.4x11.7: $225.00
• Kenmore 70929 0.9 cu ft, 900 watts, 14.5x17.8x11.02: $16.24
• Perfect Aire 1.4 cu ft, 1000 watts, 15.3x20.3x11.1: $160.18
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• Black+Decker EM031MB11 1.1 cu ft 1000 watts, 15.6x20.2x12.1: $134.99
• Magic Chef 0.9 cu ft, 900 watts, 14.6x19.1x11.3: $129.12
• Black+Decker 0.9 cu ft, 900 watts, 14.8x19.1w11.5: $114.99
• Toshiba EM925A5A-SS 0.9 cu ft, 900 watts, 16.1x19.1x11.5: $114.99
• Panasonic NN-SB458S 0.9 cu ft, 900 watts, 14.8x19.1x11.5: $119.95
• Panasonic NN-SD372S 0.5 cu ft, 950 watts, 14.8x19.2x11: $182.99 [purchased 2012-05-23]

Music Week

Expanded blog post, April archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 54 albums, 13 A-list,

Music: Current count 39927 [39873] rated (+54), 52 [56] unrated (-4: 24 new, 28 old).

I'm continuing to focus on the unheard Penguin Guide 4-star albums list, and having pushed my pass into the V's, I might as well continue to the end. I ran into a bit of trouble with Martial Solal, John Surman and Sun Ra, as the Penguin Guide recommendations didn't line up with what I could find to stream. I dealt with this by breaking things up or selecting playlists from available sources, which led to some extra entries in "grade (or other) changes." In some cases, credits have shifted (Billy Myers and Dick Mills have given way to Martial Solal; John McLaughlin to John Surman, Mr. Sun Ra to Sun Ra), so entries get broken up. Reissues get shuffled around all the time, so it shouldn't be a surprise that it's impossible to keep them aligned with what's available now or what was available at any past point.

Still, when I'm working off a check list, the temptation to check things off is too much to resist. Nowadays, you might as well go straight to the John Surman box (Glancing Backwards) rather than try to find the Sequel set the Penguin Guide reviewed. The extra in the box is the first The Trio album, which is one of the best things British jazz ever produced. As for Sun Ra, the series of twofer CDs Evidence produced in the 1990s are prime targets for scroungers, but almost everything has been reissued in digital by reverting to the original LP configurations (as is whatever new vinyl is available). This reshuffling has produced some redundancies in my Sun Ra listing.

I should mention that Henri Texier's Izlaz seems to be available these days in a two-CD package with Colonel Skopje. I reviewed the latter long ago as a B, didn't bother to listen to it again just to compromise on the package. Sometimes I went off on tangents: Warren Vaché's Zephyrs seem pretty much of a piece; Petter Wettre seemed to demand further research. Vienna Art Orchestra was particularly frustrating, with nine 4-star albums I looked for but couldn't find, while I checked out three albums not even on my list (some remarkable music, but too many vocals, and too much Strauss).

I did finally add some unheard albums to my tracking file, but haven't delved in as yet. My desk is still a mess, and the demo queue remains far from sorted, so the best new jazz this week won't be available until 4/28 (Dave Rempis) or 5/12 (Javier Red). Sorry about that, but it was nice to pull out something from the queue that I really liked.

Another substantial Speaking of Which yesterday. I started off by writing the introduction, as soon as I saw Jeffrey St Clair's Roaming Charges. I regard gun control as a losing political issue, so I cringe whenever one of these shootings happens and the same old song plays out. Granted, it makes Republicans look not just stupid but pathological. It also makes Democrats look like scolds and enemies of freedom, and that's neither good for politics nor for policy. Still, I see no problem in talking about why people are so enamored with guns, especially the connections between America's war culture and the way too common desire to attack social and cultural problems with guns.

After the intro, I started gathering other stories. I wasn't surprised that Trump dominated the news. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to sort out what I collected, so a better structure would have helped, and there may be some redundancy. I was surprised that I didn't pick up anything on Trump's post-indictment fundraising, but after a quick search, I've added some links today. (Latest haul figure is $7 million, which is simultaneously too much and too little for a needy billionaire.)

Kind of lost in the noise is Trump's request for battle plans to attack Mexico. Were it not so stupid, it would have deserved its own section. Meanwhile, I collected quite a bit on casual attacks on Syria and Iran, as well as the worsening situation in Israel. I didn't make the comparison of Ben Gvir's new National Guard to the SA lightly, nor my comment about the genocide countdown clock.

I'm continuing to monitor my Twitter statistics. It's pretty regular that announcements of "Music Week" columns gather 300-350 views, but "Speaking of Which" has been steadily falling since 209 on Feb. 27, and rarely gets more than 115. I don't know what the Facebook situation is: the Expert Witness notices go to a group with 372 members, but I only get feedback from a dozen or so each week, and usually just likes, often no comments at all. I don't use my regular account for notices. I'm toying with the idea of doing a Substack as a cheap hack to push pieces out via email. I don't expect to make any money out of it, but it might be nice to provide a venue independent of the rotting social media swamp. No immediate plans.

New records reviewed this week:

• Konrad Agnas: Rite of Passage (2021 [2023], Moserobie): [sp]: B+(***)
• Dave Askren/Jeff Benedict: Denver Sessions (2022 [2023], Tapestry): [cd]: B+(**)
• Hailey Brinnel: Beautiful Tomorrow (2023, Outside In Music): [cd]: B+(***)
• Mark Feldman/Dave Rempis/Tim Daisy: Sirocco (2022 [2023], Aerophonic): [cd]: A- [04-28]
• MUEJL [Michel Stawicki/Uygur Vural/Elisabetta Lanfredini/João Madeira/Luiz Rocha]: By Breakfast (2022 [2023], 4DaRecord): [cd]: B+(*)
• Javier Red's Imaginary Converter: Life & Umbrella (2023, Desafio Candente): [cd]: A- [05-12]
• Natsuki Tamura/Ittetsu Takemura: Lightning (2022, Libra): [bc]: B+(**)
• Petter Wettre: The Last Album (2021, Odin): [sp]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Steve Swell's Fire Into Music: For Jemeel: Fire From the Road (2003-04 [2023], RogueArt, 3CD): [cd]: A-

