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Monday, September 7, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some scattered links this week:

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

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

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

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

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

Riley Beggin:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Brigham:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aaron Ross Coleman:

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

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

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

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

Jason Ditz:

• Pentagon accuses China of massing anti-satellite weapons:

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

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

• Pompeo: Whole world uniting against China.

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

• Pompeo tells Venezuela opposition to boycott election.

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

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

• Benjamin Balthaser: A Jewish goodbye to David Graeber.

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

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

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

• Stuart Jeffries: David Graeber obituary.

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

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

• Nathan J Robinson: What David Graeber noticed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Against economics (2019).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More pieces on Trump books:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ezra Klein:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Krugman:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martin Longman:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ian Millhiser:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cameron Peters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aaron Rupar:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margaret Sullivan:

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

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

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

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

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

Alex Ward:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion:

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

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Monday, August 31, 2020

August archive (final).

Music: Current count 33914 [33865] rated (+49), 215 [225] unrated (-10).

Another big week, closing out a huge five-week month -- the August Streamnotes (link above) collected 216 records, which is close to the record (something I don't have time to research at the moment). Fairly significant dives into old jazz, triggered either by questions or deaths, really pumped up the total. This week the subjects are Wayne Shorter and the late Jimmy Heath (whose new album came out shortly after his death). That left 92 new music albums, plus 14 new compilations of older music. This week I finally took a crack at my demo queue, reducing it by half.

Very few questions of late, but I did post some notes on Heath and Shorter.

Don't have time to write much more. I did save an obituary link for Japanese trumpet player Itaru Oki (1941-2020). I have two of his records in my database. I've also factored Phil Overeem's latest list into my metacritic rankings. One of the new records there (number 2 on the old music list) is Allen Lowe's latest book, packaged with 30 CDs.

Found out another cousin (well, -in-law) died, this one three years ago. Barbara Burns, wife of Jerold Dean Burns, known as Pete to his friends, and J.D. to his family. Been wondering about her.

New records reviewed this week:

Rez Abbasi: Django-shift (2019 [2020], Whirlwind): Guitarist, with Neil Alexander (organ/electronics) and Michael Sarin (drums), playing seven Django Reinhardt pieces and two others ("Anniversary Song" and "September Song"). Steers clear of the Hot Club formula, for better or worse. B+(**) [cd]

Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids: Shaman! (2020, Strut): Originally Bruce Baker, saxophonist from Chicago, played with Cecil Taylor's Black Music Ensemble in the 1970s, has led this group at least since 1998. Fifth album. Full-bodied sax over a rippling rhythm. Good enough for a party, and then some consciousness. A-

Mandy Barnett: A Nashville Songbook (2020, BMG): Stage singer, built her career on portraying Patsy Cline, something she does remarkably well. Thirteen "iconic country and pop standards . . . that made Music Row famous," you know she's shooting for the rafters when she trots out Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley. B+(**)

The Big Bad Bones Featuring Scott Whitfield: Emergency Vehicle Blues (2019 [2020], Summit): Four trombonists -- Whitfield, Brett Stamps, Pete Madsen, and Steve Wilson on bass trombone -- backed by a Big Bad Rhythm Section (keyboards, bass, drums), effectively a big band minus trumpet and reed sections. Stamps wrote all the pieces. B+(*) [cd]

Endless Field: Alive in the Wilderness (2020, Biophilia): Guitar (Jesse Lewis) and bass (Ike Sturm) duo, Sturm listed first here but I filed their 2017 album under Lewis (lead name there). Nice, intimate interchange. [Package but no CD.] B+(**)

Nubya Garcia: Source (2020, Concord): British tenor saxophonist, mother from Guyana, father from Trinidad, second album, also group efforts with Maisha and Nérija and side credits, including with Joe Armon-Jones -- piano here, in a quartet with bass and drums, plus extras, including trumpet (Ms. Maurice) on three cuts, vocals on too many. Strong sax over crossover beats. B+(**)

Johnny Iguana: Johnny Iguana's Chicago Spectacular (2019 [2020], Delmark): Blues pianist, grew up in Philadelphia but always belonged in Chicago. This sports ten more names on the cover, and a substitle: A Grand and Upright Celebration of Chicago Blues Piano. B+(**)

Jyoti: Mama, You Can Bet (2020, SomeOthaShip): Singer-songwriter Georgia Anne Muldrow, has quite a few albums since 2006, using Jyoti (a name given to her by Alice Coltrane) for her more jazz-oriented releases (this is her third). Obscurantist funk, hard to get a handle on it all. B+(**)

Jon-Erik Kellso: Sweet Fruits Salty Roots (2020, Jazzology): Trad jazz cornet player, first record 1993, cover says "Recorded in New Orleans" and lists more names: Evan Christopher, Don Vappie, Peter Harris (that would be clarinet, banjo, and bass). A bit understated, but very nice old-time jazz. B+(***)

Eva Kess: Sternschnuppen: Falling Stars (2019 [2020], Neuklang): Swiss/German bassist, real name seems to be Kesselring, has a couple previous albums. String quartet plus jazz piano trio, strings on edge, rhythm centers and propels. B+(***)

Allegra Levy: Lose My Number (2020, SteepleChase): Jazz singer, fourth album, normally writes her own songs but this time started with music by John McNeil (who plays trumpet on three cuts) and added her lyrics. Backed by piano trio, with Pierre Dørge the featured guest on "Ukelele Tune." Shades of vocalese. B+(**) [cd]

Roberto Magris: Suite! (2018 [2020], JMood, 2CD): Pianist from Italy, couple dozen albums since 1990. Quintet with trumpet (Eric Jacobson), tenor sax (Mark Colby), bass, and drums, with spoken vocals by PJ Aubree Collins -- little treatises that break up the flow, but just as well. Filled out with three pop covers. B+(**) [cdr]

Raphaël Pannier Quartet: Faune (2020, French Paradox): French drummer, studied at Berklee, based in New York, several albums. This with Miguel Zenon (typically brilliant alto sax), Aaron Goldberg (piano), François Moutin (bass), with Giorgi Mikadze playing piano on pieces by Ravel and Messiaen. B+(**)

Protoje: In Search of Lost Time (2020, RCA): Reggae singer, Oje Ken Ollivierre, sixth album since 2011. Light touch, nice beats. B+(**)

Bruno Råberg/Jason Robinson/Bob Weiner: The Urgency of Now (2017-18 [2020], Creative Nation Music): Bass, reeds (tenor/soprano sax, alto flute), drums. Joint credits, except for one Råberg solo credit, and a closer from John Tchicai. Nothing very fancy here, but balance is key with free jazz, especially if you don't just blast through it. A- [cd]

Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra: Data Lords (2019 [2020], ArtistShare, 2CD): Composer/conductor, ninth album since 1994, runs an 18-piece big band including guitar and accordion, mostly famous names, almost universally praised, at least since 2004's Concert in the Garden. Two discs: "The Digital World" and "Our Natural World." Not much difference between them. Her instrument is orchestra, showing her mastery of moving the pieces around for dramatic effect and just to set moods. I've never found that very appealing, even when I've been momentarily impressed. B+(**) [cd]

Radam Schwartz Organ Big Band: Message From Groove and GW (2020, Arabesque): Organ player, half-dozen records going back as far as 1988. The big band is short on trombones (but they do get a lot of solo space), with an organ-guitar-drums rhythm section -- cover gives drummer David F. Gibson a shout out, but doesn't mention guitarist Charlie Sigler. "GW" is a nod to the late Gerald Wilson, who once played with Richard Holmes, nicknamed Groove, pretty descriptive there and here. B+(***) [cd]

Somi With Frankfurt Radio Big Band: Holy Room: Live at Alte Oper (2019 [2020], Salon Africana): Jazz singer-songwriter Laura Kabasomi Kakoma, born in Illinois, parents from Uganda and Rwanda, half-dozen albums since 2003, gets big band backing here, arranged by John Beasley, featuring Hervé Samb (guitar) and Toru Dodo (piano). Good singer, runs long. B+(*) [cd]

Trio Linguale [Kevin Woods/John Stowell/Miles Black]: Signals (2019 [2020], Origin): Trumpet, guitar, piano, no rhythm section, so they offer a leisurely meander. The guitar, from a veteran master, is most distinctive. B+(*) [cd]

Tropos: Axioms // 75 AB (2019 [2020], Biophilia): Quintet: Laila Smith (voice), Raef Sengupta (alto sax), Phillip Golub (piano), Zachary Lavine (bass), Mario Layne Fabrizio (drums). First album, celebrating Anthony Braxton's 75th birthday with a mix of his songs and original pieces. While the music is fascinating, Braxton doesn't have much of a future in karaoke. [Package but no CD.] B+(*)

The Trevor Watts Quartet: The Real Intention (2019 [2020], Fundacja Sluchaj): British alto/soprano saxophonist, leader of Amalgam back in the 1970s, backed by Veryan Weston (piano), John Edwards (bass), and Mark Sanders (drums). Free jazz, testy early but builds up considerable energy by the end. B+(**) [bc]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Bob James: Once Upon a Time: The Lost 1965 New York Studio Sessions (1965 [2020], Resonance): Pianist, has long been a smooth jazz fixture, especially with his group Fourplay, but had a few misadventures as a youth, including a 1965 ESP-Disk album called Explosions, which was impressively avant. These two previously unreleased sessions, both trios, date from the same year, but are more mainstream, and fairly impressive as well. B+(**) [cd]

Oneness of Juju 1970-1982 (1970-82 [2020], Black Fire, 2CD): African-inspired group based in Richmond, Virginia, led by saxophonist James "Plunky" Branch, simply called Juju early on (1970-74). Aside from the drums, they mostly come off as a funk group, with a bit of sax. B+(**)

Old music:

Bilal: Love for Sale (2001-03 [2006], bootleg): Neo-soul singer-songwriter Bilal Sayeed Oliver, from Philadelphia, first album 2001, three more 2010-15, this would-be second effort shelved as too avant but leaked in 2006. Seems like an extreme example of the slack and disjointed rhythm the genre the leaning into at the time, minus the usual slickness. "Hollywood" is a good example. B+(**) [yt]

Jimmy Heath: The Quota (1961 [1995], Riverside/OJC): Tenor saxophonist, from Philadelphia, part of a very talented family, including two famous brothers here: Percy (bass) and Albert (drums, aka Tootie). Sextet, with Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Julius Watkins (French horn), and Cedar Walton (piano). Shows a flair for arranging here. B+(**)

Jimmy Heath: Triple Threat (1962 [1998], Riverside/OJC): "Featuring the compositions, arrangements and tenor sax of," with the same sextet. B+(**)

Jimmy Heath and Brass: Swamp Seed (1963 [1997], Riverside/OJC): Continues to put great care into his arranging. The brass: trumpet (Donald Byrd), French horns (Jim Buffington and Julius Watkins), tuba (Don Butterfield). Recorded over two sessions, with Percy Heath on bass for both, piano/drums split (Herbie Hancock and Connie Kay, Harold Mabern and Albert Heath). B+(***)

Jimmy Heath Quintet: On the Trail (1964 [1994], Riverside/OJC): Cover adds: Featuring Kenny Burrell and Wynton Kelly (guitar and piano), omitting mention of Paul Chambers (bass) and Albert "Tootie" Heath (drums). B+(***)

Jimmy Heath: Nice People: The Riverside Collection (1959-64 [1988], Riverside/OJC): Eight songs from as many sessions, from six albums, mostly groups of 5 or 6, with 4 and 9 outliers. [CD adds two more tracks.] Not an especially flashy player, he put a lot of effort into arranging his group sound. The differences add a bit of variation while never breaking the flow. A-

Jimmy Heath: Picture of Heath (1975, Xanadu): His records thin out after his 1959-64 Riversides, aside from a series on Columbia and Antilles from 1978-81 as the Heath Brothers. Don Schlitten's label picked up a lot of name artists quick in 1975, but few returned for more albums. This is a one-shot with Barry Harris (piano), Sam Jones (bass), and Billy Higgins (drums). One time he really gets to play. A-

Jimmy Heath: Peer Pleasure (1987, Landmark): Last of three 1974-87 albums released on Landmark. Heath plays soprao and alto as well as his usual tenor sax. With Tony Purrone (guitar), Larry Willis (piano, 4/7 tracks), Stafford James (bass), and Akira Tana (drums), plus Tom Williams (trumpet/flugelhorn) on three tracks. B+(**)

Jimmy Heath Quartet: You've Changed (1991 [1992], SteepleChase): First of two albums Heath recorded for the Danish label, with guitar (Tony Purrone), bass (Ben Brown), and drums (Albert Heath). Three originals, four standards. Guitar's a nice touch, very compatible with his tone. B+(***)

Jimmy Heath Quartet: You or Me (1995, SteepleChase): Another straightforward quartet, same guitar and drums, new bassist (Kiyoshi Kitagawa). Slight shift toward ballads, with four originals, covers from Ellington, Dameron, Duke Pearson, and Blue Mitchell. A very nice one. A-

The Jimmy Heath Big Band: Turn Up the Heath (2004-06 [2006], Planet Arts): He always fancied himself as an arranger, so big bands were a natural expansion -- starting with 1992's Little Man Big Band. Two sessions and guest slots, so there's a lot of churn in the credits: constants include lead horn players -- Frank Greene (trumpet), Mark Gross (alto sax), John Mosca (trombone) -- Jeb Patton (piano), Peter Washington (bass), and Lewis Nash (drums). B+(**)

The Heath Brothers: Marchin' On! (1976, Strata-East): From Philadelpha, each famous in their own right: Jimmy Heath (flute, tenor/soprano sax), Percy Heath (bass), Albert "Tootie" Heath (drums), played together on Jimmy's early albums but inaugurated this group here, recording seven albums through 1981, three more later. Band is rounded out with Stanley Cowell (piano), who gets featuring credit on the cover. Starts out with Albert playing flute on an Ellington piece, but doesn't pick up until Percy's infections "The Watergate Blues." B+(**) [yt]

Heath Brothers: Brotherly Love (1981 [1982], Antilles): After their Strata-East debut and four 1978-80 albums on Columbia, the brothers landed on Island's spinoff label for two records. Just Jimmy and Percy here -- Albert is missing (just Jimmy and Percy on the cover), replaced by Akira Tana on drums, with Tony Purrone on guitar and Stanley Cowell on keyboards. B+(*)

Heath Brothers: As We Were Saying . . . (1997, Concord): Long break before they resurfaced, Tootie back on drums, with either Sir Roland Hanna or Stanley Cowell on piano, trumpet and trombone on three tracks (Jon Faddis and Slide Hampton), guitar (Mark Elf) on four, percussion (James Mtume) on one. Bouncy, vibrant, a bit slick. B+(**)

Heath Brothers: Endurance (2008 [2009], Jazz Legacy): Percy Heath, the eldest brother, died at 81 in 2005, so here they're back down to two: Jimmy and Tootie. Joined by Jeb Patton (piano) and David Wong (bass). B+(**)

Wayne Shorter: Introducing Wayne Shorter (1959 [1960], Vee-Jay): Tenor saxophonist, had graduated from NYU, served in the army, and played for Maynard Ferguson before joining Art Blakey in 1959. This was recorded the day before Blakey's Africaine, with Lee Morgan (trumpet) on both and a different but impressive rhythm section: Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Jimmy Cobb (drums). Original 37-minute album is an impressive hard bop debut. If I had to factor in the outtakes added to the CD, I might quibble more. A-

Wayne Shorter: Second Genesis (1960 [1974], Vee-Jay): Second album, albeit one that didn't appear until well after the fact. Another quartet, with Cedar Walton (piano), Bob Cranshaw (bass), and Art Blakey (drums). Five originals, three standards. B+(*)

Wayne Shorter: Etcetera (1965 [1980], Blue Note): Shorter left Art Blakey for Miles Davis in 1964, staying to 1970, during which time he also recorded 11 albums for Blue Note. I've heard most of them, giving Night Dreamer an A- and his 2-CD retrospective The Classic Blue Note Recordings an A, while having various reservations about the others. This is one I missed: a quartet with Herbie Hancock (piano), Cecil McBee (bass), and Joe Chambers (drums), not released until 1980. B+(***)

Wayne Shorter: Schizophrenia (1967, Blue Note): Sextet, with James Spaulding (alto sax/flute), Curtis Fuller (trombone), and a rhythm section of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Joe Chambers. Mixed bag: hard bop, post-bop, maybe something further out, or just slicker. B+(**)

Wayne Shorter: Moto Grosso Feio (1970 [1974], Blue Note): Recorded a month after Shorter's last appearance with Miles Davis, mostly with Davis alumni: John McLaughlin (guitar), Ron Carter and Dave Holland (bass), Chick Corea (percussion). Only cover is a Nascimento song -- title track is a Shorter original. Aims for a bit of exotica. B+(*)

Wayne Shorter: Odyssey of Iskra (1970 [1971], Blue Note): As Miles Davis reinvented himself in fusion, Shorter jumped ship, and found his own path, recording this just before joining Weather Report. With guitar (Gene Bertoncini), double bass and drums, and more percussion, Shorter is pictured on the cover with his soprano sax. Still, he's not there yet, relying more on tension than groove. B+(**)

Wayne Shorter: Atlantis (1985, Columbia): Shorter only recorded one album on the side during the 1970-85 span of Weather Report -- 1974's Native Dancer. Then he released this, with Jim Walker on flute, Michael Hoenig on synthesizer, electric bass and keybs, Latin percussion, and vocalists. It's hard to pick the leader out from this mess, especially when he plays soprano. C+

Wayne Shorter: Phantom Navigator (1986 [1987], Columbia): Even more credits here (15), although all but the leader fall into four buckets (keyboards, bass, percussion, vocals), so they were most likely slotted interchangeably. Big name is Chick Corea, but he's slumming like the rest. C

Wayne Shorter: Joy Rider (1988, Columbia): Fewer and better musicians here -- Patrice Rushen, Geri Allen, and Herbie Hancock split the keyboard slot, and Dianne Reeves gets the only vocal track. Still doesn't help (but taking a sax solo does). C+

Wayne Shorter: Alegria (2002 [2003], Verve): After a long period of floundering, Shorter revived in 2001 when he put a brilliant new quartet together for his Footprints Live! album, with Danilo Perez (piano), John Patitucci (bass), and Brian Blade (drums). That quartet returns for three tracks here, with a couple dozen more joining in elsewhere, including Robert Sadin as conductor on 4 tracks. Sounds to me like he outsmarted himself. B

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Allegra Levy: Lose My Number (SteepleChase)
• Merzbow/Mats Gustafsson/Balász Pándi: Cuts Open (RareNoise): cdr [09-25]
• WorldService Project: Hiding in Plain Sight (RareNoise): cdr [09-25]

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Sunday, August 30, 2020

Before we waddle in the dirt, here's an election song from Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby. It will make you feel better. And to top it off, how about People Have the Power (e.g., "the power to wrestle the earth from fools")?