Old music:

• Kenny Baker and Warren Vaché: Ain't Misbehavin' (1996-97 [1998], Zephyr): [sp]: A-
• Billy Byers & Martial Solal: Jazz on the Left Bank & Réunion à Paris (1956 [1998], Fresh Sound): [r]: B+(***)
• Dick Mills/Billy Byers/William Bouchaya/Martial Solal/Wessel Ilcken/Benoit Quersin: Jazz on the Left Bank (1956 [1957], Epic): [sp]: B+(**)
• Jim Snidero: The Music of Joe Henderson (1998 [1999], Double-TIme): [sp]: B+(***)
• Martial Solal: Réunion à Paris (1956 [1957], Vogue): [sp]: B+(***)
• Martial Solal: Improvise Pour France Musique (1993-94 [1994], JMS, 2CD): [sp]: B+(***)
• Martial Solal With Peter Erskine and Marc Johnson: Triangle (1995, JMS): [sp]: B+(**)
• Martian Solal Trio: Balade Du 10 Mars (1998 [1999], Soul Note): [sp]: B+(**)
• South Frisco Jazz Band: Sage Hen Strut (1984, Stomp Off): [sp]: B+(***)
• South Frisco Jazz Band: Broken Promises (1987, Stomp Off): [sp]: B+(***)
• Bobo Stenson/Anders Jormin/Jon Christensen: Reflections (1993 [1996], ECM): [sp]: B+(***)
• Sun Ra: St. Louis Blues: Solo Piano (1977 [1978], Improvising Artists): [r]: B+(***)
• Sun Ra: We Travel the Spaceways/Bad & Beautiful (1956-61 [1992], Evidence): [r]: B+(**)
• John Surman & Friends: The Dawn Sessions: Where Fortune Smiles/Live at Woodstock Town Hall (1971-75 [1999], Sequel, 2CD): [sp]: B+(***)
• John Surman: Glancing Backwards: The Dawn Anthology (1970-75 [2006], Sanctuary, 3CD): [sp]: A-
• Ralph Sutton: Ralph Sutton at Café Des Copains (1983-87 [1990], Sackville): [sp]: A-
• Ralph Sutton: More Ralph Sutton at Café Des Copains (1988-89 [19904, Sackville): [sp]: B+(***)
• Ralph Sutton/Kenny Davern: Ralph Sutton & Kenny Davern (1980 [1998], Chiaroscuro): [sp]: A-
• Martin Taylor: In Concert: Recorded at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild (1998 [2000], Milestone): [sp]: B+(***)
• John Tchicai: Grandpa's Spells (1992 [1993], Storyville): [sp]: A-
• Henri Texier Transatlantik Quartet: Izlaz (1988, Label Bleu): [r]: A-
• Jean Thielemans: Man Bites Harmonica (1957 [1958], Riverside): [r]: B+(**)
• Toots Thielemans: Live (1974, Polydor): [sp]: B+(**)
• Radka Toneff: Winter Poem (1977, Sonet): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mel Tormé: The Duke Ellington & Count Basie Songbooks (1960-61 [1984], Verve): [r]: B+(***)
• The Trio: Conflagration (1971, Dawn): [sp]: A-
• The Trio: Meet the Locals (1998 [1999], Resonant): [r]: A-
• The Trio: In Color (1999 [2000], Resonant): [sp]: B+(***)
• Gianluigi Trovesi Octet: From G to G (1992, Soul Note): [r]: B+(**)
• Warren Vaché and Brian Lemon: Play Harry Warren: An Affair to Remember (1995 [1997], Zephyr): [sp]: B+(***)
• Warren Vaché/Tony Cole/Alan Barnes Septet: Jumpin' (1997 [1999], Zephyr): [sp]: B+(**)
• Warren Vaché & Alan Barnes: Memories of You (1997 [1999], Zephyr): [sp]: B+(**)
• Warren Vaché/Allan Vaché: Mrs. Vaché's Boys (1998 [1999], Nagel Heyer): [sp]: B+(***)
• Warren Vaché: I Can't Get Started: Warren Vaché Meets Derek Watkins Again! (2000, Zephyr): [sp]: B+(***)
• Kid Thomas Valentine: Kid Thomas in California (1969 [1994], FGHB): [sp]: A-
• Tom Varner: Martian Heartache (1996 [1997], Soul Note): [sp]: B+(***)
• Joe Venuti and Dave McKenna: Alone at the Palace (1977, Chiaroscuro): [sp]: A-
• Vienna Art Orchestra: Suite for the Green Eighties (1981 [1990], Hat Art): [sp]: B+(**)
• Vienna Art Orchestra: Quiet Ways: Ballads (1996 [1997], Amadeo): [sp]: B+(**)
• Vienna Art Orchestra: All That Strauss (2000, TCB): [sp]: B+(*)
• Petter Wettre Quartet: Pig Virus (1998, Curling Legs): [sp]: B+(***)
• Petter Wettre Quintet: Household Name (2002 [2003], Household): [sp]: B+(**)
• Petter Wettre/Dave Liebman: Tour De Force (2000 [2004], Household): [sp]: B+(**)

Grade (or other) changes:

• Stu Martin/John Surman: Live at Woodstock Town Hall (1975 [1976], Pye): [sp]: B+(***)
• John McLaughlin/Dave Holland/John Surman/Stu Martin/Karl Berger: Where Fortune Smiles (1971, Dawn): [sp]: [was: B+] B+(***)
• Sun Ra and His Myth Science Arkestra: We Travel the Space Ways (1956-60 [1960], El Saturn): [r]: B+(*)
• Mr. Sun Ra and His Arkestra: Bad and Beautiful (1961 [1972], El Saturn): [r]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Chet Baker: Blue Room: The 1979 Vara Studio Sessions in Holland (Jazz Detective, 2CD) [04-28]
• Tom Collier: Boomer Vibes Volume 1 (Summit) [03-10]
• Das Kondensat: Andere Planeten (WhyPlayJazz) [04-07]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

I opened this file by linking to Jeffrey St Clair's latest "Roaming Charges" piece (way down below), because any time he writes one of his scattershot columns, I feel duty-bound to link to it. Not that we see eye-to-eye on everything. I could certainly do without the gratuitous sniping at Bernie Sanders (even if he occasionally has a point). But he's never tried to critique both parties from some imaginary point in the middle, so when he does hold Democrats to account, he never tries to blur the distinction by making Republicans seem a bit less evil.