Big event of the week was the Republican National Convention. Once again, I didn't watch any of it live, but caught some high- or low-lights on Stephen Colbert's "live" recaps, plus I read a lot. I started collecting links on Tuesday, and I haven't made the effort to group them, so the following list may seem to run around in circles. I did try to list them chronologically under each writer. (Past practice generally listed the latest pieces first, but the opposite made more sense for day-by-day pieces, and when I decided that I tried to reorder the others.)

There were other serious stories this week. A Category 4 hurricane hit Louisiana, inflicting a lot of damage. Police in Kenosha, WS shot an unarmed black man eight times in the back -- he survived, but is paralyzed -- and that kicked off another round of Black Lives Matter protests. Then an armed Trump supporter shot three protesters, killing two. There was also a shooting in Portland, OR, where the victim was a Trump-aligned counter-protester (presently unclear who pulled that trigger).

Barely mentioned below is a well-attended March on Washington, on the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech there. One story I've shortchanged is Israel's continuing offensive against Gaza, extended last week with bombing raids on Lebanon (as opposed to the more covert destruction of the port of Beirut).

Links on the Republican National Convention:

• Vox [Zack Beauchamp/Jane Coaston/German Lopez/Ian Millhiser/Nicole Narea/Andrew Prokop/Aaron Rupar/Dylan Scott/Emily Stewart/Matthew Yglesias/Li Zhou]:

  • 5 winners and 2 losers from the RNC's first night: Winners: The Fox News cinematic universe; Nikki Haley; Sen. Tim Scott; Recep Tayyip Erdogan; Covid-19; Losers: Optimism; The GOP beyond Trump. That cut Haley and Scott a lot of slack, "but the reason they stood out is that they felt out of step with the rest of the two-and-a-half-hour convention." In particular, the "story of Trump's triumph over Covid-19" was so unconvincing they scored that point for the virus, rather than flagging the story itself as the loser it was.

  • Republican National Convention speakers, explained for people who don't watch Fox News. The Tuesday night roster.

  • 2 winners and 3 losers from night 2 of the RNC: Winners: Eric Trump ("the most effective orator of the evening"); nepotism. Losers: Ethics in government; The immigrants Trump didn't naturalize; RNC vetting.

  • Wednesday's Republican National Convention speakers, explained for people who don't watch Fox News.

  • 2 winners and 3 losers from the third night of the Republican National Convention: Winners: The Republican Party's alliance with law enforcement; Gov. Kristi Noem (evidently the night's least embarrassing speaker; their words were "nothing all that extraordinary"; also "She inaccurately characterized Martin Luther King Jr. as a supporter of Republican approaches to racial issues"). Losers: Mike Pence's presidential aspirations; pretaped speeches; whitewashed feminism.

  • Thursday's Republican National Convention speakers, explained for people who don't watch Fox News.

  • 3 winners and 4 losers from the final night of the Republican National Convention: Winners: Donald Trump; Black Republicans; The politicization of sports. Losers: The Mellon Auditorium; Social distancing; Riots; Bill de Blasio. This whole "winners/losers" thing has been sorely tested by the RNC. It worked better following debates, where some candidates did better/worse, and some issues were touted or ignored. With the RNC, the winners and losers were still relative, but the bar was so far below normal the "winning" speeches were merely the less embarrassing ones (remember, Eric Trump was the lead day two "winner"), and the reasons behind picking the non-people winners/losers were rarely obvious (e.g., Covid-19 was a day one winner, probably because whenever a speaker mentioned it, the claims made obviously rang false).

• Tim Alberta: Grand old meltdown: "Trump's Republican Party is the very definition of a cult of personality."

  The spectacle is unceasing. One day, it's a former top administration official going public with Trump's stated unwillingness to extend humanitarian aid to California because it's politically blue and Puerto Rico because it's "poor" and "dirty." The next day, it's Trump launching a boycott of Goodyear, a storied American company that employs 65,000 people, for one store's uneven ban on political apparel in the workplace. A day later, it's Steve Bannon, the president's former chief strategist, getting rung up on charges of swindling donors out of money for the private construction of a border wall, money he allegedly spent on yachts and luxury living. It was just the latest in a string of arrests that leave Trump looking eerily similar to the head of a criminal enterprise. What all of these incidents and so many more have in common is that not a single American's life has been improved; not a single little guy has been helped. Just as with the forceful dispersing of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park -- done so he could hold up a prop Bible for flashing cameras -- Trump and his allies continue to wage symbolic battles whose principal casualties are ordinary people.

• Eric Alterman: The 'abomination' of a convention makes clear the GOP threat.

• David Atkins:

  • Trump's message isn't confused. He's promising a dictatorship.

  • Trump got a bounce from his convention. Biden didn't. There's a lesson there.

• Zack Beauchamp:

  • Nick Sandmann, RNC speaker and Covington Catholic video star, explained: Why is an 18-year-old nobody speaking at the RNC?

    Sandmann is the perfect victim: a young conservative man who came to Washington to protest abortion and was "smeared" by the left as being an awful racist because he had the temerity to wear one of President Trump's hats. The fact that he's been fighting the media, and forcing them to settle lawsuits, is icing on the cake.

    In reality, though, Sandmann's appearance is a testament to the emptiness of this narrative. There's no policy argument connected to this story; revisiting it does nothing to convince voters that the Trump administration can make their lives better in any kind of material way. The RNC to date has been empty in this exact way, an attempt to gin up anger and fear at the base's enemies rather than sell a positive vision of America.

  • The RNC and the subtle rot of Trump's reality TV presidency: "Why the RNC's broadcasted naturalizations and pardon ceremony felt so wrong."

  • The RNC weaponized exhaustion: "The sheer volume of lies and illegal behavior from Trump and the Republicans is what allowed them to get away with it."

    The first night of the RNC featured more false and misleading claims than all four nights of the DNC put together, according to a CNN fact-check. The second night starred an anti-abortion activist whose tale about the horrors of Planned Parenthood had been exposed as a fraud more than 10 years ago. On the third night, Vice President Mike Pence suggested that the murder of a police officer by a far-right extremist was a crime committed by left-wing rioters. It was all capped off by President Trump's Thursday night speech, a farrago of falsehoods that even veteran Trump fact-checkers found stunning.

• Katelyn Burns:

  • Kimberly Guilfoyle's speech encapsulated the Fox News feel of the RNC's first night: "Loudly." How can a person find any logic in gibberish such as this:

    "They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live," she said. "They want to enslave you to the weak dependent liberal victim. They want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom."

    The only way to stop it, according to Guilfoyle, would be by reelecting President Donald Trump. She listed several of Trump's accomplishments since taking office, mentioning tax cuts, taking on ISIS, and renegotiating trade deals.

    "Don't let the Democrats take you for granted," she said. "Don't let them step on you. Don't let them destroy your families, your lives, and your future. Don't let them kill future generations because they told you and brainwashed you and fed you lies that you weren't good enough."

  • Eric Trump's RNC speech had something rare: Policy substance. Just because he mentioned (in deceptive spin) a few things -- "tax cuts for the wealthy, cut regulations, an improved economy and reduced unemployment (before the pandemic triggered a collapse), and increased military funding, and the move of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem" -- that the Trump administration had done doesn't make him a policy wonk, let alone explain the thinking behind de facto policies. Moreover, the thrust of his speech was wholly in line with the Trump campaign spiel:

    Using imagery of the Hoover Dam and Mount Rushmore, Trump's speech painted a picture of an industrious heartland, ignored by the coastal elites. "Every day my father fights for the American people," he said. "The forgotten men and women of this country. The ones who embody the American spirit." . . .

    "In the view of the radical Democrats, America is the source of the world's problems. As a result, they believe the only path forward is to erase history and forget the past. They want to destroy the monuments of our forefathers," he said. "They want to disrespect our national anthem by taking a knee, while our armed forces lay down their lives every day to protect our freedom. They do not want the Pledge of Allegiance in our schools. Many do not want one nation under God. The Democrats want to defund, destroy, and disrespect our law enforcement."

    Trump went on to contrast this depiction of Democrats with his father, who he claimed is a champion for law enforcement, religious people, the "canceled," coal miners, and farmers. "To every proud American who bleeds red, white, and blue -- my father will continue to fight for you," Trump said.

    This featured notion that Trump fights for the little guy is possibly the most grotesque lie in a campaign that is chock full of them.

• John Cassidy: Mike Pence's big lie about Trump and the coronavirus at the Republican National Convention.

  Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Pence's bowing and scraping to Trump is that he seems to revel in it. In an interview with the Times, his chief of staff, Marc Short, said Pence has studied previous Vice-Presidencies, and he "exemplifies servant leadership." Even in these twisted days, when Trump's takeover of the G.O.P. seems virtually complete, it isn't every elected Republican who would like to go in the history books as the forty-fifth President's most loyal and obsequious servant. As he demonstrated on Wednesday night, when he once again acted as Trump's lickspittle, Pence seems to fill the role naturally.

• Jonathan Chait:

  • Probable criminal Rudy Giuliani gives anti-crime speech.

  • In 2016, Trump promised to make America safe again. He failed. I thought he said he'd "make America great again." He wasn't very clear on what "great" meant -- wasn't there something about "winning so much you grow tired of it"? I have my doubts that "great" is even something worth aiming for, but whatever it was meant to be, this can't be it.

• Jane Coaston: Trump was supposed to change the GOP. But the GOP changed him. "How the Republican Party turned Donald Trump into one of their own." This formulation flips a common argument about Trump refashioning the Party in his own image. He has done some of that in terms of look and feel, but Trump's style is something that has been honed for years by Fox pundits: he's basically a receptacle and incubator for their rants. But he's stocked his administration with standard issue Republicans, many straight from lobby shops, and they've limited his policy options to what they would have any Republican doing.

• Aaron Ross Coleman: Republicans claim Democrats want to defund the police. Biden's plan calls for more police.

• Chas Danner: NYC tenants in RNC video say they were tricked.

• Josh Dawsey: Trump escalates rhetoric on unrest in cities, looking for a campaign advantage.

• David Dayen: A guide to the GOP Convention's pretend agenda.

• Dan Diamond/Adam Cancryn: How Mike Pence slowed down the coronavirus response.

• Thomas B Edsall: 'I fear that we are witnessing the end of American democracy': "The Frank racism of the contemporary Republican agenda is on display at the RNC."

• Matt Ford: Donald Trump declares total war on the civil service: "The Republican National Convention is a testament to the president's effort to permanently recast the executive branch in his own warped image."

• David Frum: The platform the GOP is too scared to publish: "The question is not why Republicans lack a coherent platform; it's why they're so reluctant to publish the one on which they're running."

  Once you read the list, I think you'll agree that these are authentic ideas with meaningful policy consequences, and that they are broadly shared. The question is not why Republicans lack a coherent platform; it's why they're so reluctant to publish the one on which they're running.

  1. The most important mechanism of economic policy -- not the only tool, but the most important -- is adjusting the burden of taxation on society's richest citizens. . . .
  2. The coronavirus is a much-overhyped problem. It's not that dangerous and will soon burn itself out. . . .
  3. Climate change is a much-overhyped problem. It's probably not happening. If it is happening, it's not worth worrying about. . . . Regulations to protect the environment unnecessarily impede economic growth.
  4. China has become an economic and geopolitical adversary of the United States. . . . When China wins, the U.S. loses, and vice versa.
  5. The trade and alliance structures built after World War II are outdated. . . . If America acts decisively, allies will have to follow whether they like it or not -- as they will have to follow U.S. policy on Iran.
  6. Health care is a purchase like any other. Individuals should make their ow best deals in the insurance market with minimal government supervision. . . .
  7. Voting is a privilege. States should have wide latitude to regulate that privilege . . .
  8. Anti-Black racism has ceased to be an important problem in American life. At this point, the people most likely to be targets of adverse discrimination are whites, Christians, and Asian university applicants. Federal civil-rights-enforcement resources should concentrate on protecting them.
  9. The courts should move gradually and carefully toward eliminating the mistake made in 1965, when women's sexual privacy was elevated into a constitutional right.
  10. The post-Watergate ethics reforms overreached. We should welcome the trend toward unrestricted and secret campaign donations. . . .
  11. Trump's border wall is the right policy to slow illegal immigration; the task of enforcing immigration rules should not fall on business operators. . . .
  12. The country is gripped by a surge of crime and lawlessness as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and its criticism of police. . . .
  13. Civility and respect are cherished ideals. But in the face of the overwhelming and unfair onslaught against President Donald Trump by the media and the "deep state," his occasional excesses on Twitter and at his rallies should be understood as pardonable reactions to much more severe misconduct by others.

  So there's the platform, why not publish it? . . . This is a platform for a party that talks to itself, not to the rest of the country. And for those purposes, the platform will succeed most to the extent that it is communicated only implicitly, to those receptive to its message.

• Masha Gessen: Trump's Republican National Convention was a spectacle fit for a would-be king.

  To call things what they are, the Republicans adopted a fascist aesthetic for this year's Convention. It was in the pillars and the flags; the military-style outfit that Melania Trump wore to deliver her speech, on the second night; the screaming fervor with which many of the speeches were delivered; the repeated references to "law and order"; and phrases like "weakness is provocative," which the Republican senator Tom Cotton offered on the final evening. The aesthetic -- and the rhetoric -- held out the carrot of greatness, of what Hannah Arendt, explaining the appeal of totalitarian movements, called "victory and success as such," the prize of being on the winning side, whatever that side is. The seduction of greatness may grow proportionately to anxiety: the more scared one is -- of losing one's job or health insurance, or of the coronavirus, of the world never going back to normal, among other worries -- the more reassuring it is to say (better yet, to scream) that one lives in the greatest country on earth. One looks at people shouting triumphantly -- none of them social distancing, only a few wearing masks -- and one feels somehow uplifted by the fantasy of being one of them.

• Susan B Glasser: The malign fantasy of Donald Trump's convention.

  The problem, of course, is that America as we know it is currently in the midst of a mess not of Biden's making but of Trump's. Suffice it to say that, by the time Trump's speech was over and the red, white, and blue fireworks spelling out "2020" had been set off over the National Mall, late Thursday night, more than three thousand seven hundred Americans had died of the coronavirus since the start of the Convention -- more than perished on 9/11 -- and a hundred and eighty thousand Americans total had succumbed to the disease, a disease that Trump repeatedly denied was even a threat. His botched handling of the pandemic was the very reason that his Convention was taking place on the White House lawn in the first place.