[PS: Although further down he berates Biden as "old, tired, powerless, out of ideas and lacking any genuine outrage," then turns around and says, "One thing you have to admire about Trump is that he didn't give up pursuing his agenda, no matter how debased it was . . . people liked that he was a fighter." That strikes me as unfair to Biden, who evinces far more outrage than I think is politically savvy, and inaccurate on Trump, who never had an agenda to fight for, aside from symbolic gestures like the wall, and whose ineffectiveness had more than a little to do with his lack of compassion or conviction. Anyone who values Trump as a fighter has a fleeting grasp of reality.]

I may be more inclined to pull my punches for the sake of partisan solidarity, but I have to respect his principles, not least because they come with important insights. This week's column starts with one so important it needs to go here, on top, before you get distracted with what's likely to be a veritable tsunami of political bullshit. (I'm writing this on Friday, before collecting the rest, so it'll be easy to check my prediction.) He opens as follows (my bold):

The US is not going to solve its gun violence epidemic until it addresses its war violence epidemic. There's a reason the AK-15 has become the weapon of choice for post-Gulf War shooters. Blame guns if you must, but start with the war culture that has indoctrinated so many people to crave them, not, I suspect for self-protection, but for the projection of power in a society where the individual is left with so little.

For three decades, we have saturated our society with government-sponsored violence, where every type of killing is officially sanctioned, including that of children. We've committed infanticide with impunity from Kandahar to Belgrade. The sniper and the drone have become cultural icons, grotesque symbols of the American imperium.

Predictably, the chickens that have come home to roost haven't only been the relatives of the victims, but also the children of perpetrators, nurtured on fear, bloodshed and high-capacity ammo. They've been reared to see people in uniform -- from Mosul to Memphis -- kill with impunity. The lessons seem to have taken root.

I've said the first sentence before, probably many times. The rest just drives home the point, not that you couldn't add volumes more.

I have no fondness for guns, and wouldn't mind if they were totally banned. (I don't mind people who hunt, as many of my recent ancestors did, but even there I could imagine a program where people rent hunting guns when they obtain their in-season licenses. Among other things, it would match guns to game. I could also see letting people target shoot, but renting the guns there, too. Again, you'd get a better match. And, really, it wouldn't be any more onerous than having to rent shoes at the bowling alley -- I assume they still do that, as it's been a while.) But politically that's not going to happen, at least any time soon, at least as long as many people feel like they need to own guns, and are willing to live with the inevitable costs. What anti-gun people need to do is to shift some mind, to get people to realize that they don't need (and shouldn't want) guns.

A big part of the reason for my indifference or resignation to the dearth of gun control is that I really don't like the instinct that drives so many people to ban anything they don't like. That was the driving ideology behind prohibition, including the war on drugs, and creates bad side-effects as well as not working very well. I suppose there are limits to my preference for never banning anything: we still have bans on fully-automatic machine guns and artillery, and it makes sense to keep tight regulation on toxic chemicals and explosives. And while I'd cut way back on criminal penalties for drugs, I'd like to see enough regulation to keep them from being commercialized.

I have a somewhat similar position on immigration. I think most immigration is driven not by wonderful economic opportunities in America, but by the spread of violence that is largely backed or motivated by America's global projection of power, and by the global financial system that continuously works to extract profit from the rest of the world (often protected by American arms). If you want to limit immigration, the most effective thing would be to reduce the fear and hunger elsewhere that drives people here. (Needless to say, you can substitute Europe for America in the preceding sentences and still make perfect sense. And Europe and America are linked in that way, such that the political/economic powers in each no longer discriminate in favor of own interests.) So my argument to anyone who wants to restrict immigration is to start by reforming the foreign policies that drive people to come here. Oh, and by the way, also climate policies, given that changing climate is likely to be the biggest driver of migration in coming decades.

Of course, I know people (my wife, for one) who want no limits on immigration, as they believe that every person should have the right to live wherever they see fit. I don't have a strong argument against that position, but I can see a sensible one. Borders act as baffles, which aren't impermeable but do so some extent allow nations to work on their own problems independently of other nations and pressures. While America may look like some kind of paradise to outsiders, it isn't. We have a lot of work to do to make it more livable and vital for the people who already live here, and adding more people makes it harder.

Sure, maybe not a lot: I accept that the long-term benefits of adding immigrants are real, that the short-term costs aren't as bad as is commonly assumed (or wouldn't be if we didn't allow them to be exploited so badly), and that the idea that America's culture will be undermined by unassimilable aliens is a fantasy. On the other hand, we're hard pressed now to build the political will to make the changes we so sorely need, and there's little reason to think that higher immigration levels might help. Note that the biggest turn to the left in American history was during the 1930s, when immigration was close to nil. On the other hand, recall that 5 (of 16) Republican presidential candidates in 2016 had at least one foreign-born parent.

What I do see as priorities on immigration are that people who have been here for quite some time need to be accepted and documented, and not be treated as "illegals"; also that migrants who do come to America need to be treated humanely and efficiently, not just for their own sakes but because the way we've been treating them just makes us all that much more barbaric.

Top story threads:

Trump: The former president pulled away from the pack this week, by getting indicted, by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, in a case that involves the famous "hush money" payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, or perhaps more technically the hidden audit trail of the payment, but with the indictment (still sealed) of 30 items, it seems likely that the charges will go further into an extensive pattern of corrupt business practices. You might start by watching Jimmy Kimmel, because, as he insists, Trump's indictment is "historic and it's funny." He only had an hour or two to prepare (poor Seth Myers missed it completely), but he makes some good points. Also, once again, I love it that virtually his whole audience is excited by the news. I'm so used to being in a fringe minority that I find it very heartening to see a crowd of normal people clearly aware of just how horrible Trump has been (and still is).