• Melissa Gira Grant: The real, paranoid housewives of the Republican Convention: "Patricia McCloskey and Kimberly Guilfoyle are a new twist on a dangerous lineage of conservative women."

• Elliot Hannon: New citizens in Trump's naturalization stunt were unaware it would be used at RNC.

• Monica Hesse: Trying to disgust you is the only move the Republican convention's antiabortion speakers have left.

• Dan Hopkins: Why Trump's racist appeals might be less effective in 2020 than they were in 2016.

• Sarah Jones: The GOP thinks Marxists are taking over. If only that were true: All this insane paranoia about radical Democrats and the march of socialism is helping to produce a backlash as more and more people wonder if that wouldn't be a good idea after all.

• Fred Kaplan:

  • The unprecedented offenses of Mike Pompeo's GOP Convention speech.

  • Trump spewed a volcano of lies at the RNC. He wasn't alone.

• Ed Kilgore:

  • Republicans promised a convention, but delivered crazy talk: "On the first night of the RNC, speakers worshipped Trump but rarely mentioned their party, and many went over the brink with wild anti-Biden rhetoric."

  • Night two of the RNC badly needed an editor: "After a wild first night, the second night of the RNC had its insane moments but lacked pace and drama."

  • Pence warns that America won't be America without Trump: "Even the president hasn't yet made such a sweeping boast tying himself to the essence of the nation." But if you consider that the only thing separating his slogans "make America great again" and "keep America great" was Trump's election, he did. We just foolishly assumed he meant something more, but in the mind of a narcissist, what more could there be?

  • The big liar ends the RNC with big lies about himself and Biden: "Trump ended the convention as it began -- with efforts to salvage his record, make out Biden as a radical, frighten suburbanites, and ignore COVID-19."

• Ezra Klein:

  • A loyalty test for the GOP, a reality test for the country: "The Republican Party has become a personality cult."

    In the era of President Donald Trump, the news develops the quality "of being shocking without being surprising," wrote Masha Gessen in Surviving Autocracy. Each week's events are "an assault on the senses and the mental faculties," and yet, somehow, "just more of the same."

    That's how I felt watching the first night of the Republican National Convention. It was a night that I couldn't quite believe. It was a night I could not have imagined going any other way. It was bizarre, unnerving, and unprecedented. It was banal, predictable, and expected.

    "If you really want to drive them crazy, you say '12 more years,'" Trump said as he opened the convention. The crowd happily chanted "12 more years." It drove me a little crazy, but mostly left me tired. It's a performance of provocation hiding a convention that had nothing to say, only enemies to fight, social changes to fear.

    What is there to say upon hearing Trump described as "the bodyguard of Western civilization?" It's not an argument so much as a loyalty oath, an offering cut from the speaker's dignity and burnt for the pleasure of the Dear Leader himself. But the outrageousness is the point. Protest and you're triggered -- just another oversensitive lib who can't take a joke. Ignore it and you're complicit. To care is to lose. . . .

    Fact-checkers will have a field day with all this, but it's a bit beside the point. The sort of lie Trump and his supporters tell, writes Gessen, "is the power lie, or the bully lie. It is the lie of the bigger kid who took your hat and is wearing it -- while denying that he took it." That is the sort of lie that suffused Monday night's proceedings. The point isn't that it's true; it's that they can say it and no one can stop them.

    The core of Trump's agenda has always been untethering American politics from factual reality, and among Republicans, at least, he's been startlingly successful. The convention is a loyalty test for Republicans, and a reality check for the rest of us.

  • The 3 charts that disprove Donald Trump's convention speech: "Trump wants to take credit for something he didn't do [pre-pandemic economic growth], and dodge blame for something he did do [coronavirus response]."

• Michael Kruse: How Trump mastered the art of telling history his way. Grim conclusion, quoting Doug Brinkley: "And if he gets reelected with us knowing all of this, then he is a reflection of what America has become."

• Nancy LeTourneau: How Trump inoculates his supporters against reality.

• Eric Levitz:

  • The populist case for Trump is now 100 percent policy free.

  • The RNC has made a strong case for America's imminent collapse.

  • On night two, the RNC went on offense against objective reality.

• German Lopez:

  • Why the RNC blamed "restorative justice" for the Parkland shooting: "The father of a Parkland shooting victim said school discipline, not gun laws, was to blame for the mass shooting."

  • Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the gun-toting St Louis couple, explained: "The couple is speaking at the first night of the Republican convention. Here's why."

  • Trump didn't just fail to address Covid-19. He made the crisis worse. "Trump and the RNC tried to put a positive spin on his record. But the facts are clear."

  • Trump failed on the opioid crisis -- and Democrats are letting him get away with it. This is the author's reporting turf, but I can't see it as an issue worth talking about in this election -- the dig against the Democrats is unfair, although when it does come up, the answer should point out that this is a public health problem, exacerbated by the lack of free and universal health care (which would include pain management and addiction treatment). Republicans fail because they don't want free and universal health care. Democrats won't succeed until they do. But since Biden isn't exactly campaigning for that, probably best not to play up the issue.

  • The absurdity of Trump's RNC speech, in one photo: The one on the left. On the right, without the sign but with a better view of the fireworks (symbolizing the destruction of American democracy?) is every bit as absurd (and even more malign?).

  • CNN fact-checked Trump's RNC speech on air. It took 3 minutes. "Trump's RNC speech averaged a false or misleading claim every 3 minutes." Includes a list of 21 items.

  • Trump used the RNC to gaslight America on Covid-19.

• Andrew Marantz: The manic denialism of the Republican National Convention.

  The problems in your life aren't real; the real problems are the ones that nobody, except for everybody on this stage, has the courage to talk about. The media wants to brainwash you; the Marxists are massing outside your idyllic suburban lawn; if the enemy gets its way, small businesses will be decimated, Thomas Jefferson will be cancelled, and 911 will go straight to voice mail. The speakers at the Republican National Convention keep ringing the same notes: fabricated panic followed by hoarse, manic Panglossianism. Jobs were lost under past Democrats, and they would be lost under future Democrats, but with President Trump there is only milk and honey. Joe Biden is a stultifying agent of the status quo, too boring to mention by name; he is also an unprecedented break with tradition, a threat to all that we hold dear. Climate change, of course, is waved away as mass hysteria; even the coronavirus pandemic is mentioned rarely and almost always in the past tense, as if the decision to deliver speeches in a cavernous, empty auditorium were merely the whim of a quirky location scout. Anyone watching from quarantine, during a once-in-a-century unemployment crisis, would not need a fact check to know that this is all a stretch, to say the least.

  Marantz goes on for a few paragraphs like this, then he quotes Ronald Reagan from the RNC in 1980: "Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense, and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity." As best I recall, one of those was bogus, and the other two were trivial compared to what we got after Reagan was elected. Marantz then segues into a review of Rick Perlstein's new book, Reaganland. One factoid he pulled out of there is that "84 percent of Reagan voters gave 'time for a change' as their major reason for choosing him -- not any ideological reason at all." I can imagine a high percentage of Trump voters saying that in 2016, but now? Depends on how effectively the R's can portray Biden as the incumbent, responsible for all the mess Trump rails about.

• Nick Martin: The Republican National Convention's carnival of white grievance.

• Ben Mathis-Lilley:

  • Would someone mind actually restoring law and order?

  • The problem with the new Trump sales pitch is Trump.

  • Trump has a long way to go to convince Americans he's the right candidate to end racial unrest.

• Harold Meyerson:

  • Unconventional: The Republicans, day one: "Even Diversity Night was nutcase night."

  • Unconventional: The Republicans, day two: "The Melania Mystery, the Kudlow Confusion, and the two-track convention."

  • Unconventional: The Republicans, day three: "Chicago, 1968; pandemic, Kenosha, and the hurricane, 2020: Reality has a way of intruding on the Republican celebration."

  • Unconventional: The Republicans, day four: "The GOP extravaganza concluded with a fireworks display, a sign of life in a limp evening."

• Ian Millhiser:

  • The Hatch Act, the law Trump flouted at the RNC, explained.

  • The RNC's big Covid-19 lie, refused in one chart. Chart plots 7-day rolling average of new confirmed Covid-19 cases per million people, comparing US, EU, and six other well-to-do countries. "There are, in other words, world leader who did take decisive action to save lives. Donald Trump isn't one of them."

  • The RNC yanked a speaker who promoted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: Mary Ann Mendoza. "Cancel culture" lives on.

  • The most shocking line in Vice President Pence's 2020 RNC speech: "Pence blames right-wing violence on a vague leftist enemy."

    Pence's speech highlighted a single law enforcement officer, strongly implying that this officer was the victim of left-wing radicals opposed to police officers and to President Trump: "Dave Patrick Underwood was an officer of the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service, who was shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California," said Pence, before acknowledging Underwood's sister, who was in the audience.

    Underwood's death is tragic, but it has nothing to do with left-wing radicals.

    Underwood was killed just blocks away from anti-police violence protests in Oakland, but federal authorities say he was killed by Steven Carrillo, an Air Force staff sergeant and a follower of the "boogaloo boys," a right-wing extremist movement that, according to the Washington Post's Katie Shepherd, "has sought to use peaceful protests against police brutality to spread fringe views and ignite a race war." . . .

    And yet, to Mike Pence, Underwood's death was just an opportunity to pin violence on his political opponents -- regardless of whether the attack has any real basis in fact.

• Elie Mystal: We need to talk about the GOP's 'black friends': Several pieces here mention the relatively large number of black speakers at the RNC, but this article explains it: "The Republican National Convention has been all about using black people to convince white people it's OK to vote for a bigot." On the other hand, the ploy implies that the battle lines have shifted. George Wallace and Ronald Reagan never needed this sort of cover, but Trump's pollsters obviously felt he did. On the other hand, if Republicans believed that Trump had any appeal to black voters, they wouldn't be scrambling to help get Kanye West's name on battleground state ballots.

• John Nichols:

  • The Party of whatever the hell Trump says: "The Grand Old Party convenes without a platform to stand on."

  • The Republican Convention is a political Ponzi scheme.

• Timothy Noah:

  • Trump's incredible ignorance of suburbia: "The president sees suburban America as a bastion of white affluence -- an outdated view that could cost him the election."

  • Larry Kudlow's economic hallucinations: "Trump's chief economic adviser claims that stagnation, recession, and pessimism are all in the past. The numbers prove otherwise."

• Anna North: Trump's pitch to evangelical voters, explained in one RNC speech: "He's 'the most pro-life president we have ever had,' according to anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson."

• Rebecca Onion: American history has never seen anything to rival the Trumps' RNC family act: Alternate title, "The Trump children hogged the spotlight like nothing else in history."

• JC Pan: The Republicans' love letter to rich culture warriors.

• Cameron Peters: The difference between the DNC and RNC, in one tweet: It's mostly visual, so you'll have to follow the link to get it. Of course, that's not the only difference, or even the most important one.

• Paul R Pillar: The costs of Mike Pompeo's partisanship.

• Andrew Prokop: Why Republicans didn't write a platform for their convention this year: "The party's true priority is supporting Donald Trump."

• Frank Rich: Trump thinks racism is his best chance: "Trailing in the polls, he used the Republican National Convention to ratchet his violence-encouraging rhetoric to an even more dangerous level."

• Alyssa Rosenberg:

  • The first night of the Republican convention was a brilliant act of fan service.

  • Trump shows us the limits of running the country like a reality TV show.

• David Roth: Trump's cloud of gossip has poisoned America: "The president's insatiable need to traffic in rumor and conspiracy blows larger holes in our shared reality with each passing day."

• Aaron Rupar:

  • The RNC keeps referring to Covid-19 in the past tense. 1,147 American deaths were reported Tuesday. Larry Kudlow was a prime offender.

  • "12 more years!": Trump's opening speech got the 2020 RNC off to a dark start.

  • The RNC disarray is a microcosm of everything Trump did wrong with the coronavirus.

  • Trump's RNC speech was a mess. But the optics of it were powerful. "For those who care about the rule of law, the White House being used as a political prop was a disconcerting sight." By the way, for some reason (well, the billboard picture) I just noticed that the trademark slogan Trump registered in 2017, "Keep America Great," has given way to a new one: "Make America Great Again!" Apparently they're acknowledging that greatness didn't take the first time, so it needs some sort of booster shot.

• Greg Sargent: The GOP convention just ripped the mask off Trump's corruption and lies: On Pam Bondi's speech.

• Dylan Scott: The contradictory Republican case to Black voters -- and why it matters.

• Doreen St Félix: The special hypocrisy of Melania Trump's speech at the Republican National Covention.

• Joshua Shanes: This was the week American fascism reached a tipping point.

• Walter Shapiro:

  • The surprising boredom of Trump's circus show.

  • Mike Pence is a parody of a politician.

    Wednesday night, the gravely serious Mike Pence ended his workmanlike speech at Fort McHenry with a similar frenzy of repetition: "With President Donald Trump in the White House for four more years and with God's help, we will make America great again, again."

    As presidential campaign slogans go, it isn't "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," which helped elect William Henry Harrison in 1840.

    Pence's oratory is revealing since he is a disciplined politician who obediently follows the script and scrupulously avoids crazed Trumpian improvisations. In short, every line in a Pence speech is there because White House political strategists thought it represented shrewd politics -- even Pence rhetorically sticking another scarlet "A" for "Again" on every MAGA hat. What the vice president is saying is that, despite Trump's supposed Mount Rushmore greatness, America needs saving yet again. In Pence's telling, the nation is akin to an innocent maiden in the silent movies who keeps getting tied to the railroad tracks.

    Donald Trump, of course, has no responsibility for anything. Not the pandemic, not the economy, not White House incompetence, not a white vigilante killing protesters in Kenosha, and not Hurricane Laura devastating the Gulf Coast. Trump is simply the unluckiest president since William Henry Harrison died in office just a month after he was inaugurated in 1841.

    Still unclear to me why, if God let Trump down in his first term, She's going to come to his rescue in a second term.

  • The Republicans still don't know how to run against Biden.

• Alex Shephard:

  • The Republican National Convention's war on reality.

  • Why the GO didn't write a new platform: "It isn't just that the party has surrendered to Trump. It's also because its policies are deeply unpopular."

  • Donald Trump is rooting for chaos: "A rambling convention speech underlined the core of his campaign: He needs violence and destruction to win reelection."

• Roger Sollenberger: Registered foreign agent Pam Bondi accuses Joe Biden of self-dealing in Republican convention speech.

• Emily Stewart: Trump's spent years touting the stock market. At the RNC, he just . . . didn't. "Somewhere along the way, did someone decide it might not be a moment to tout stocks?" As long as Trump stays on script, which he mostly did at the RNC, everything he says has been pre-cleared and calculated for effect. What he says is what his handlers think will do him the most good. They may not be right, but it's not for lack of polling and testing.

• Emily VanDerWerff: The bland, boring visuals of the Republican National Convention: "The aesthetics of the 2020 RNC are a disaster."

• Paul Waldman: The RNC will be a strange mix of denial and terror.

• Joan Walsh:

  • Why I can't watch the RNC.

  • Donald Trump has declared himself impotent: "A pitiful, hapless tyrant of a president blames the problems his administration has caused on out-of-office Joe Biden."

• Alex Ward:

  • Mike Pompeo's RNC speech will place him as the most partisan secretary of state in decades. He's delivering the speech from Jerusalem.

  • Melania Trump used her RNC speech to defend her husband's record. "Unlike four years ago, there was no obvious plagiarism in her remarks this time around."

• Robin Wright: A dubious Pompeo speech for an empty Trump foreign policy.

• Li Zhou:

  • Iowa's Joni Ernst ties her reelection prospects to Trump with speech at the RNC: "She's the only vulnerable Republican senator who's speaking in primetime at the event."

  • Trump's argument about "Joe Biden's America" is undercut by the fact that he's in charge. Moreover, "It is police violence -- not protester violence -- that is threatening people's safety now."

• Jonathan Zimmerman: Trumpism is the real cancel culture.

This doesn't seem to be organized as a formal series, but I've noticed that Vox is running a number of pieces about what a second term with Donald Trump as president might mean. The articles are all speculative about the future, but they are also effective indictments about what the first Trump term did. I thought I'd try to collect them here:

• Katelyn Burns: What a second Trump term could mean for LGBTQ people.

• Nicole Narea: A nation of immigrants no more.

• Andrew Prokop: Lock them up: The danger of political prosecutions in a second Trump term.