• Nicole Narea/Ian Millhiser: [03-31] Your biggest questions about Trump's indictment, answered: "Here's what happens next."

• Zack Beauchamp: [03-31] The best precedent for Trump's indictment is (gulp) Israel: Sure, no nation has more experience with indicting its political leaders, but Trump hasn't pushed his situation nearly as far as Netanyahu has. To make the two analogous, Trump would have to win in 2024, and make every day January 6 all over again.

• Igor Derysh: [03-31] Trump reportedly "caught off guard" by 34-count indictment -- melts down all night on Truith Social. My instinct is to be agnostic about indicting Trump (or anyone else, at least anyone I've heard of), not just because "innocent until proven guilty," and not just because I never care much for the details, but also because I don't have much faith that justice works in America. If Trump acted like a normal defendant, which is to say hid behind lawyers who exercised some care not to inflame the situation, that would probably be the end of my interest. After all, why get heavily invested in something (like his impeachments) that isn't likely to pan out. On the other hand, when he squirms like a stuck pig, that's something I can enjoy. Not that I usually go in for Schadenfreude, but regardless of whether he's ultimately a convicted felon, he's clearly a malign political force, and quite simply a bad person. Perhaps the squirming is just the mark of a thin-skinned, narcissistic egomaniac, but it feels like at least a taste of justice.

  By the way, Salon is having a lot of fun consulting various "experts" on whatever it is they know about the Trump indictment. Examples as of [04-02]: Experts: Bragg has "very strong case"; Expert: Indictment won't help Trump; Expert: Charges show Trump not a "king"; Experts rip DeSantis' extradition threat; Haberman: Ex-Trumpers "quietly cheering"; Legal experts: Trump will fight back; Right freaks out over Trump indictment. Also, a while back [02-24] "Threatening a prosecutor is a crime": Experts say Trump's Truth Social post could badly backfire.

• Chris Hedges: [03-31] Yes, Donald Trump has committed many crimes -- but that's not why he faces prosecution: "Like Richard Nixon, Trump is being punished for his sins against the dominant order, not his most serious ones." Mostly true: if I had to rank his crimes, I'd start elsewhere, but suppressing the Storm Daniels story a week before the 2016 election may have been one that was necessary to secure his win, making the later crimes possible. There's no doubt that the story was juicy enough the media would have gone crazy with it, possibly drowning out the last round of Clinton email hoopla. Sure, most of his supporters would have laughed it off, but he won the electoral college by a very slim margin.

  The part that's untrue is that he is being tried for upsetting "the dominant order." That's an odd, imprecise term, but most of the rich and powerful were perfectly happy with all the perks and favors Trump cut them. Even when they found him embarrassing, they were more worried that he'd get voted out and the gravy train would stop (although, let's be real, most of them know how to extract favors from Democrats as well). While Trump occasionally said things that were off base, he did so little on his own that he never was much of a threat. In particular, his much bruited antiwar sentiments led to ever larger defense budgets and an acceleration of random drone attacks, while he tore up many more treaties than he negotiated. And while it's true that most Democrats came to really despise him, the few cases they brought -- including two politically-doomed impeachments -- were constructed narrowly and solidly based. We haven't seen the Manhattan DA case yet, but given how reluctant Alvin Bragg was to charge Trump, he probably has a solid case.

  Since Hedges mentioned Nixon, let's talk about him for a minute. Maybe I was just at an impressionable age when he became president, but I've always thought he was the most evil politician in American history. He's the only one I've truly hated, and I still blame much of what I deplore most in Reagan, Bush, and even Trump on him. When I was trying to figure out what I thought about capital punishment, he was my test case: if we can't execute Nixon, where's the justice in executing anyone else? It really just reduces to a power dynamic: states kill the people too powerless to stop them, and let the rest go free. I remember thinking about death, and concluding that as long as Nixon goes first, I'm willing to deal with it. Yet basically what happened was that after Nixon resigned, and after Ford pardoned him, he became harmless. He didn't become a hermit. He wrote his self-serving books, and enjoyed the rest of his life in relative comfort, but he never really bothered us after that. So, sure, it wasn't justice that Nixon never had to pay for his crimes. But it was effective, just to keep him away from the levers of power that made his crimes so calamitous.

  Now maybe the same thing could have happened with Trump, but here he is, running for president again, threatening revenge on everyone who slighted him over the years, inspiring and exhorting his coterie of followers to build new crimes on top of his. Never mind remorse, he is utterly without shame or conscience. He still describes himself as "the most innocent man in American history." It is quite possible that had he meekly retired into his mansion, none of the charges -- and now that the ice is broken, I have little doubt that there will be more -- would have been brought. You can object that makes them political, but Trump is the one who made them political: he is the one who made them urgent and necessary. Had he simply retired, he would have been as harmless as Nixon. But by fighting on, several prosecutors decided they had to make clear to the public what kind of man (what kind of criminal) he really is.

  Hedges' other implication: that one shouldn't be prosecuted for a lesser crime once one has committed a greater one, is too ridiculous to address. I rather doubt that's even the rule in divinity school, where Hedges studied, but I'm dead certain that no lawyer in America would try to use that as a defense.

• Ben Jacobs: [03-31] Trump's indictment has united the Republican Party in apocalyptic rage. Well, they see every rage as apocalyptic.

• Samaa Khullar: [03-31] Manhattan DA accuses GOP of "unlawful political interference" in Trump case: If you want to talk about "unprecedented," tell me the last time a committee of Congress tried to insert itself into a state or local prosecution, demanding to expose and interrogate a case before it has been tried? I like the British term for this sort of thing: "attempting to pervert the course of justice." Khullar also wrote: [03-31] Fox News stokes fears of political "violence" over Trump indictment.

• Tori Otten: [03-31] Republicans' Only Defense Against the Trump Indictment: George Soros: Mostly in the context of the "Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney." I shouldn't have to explain the anti-semitic tropes of singling Soros out everywhere. And it's not like left-leaning pundits are going around deriding Republicans as "Koch-backed" or "Adelson-backed" (even though both of those guys, at least before the latter died, held conventions attended by dozens of Republicans hoping to kiss the ring). [OK, full disclosure, back when he was a Congressman, I did refer to "Mike Pompeo (R-Koch)," but that connection was much more direct than Soros ever gets to anyone, and I was contrasting Pompeo to "Todd Tiahrt (R-Boeing)."]

• Andre Pagliarini: [04-01] What the Right-Wing Freakout Over Trump's "Banana Republic" Indictment Is Really About. Meanwhile, Jair Bolsonaro return to Brazil, and his own possible prosecution for a wide range of crimes.

• Ramesh Ponnoru: [04-02] Trump's indictment will warp our politics for years to come: I only mention this piece only because it strikes me that Trump's indictment may well be viewed as belonging to the "warp for years to come" that started with Republican attempts to use civil and criminal suits against Clinton in the 1990s. If this seems to be harsher on Trump, it's because he's left so much more evidence to prosecute him with -- and possibly because his "lock her up" campaign slogan amounted to taunting.

• Andrew Prokop: [03-30] Donald Trump has been indicted. The hush money case against him, explained. The story, updated many times, from a staple post. But until people see the actual indictment, it's hard to speculate on how strong the case is. Prokop also wrote: [04-01] How to tell when an investigation is politicized. His criteria seem to be: how similar is this to the Kenneth Starr prosecution of Clinton? He doesn't really know, but that isn't stopping him from spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). Of course, anything involving Trump is bound to be politicized, as Trump will blame political motives, and likely realizes that his offenses are seen as part of his political persona. This leads to a second question which Prokop doesn't ask: should people with political motives be exempt from prosecution? As someone long identified as a leftist, I can't think of any such precedent. I'm especially annoyed by the line: "if they can go after Trump, they can go after anybody." Where have these people been? They've been going after anybody for well over a century. It's only people like Trump who felt themselves above the law, immune from prosecution.

• Alex Shephard: [03-30] Did Trump Do Worse Things? Sure. But This Indictment Is a Great Start. Shephard also wrote: [03-31] A Field Guide to the Right's Hysterical and Desperate Response to Trump's Indictment. I always get a kick out of the line (attributed here to Vivek Ramaswamy, but I've probably heard it 20 times so far): "If they can do it to Trump, they can do it to you." Of course, if you committed the same crimes Trump is charged with, they always could have "done it to you" -- and wouldn't have given it a second thought. What's new is that they're even, finally doing it to Trump.

• Perry Stein/Shayna Jacobs: [03-31] Trump lashes out against New York judge who will hear his criminal case.

• Asawin Suebsaeng/Adam Rawnsley: [03-29] Trump Asks Advisers for 'Battle Plans' to 'Attack Mexico' if Reelected.

• Michael Tomasky: [03-31] What Trump and Republicans Don't Understand About the Law.

• Brett Wilkins: [03-31] 'This P*ssy Grabbed Back': Stormy Daniels Speaks Out After Trump Indictment.

• Li Zhou: [03-31] The indictment adds to a long list of times Republicans have backed Trump. List is admittedly "non-exhaustive."

• Inspirational tweet (sure, we're all criminals, which makes it so unfair when any of us get charged):

  Lauren Boebert: If they charge President Trump for his crimes, they could charge any of us for our crimes. The rule of law means nothing to these people.

• PS: I was later surprised that I didn't come up with anything on Trump's post-indictment fundraising. A quick search revealed:

  • Trump's fundraising efforts after indictment pay off, with over $4 million raised
  • Scoop: Trump raises over $5 million since indictment news
  • Trump Campaign Has Raised $7 Million Since Indictment
  • And then there's his little golf buddy: Lindsey Graham calls for Fox News viewers to donate to Trump: 'They're trying to bleed him dry' -- but Trump's supposed to be a billionaire, which means he has a thousand times more money than he's raising, so how does an extra 0.01% really help out? Of course, if they did bleed him dry, he'd still be eligible for a public defender, like everyone else, so what does he have to complain about?

Other Republicans: DeSantis, McCarthy, and the rest simply couldn't keep up last week.

• Kate Aronoff: [03-29] Why the Republicans' "Lower Energy Costs Act" Won't Lower Energy Costs: "It will, however, please the oil and gas industry."

• Jennifer C Berkshire: [03-30] The West Coast Think Tank Helping to Orchestrate DeSantis's War on the Woke: On the Claremont Institute.

• Jonathan Chait: [03-30] The Republican Debt-Ceiling Hostage Scheme Is Collapsing. Still, I'm not convinced that not having a negotiating position will keep them from trying to crash the economy. Backing down would be a sign of weakness, which they can't allow.

• Luca Goldmansour: [02-23] Who Wants to Teach in Florida? "Gov. DeSantis's culture warmongering has helped produce the highest teacher vacancy rates in the country."

• Meryl Kornfield: [04-02] Republican Asa Hutchinson announces he is running for president.

• Matt Stieb: [03-30] Ron DeSantis Got Played by Disney.

• Steve M: [03-31] DeSantis's reaction to the Trump indictment shows why he's in second place. Also: [04-02] Maybe Republicans shouldn't defend Trump or attack him. The Jeb Bush tweet is especially pathetic. Perhaps the reason Bragg took up the case, after originally expressing his disinterest, was because the case simply became too overpowering not to prosecute?

Israel: If we were keeping something like the "doomsday clock" on the question of when does Israel turn genocidal, I wouldn't put it a few minutes before midnight (like the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists does), but this week it definitely moved past noon.

• Ben Armbruster: [03-29] Lawmakers ask Biden to investigate Israel's use of US arms: The law says that "American weapons sales cannot be used to commit human rights abuses," but Israel has long gotten a free pass.

• Haim Bresheeth-Zabner: [03-31] Israel's rightwing government represents the Judaization of Zionism. "The statistics are clear: Israel is safely on its way to becoming a Jewish version of the Islamic Republic." It is worth remembering that before 1948, the Zionist movement was overwhelmingly secular, even in its "revisionist" Jabotinsky wing, while religious Jews in Palestine (going back centuries) tended to be anti-Zionist. However, Ben-Gurion decided he wanted the imprimatur of the rabbis, so cut a deal to let religious parties into the government. Their numbers increased with the immigration of Jews from Arab states, and they developed their own peculiar vision of Zionism, especially as they led the post-1967 settler movement. They cemented their gains by being power brokers, switching between Labor and Likud governments depending on who gave them the best deal. As their power grew, there was a secular backlash a few years back, but by then the division between Jews and Palestinians was so deep that even secular Jews couldn't bridge it. In the latest elections, Netanyahu was so desperate to return to power (and to keep out of jail) that he effectively surrendered the government to his religious party partners, giving them effective power even though they still only represent a minority of Israeli Jews.