• David Roberts: A second Trump term would mean severe and irreversible changes in the climate. Isn't that already the meaning of the first Trump term? Or at least part of the meaning. Roberts argues: "Trump's damage to the climate is not like his damage to the immigration system or the health care system. It can't be undone. It can't be repaired. Changes to the climate are, for all intents and purposes, irreversible." He's exaggerating on both ends. Trump's damage to government won't be so easy to reverse (especially with his packed courts). On the other hand, zero carbon emissions would eventually result in a lowering of the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. Not soon, but, you know, eventually.

• Dylan Scott: What would Trump actually want to do on health care in a second term?

• Alex Ward: "America First, but on steroids": What Trump's second-term foreign policy might look like: "Little could stop President Trump from remaking the world in his image." It's tempting to wax dystopian when contemplating second terms for presidents who did extraordinary damage in their first terms -- invariably, they imagine even greater feats, especially with the popular ratification of their first term -- but the track records are more benign. GW Bush's second term was an utter disaster for America, but more past-due bills from his first term than new ambitions. His big push to privatize Social Security was beaten back, and he never managed to mop you the remainder of his Axis of Evil (having gotten totally bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan). Then his fraudulent housing bubble burst, and the Great Recession ensued. Reagan's second term was mostly tied up with scandals. Nixon didn't even manage to finish his second term. Even Eisenhower did little in his second term. Of course, one thing that helped in all of these cases is that Democrats won big in the 6th year mid-terms, so Republicans had no chance of doing much legislatively. Of course, foreign policy could be different, given how much power Congress has surrendered to the president over the years (and how much various presidents have snatched). Most of the topics in Ward's article are alarming, in large part because Trump is so unprincipled and erratic, but the last ("Trump may just start withdrawing from everything") might be for the better. A more sensible approach would be to draw back military forces based on multilateral treaties that build up international institutions, and that's clearly over his head. I don't want to cast doubt on the likelihood of disaster that a second Trump term would pose. First of all, after seeing what Trump has done, it would reflect very poorly on the judgment of the voters. Second, we'd have to bear with four more years of extreme bullshit, while real crises continue to multiply. Third, although popular opinion (through Congress) can frustrate his legislative agenda, his administration mostly works through executive orders and appointments to pack the courts. Fourth, he is just staggeringly bad at crisis management, and you should expect a lot of them. Finally, nobody has any idea how much damage he's caused in the last four years, or how much effort it's going to take to restore any semblance of normalcy. The Republican war on government (formerly conceived as "of the people, by the people, and for the people") sometimse includes bold proposals like privatizing the Post Office and the TVA, which can be opposed politically, but it mostly proceeds by entropy: by thousands of little cuts, not least to the incentive to public service. Much of what government does is manage risk (cf. Michael Lewis's book, The Fifth Risk). The thing is, you rarely notice that you've shortchanged risk management until it breaks, and disaster ensues.

  Trump has mostly worked to change the rules under which business and government operate, but it takes time before people adapt to exploit the new rules. For example, the Republicans won Congress in 1946 and combined with Southern Democrats to override Truman vetoes on labor and banking legislation. The effects of those laws didn't really become evident until the 1980s, when Reagan signaled open war on labor unions, and the savings & loan industry blew up. Things happen faster now because the brain rot of the Reagan era has progressed to Trump's zombiedom, because an era of relatively equal collective affluence has turned into an orgy of individualist greed. Trump's one claim to greatness is how thoroughly he personifies America's decline.

Some more scattered links this week:

Dan Alexander: Trump has now oved $2.3 million of campaign-donor money into his private business.

Edward Burmila: What populism is and is not. Review of Thomas Frank's book, The People, NO! The War on Populism and the Fight for Democracy.

Katelyn Burns:

• House Democrats launched contempt of Congress proceeding against Mike Pompeo.

• The "get your knee of our necks" march on Washington in photos: 57 years after Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the 1963 March on Washington.

Marcia Chatelain: How federal housing programs failed black America: Review of Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's book, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership.

Fabiola Cineas: The police shooting of Jacob Blake, explained: Black man, unarmed, shot 7 times in the back, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Protests ensued, and more shooting: Kyle Rittenhouse, age 17, armed with an AR-15, shot three protesters, killing two.

• Zack Beauchamp: Why police encouraged a teenager with a gun to patrol Kenosha's streets.

• Fabiola Cineas: 17-year-old charged with murder in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shootings.

• Benjamin Hart: Two shot dead in Kenosha amid third night of Jacob Blake protests. "A 17-year-old from Illinois has been arrested and charged with first-degree intentional homicide." A friend tweeted that he'd be speaking at the RNC tonight. A surprising number of people found that credible. After all, it's only the next logical step beyond the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at marchers and wound up speaking at the RNC (despite, or maybe because, they got arrested for menacing with a gun). The only things that kept this guy from the dais were timing, logistics, and the courage of his convictions.

• Ellie Hall/Amber Jamieson/Tasneem Nashrulla/Kadia Goba: The Kenosha shooting suspect was in the front row of a Trump rally in January.

• Nancy LeTourneau: Trump created a permission structure for the shootings in Kenosha.

• Branko Marcetic: Cops have long encouraged armed right-wing counterprotesters like the teenage shooter in Kenosha.

• Sarah Jones: Conservatives are defending a white teen charged with killing protesters.

• Tom Boggioni: Christians fundraising for Rittenhouse.

• Matt Ford: The violent delights of the Trumpian right: "In the end, it was always going to be about blood and soil and gun-toting vigilantes."

  Many conservatives who own guns likely wouldn't use them to slaughter fellow Americans. But their embrace of rhetoric that legitimizes acts of violence against Black Lives Matter protesters, Democratic opponents, and other perceived opponents only helps those who might take things to their logical, bloody conclusion. As the November election grows closer, the economy struggles, and the nation's political temperature rises, the risk of further bloodshed may get worse. Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump's top White House advisers, suggested that the White House has no interest in trying to lower political tensions any time soon. "The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety, law and order," she explained.

• Mark Joseph Stern: The conservative defense of Kyle Rittenhouse is dangerous nonsense.

• Cameron Peters: What we know about a deadly shooting in Portland, Oregon: "1 person is dead in Portland after a pro-Trump caravan descended on the city." Victim appears to be part of that "pro-Trump caravan." Members of the caravan attacked protesters with "pepper spray and paintballs," so the violence didn't start with the shooting. Might as well file this here for now. Back-and-forth risks escalating random police shootings and consequent protests into civil war. Peters also wrote: Trump responds to a deadly shooting in Portland by blaming Democrats -- and calls for the National Guard. Trump is clearly pining for his Reichstag Fire. For Biden's response, see Elise Viebeck: Biden accuses Trump of 'recklessly encouraging violence' in response to Portland shooting.

• David Atkins: White supremacists are invading American cities to incite a civil war.

  Trump's election theme is that Americans won't be safe in a Biden presidency. The opposite is true. Americans won't be safe as long as a white supremacist president is leading a movement of bigots to incite a civil war, and attempting to ensure that the majority of Americans with cosmopolitan, egalitarian values remain politically disenfranchised and under the thumb of those who fear and despise them.

• Daniel Politi: Trump is visiting Kenosha on Tuesday. The mayor would rather he didn't.

Eric Cordellessa: The Republicans newest plan to derail voting rights.

Vinson Cunningham: The exhilarating jolt of the Milwaukee Bucks' wildcat strike.

David Enrich: The incestuous relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News: Review of Brian Stelter's book, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.

David A Farenthold/Jonathan O'Connell/Joshua Partlow:

• New York attorney general files legal action against Trump Organization, revealing state investigation into the company's financial dealings.

• Room rentals, resort fees and furniture removal: How Trump's company charged the US government more than $900,000.

Jessica Flack/Melanie Mitchell: Uncertain times: "The pandemic is an unprecedented opportunity -- seeing human society as a complex system opens a better future for us all." Not sure this piece ever gets to where it's going, but I do believe that increasing social complexity is forcing us to rethink basic assumptions about how people work.

Chris Gelardi: US law enforcement's warrior complex is on full display in the streets -- and in leaked documents: "Hacked documents from the early weeks of the ongoing protest movement illustrate one of Black Lives Matter's central observations: Policing in the United States functions as a military occupation."

Sean Illing:

• Why Trump's Mar-a-Lago is a magnet for grifters: Interview with Sarah Blaskey, author of The Grifter's Club: Trump, Mar-a-Lago, and the Selling of the Presidency.

• Why this former Republican says the party must be burned to the ground: Interview with Stuart Stevens, author of It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.

Umair Irfan: What makes California's current major wildfires so unusual: Updated from last week. After all, the state is still on fire.

Ezra Klein:

• Isabel Wilkerson wants to change how we understand race in America: Wilkerson's book is Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents. Makes me wonder why she can't just say "class."

• Those who like government least govern worst: "From the Iraq War to the coronavirus: why Republicans fail at governance." Mostly about Robert Draper's book, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq, although the article title could have brought up any number of examples. Toward the end, Klein tries to draw a link between the coronavirus response fiasco and Iraq, and there are some (like magical thinking), but there are also differences. Republicans are generally pretty deferential to the military, so it's hard to pin the failure in Iraq on lack of funding or message discipline or even resolve -- all of which had an adverse effect on coronavirus response, and are characteristic of Republicans' general contempt for government. Yet Iraq was a disaster anyway. Faith in power and disregard for other people have something to do with it. With both, really.

• How to decarbonize America -- and create 25 million jobs: Interview with Saul Griffith, who runs an organization called Rewiring America, and has an ebook on how to do it.

Markos Kounalakis: Vladimir Putin is on the ballot in November: This is really stupid. I don't doubt that Putin prefers Trump to Biden, and that he has little reason not to throw some of his cyber resources into tainting the 2020 election, but the net effect in terms of US-Russian relations will be negligible. The assertion that if Trump wins a second term, "Russia will be able to wantonly throw its weight around globally" is ridiculous. It hasn't happened in Trump's first term, and nothing changes for a second. The main limit on Russian "expansion" is Russia's own weakness and lack of popularity. Sure, they can on rare occasions play on external schisms as they have in Georgia and Ukraine, but most of the former Russian sphere thoroughly hates them, and their only "allies" elsewhere are countries the US has driven into their arms (like Syria, Venezuela, and Iran). If Biden decides to "get tough" on them, he'll only alienate and destabilize the world situation further. I don't doubt that Trump and Putin are sympatico because of their shared links to oligarchs, their reliance on jingoistic nationalism, and their general contempt for democracy, but interests are something else. Where Trump might help Putin most is in promoting the arms trade -- that being one of Russia's few competitive exports. He also might blow up the Middle East, which would be good for Russian oil and gas prices. (He's already taken most Iranian and Venezuelan oil off the market.) I don't doubt that if Putin were on the ballot, hardly anyone would vote for him. Except maybe in a Republican primary, where a cunning oligarch and despot might be preferred over a really stupid one.

Akela Lacy: Protesters in multiple states are facing felony charges, including terrorism.

Nicholas Lemann: Why Hurricane Katrina was not a natural disaster: "Fifteen years ago, New Orleans was nearly destroyed. A new book suggests that the cause was decades of bad policy -- and that nothing has changed." The book is Katrina: A History, 1915-2015, by Andy Horowitz. As I note under Alex Ward (above), bad policy may take many years to reveal itself as a disaster, which is the argument here. Louisiana is getting hit by another big hurricane this week:

• Umair Irfan: Hurricane Laura rapidly intensified and could hit the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm, and Hurricane Laura hits Gulf Coast as an "extremely dangerous" storm. It made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, as a Category 4, with 150 mph winds, with a storm surge of about 9 feet. Irfan also wrote 2020's "extremely active" hurricane season, explained.

• Alex Ward: Hurricane Laura was already a deadly storm before it reached the US: "The storm killed over 20 people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic."

• Roge Karma: Tropical Storm Laura's flooding and other impacts on the ground: What we know. It degraded from Category 4 Hurricane to Tropical Storm after it moved into central Louisiana.

• Jen Kirby: "It looks like a bomb went off:" Louisianians on recovering from Hurricane Laura.

• Kate Aronoff: Who will get rich off of Hurricane Laura? Annals of disaster capitalism.

German Lopez:

• Trump asked for fewer Covid-19 tests. Now the CDC is recommending less testing.

• How violent protests against police brutality in the '60s and '90s changed public opinion. It's not unreasonable to worry that acts associated with protests might lead to a backlash and even a setback. But lots of things are different now. Police brutality often triggered riots in the 1960s, but it wasn't seen as such, partly because the riots weren't preceded by protest marches, and partly because there weren't cameras everywhere back then to document the brutality. Civil rights marches in the 1960s were much more analogous to the current BLM marches, not only because they were organized protests but also because they were met with public police brutality not unlike we see today. Whereas the riots produced a backlash against "criminality," the marches made the case for civil rights, and were generally successful (ultimately). I worry that repeating protests too often will create an escalating dynamic that could turn counterproductive (which may have happened in Portland, although I'm not close enough to be sure). I also don't have any problem with arresting people who destroy property and/or act violently -- nor would I exempt the police when they do so. But secondary violence never excuses the violence that triggered the protests in the first place, nor does it justify further violence by police, let alone their self-appointed "allies." Police have as much responsibility to protect protesters as anyone else -- something they can all too easily forget when they dress up like stormtroopers.

Sarah Lyall: In Trumpworld, the grown-ups in the room all left, and got book deals: Gang-reviews books by Sean Spicer, James Comey, Omarosa Manigault Newman, Andrew G McCabe, Anonymous, John Bolton, and Mary L Trump.

Jonathan Martin: Over 100 ex-staff members for John McCain endorse Joe Biden. As someone who's long regarded McCain as one of the most reprehensible characters in American politics, I don't find this very gratifying. Especially give the other large Republican cluster to come over to Biden: Top Republican national security officials say they will vote for Biden. McCain was long the most reckless hawk in the GOP, and that's bread and butter to the security officialdom, so the bet is that Biden will follow militarist orthodoxy more faithfully than Trump will. Biden has given them little reason to think otherwise, so they may be onto something. Those camps loom large in All the Republicans who have decided not to support Trump.

Bill McKibben: On climate change, we've run out of presidential terms to waste. He probably said that about Bush too -- if not the first, certainly the second. After all, he founded 350.org when 350 was just a fearsome future number. The latest carbon dioxide number (from 2019) is 409.8 ppm.

Ian Millhiser: What happens to the Supreme Court (and the Constitution) if Trump wins: "The Supreme Court has rejected some of the GOP's sloppiest and most presumptuous arguments. It won't anymore if Republicans grow their majority."

Anna North: Elizabeth Warren calls for investigation into Trump's politicization of Covid-19.

Evan Osnos: Can Biden's center hold? Long piece, good background including some things I didn't know, recounting the campaign to date, not much forward projection, even on the title question. Of course, all you can really say is that what holds Biden's center together is fear and loathing of Donald Trump. Take that away and you can pick Biden apart from every angle. But for now, Biden is managing to straddle two theories that are normally in opposition: one is the centrist belief that if you can stop right-wing destruction and restore functioning institutions (not just government, although that's the big one), America will rebound largely on its own, and all will be well; the other is the leftist belief that unless equality and justice are restored, nothing can work right, and our problems will continue to multiply. Biden is more associated with the former, but not so dogmatically as to exclude inputs from the left. Moreover, as long as he's running against Trump, the left-center split isn't (or shouldn't be) an issue.

JC Pan: Private equity is cannibalizing the post-pandemic economy: "These vulture firms helped create the conditions for economic collapse. Now they're cleaning up."

All of this is to say that private equity had a heavy (if largely unseen) hand in weakening a number of crucial industries right before a national disaster. Not only will it likely face no consequences for indirectly facilitating a portion of the suffering, but it also now stands to profit from the wreckage of the economic recession it helped flame. . . .

That very disconnect illuminates the failure of an economy that encourages disaster profiteering. Though private equity may seem uniquely villainous, in the end, those firms are only doing what they were created to do and always explicitly promised to do: generate profit for their investors above all else. Their predations are made possible by a government that condones them or is content to simply turn away, as it has so many times before. That calls not just for a general condemnation of financial greed -- which most politicians are happy to offer -- but real measures to end it. As Warren and Fife put it, "Wall Street has already shown us what it will do if left unchecked."

Alex Pareene:

• Madison Cawthorn is the future of the Republican Party.

• The police are pretty sure they're going to get away with it: "In Portsmouth, Virginia, cops have been systematically using their state power to tyrannize political enemies."

Vijay Prashad: Why Cuban doctors deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

Since the start of Cuban medical internationalism in 1960, over 400,000 medical workers have worked in more than 40 countries. . . . Cuban medical workers are risking their health to break the chain of the COVID-19 infection. Cuban scientists developed drugs -- such as interferon alpha-2b -- to help fight the disease. Now Cuban scientists have announced that their vaccine is in trials; this vaccine will not be treated as private property but will be shared with the peoples of the world. This is the fidelity of Cuban medical internationalism.