• Ryan Cooper: [03-30] The Occupation Is Eating Israeli Democracy.

• Ruth Margalit: [03-29] Israel's transformative protest movement.

• Jonathan Ofir: [03-31] Meet Avichai Buaron, the new Likud lawmaker who advocated for 'extermination camps' for Israel's enemies. Richard Silverstein also wrote about this: [03-30] New Israeli MK Advocated Death Camps for Palestinians.

• Shira Rubin: [04-02] Israel to form national guard proposed by far-right minister Ben Gvir. Israel is not exactly lacking for internal security organizations, but this one would report directly to Ben Gvir, who "has been convicted dozens of times for charges that include support for terrorist organizations and anti-Palestinian incitement." I don't see this working out well. Even Hitler eventually moved to disband the SA (Sturmabteilung, aka "brown shirts") when they got out of hand.

• Philip Weiss: [03-28] US media turn on Netanyahu (finally) for meddling in US policy. Cites important articles by Sharon Pardo/Yonatan Touval: [03-23] Netanyahu Has Made Israel a US Adversary; and James Bamford: [03-23] The Trump Campaign's Collusion With Israel (which I commented on last week). Weiss also wrote: [04-01] 'Soft gloves' police treatment of Jewish protesters reveals Israeli racism.

• Jeff Wright: [03-12] 'Til Kingdom Come unpacks the power and politics of Christian Zionism: Documentary film by Maya Zinshtein. Wright also wrote a review of another recent film: [04-02] The Law and the Prophets offers a master class on Israel's control of Palestinians.

Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc: A couple late items on the 20th anniversary of the Bush invasion of Iraq, but also a sudden rash of articles about the region (mostly about blowing it up).

• Sina Azodi/Arman Mahmoudian: [03-28] Iran's historic interdependence with Russia takes a turn -- over Europe.

• Dave DeCamp: [03-30] Milley Says the US Should Attack Iran's IRGC Quds Force. I think he means in Syria (and possibly Iraq), as opposed to directly attacking Iran, but he could be more specific. The US mission in Syria has always been schizophrenic, and it's become increasingly pointless as Assad has tightened control over almost all of the country. Of course, Israel is doing the same thing: see [03-31] Israel strikes Damascus for second time in 24 hours, kills IRGC officer.

• Daniel Larison: [03-31] Centrist DC think tank: US should threaten war, regime change in Iran: CNAS (Center for a New American Security), no names here, but I suppose "centrist" means that the Democrats are even hawkier than the Republicans (it wouldn't be hard to staff a roster like that).

• Ted Galen Carpenter: [03-31] Syria episode shows how contractors still used to fight America's wars.

• Blaise Malley: [03-28] Iraq War cheerleader reunion: it wasn't the failure you think it was: "Robert Kagan claims US standing across the globe is just fine. The rest of the world wants 'more America, not less.'" Some names here have new books I've been noting recently, including Robert Kagan, Stephen Hadley, and Melvyn Leffler. Kagan, by the way, also figures prominently in Medea Benjamin/Nicholas JS Davies: [03-17] The Not-So-Winding Road from Iraq to Ukraine.

• James North: [04-01] An Iraqi writer's brilliant book shows how the 2003 US invasion detonated 20 years of awful violence: Review of Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East's Long War. The author was a young architect in 2003. He became a translator/fixer for foreign journalists, went on to write and photograph his own articles (mostly for Guardian), and remained on the front lines at least through the fight with ISIS in 2017: "no American or European writer could have done this."

• Philip Weiss: [03-22] The US establishment's fever to smash Iraq must not be forgotten.

Ukraine War: Both sides continue to publicly build up their cases that they cannot be defeated, and that they can continue to fight indefinitely. We're supposed to be impressed by that?

• Blaise Malley: [03-31] Diplomacy Watch: Privately, experts ask White House 'what's the longer-term gameplan?'

• David Atkins: [03-29] Trump, DeSantis Say They Just Want Peace in Ukraine. Don't Fall for It. I started to write something about this piece, then tore it up, because it's too easy to get sucked into a rathole about the insincerity of "fascists for peace." But I came back to it, because I hate the idea of attacking anyone for "just wanting peace," even characters as execrable as the headline. I also hate the practice of dredging up the reluctance of many Americans to get involved in WWII, even if Charles Lindbergh and "the original 'America First' crowd" were Nazi symps (except to point out that Trump's father attended a notorious 1939 pro-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden). Having read a lot of history on the subject, I'm probably more attuned to incipient fascism than most, but Nazi/Fascist charges only obscure the causes and stakes of the Ukraine war (as, for that matter, do high-minded paeans to democracy), and act mostly as pro-war recruiting signals. (For example, this page provides links to two 2014 pieces by Ed Kilgore: Russia as the New Fascist Threat, and Ukraine and the Sudeten Analogy. Kilgore, of course, is one of those liberals whose neverending "search for monsters to destroy" led him to support the Bush War in Iraq.)

  I also object to the assumption that the real (or only) reason Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans have for opposing US support for Ukraine -- if that's what they're doing; describing Ukraine as "a regional conflict" doesn't reflect the official line but isn't all that inaccurate -- is that they are Putin fans/fools. There is a long and honorable tradition in American politics, going back to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and articulated most famously by John Quincy Adams, of military entanglements around the world. This tradition was unfairly lampooned as "isolationism" during the intoxication of WWII and the rise of the Cold Warriors afterwards, but we now have 75 years of evidence suggesting that restraint and peaceful diplomacy and commerce would have been a wiser course. Granted, Trump's actual presidency gives us no reason to believe that he understands what it takes to avoid the wars he claims not to believe in. Indeed, history will record that he made a complete botch of Ukraine during his four years as president.

• Jonathan Guyer: [03-29] What US weapons tell us about the Russia-Ukraine war: As the chart makes clear, arming Ukraine is overwhelmingly an American project. What isn't clear is how much arms like tanks are meant to advance a negotiating position or just an offensive hoping to reclaim Russian-occupied territory, because neither Ukraine nor the US seems to have a coherent negotiating position.

• Fred Kaplan: [03-27] What Putin's Latest Nuke Announcement Really means: "It's all just for show -- but it could backfire."

• Ivan Nechepurenko/Anatoly Kurmanev: [04-02] Influential Russian Military Blogger Is Killed in St Petersburg Bombing.

• Jake Werner: [03-31] What Biden means when he says we're fighting 'global battle for democracy': So, you see, he's hosting this Summit for Democracy, which among other oddities included a panel featuring Narenda Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu, leaders in legislating ethnocracies, which deny fundamental rights to minorities, while still pretending to practice democracy.

• Joshua Yaffa: [03-31] The unimaginable horror of a friend's arrest in Moscow: Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested and charged with espionage. Even if true, it's hard to imagine that reporting on Russia is more damaging than descending into hostage-taking. For more, see Connor Echols: [03-30] Ex-CIA official: No way detained WSJ reporter is a US spy. Also Jonathan Guyer: [03-30] The first US journalist was just arrested in Russia since the Cold War.

Other stories:

Dean Baker: [04-01] The Social Security Scare Story Industry: One of those scare stories showed up in my local paper. I'm not surprised at how few people actually understand how Social Security works, but you'd think the ones who write on it for major news chains would show some initiative. The real future problem with Social Security and Medicare is whether we elect politicians who understand the need to take care of the elderly and infirm, or we elect a bunch of jerks (i.e., Republicans) who don't care and can't be bothered. Baker also wrote: [03-29] The Silicon Valley Bank Bailout: The Purpose of Government Is to Make the Rich Richers #63,486. I don't think he's actually counting, but feels like the right ballpark.

Shirin Ghaffary: [03-31] Elon Musk wants to fill your Twitter feed with paid accounts: As of April 15, "Twitter will only recommend content from paid accounts in the For You tab, the first screen users see when they open the app." That sounds like it will be 100% advertising. The alternative to "For you" is "Following," which actually gives me something more like what I expected: tweets from people I follow, plus ones those people forward. I've been looking at my own view stats, and I'm pretty disgusted with what I'm seeing: my tweets announcing "Speaking of Which" posts are ultimately viewed by a bit less than 15% of my followers. "Music Week" announcements get more views, but still only about 50% of my followers (or that's what the total works out to: they usually get a retweet or two, so that helps the spread). Consequently, I'm questioning the whole utility of the platform. And I suspect that that in a few weeks a blue checkmark will be recognized as a stigma instead of as proof of authenticity. They're really just pissing on their brand.

• Drew Harwell: [04-02] Twitter strikes New York Times' verified badge on Elon Musk's orders: "The Times and other news organizations say they won't pay for the icon, which [was originally] designed to protect against impersonation." Evidently, they haven't removed all the blue checks yet, probably to obscure the question of how many suckers have paid up, but after the Times publicly refused to pay up, Musk decided to make an example of them.

• Prem Thakker: [03-31] Sorry Elon, No One Cares About Losing Their Blue Checkmark on Twitter. There's a list here of famous publishers opting out. This flows into a another piece: "Twitter Admits It's Been Forcing Elon Musk on Your Timeline." I recently clicked on "Following" instead of the default "For you," and the Musk tweets have (so far) vanished.

William Hartung: [03-26] The Pentagon's Budget from Hell: Congress Has Been Captured by the Arms Industry: "The ultimate driver of that enormous spending spree is a seldom-commented-upon strategy of global military overreach, including 75 U.S. military bases scattered on every continent except Antarctica, 170,000 troops stationed overseas, and counterterror operations in at least 85 -- not, that is not a typo -- countries (a count offered by Brown University's Cost of War Project."

Sean Illing: [03-30] The media wants the audience's trust. But is it being earned? Interview with Brian Stelter, who wrote Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth. Illing has a point: "So it's not that Fox doesn't have a right-wing bias; it's that it primarily exists to flatter the delusions of its audience, and they do it even when they know it's bullshit." That's an insight that could apply to other media companies, which are all defined by their ability to corral and exploit a predictable audience. But Fox's audience is more deluded than most, and it's easy to push their buttons. Moreover, they've captured a political party, which means they can make much of the news they report, and give their audience a rooting interest.

Robert Kuttner: [03-28] What Comes After Neoliberalism? "We are winning the battle of ideas. We have a long way to go before we win the politics." I hear an echo here of one of my pet ideas: I believe that the New Left won the "battle of ideas" in the 1970s, resulting in sweeping changes to how we think about war, race, sex, the environment, and consumer rights, but part of that constellation of ideas was a profound mistrust of power, as well as a sharp critique of the previous generation of liberals (especially those who brought us the Cold War and the hot war in Vietnam), so very little effort got made to secure liberation with political power. (The New Left was also divided on labor unions, which after Taft-Hartley had largely abandoned the struggle to organize poor workers, and which mostly exercised their power within the Democratic Party to support the warmongers.) The result is that we've seen much erosion on these fronts, even though there's little popular support for the reaction.

A big part of this erosion can be ascribed to elements in the Democratic Party who tried to craft a "kindler, gentler" version of neoliberalism -- with scant success, given that any time they tried to make something decent out of market solutions, Republicans were there to wreck their efforts. (Clinton claimed he had crafted a good welfare reform bill, only to find it passed by a Republican Congress wrapped up in "a sack of shit." Obamacare didn't fare much better.) It's true that there are new ideas gaining purchase among Democrats (some even embraced by Biden, who the neoliberal faction settled on as their "anybody but Bernie" candidate), but it's premature to claim that they've gained the upper hand over neoliberalism.

What is clear, though, is that neoliberalism has failed, both as an economic doctrine and as a political movement. As for the terminology problem, I'm inclined to go with democracy: we need a political order that puts people ahead of profit, that puts industry and commerce to work for the betterment of everyone. The key to doing that is to give everyone more rights, so they can take back the state and redirect it for the general welfare. The Republicans ran on exactly that platform in 1860: "Vote yourself a farm; vote yourself a tariff!"