Andrew Prokop: The Jerry Falwell Jr scandal, explained: "It's not just about sex -- it's a tale of financial, institutional, and political corruption. And there's a Trump angle." More on Falwell:

• Chris Lehmann: Jerry Falwell Jr's filthy, predatory finances: "The son of the late evangelical titan may be embroiled in a scandal made for reality TV, but it's not as tawdry as his Trumpian path to riches."

Robert Reich: Trump's 40 biggest broken promises.

Aja Romano: Why we can't stop fighting about cancel culture: Is cancel culture a mob mentality, or a long overdue way of speaking truth to power?" No, neither, and not just because it isn't even a thing. Think about it. Cancel is something that only those in power can do. It's something they do all the time, usually without fanfare or even notice. They don't need a "culture" to get them to do it. All they need is the power. I made a joke above about "cancel culture" causing the cancellation of an RNC speaker who had suddenly become an embarrassment (although her usual racist shtick was probably why she got the invite in the first place). On the other hand, people without the power to actually cancel an appearance can still ask or demand that it happen, but they have no direct power to make it happen. It's really just a challenge to power, and those in power don't like those out of power butting into their business, so they imagine a "culture" which drives this dynamic on.

Siguel Samuel: Germany is launching a new experiment in basic income.

Luke Savage: Joe Biden's strategy of appealing to Republicans is courting disaster. See 2016. I don't mind the messaging going that way, but the mistake that Biden cannot afford is slighting the "ground game" to make sure the base votes, and understands what's at stake. That's something Obama did well, and Hillary barely did at all.

John Schwartz: Climate is taking on a growing role for voters, research suggests. Related: Lisa Friedman: Climate could be an electoral time bomb, Republican strategists fear.

Dylan Scott: How Obamacare helped millions who lost their jobs during Covid-19, in 3 charts.

Avi Shlaim: UAE-Israel deal: Breakthrough or betrayal?

• Ramzy Baroud: Netanyahu vs Gantz: Gaza escalation as reflection of Israel's political rivalry.

• Phyllis Bennis: The Israel-UAE deal isn't about peace at all.

• Andreas Krieg: The UAE and Israel: More than a marriage of convenience.

• Joseph Massad: The UAE's love affair with Israel: "today, all the oppressors of the Arab peoples are allies in the open."

• Gareth Porter: After Beirut blast, Israel revives tale of Hezbollah ammonium nitrate terror plots. And, of course, having laid their propaganda campaign, Israel strikes Hezbollah targets in Southern Lebanon.

• Philip Weiss/James North: The Democratic Party won't be out-Israel'd this fall.

Emily Stewart: Americans are falling through the safety net. The government is helping predatory lenders instead.

Libby Watson: The real pandemic gap is between the comfortable and the afflicted: "Beneath society's plutocratic layer, America is not as united in the face of crisis as we like to pretend." Who's pretending? The idea that this is a war, with its now-ancient implication that we're all in it together, didn't take root. Once the stock market rebounded, Trump and the Republicans lost interest in bipartisan deals that might help the non-rich. Still, there is another gap, between Watson's "comfortable" and those who struggle from paycheck to paycheck. Watson puts that gap somewhere between $30,000 and $130,000, noting that "Pew reports 18 percent of 'upper income' (above $112,600 in annual income) people have been laid off or lost their jobs since the pandemic started (compared with 39 percent of 'lower income' people, who earn less than $37,500)." I'd define it a bit differently: the "comfortable" are those who simply added their $1,200 stimulus checks to their savings, in contrast to the "uncomfortable" many who spent it on debts and necessities and soon wound up with nothing less. The big difference there is having an uninterrupted income stream larger than routine expenses, which has a lot more to do with who saves than thriftiness ever did.

George Will: Biden needs a Sister Souljah moment: I read this op-ed in the Wichita Eagle this morning, and was appalled and disgusted. Will is a conservative pundit who doesn't love Trump but also doesn't like anything his opponents stand for, so he should be irrelevant at the moment. I might have skipped this, but then I found Robert Tracinski: Biden needs a Sister Souljah month, which elicited a response from Martin Longman: We don't need another Sister Souljah moment. I didn't recall what the rapper said to provoke Bill Clinton's wrath, but still recalled the incident for its gratuitous racism. It was Clinton's way of reminding white people that he's one of them, and that he can be counted on to defend them against raging blacks. Biden doesn't need such a moment, and shouldn't want one, and anyone who prods him in that direction is aiming to make the racial divide worse. Take Donald Trump: he has a Sister Souljah moment almost every day, and each one begets the next. Tracinski's real point is that Biden needs to make sure he's viewed as anti-riot. I'm against riots too, and I don't care how draconian he gets in prosecuting rioters -- as long as the same justice applies to police and to Trump's agitator-thugs. Or I would be, but shouldn't police be held to a higher standard? As it is, much of what they do seems designed to provoke riots, not to prevent or pacify them. PS: Biden did issue a strong statement, included here. As Steve M notes, "The New York Times covers it by burying it in the 13th paragraph of a story about President Trump's overnight Twitter barrage." He also notes:

Why did Hillary Clinton lose in 2016? She lost for many reasons, but one was the media's willingness to let her opponent Bigfoot his way to a disproportionate share of press coverage. Trump was seen as great copy and great television, so the media yielded the floor to him every time he beat his chest and demanded attention, dismissing most efforts by Clinton to Change the subject to serious issues. And here we are.

Matthew Yglesias:

• Democrats should learn the wisdom of Tammy Baldwin: "Senate candidates in red states hold the future in their hands."

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, August 24, 2020

August archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 33865 [33814] rated (+51), 225 [221] unrated (+4).

Started off last week playing old albums by the late tenor saxophonist Steve Grossman. (I only had two in my database, fondly remembering 1991's In New York.) Turns out I had missed quite a bit. Consistently strong albums, especially in the 1990's, with the Quartet with Michel Petrucciani perhaps closest to the cusp.

Then I went after a long list of British jazz albums suggested by a recent Q&A query: Don Rendell, Ian Carr, and Michael Garrick. I had noticed but didn't pursue recent box sets of the 1965-69 Rendell-Carr Quintet and the Carr's 1970-75 Nucleus group, but as I had listened to everything on separate albums, I figured I could summarize the boxes and assign them a grade. I haven't seen the packaging, so no extra credit there, nor for the convenience of keeping everything together. Garrick, who played a lot with Rendell and/or Carr, is the more significant talent, and also the one I've missed most by. One not below I can heartily recommend is his For Love of Duke . . . and Ronnie (1995-97 [1998], Jazz Academy).

These old jazz albums went fast, but by Friday, when I turned my attention to Weekend Roundup, I hadn't listened to a single new album. I promised to sort my input queue by release date and start picking off the oldest releases, but didn't get to that, and when I did pick out the most promising release I had seen reviewed, Matt Wilson's Hug!, I discovered it's not out until next week. I'll try again next week.

The only things in the Q&A queue are suggestions for artists to explore. One is Jimmy Heath (1926-2020). I only had two of his records in my database before adding his latest/final this week. I'm surprised I don't have his 1992 Little Man Big Band listed -- pretty sure I owned that, although I doubt I've played it since it was new. Heath didn't record as much as others I think of as his peers (Benny Golson, Johnny Griffin, Joe Henderson, Clifford Jordan, maybe Hank Mobley and/or Wayne Shorter), but my sampling -- even against my "shopping list" -- has been relatively sparse. Something to look into.

Another suggestion is Bilal's Love for Sale, recorded 2001-03 and unreleased but leaked in 2006, and evidently pretty easy to find. The guy who wrote up my Wikipedia page has written up an extremely detailed one on this album.

Looking through the week's deaths, I see several familiar musicians: Justin Townes Earle (38, singer-songwriter, son of Steve Earle), Peter King (80, English saxophonist), Charlie Persip (91, drummer), Hal Singer (100, saxophonist). I tracked down several of Singer's albums back in June. I belatedly played Earle's 2019 album, and it's pretty good (see below).

On a more personal note, my cousin Devoe Brown (89) died today -- the third cousin I've lost this year. He was a builder in Twin Falls, Idaho. He married Colleen in 1950, and they had four daughters and a son. For many years he would buy, live in, fix up, and resell old houses. He started building new ones, eventually whole subdivisions of them. His father was a blacksmith and railroad worker, William Clagge Brown (1907-74), who moved his family from Arkansas to Missouri to Pocatello in the early 1940s. Clagge rode in rodeos, and was the most credible outdoorsman in a family chock full of hunters. Some griddles he crafted are among my most prized possessions. We visited both ways in the 1950s and 1960s. I became reacquainted with Devoe in the 1990s, and we've remained close. I don't think I've known anyone who so much enjoyed to laugh. One couldn't ask for better company. About six months ago, when he was diagnosed with liver illness, he took it in stride, describing his decline as "the grand finale" of his life. The last few months haven't been so grande, but it's always been a pleasure to hear his voice.

New records reviewed this week:

Abraham Inc.: Together We Stand (2019, Table Pounding): Second group album: Klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, funk trombonist Fred Wesley, and master sampler Socalled, with friends filling in guitar-bass-drums, horns (Eddie Allen trumpet and Jay Rodriguez sax), and adding raps (Taron Benson, Fat Tony, Sarah MK). About what you'd expect from the concept. B+(***) [bc]

Gregg August: Dialogues on Race: Volume One (2020, Iacuessa): Bassist, probably best known as part of JD Allen's trio, but fourth album as leader since 2003, a composition written in 2009, reflecting on the 1955 murder of Emmett Till after Barack Obama got elected president. Many murders later, he's revived the piece, with 10+ musicians (one track adds strings, a couple more have vocals and/or extra percussion. Really like most of the music (except the strings thing); don't care for the vocals, though the message matters here. B+(***)>

David Berkman: Plays Music by John Coltrane and Pete Seeger: Solo Piano (2020, Without): Pianist, from Cleveland, early albums (1998-2000) most impressive. "Music by" isn't restricted to their own compositions: Seeger covered the folk tradition, so you get extras like "Goodnight Irene" and "We Shall Overcome," and you get a "Body and Soul" too. The Seeger parts are more evocative, probably because they're the ones I recognize. B+(**) [cd]

Black Art Jazz Collective: Ascension (2020, HighNote): Sextet, third album, horns return -- Wayne Escoffery (tenor sax), Jeremy Pelt (trumpet), James Burton III (trombone) -- but with a new rhythm section: Victor Gould (piano), Rashaan Carter (bass), Mark Whitfield Jr. (drums). Title track is a Gould original. Could have stuck with hard bop, especially with Pelt's chops, but progressively leans into postbop, getting slicker and slicker. B+(*)

Charley Crockett: Welcome to Hard Times (2020, Son of Davy): Americana singer-songwriter from San Benito, Texas; grew up in Dallas, busked in New Orleans and New York, wound up in Austin, eighth album since 2015. More Western than country. B+(*)

Justin Townes Earle: The Saint of Lost Causes (2019, New West): Singer-songwriter, dead at 38, cause not disclosed. Father was Steve Earle, absent from 2 to 12, the age he got into drugs. Toured with his father, started writing his own songs, a mix of country and blues, although he never impressed me much. This his ninth and evidently last album -- one I skipped when it came out. Turns out it's pretty good. B+(***)

Paul Flaherty/Randall Colbourne/James Chumley Hunt/Mike Roberson: Borrowed From Children (2020, 577): Avant saxophonist, b. 1948, plays alto and tenor, has over three dozen albums since 1990 but this (somehow) is the first I've picked up. The others play drums, trumpet/cornet, and electric guitar. B+(**)

Bill Frisell: Valentine (2020, Blue Note): Guitarist, trio with Thomas Morgan (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums). Opens with a piece from Mali. Closes with "We Shall Overcome. Originals inside, aside from the pairing of "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing" and "What the World Needs Now Is Love." B+(**)

Jimmy Heath: Love Letter (2019 [2020], Verve): Tenor saxophonist from Philadelphia, died at 93 in January, recorded with Kenny Dorham and Clifford Brown in 1953, led his first album in 1959, stood a mere 5 foot, 3 inches but called one of his best albums Really Big! With piano (Kenny Barron), guitar (Russell Malone), vibes, bass, and drums, a guest spot for Wynton Marsalis, also singers Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gregory Porter -- names fitting a legend, but it comes off rather dreamy, and the singers don't help. B+(*)

Eddie Henderson: Shuffle and Deal (2019 [2020], Smoke Sessions): Trumpet player, I think of him as a hard bop guy but he started in fusion around 1973, has a lot of side credits but as he approaches 80, has more than two dozens albums under his own name. In his groove here with Donald Harrison (alto sax), Kenny Barron (piano), bass, and drums. B+(**)

Christoph Irniger Trio: Open City (2020, Intakt): Swiss tenor saxophonist, backed by Raffaele Bossard (bass) and Ziv Ravitz (drums), with guests Loren Stillman (alto sax) and Nils Wogram (trombone). B+(***)

Ingrid Laubrock + Kris Davis: Blood Moon (2019 [2020], Intakt): Sax/piano duo, Laubrock playing tenor and soprano. Both well known, often in each other's company, at least since their Paradoxical Frog trio (2010). Feels a bit sketchy. B+(**)

Matt Wilson Quartet: Hug! (2019 [2020], Palmetto): Drummer, many records, adventurous quartet with Jeff Lederer (saxes), Kirk Knuffke (cornet), and Chris Lightcap (bass). Interesting music, including covers from Abdullah Ibrahim and Roger Miller. One spoil moment samples Donald Trump announcing the Space Force, which segues into Sun Ra with the band singing "Interplanetary Music." B+(**) [cd] [08-28]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Horace Tapscott With the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: Ancestral Echoes: The Covina Sessions, 1976 (1976 [2020], Dark Tree): Pianist, a major figure in Los Angeles jazz, his large group here more a scene than a mere band. A- [cd]

Old music:

Ian Carr With Nucleus: Solar Plexus (1971, UMC): Scottish trumpet player (1933-2009), best known for his quintet co-led by Don Rendell (1964-69) and his fusion group Nucleus (1969-89). Fairly large group with either Harry Beckett or Kenny Wheeler joining on trumpet, three saxes (Karl Jenkins also played oboe and keyboard, as did Keith Winter), guitar (Chris Spedding), two basses, drums (John Marshall), although many other folks passed through the band at some point. Third group album (first with Carr's name singled out). B+(**)

Nucleus: Elastic Rock (1970, Vertigo): Debut of Ian Carr's fusion band, a sextet, mostly players with long and distinguished careers in British jazz: leader played trumpet, Karl Jenkins (bari sax, oboe, keyboards), Brian Smith (tenor/soprano sax, flute), Chris Speeding (guitar), Jeff Clyne (electric bass), John Marshall (drums). Slightly exotic, nothing revolutionary. B+(*)

Nucleus: We'll Talk About It Later (1970 [1971], Vertigo): Same group, Jenkins is the principal writer (4.5 songs), followed by Carr and Cline (2 co-credits) and Marshall (1 half). Both energy and chops advance. Last two songs have vocals. Don't see a credit, but both are Carr co-writes, and they're actually pretty good. B+(***)

Ian Carr With Nucleus Plus: Labyrinth (1973, Vertigo): Artist list after Plus: Kenny Wheeler, Brian Smith, Tony Levin, Roy Babbington, Clive Thacker, Tony Coe, Gordon Beck, Norma Winstone, Dave MacRae, Trevor Tomkins -- only one not in that list is Carr. The guests pull the band in various ways -- especially Winstone, to the atmospherics her voice usually dwells in. B+(*)

Ian Carr's Nucleus: Roots (1973, Vertigo): Band stripped back down to a sextet plus singer (Joy Yates), with only Carr and Brian Smith (reeds) returning from more than one album back. B+(*)

Nucleus: Under the Sun (1974, Vertigo): Sixth album, considerable churn in the lineup, with Bob Bertles on sax, Gordon Beck and Geoff Castle on keyboards, two guitars, the bassist and drummer writing one song each. Still Carr's band, and best when he takes charge. Starting to lose interest otherwise. B

Nucleus: Snakehips Etcetera (1975, Vertigo): Last of eight 1970-75 albums for Vertigo: band lasted a few more years, with various labels, and has regrouped for occasional live gigs. Playing out the string here, faithful to the core fusion verities of power and propulsion, with maybe a bit of outer space. B+(*)

Nucleus: Alleycat (1975, Vertigo): Cover image looks like a leopard. Ian Carr's band is back down to six: saxes (Bob Bertles), guitar (Ken Shaw), keyboards (Geoff Castle), bass guitar (Roger Sutton), drums (Roger Sellers), with Carr playing synthesizer as well as trumpet and flugelhorn. B+(*)

Nucleus & Ian Carr: Torrid Zone: The Vertigo Recordings 1970-1975 (1970-75 [2019], Esoteric, 6CD): Having listened to all of this piecemeal (9 albums), I can pretend to having listened to the box. The mainstream jazz market collapsed in the late 1960s, and fusion (cf. Miles Davis and/or John McLaughlin) seemed like a way out, although few other artists really distinguished themselves. The early albums were most vital, with several musicians moving on to take over Soft Machine, while leader Ian Carr plugged on, producing records that weren't all that inspired, but no worse than what Weather Report in the US. A lot of important musicians passed through this band, but few did their best work here. Wish I could claim more historical value, but fusion repeatedly turned into a dead-end genre, even though the impulse is eternal, and occasionally shakes us up. B+(*)

Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band: No Roses (1971, Pegasus): English folksinger, perhaps the most famed of the age, introduces a large band which later sported leader Ashley Hutchings' moniker, and continued to record with Collins through 1980, when she retired (until her 2016 return). Band lists 25 names, including some like Lol Coxhill I know from jazz. Indeed, my favorite thing here is the horns, but then I've never been much of an English folk fan. B+(***)

Michael Garrick Trio: Moonscape (1964 [2007], Trunk, EP): British pianist (1933-2011), first recorded in 1958, played with Ian Carr and Don Rendell in their 1965-69 quintet, occasionally recorded under his own name up to 1978, took a break, returned in 1994. Early trio with Dave Green on bass (John Taylor 1 cut) and Colin Barnes on drums. Short, six tracks, 23:28. Fine pianist, makes quite an impression. B+(***)

Michael Garrick Sextet With Don Rendell and Ian Carr: Prelude to Heart Is a Lotus (1968 [2014], Gearbox): The Heart Is a Lotus is a 1970 Garrick album, on Vocalion. This precursor was cut for BBC Jazz, with four members of the Rendell/Carr Quintet, Coleridge Goode taking over bass, and Jim Philip on flute. Long on texture. B+(**) [bc]

Michael Garrick: The New Quartet (2001 [2002], Jazz Academy): Garrick returned from a 15-year hiatus in 1993 with a trio, then produced a few big band records during the 1990s. Small group here with Martin Hathaway (soprano/alto sax), Paul Moylan (bass), and Alan Jackson (drums). Four originals, four more from the band, covers of Benny Golson, Joe Harriott, Duke Ellington, and Jaco Pastorius. A lot going on here. Surprised the saxophonist hasn't had a more of a career. A-

Garricks' Strings Quartet: Green and Pleasant Land (2003, Jazz Academy): The plural reflects two Garricks in the lineup, pianist Michael and his son Chris Garrick on violin, the group rounded out with guitar (Dominic Ashworth) and bass (Paul Moylan), so not your typical string quartet, but a right fair piece of chamber jazz. Closes with a nice Anita Wardell vocal. B+(*)

The Michael Garrick Trio: Gigs: Introducing Mick Garrett . . . ([2008], Jazz Academy): No info on when this was recorded, but title and picture mark it as early. Trios with bass (Dave Green, Paul Moylan) and drums (Trevor Tomkins, Alan Jackson) -- Green and Tomkins played with him in the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet (1965-69), and they continued in his groups through 1973 (Green goes back at least to 1962); Jackson was in a 1978 quartet, and returned in the 2001 New Quartet, which is where Moylan finally appears. B+(*)

Johnny Griffin/Steve Grossman: Johnny Griffin & Steve Grossman Quintet (2000 [2001], Dreyfus): Two tenor saxophonists, the elder a seasoned brawler in such contexts, backed by piano (Michael Weiss), bass (Pierre Michelot), and drums (Alvin Queen), selected from three nights in Paris. Title cut is one of three Grossman songs, matched by three from Griffin, with one from Weiss, two standards. Spirited jousts, nice ballad turns. [Napster has this as Take the "D" Train, but no evidence of that on cover. It is the lead song title.] B+(***)

Steve Grossman: Some Shapes to Come (1973 [1974], PM): Tenor saxophonist, played for Miles Davis in his early 1970s fusion bands, so plays some soprano as well. With electric piano (Jan Hammer), electric bass (Gene Perla), and percussion (Don Alias), this builds on a fusion groove, but the saxophonist takes charge and delivers on his ambitious title. A-

Steve Grossman: Terra Firma (1975-76 [1977], PM): Same quartet, bassist Gene Perla produces and wrote two pieces, vs. one for percussionist Don Alias, four for the tenor saxophonist, wailing strong over fusion beats. B+(***)

Steve Grossman: Way Out East, Volume 1 (1984, RED): Tenor sax trio with Juni Booth (bass) and Joe Chambers (drums). He's turned away from fusion and become a mainstream player, relying on his tone and dynamics, with one original, seven standards. B+(**)

Steve Grossman: Way Out East, Volume 2 (1984, RED): Continues with the second of two days at Studio 7 in Milan. More standards ("Body and Soul," "Trane's Slow Blues," "Soultrane," etc.). B+(**)

Steve Grossman: Love Is the Thing (1985 [1986], RED): Quartet with Cedar Walton (piano), David Williams (bass), and Billy Higgins (drums). B+(***)

Steve Grossman Trio: Bouncing With Mr. A.T. (1989 [1996], Dreyfus): Refers to drummer Art Taylor (1929-95), who's led albums with Mr. A.T. in the title, and who's bounced with everyone from Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk through Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, Gene Ammons, up to the tenor saxophonist here. With Tyler Mitchell on bass, A.T. brings out the saxophonist's uproarious best. A-

Steve Grossman: Live at Café Praga (1990 [1991], Timeless): Quartet, recorded live in Bologna with piano (Fred Henke), bass, and drums. Five extended pieces. B+(***)

Steve Grossman: My Second Prime (1990 [1991], RED): Discogs shows a steady stream of albums from his 1974 debut up to 1994, when he begins to slow down. Recorded at Spezia Jazz Festival on Dec. 17, probably why they picked "The Christmas Song"), with piano (Fred Henke), bass, and drums. Two originals, one from Henke, and three covers, ranging fast and slow, averaging 10 minutes. B+(*)

Steve Grossman: Do It (1991, Dreyfus): Tenor sax quartet with Barry Harris (piano), Reggie Johnson (bass), and Art Taylor (drums). Back to bebop roots (if not his, then A.T.'s), with three Powells, two Monks, one Dameron (a gorgeous "Soultrane"). Opens with "Cherokee," closes with Charlie Parker's "Chi Chi." B+(***)

Steve Grossman Quintet Featuring Harold Land: I'm Confessin' (1992 [2007], Dreyfus): Two tenor saxophonists, each lay out one track. Backed by Fred Henke (piano), Reggie Johnson (bass), and Jimmy Cobb (drums). B+(**)

Steve Grossman + Cedar Walton Trio: A Small Hotel (1993, Dreyfus): With Walton on piano, David Williams (bass) and Billy Higgins (drums). B+(***)

Steve Grossman/Michel Petrucciani: Quartet (1998 [1999], Dreyfus): Tenor saxophonist in much larger type, followed by the French pianist, without listing Andy McKee (bass) and Joe Farnsworth (drums). One original each, rest standards, mostly ballads, often lovely. B+(***)

Don Rendell: Meet Don Rendell (1954-55 (2001), Jasmine): British tenor saxophonist (1926-2015), started in Johnny Dankworth's band, early recordings as leader: the title comes from a 10-inch LP released on Tempo in 1955, sandwiched here between seven earlier sextet tracks (a bit more trad-oriented) and four later quintet tracks. Nice cool tone, with some swing. B+(***) [yt]

Don Rendell/Bobby Jaspar: Rencontre A Paris (1955, Swing, EP): Two tenor saxophonists, from England and Belgium, in a septet, with French horn (Dave Amram), guitar, piano, bass, and drums, for a six track, 10-inch LP (27:12). [Reissued 2015 on Trunk as Don Rendell Meets Bobby Jasper.] B+(**)

Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet: Shades of Blue (1965, Columbia): Co-led this group with the trumpet player, first of five albums through 1969. With Colin Purbrook (piano), Dave Green (bass), and Trevor Tomkins (drums). Mainstream, shaded blue. B+(*)

Don Rendell/Ian Carr 5tet: Dusk Fire (1966, Columbia): Michael Garrick, a notable British jazz figure in his own right, takes over the piano slot, and writes three songs to Rendell's four (Carr has a co-credit with each). B

Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet: Phase III (1967 [1968], Columbia): Garrick is settling in nicely here, adding energy and clarity, although as jazz goes this remains pretty atmospheric. B+(**)

Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet: Live (1968 [1969], Columbia): Actually recorded in Lansdowne Recording Studios in London, presumably in "live" takes. Rendell plays a fair amount of flute and clarinet in addition to his tenor/soprano saxes, adding atmosphere to the persistent rhythm. B+(***)

Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet: Change Is (1969, Columbia): A final studio album, same group except for Jeff Clyne playing bass on one (of six) tracks. I haven't had much to say about Carr, but the fact that he plays flugelhorn as well as trumpet puts him in a line between Art Farmer and Kenny Wheeler -- perhaps too subtle for his own good, but he comes through nicely here. B+(***)

Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet: The Complete Lansdowne Recordings (1965-1969 [2018], Jazzman): This is also available in box form, at least in vinyl (5-LP), only CD I can confirm is a single-disc sampler promo. Group got steadily better, especially as pianist Michael Garrick developed, but were so understated it took me a while, suggesting I've underrated the early albums. Lansdowne, by the way, was the studio they recorded in. The albums were originally released on Columbia [UK]. B+(**)

The Don Rendell Five Featuring Barbara Thompson: Just Music (1974 [1976], Spotlite): Thompson's first record -- like Rendell, she plays tenor sax, soprano, and flute (Rendell also plays clarinet and alto flute). Backed by Peter Lemer (keyboards), bass, and drums. B+(**)

Don Rendell/Ian Carr/Michael Garrick: Reunion (2001 [2002], Spotlite): One of the last things in Rendell's discography, although he wound up living longer than his younger colleagues. With trombone, bass, and drums. Eases into the traffic, but speeds up and before long they're enjoying themselves, ending with old standbys "How Deep Is the Ocean" and "Struttin' With Some Barbecue." B+(***)

Grade (or other) changes:

Steve Grossman: Time to Smile (1993 [1994], Dreyfus): Quintet with Tom Harrell on trumpet, Willy Pickens on piano, Cecil McBee on bass, but drummer Elvin Jones gets the big print. Probably took exception to Harrell's harmonizing, but the sax is often great, and the rhythm swings. [was: B] B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• The Big Bad Bones Featuring Scott Whitfield: Emergency Vehicle Blues (Summit) [08-21]
• The Claire Daly Band: Rah! Rah! (Ride Symbol) [10-02]
• Jason Foureman and Stephen Anderson: Duo (Summit)
• Sukyung Kim: Lilac Hill (self-released)
• Modern Jazz Quartet Karlsruhe: Four Men Only: Complete Recordings (1968-73, NoBusiness -3CD)
• Radam Schwartz Organ Big Band: Message From Groove and GW (Arabesque)
• Trio Linguale [Kevin Woods/John Stowell/Miles Black]: Signals (Origin) [08-21]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, August 23, 2020

The Democrats had their virtual convention last week. I didn't watch any of it live. For that matter, neither did my wife, who's got a much thicker skin for these things -- probably developed from hate-watching Fox News, although in fairness she mostly does that to watch them squirm on particularly embarrassing news days. I did watch Stephen Colbert's nightly post-convention monologues, so I got a taste of the virtual spectacle -- mostly selected for joke potential. I've also read (or at least skimmed) the pieces, both on the convention and on the Biden campaign, linked below:

• Vox [Zack Beauchamp/Aaron Ross Coleman/Dylan Matthews/Nicole Narea/Ella Nilsen/Anna North/Andrew Prokop/Dylan Scott/Emily Stewart/Emily VanDerWerff/Li Zhou]:

  • 5 winners and 2 losers from the first night of the Democratic National Convention: Winners: Real people; Michelle Obama; John Kasich's crossroads; The convention format; Evan Longoria Baston. Losers: The "defund the police" agenda; Lecterns.

  • 5 winners and 2 losers from night 2 of the Democratic convention: Winners:The state roll call; Ady Barkan; The Carters; Jacquelyn, the New York Times security guard; State legislators and local leaders. Losers: Bill Clinton; The traditional convention format.

  • 5 winners and 2 losers from night 3 of the Democratic convention. Winners: The youth; Resistance moms; Elizabeth Warren; Making a plan to vote; Kamala Harris. Losers: Hillary Clinton; Hope and change (Obama, "a little older and a lot grayer").

  • 5 winners and 4 losers from the last night of the Democratic convention: Winners: Joe Biden; Anti-Trump Republicans; Brayden Harrington; The religious left; Tammy Baldwin. Losers: The courts; Tonal consistency; Build Back Better; Bruce Springsteen's discography beyond 10 seconds of "My City of Ruins" off the 2002 LP The Rising.

  • The 2020 Democratic National Convention speaker lineup and how to watch.

• Zack Beauchamp: Andrew Yang said the smartest thing about Biden at the DNC: "The magic of Joe Biden is that everything he does becomes the new reasonable."

• Fabiola Cineas: What it will take to fight the sexist, racist attacks against Kamala Harris. Interview with Niambi Carter, author of American While Black: African Americans, Immigration, and the Limits of Citizenship.

• Constance Grady: How politicians showed off their books at the Democratic National Convention. Something I'm always curious about, but Cory Booker didn't help himself by showcasing a David Brooks book.

• Sue Katz: Rating the Democratic National Convention: Highlights & bummers: A friend's blog report.

• Ezra Klein:

  • Joe Biden likes you. On his acceptance speech. The speech itself is here. Klein does some of his Why We're Polarized stuff, but his main point is this:

    The core of Joe Biden's politics is his talent at fulfilling the simplest of political and emotional needs: Joe Biden likes you. That was the message of this convention, and it's the message that has always been at the core of his politics. Joe Biden likes you if you're a Democrat or a Republican. He likes you even if you don't like him, because it's his job to like you, no matter how you vote.

    "While I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president," Biden said. "I will work as hard for those who didn't support me as I will for those who did. That's the job of a president. To represent all of us, not just our base or our party."

    If this sounds trite, consider the contrast it offers to the reality we live in, and the politics President Trump models.

    I must say I don't find that very reassuring. I get the contrast to Trump, and I believe that the most basic lesson of life is how necessary it is to respect other people (even ones very different from yourself). Still, putting likability above commitment runs the risk of losing the principles and allegiances that will get him elected in the first place, and make him ineffective. Obama didn't just want to make bipartisan deals. He was willing to make bad ones, just to look good to people who didn't care. Biden may want to be liked by everyone, but he won't be -- indeed, the depths of irrational invective and hatred Republicans direct at him during the campaign should make that point inescapable.

  • American carnage: "In 2017, Trump promised to end 'this American carnage.' Four years later, carnage defines his presidency."

• Mike Konczal: Can Joe Biden unrig the economy? "Raising taxes on the rich would help stop the economy from simply channeling income to 1 percent."

• Nancy LeTourneau: What everyone should learn from Michelle Obama.

• German Lopez:

  Obama's Democratic convention speech gave a clear warning: Democracy is at stake in 2020: As he's done so often in his career, Obama grasps at the most anodyne, least objectionable position in a crisis. It is true that Republicans have no respect for democracy, and if given the chance will do anything they can to tilt elections in their direction. Still, it does little good to defend democracy in the abstract when you don't use of it to do popular things, or even practice the Preamble to the US Constitution (establish justice, promote the general welfare, etc.). When Democrats gained control of Congress and the Presidency in the 2008 elections, they did nothing whatsoever to fight back against the gross distortions of money in politics. They didn't even get rid of the anti-democratic filibuster in the structurally un-democratic US Senate. Don't get me wrong: it's good that Obama values democracy now. It's just a shame that he didn't make better use of it when he had the chance.

  • The Democratic convention highlighted gun violence. Here's what Biden plans to do about it. Gun control isn't an unpopular issue, but is is a polarizing one, so much so that I doubt it works as a political issue, so I don't see any value in the Democrats bringing it up.

• Dylan Matthews: This is the future Joe Biden wants. Introduction to a series called A Biden Presidency: "The Democratic nominee's policy vision, explained." Other links in this series:

  • Fabiola Cineas: How Biden has -- and hasn't -- harnessed the national reckoning on race.

  • German Lopez: Joe Biden's criminal justice reform proposal, explained.

  • Nicole Narea: Reviving DACA and reforming DHS: 5 immigration issues Biden could confront.