Jack McCordick: [03-29] How Big Business Hijacked Freedom: Interview with Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway, authors of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. Telling that the issue that originally set the NAM (National Association of Manufacturers) off was their opposition to child labor laws.

Ian Millhiser: [03-30] The lawsuit that threatens everything from cancer screenings to birth control, explained: "A notoriously partisan judge has launched a new attack on one of Obamacare's key provisions." More on the courts:

• Matt Ford: [03-30] It's 2023, and Conservatives Are Still Trying to Sue Obamacare Out of Existence. Judge Reed O'Connor "struck down a major part of the Affordable Care Act on Thursday. . . . O'Connor was the favored destination of such suits for years: He has found the ACA to be unconstitutional, either in whole or in part, at least four times now, leaving the appellate courts to clean up his many messes."

Charles P Pierce: He cranks out several posts every day, most worth reading (many I could have filed in various spots above):

• [03-31] Our Severe Weather Infrastructure Is in Bad, Bad Shape.

• [03-30] Idaho Conservatives Have Debuted Their Latest Bullsh*t Catchphrase: 'Abortion Trafficking'.

• [03-30] The Preposterous Ginni Thomas Dark Money Situation Has Gone On Far Too Long.

• [03-28] Tommy Tuberville Just Called the Department of Defense an "Abortion Travel Agency".

Paul Rosenberg: [04-02] What crisis of democracy? Scholar Larry Bartels says the real crisis is corrupt leaders: Shorter title: "Maybe we just elect bad people." Interview with Bartels, who wrote Democracy Erodes From the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe. Focus is on European leaders like Viktor Orban and Giorgia Meloni, but key point applies to American political leaders as well, especially Donald Trump, who didn't exactly run as an authoritarian but exercised his power as arbitrarily and capriciously as he could get away with, resulting in a quite striking erosion of democratic norms and expectations.

Jason Samenow: [03-26] How Mississippi's tornadoes unfolded Friday night and why they were so deadly: I read this piece with considerable interest, having grown up in what used to be called "tornado alley": roughly an oval from a bit south of Oklahoma City to a bit north of Wichita, spreading out maybe a hundred miles east and west. After a large tornado wiped out the small town of Udall, about 20 miles southeast of Wichita, when I was 5 or 6, Kansas got its act together and built a pretty robust tornado warning system. The frequency of tornados declined over the last decade or two, shifting east and south, but until then the grim statistic was that despite getting many fewer tornados than Kansas, the state with by far the most tornado deaths was Mississippi. That's what happens when your state hates you. I haven't looked at those stats recently, but with the climate shift on top of America's most decrepit state government, the situation can only have grown worse (despite the fact that at the national level, weather forecasting has gotten markedly better). More tornado reports this week:

• Kim Bellware, et al: [04-01] Tornadoes charge through South, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, killing 24.

• Annabelle Timsit/Jason Samenow: [04-02] Death toll at least 31 after storms pummel South, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic. I think this includes the 25 deaths previously reported.

Kelefa Sanneh: [03-27] How Christian is Christian nationalism? This is a question that I, as someone who doesn't believe in, and for that matter distrusts, both Christianity and nationalism, am indifferent to, yet perversely curious about. The latter is probably because I once had what I felt to be a pretty sound grounding in at least one strain of Christianity, and I suspect that most self-professed Christian nationalists have a very different understanding. This piece reviews a couple books: Paul D Miller's The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong With Christian Nationalism; and Stephen Wolfe's The Case for Christian Nationalism.

Dylan Scott: [03-31] The number of uninsured Americans is about to jump dramatically for the first time in years: "Starting April 1, states will begin removing millions of people off Medicaid's rolls as a pandemic-era program that kept them enrolled expires."

Jeffrey St Clair: [03-31] Roaming Charges: Spare the AR-15, Spoil the Child. Beyond the Nashville shooting story (noted in introduction), see the excruciating long list of failures in America's so-called justice system, as well as a few obvious comments about the ICC, and numerous other stories that should make you stop and think. Much more, including a link to hear Pharoah Sanders in 2011.

I don't feel like elevating this to the "major story" section, but if I catch more links on guns, hang them here:

• Hannah Allam: [03-27] The radicals' rifle: "Armed groups on the right and left exploit the AR-15 as both tool and symbol." Left? Well, they found some, and they've bought guns to defend against "real threats," by which they mean the gun nuts on the right.

• Ben Beckett: [03-31] The Right Is Flat-Out Admitting It Doesn't Care About Gun Violence. The right don't care whether you, or your children, live or die. The right don't care if you're miserable. The right thinks the world can go to hell, and they'll carry on as oblivious as ever.

• Emily Guskin/Aadit Tambe/Jon Gerberg: [03-27] Why do Americans own AR-15s: Polling as to why misses the obvious category (although some of the given categories are subsets): "because I'm an asshole." Other factors are largely as expected. Note that only 8% of US adults overall have served in military, but 28% of AR-15 owners have, as have 18% of other gun owners. Hunting is not a reason for 52% of AR-15 owners. The other 48% are lying and/or assholes (the two are not exclusive).

• Alex Horton/Monique Woo/Tucker Harris: [03-27] Varmints, soldiers and looming threats: See the ads used to sell the AR-15. One ad reads: "Consider your man card reissued."

• N Kirkpatrick/Atthar Mirza/Manuel Canales: [03-27] The Blast Effect: "This is how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart.

Jonathan Swan/Kate Kelly/Maggie Haberman/Mark Mazzetti: [03-30] Kushner Firm Got Hundreds of Millions From 2 Persian Gulf Nations: Now, this is how you do graft. Moreover, it's unlikely that he'll ever get prosecuted for the "stupid shit" that keeps tripping Trump up.

Li Zhou: [03-30] Why train derailments involving hazardous chemicals keep happening: "another train has derailed and caught fire in Minnesota." Also:

• Rebecca Leber: [04-02] The thread that ties the recent chemical spills together.

Mar 2023