  • Anna North: Child care is broken. Biden has a plan to fix it.

  • Dylan Scott: Joe Biden's Obamacare opportunity. "The 2010 law gave health coverage to millions but left millions of other uninsured. Biden could finish the job." But not, as suggested here, by amending Obamacare. Sure, he could patch up some of the holes, even add a "public option" that could attract many to replace their private insurance. But the Supreme Court blew open some more holes, especially by allowing Republican-dominated states to refuse expansion of Medicare. The fact is that the only way we ever get to universal coverage is through a single-payer program that establishes a basic right to health care, like Medicare for All. Until Biden realizes that, anything else he does will continue to come up short.

  • Alex Ward: Biden's strategy to fix the world.

• Ian Millhiser:

  • The Democratic platform calls for a bold remaking of the federal judiciary. It's not nearly enough.

  • The 5 most important words in Michelle Obama's DNC speech: "Democrats are telling their voters not to trust the post office."

    Which brings us to the five most significant words of Obama's address. She did not simply urge her audience to vote for Joe Biden; she urged them to vote early. She urged voters who must vote absentee to request their ballots immediately and return them as soon as possible.

    And she urged voters to cast their ballots "in person if we can."

• Nicole Narea: A Covid-19 victim's daughter delivered a moving account of her father's death -- and a searing critique of Trump. This may be the sound bite of the convention: "My dad was a healthy 65 year-old. His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life."

• Ella Nilsen:

  • Bill Clinton's argument for defeating Trump: A new, fairer economy: In other words, do what I said back in 1992; not what I did in the 8 (or 28) years that came after. "It's [still] the economy, stupid!"

  • The all-virtual Democratic National Convention, explained.

• Anna North:

  • Elizabeth Warren made a crucial point at the Democratic convention: Child care is "infrastructure for families": "Her speech focused on one of the biggest problems facing Americans during the pandemic."

  • The relatable toughness of Jill Biden.

• Cameron Peters: Bernie Sanders just made the progressive case for Joe Biden.

• David Remnick: Obama, Harris, and an unconventional convention.

• Aja Romano:

  • Tuesday's DNC roll call was a quirky, unexpected delight.

  • Jacquelyn Brittany's viral elevator moment made her the star of a populist DNC fairy tale.

• Aaron Rupar: Fox News thinks Joe Biden's DNC speech was "a home run": "Trump won't be happy with Fox News's rave reviews of Biden's speech."

• David E Sanger: Top Republican national security officials say they will vote for Biden: "In a letter released hours before Joe Biden delivered his nomination acceptance speech, over 70 senior officials called President Trump 'unfit to lead' and outlined their support for his opponent." Every vote counts, but some endorsements create associations you'd rather not have. These, in particular, remind us that Biden has faithfully supported decades of national security blunders and disasters. One note is that the names most closely associated with Trump, while sometimes being highly critical of him (e.g., John Bolton), are still unwilling to break party ranks and commit to Biden.

• Dylan Scott: Biden's 2020 message rests on Trump's fundamental Covid-19 failure. Cites a major piece by Ed Yong: How the pandemic defeated America: "A virus has brought the world's most powerful country to its knees." Scott quoted this much:

  A month before his inauguration, I wrote that "the question isn't whether [Trump will] face a deadly outbreak during his presidency, but when." Based on his actions as a media personality during the 2014 Ebola outbreak and as a candidate in the 2016 election, I suggested that he would fail at diplomacy, close borders, tweet rashly, spread conspiracy theories, ignore experts, and exhibit reckless self-confidence. And so he did.

  No one should be shocked that a liar who has made almost 20,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency would lie about whether the U.S. had the pandemic under control; that a racist who gave birth to birtherism would do little to stop a virus that was disproportionately killing Black people; that a xenophobe who presided over the creation of new immigrant-detention centers would order meatpacking plants with a substantial immigrant workforce to remain open; that a cruel man devoid of empathy would fail to calm fearful citizens; that a narcissist who cannot stand to be upstaged would refuse to tap the deep well of experts at his disposal; that a scion of nepotism would hand control of a shadow coronavirus task force to his unqualified son-in-law; that an armchair polymath would claim to have a "natural ability" at medicine and display it by wondering out loud about the curative potential of injecting disinfectant; that an egotist incapable of admitting failure would try to distract from his greatest one by blaming China, defunding the WHO, and promoting miracle drugs; or that a president who has been shielded by his party from any shred of accountability would say, when asked about the lack of testing, "I don't take any responsibility at all."

  When I scanned the article, I missed those but picked out a few additional paragraphs, which struck me as germane, albeit less pointed at Trump:

  How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet's most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom. . . .

  The U.S. has little excuse for its inattention. In recent decades, epidemics of SARS, MERS, Ebola, H1N1 flu, Zika, and monkeypox showed the havoc that new and reemergent pathogens could wreak. Health experts, business leaders, and even middle schoolers ran simulated exercises to game out the spread of new diseases. In 2018, I wrote an article for The Atlantic arguing that the U.S. was not ready for a pandemic, and sounded warnings about the fragility of the nation's health-care system and the slow process of creating a vaccine. But the COVID-19 debacle has also touched -- and implicated -- nearly every other facet of American society: its shortsighted leadership, its disregard for expertise, its racial inequities, its social-media culture, and its fealty to a dangerous strain of individualism. . . .

  Despite its epochal effects, COVID-19 is merely a harbinger of worse plagues to come. The U.S. cannot prepare for these inevitable crises if it returns to normal, as many of its people ache to do. Normal led to this. Normal was a world ever more prone to a pandemic but ever less ready for one. To avert another catastrophe, the U.S. needs to grapple with all the ways normal failed us. It needs a full accounting of every recent misstep and foundational sin, every unattended weakness and unheeded warning, every festering wound and reopened scar. . . .

  Compared with the average wealthy nation, America spends nearly twice as much of its national wealth on health care, about a quarter of which is wasted on inefficient care, unnecessary treatments, and administrative chicanery. The U.S. gets little bang for its exorbitant buck. It has the lowest life-expectancy rate of comparable countries, the highest rates of chronic disease, and the fewest doctors per person. This profit-driven system has scant incentive to invest in spare beds, stockpiled supplies, peacetime drills, and layered contingency plans -- the essence of pandemic preparedness. America's hospitals have been pruned and stretched by market forces to run close to full capacity, with little ability to adapt in a crisis. . . .

  The federal government could have mitigated those problems by buying supplies at economies of scale and distributing them according to need. Instead, in March, Trump told America's governors to "try getting it yourselves." As usual, health care was a matter of capitalism and connections. In New York, rich hospitals bought their way out of their protective-equipment shortfall, while neighbors in poorer, more diverse parts of the city rationed their supplies. . . .

  At times, Americans have seemed to collectively surrender to COVID-19. The White House's coronavirus task force wound down. Trump resumed holding rallies, and called for less testing, so that official numbers would be rosier. The country behaved like a horror-movie character who believes the danger is over, even though the monster is still at large.

  Yong has another piece out: Long-haulers are redefining COVID-19.

• Walter Shapiro:

  • The Democrats choose politics over ideological purity: "On the first night of its convention, the party showed it will invite anyone under its big tent in order to defeat Trump."

  • Joe Biden finds his voice.

• Alex Shephard:

  • Joe Biden has found his big idea: "It's not just about defeating Donald Trump, but providing an off-ramp from this all-consuming political moment." Still hard to get much of a grip on all this vacuousness. It doesn't especially bother me if Biden doesn't come up with plans or anything forward thinking until after the election, but the idea that everything will be just fine if only we don't have Trump driving us crazy almost daily seems a little myopic. While acting deliberately may be too much to ask of a politician these days, shit happens, and that means the president will have to react -- often, intelligently, with care and maybe even cunning.

  • A night of magical thinking at the Democratic convention: "Democrats are already in love with their future, in spite of the face that Joe Biden has glossed over how he will get them there."

• Doreen St Félix: Michelle Obama's unmatched call to action at the Democratic National Convention.

• Emily Stewart: Ordinary Americans stole the show at this year's Democratic convention.

• Emily VanDerWerff:

  • The 2020 DNC was an eerie look at a country in crisis -- and great TV.

  • The DNC is a reminder that America is a big, diverse country, racked by disaster.

• Kara Voght/Rebecca Leber: Biden's pitch to voters: What America needs now is empathy: After Trump, a little empathy seems like a good idea. Still, remind me of the old George Burns quote: "The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Biden's been trading in empathy his whole career, all the while voting for special interests. What we really need is someone to show us that government is on the people's side, doing things that help everyone in tangible ways. Republicans deny that this is even possible, which gives them an excuse for being so awful at it. Democrats, including Biden, have often gone along, touting deregulation and "market solutions" and austerity. But the thing is, in a world as complex and interconnected as ours has become, you need institutions committed to the public interest, and you really need them to work. Empathy may give you motivation to do that, but there are other motivations available, like survival.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • Hunter Biden, the black sheep who got Trump impeached, explained.

  • Jill Biden feels America's pain.

  • John Kasich makes the Republican's case for Joe Biden.

  • The Republican speakers at the Democratic convention, explained. Half of this is on the left reaction. Mine may be muted because I didn't watch it, but this strikes me as a good place to stake out a big tent vision, and Republicans are useful props for that -- except Colin Powell is a little shop-worn, and I sure wouldn't have set up a tribute to John McCain. Where it might turn into a problem is if late in the campaign Biden sacrifices Democrats down ballot to focus on his campaign pitch to wavering Republicans. Hillary Clinton tried that lose-lose strategy in 2016. Biden not only needs to win, he needs a Democratic Congress to get anything done, and that's going to take opposing and exposing Republicans for the scourges they are.

  • The triumph of the Nostalgiacrats: "Democrats have scheduled a convention that's more about celebrating the past than winning the future."

• Li Zhou:

  • The unwarranted controversy over AOC's nomination of Bernie Sanders, explained. It had been widely reported that her speech was limited to 1 minute, but not that it was a pro forma nominating speech for Sanders, so I guess I was confused too. To attack her for not endorsing Biden in his nomination of Sanders was suggestive of people who want to use Biden's win as an excuse to purge the left of the party. It would have been smarter for the DNC to slot her elsewhere in a spot where she could campaign for Biden, leaving the Sanders nominating speech to someone else.

  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's DNC speech emphasized the need for systemic change.

    Also on AOC: Aaron Ross Coleman: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the future of the left.

On to the Republican Convention next week. For a preview, see Riley Beggin: The Repubican National Convention: Who's speaking and how to watch. Also not one but two hurricanes, one on Monday to open the RNC, a second (bigger) one for its climax: Hurricane warnings issued as Gulf Coast prepares for March and Laura. Neither are likely to come close to the RNC in Charlotte. Here's some early anticipation of the RNC:

• Nancy Cook: Last-minute confusion: Many Republicans still in dark about convention.

• Nick Martin: The Republican National Convention's carnival of white grievance: "The week's lineup is further proof that the party's survival depends on racist culture wars."

Some scattered links on other subjects this week:

Kate Aronoff: Ban yachts: "They're floating castles of crime, polluting our air and water." By the way, there's a striking passage in Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal, pointing out that during the era of relative equality in the 1950s/1960s (what he calls, in a phrase that surely will not stand the test of time, "the great compression") when private yachts were virtually unheard of -- in stark contrast both to the "roaring '20s" and now.

Riley Beggin:

• Trump's sister calls him a liar with "no principles" in secret recordings.

• Trump calls for law enforcement at the polls, prompting cries of voter intimidation.

• Democrats push for $25 billion for the Postal Service. The White House says it will reject it. More on the mail (also see my comment under Krugman, below):

  • Eric Cortellessa: Susan Collins engineered the USPS disaster she's now protesting.

    In 2005, she sponsored and introduced legislation, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), that required the USPS to pre-pay the next 50 years worth of health and retirement benefits for all of its employees -- a rule that no other federal agency must follow. As chair of the Senate oversight panel at the time, she shepherded the bill's passage, along with her House GOP counterpart Tom Davis, during a lame-duck session of Congress. It passed by a voice vote without any objections -- a maneuver that gave members little time to consider what they were doing.

  • Aaron Gordon: USPS headquarters tells managers not to reconnect mail sorting machines, emails show.

  • Silas House: Trump shows his contempt for his most fervent supporters.

  • Kenneth P Vogel/Jessica Silver-Greenberg/Alan Rappeport/Hailey Fuchs: Mnuchin paved way for Postal Service shake-up.

• Charlie Warzel: The Post Office mess is meant to exhaust you. Don't let it.: "Trump is 'flooding the zone.' It's a form of modern censorship."

Adam Weinstein: The world's dumbest authoritarian: "Most dictators rig elections to win. With his Postal Service gambit, Trump merely wants everybody to lose with him."

Jane Coaston: QAnon, the scarily popular pro-Trump conspiracy theory, explained. More QAnon:

• Robert Guffey: The deep, twisted roots of QAnon: Delusions of demon-cannibal conspiracies aren't even original: Second in a series, first here.

• Kevin Liptak: Trump embraces QAnon conspiracy because 'they like me'.

• Matthew Rosenberg/Maggie Haberman: The Republican embrace of QAnon goes far beyond Trump.

• Charlie Warzel: Is QAnon the most dangerous conspiracy theory of the 21st century? Interview with Adrian Hon (CEO of a gaming company and a designer of "alternate reality games or ARGs").

Jason Ditz:

• Trump to use frozen Venezuela funds to try for regime change: "US holds over $300 million in Venezuelan government funds."

• Syria envoy: US stealing Syrian oil and gas.

• US officially acts to restore UN sanctions on Iran; also Pompeo rebukes allies who oppose sanctions on Iran. More on Iran:

  • Ben Armbruster: Exposing Pompeo's phony UN snapback stunt in two sentences.

  • Ryan Costello: Snapback: The last gasp of Trump's failed Iran strategy.

  • Fred Kaplan: After leaving the Iran Deal, Trump is still trying to break the Iran Deal. Also: Pompeo's regime change obsession has left the US more isolated than ever.

• Trump: US considering F-35 sales to UAE, despite Israeli objections. "Trump has made selling costly arms a top priority, and the F-35s are particularly expensive." So expensive there is a regular effort to cut them from the US Defense appropriations. More on UAE arms:

  • Gawdat Bahgat: What's next after the UAE-Israel deal?

  • Trita Parsi: The Israel-UAE deal puts the "forever" in "forever war": "What binds Israel and its new Arab allies is not the threat from Iran but the threat of the US military leaving the Middle East." That strikes me as a useful insight -- one that should be more obvious given Trump's vows to remove US troops from the region, and the lack of political support within the Democratic Party for keeping them there. Reminds me a bit of the 1970s Nixon-Kissinger scheme to promote Saudi Arabia and Iran as regional proxies. (N-K wanted to correct the suspicion that US resolve had been weakened by losing Vietnam, but everyone understood they were acting from admitted weakness.) Hard to imagine the US military ever leaving the region, but also seems inevitable. Still, leaving the most brutal and corrupt regimes in the region to run amuck in our stead doesn't seem like the best solution.

  • Mitchell Plitnick: How Trump's arms deals risk more conflict in the Gulf.

  • Richard Silvestein: Trump, Netanyahu pull UAE rabbit out of hat.

Dilip Hiro: Donald Trump is losing his tech war with Xi Jinping. Lots of interesting details here, but the big takeaway is that China has a national economic plan which invests in world-class high tech industries and is lifting itself to be a world leader, where the US has a system (loosely speaking) of crony capitalism, where privately-owned businesses (and not necessarily American ones) can buy government favors but also gain much of their profits by using low-cost labor and suppliers abroad, so their profits do little (if anything) to help American workers, who (if anything) get poorer in the bargain. One detail: in 2019, China applied for more patents than the US. Over the last few decades, the main thrust of American trade policy has been to force other countries to pay intellectual property rents (to companies, not really to America). China is now poised to capture the lion's share of that income stream. I am very firm in my belief that patents are bad, so my preference is to ban them everywhere. As the US sinks ever lower in the patent tribute system, Americans should realize that the patent system is a losing game. (Americans have long charged China with cheating at that game, although the US didn't recognize foreign patents back in the 19th century.)

Sean Illing: What MLK and Malcolm X would do today: Interview with Peniel Joseph, author of The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., a dual biography.

One of the things I write about Malcolm is that Malcolm is Black America's prosecuting attorney, but he becomes the statesman. And Dr. King is the defense attorney who becomes this pillar of fire. He becomes this man on fire in the last several years of his life, and he's prosecuting and castigating in a way that we never think about King.

Umair Irfan: What makes California's current major wildfires so unusual: "Dry lightning, extreme heat, and Covid-19 are all shaping California's efforts to contain massive, deadly blazes." Related:

• Darryl Fears/Faiz Siddiqui/Sarah Kaplan/Juliet Eilperin: Heat is turbocharging fires, drought and tropical storms this summer.

  At least 140 Western weather stations notched record highs in the past 10 days as a thermometer in California's Death Valley hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit, one of the highest temperatures measured on Earth. Eighty million U.S. residents are under excessive heat advisories. More than 35 wildfires are raging in California, burning 125,000 acres in the San Francisco Bay area alone, threatening 25,000 businesses and homes this week. Parts of the country are suffering drought conditions. And in the Atlantic Ocean, a marine heat wave is fueling what is becoming an unusually active storm season.

• David Wallace-Wells: California has Australian problems now.

Colby Itkowitz/Amy Gardner: Tennessee adopts new law that could strip some protesters of voting rights.

Protesters who camp out on state property, such as the activists who have demonstrated for months outside the state Capitol against racial injustice, could now face felony charges punishable by up to six years in prison. Convicted felons are automatically stripped of their voting rights in Tennessee.

Ezra Klein:

• What it would take to end child poverty in America: Interview with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA).

• The tragedy of Hillary Clinton. This piece probably belongs with the DNC pieces above, as it is based on her speech there, but if I couldn't banish her from the roster, at least I sequester her here. Even Klein admits, "nothing ensures ignominy like failure," and Hillary's failure was a monumental one: she lost to Donald Trump. What Klein doesn't admit is that she uniquely lost to Trump because her unacknowledged faults precisely clouded Trump's far greater ones. Take corruption for instance: Trump could paint her as Crooked Hillary because he had bought favors from her in the past. Clinton's Foundation underscored her nouveau greed because Trump had his own Foundation (one that did even less to disguise its crookedness). Klein dabbles in counterfactuals, suggesting we would be much better off had Trump lost to Hillary. But while he relishes the idea of Hillary holding press conferences filled with facts and sound advice, Hillary would have found herself on top of a broken government system she couldn't control, likely faced with a hostile Congress -- chances that her Democrats would have won the House in 2018 were close to nil -- and media, still saddled with scandals she could never explain away. So she handles coronavirus a bit better -- maybe 110,000 dead now compared to 170,000 under Trump -- and the economy a bit worse (Congress wouldn't have given her anything like the CARES Act Democrats gave Trump), and she'd wind up looking hopeless for reelection. Maybe that's all just so unfair. Maybe in a true meritocracy her talents could have won out. But Clinton's big break, which let her win a Senate seat in a state she didn't live in, parlay that into Secretary of State for the rival who beat her, and corner the 2016 nomination with no opposition (except for a Vermont socialist she almost lost to), was as unmerited as picking the right guy to fuck, and sticking with him while he goes out and fucks so many others. Their bond was always their addiction to power, and they've never escaped that scent. It even overpowered Trump's stink, and that's why she lost in 2016, and became useless to us forevermore.

• Why Republicans are failing to govern: "Does Mitch McConnell want Trump to be a one-term president?" Republicans have proposed as a next stimulus step a "$1 trillion HEALS Act," but they don't seem to be serious even about that -- it just gives them some talking room as they try to blame their failures on the Democrats, who've passed a $3.5 trillion dollar package in the House. Seems like there should be a lot of room for compromise there, especially when the alternative is nothing. Klein posits "four theories for the GOP's governance crisis":

  1. It's Trump's fault.
  2. Conservative thinking has no room for Covid-19.
  3. They're worried about Tea Party 2.0.
  4. They've given up on 2020, and many are looking toward 2024.

  Conclusion:

  That brings me to the explanation for GOP behavior that is almost unanimous among Senate Democrats I've spoken to. They believe Republicans are readying themselves to run the strategy against former Vice President Joe Biden they ran against President Obama: Weaponize the debt -- which Republicans ran up by trillions during the Trump administration -- as a cudgel against anything and everything the Democrats want to do. Force Democrats to take sole ownership of an economic response that's too small to truly counteract the pain.

  If Republicans are behaving like an opposition party that primarily wants to stop Democrats from doing anything, that's because it's the role they're most comfortable playing, and one many of them expect to reprise soon.

Paul Krugman:

• Stocks are soaring. So is misery. "Optimism about Apple's future profits won't pay this month's rent."

  On Tuesday, the S&P 500 stock index hit a record high. The next day, Apple became the first U.S. company in history to be valued at more than $2 trillion. Donald Trump is, of course, touting the stock market as proof that the economy has recovered from the coronavirus; too bad about those 173,000 dead Americans, but as he says, "It is what it is." . . .

  Take the example of Apple, with its $2 trillion valuation. Apple has a price-earnings ratio -- the ratio of its market valuation to its profits -- of about 33. One way to look at that number is that only around 3 percent of the value investors place on the company reflects the money they expect it to make over the course of the next year. As long as they expect Apple to be profitable years from now, they barely care what will happen to the U.S. economy over the next few quarters.

  Another way to look at that price-earnings ratio is that investors expect Apple to continue to make monopoly profits every one of the next 33 (or more) years. That's double the length of patents, so they're also betting capitalism won't be very competitive in the next 33 years, that the present cartelization will only deepen. There's nothing in history to justify such expectations. Or another way to look at it is that rich people today have way too much money, much more than they can invest in actually producing things, so their only option left is to bid up the price of assets only they can afford -- which offers the gratification of making them appear to be even richer. Economists have a term for that: bubble. Still, they only seem to be able to recognize one when it bursts.

• Trump, the mail and the unbinding of America: "The Postal Service facilitates citizen inclusion. That's why Trump hates it." I suspect that credits Trump with more depth than he has. He started railing against the Post Office when he thought it was helping his arch-rival, Jeff Bezos, so initially just another tantrum. Of course, he got even more agitated when he discovered people could vote by mail. But Trump's deeper problem with the USPS is basic Republican dementia: government = bad; business = good; ergo hack government up and turn the pieces into businesses, so they can figure out better ways to rip off customers and feed the profits to the rich.

• Trump's racist, statist suburban dream: "Racial inequality wasn't an accident. It was an ugly political choice." This refers back to Richard Rothstein's book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, which is part of the story -- for more in that vein, see Ira Katznelson: When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Injustice in Twentieth-Century America -- but nowhere near all of it.

• Trump sends in the economic quacks: "Now he's prescribing hydroxychloroquine to fight recession."

Nancy LeTourneau:

• Republicans have politicized almost every aspect of American life. I think this is true, and that it's had an adverse effect both on society and on politics. Republicans might counter that Democrats have been politicizing things too, but looked at case by case you'll find that's usually in response to Republican polarization. The big example is climate change, which an increasing number of Republicans doubt and deny because doing so has become part of their political identity. That wasn't the case 30 years ago, when the "ozone hole" was recognized as a common problem needing a technical solution.

• Former DHS staff: Trump claimed "magical authorities" to break the law: Touts a group called Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT), which have been posting videos of Republicans explaining why.

Eric Levitz: America is drowning in joblessness -- and swimming in cash: "Thanks to the CARES Act, Americans hae saved roughly $930 billion more in recent months than they were on pace to do before the pandemic."

German Lopez: Why Trump shouldn't compare America's Covid-19 outbreak to New Zealand's, in one chart.

Laura McGann: Melania Trump's changes to the White House Rose Garden, explained: "She dug up trees and put in paved walkways."

Bill McKibben:

• 130 degrees: Review of Mark Lynas: Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency.

• In Alaska, Trump doubles down on environmental vandalism: Opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for mining and drilling.

  • Kate Aronoff: Is Trump killing his favorite industry? "Leasing off oil and gas permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may do more harm than good for fossil fuel producers."

  • Juliet Eilperin: Trump finalizes drilling plan for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

  • Juliet Eilperin/Ashley Parker: Trump administration to pause permit for Alaska's Pebble Mine on Monday: "The mine, which would be North America's largest, has come under fire from key Republicans."

Stephanie Mencimer: Judge orders Trump to pay Stormy Daniels $44,000 in legal fees.

Ashley Parker: The permanent outsider: "President Trump has no idea how to run for reelection as an incumbent.

Yumna Patel: Gaza's health sector at risk as Israel's week-long airstrikes continue: "Israel has been bombing Gaza for eight days straight, all as part of what Israel says is a response to incendiary balloons sent from Gaza into Israeli territory." First I've heard about it, which gives you a measure of how Israel has routinized its arbitrary violence against Palestinians. No doubt there's more to link to here:

• Middle East Eye: Israel bombs Gaza for tenth day in a row after rocket fire.

• Sam Bahour: Trump and Netanyahu's celebration of failure: "The Israel-UAE deal stems from the colossal failure of Trump-Netanyahu's 'Peace plan.'"

• Jonathan Cook: How Israel wages war on Palestinian history.

• Jason DeCamp: Israel bans imports into Gaza except food and medicine.

• Emad Moussa: The UAE-Israel alliance: normalizing with the abnormal state.

• James North: Thomas Friedman is wrong again -- this time about the UAE-Israel deal.

Gail Pellett: Out of China: An affair in a dangerous ditch. She spent 1980 working in China, chronicled in her marvelous book Forbidden Fruit: 1980 Beijing, recapped here with further thoughts.

Paul R Pillar: Trump's schadenfreude foreign policy and its political appeal: The German word means to take joy in the suffering of others. Aside from highly touted arms sales, that's about the only return Trump has managed in foreign policy, and if/when those weapons are used you can count them too. Trump has dashed any delusions one might have hoped for based on his campaign. The author of The Art of the Deal seems consitutionally incapable of making any deals at all. (The only one so far has been the NAFTA band-aid.) What's the point of sucking up to Putin, Xi, and Kim except to negotiate deals to reduce conflict and stabilize relations? All he's managed to do with Russia has been to dismantle decades worth of arms limits agreements, leading to a renewed arms race. (Which seems, by the way, to be ok with Russia, as one of their few viable export industries is arms.) Elsewhere, he's repeatedly broken things, while encouraging "allies" like UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel to break even more. His withdrawal from the Paris Accords shows that his Bad Neighbor Policy -- not official term, but the suggested as the polar opposite of Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, an attempt to build some good will that proved invaluable in WWII -- permeates all levels. Pillar is right to point out that foreign policy is not a zero-sum game: hurting other people and countries doesn't help America; it often hurts, and not just in loss of reputation, trust and prestige. So why does Trump do it? Pillar tip-toes around several theories, noting that his policies are more likely rooted in his understanding of domestic politics than in any concern for the rest of the world, and coming closest to the mark with "Trump supporters disproportionately exhbit traits that make them more likely to feel pleasure from someone else's pain." There's a much shorter word for Trump's syndrome: sadism. The only thing that restrains us from talking about his "sadistic foreign policy" is the sheer amount of indifference and ineptness, which blunts the pleasure sadists obtain from the pain of others. On the other hand, schadenfreude is a bit too kind, as it implies a degree of sorrow Trump is simply incapable of.

Andrew Prokop:

• Steve Bannon charged with fraud over crowdfunding campaign for border wall: "He and three others were charged with diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fundraising effort." The others were Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea, whose group is called We Build the Wall. Not (yet) indicted is Advisory Board member Kris Kobach. So is that because he's cooperating with the prosecution? Or because he's so stupid he went along as a front without understanding (much less getting a cut of) the real scam?

  • David Dayen: The latest in a long line of Republican con artists.

  • Joshua Green: The end of Steve Bannon -- and maybe Trump, too.

  • Eric Lach: The predictability of Steve Bannon's scam.

  • Noah Lanard/Dan Friedman: This is the very expensive yacht Steve Bannon got arrested on: "It reportedly belongs to a Chinese fugitive."

  • Michael Daly: 'We Build the Wall' victim: "I wish them well in their cavity searhes': "Marianna Treviño-Wright, branded a butterfly 'freak' by We Build the Wall's founder, describes the whole GoFundMe effort, which led to four arrests Thursday, as a 'circle jerk.'"

• The Senate Intelligence Committee's new Russia report, explained.

Steven Rattner: The economic recovery that isn't: "Don't believe the story that Trump will tell at the Republican convention." Related:

• Michael Tomasky: Why reent Republican presidents have been economic failures.

Kate Riga: Pelosi's Kennedy endorsement and why people are so mad about it.

David Roberts: Air pollution is much worse than we thought: "Ditching fossil fuels would pay for itself through clean air alone."

David Roth: Trump's cloud of gossip has poisoned America: "The president's insatiable need to traffic in rumor and conspiracy blows larger holes in our shared reality with each passing day."

Dylan Scott: Kanye West is running for president -- seriously: He's getting on the ballot in places like Ohio and Wisconsin. From what I've been able to tell, his sole support comes from Republican operatives who won't vote for him but hope he'll split some black votes away from Biden. I seriously doubt he'll find many, or be any sort of a factor, but he could kind of work as a "fuck it all" alternative to major party candidates who are widely despised. Who he draws the most votes from is so irrational it's impossible to predict. More: Ben Jacobs: Kanye West's presidential campaign is both proceeding and unraveling.

Robert J Shapiro: How Trump may be plotting to stay out of jail:

Donald Trump has a serious dilemma. If Joe Biden loses in November, he can go home and settle in as a party elder stateman, as defeated nominees have often done. But if Trump loses, he faces years of intensive investigations by Congress and, assuming he pardons himself, years of investigations by state prosecutors, likely criminal indictments, and possible conviction and imprisonment. The investigations also could expose some of his children to legal peril. And Trump assets -- and those of the Trump Organization -- will be vulnerable to government seizure if New York state prosecutors and courts find that his past actions were part of an organized enterprise engaged in criminal activity. . . .

In Trump's view, this could be his ultimate deal. He agrees to accept the election results and retire peacefully, but only if Biden and Democratic congressional leaders agree to shelve future investigations and forgo federal prosecutions of him and his family and associates -- and call on state prosecutors and attorneys general to do the same.

If Trump loses non-trivially, I don't see that he has much leverage. I don't see how he can throw a fit and simply refuse to leave. I don't know that he can pardon himself, but I have entertained the idea that he might resign after November in expectation of a President Pence pardon, following the Ford-Nixon precedent, possibly extending to his family and company if not to all of his confederates. (I doubt he cares much about them anyway.) That still leaves possible state prosecution, and civil complaints. I'm not much impressed with the power of Congress to investigate Trump, so I don't see much worry there. On the other hand, Trump does have two pretty strong points in his favor. One is that although there is a lot he could be indicted for, it's almost inconceivable that he would ever be convicted by a jury that hadn't been rigged. The second is that it sets a rather nasty precedent for a new administration to criminally investigate its predecessor. As far as I know, that's never been done in the US -- well, until Trump, who currently has the DOJ investigating "Obamagate." Nixon deserved jail, but spared that spent the rest of his life out of politics and relatively harmless. (Not that eulogizing him didn't tarnish Clinton's reputation.) Obama never prosecuted anyone in the Bush administration, which effectively turned Bush's many faults into his own -- a huge favor to the Republicans, and a huge drag on his own ability to make changes. If Biden wins, he will inherit a mess even more huge than Obama did, so it's very important that he remind people how much this has been due to the mistakes and ill intentions of Trump and his gang. So whatever he does about prosecuting Trump, we need to make sure that the full extent of his crimes and scandals are aired. Perhaps this is time for some sort of "truth and reconciliation" commission? With it you could grant some degree of amnesty for honest testimony. You should be careful about how this is set up, but the emphasis should be on getting to the truth, and learning from it, and not on petty revenge. For a cautionary piece on why you need to keep people aware of truth, see Ari Rabin-Havt: We shouldn't have to remind people George W Bush was a terrible president. But we do.

Margaret Sullivan: Trump is 'Fox's Frankenstein,' insiders told CNN's Brian Stelter -- and here's the toll it's taken. Stelter has a book coming out next week: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth. It's hard to escape the conclusion that everyone involved deserve each other -- especially the ones who think they have scruples but don't act on them.

Trevor Sutton: How the US can fight corruption after Trump: Talking about foreign policy here, although one reason the US has never done much about limiting corruption abroad is that we tolerate so much of it at home. The other reason, which isn't much touched on here, is that buying off foreign officials is usually good for business (at least in the short term, which with business is the only term that matters).

Alex Ward:

• Did Putin have his top critic poisoned? "Here's why we may never know." Alexei Navalny drank some tea, boarded a flight, landed in a hospital in Omsk in a coma. If so, he wouldn't be the first Putin critic poisoned (some others have been shot). For more:

  • Masha Gessen: The suspected poisoning of Alexey Navaly, Putin's most prominent adversary. Gessen also wrote: "We were locked up in one country and released into another": Horror and hope as protests in Belarus continue.

  • Miriam Berger: How Navalny combined protests and anti-corruption campaigns to take on the Kremlin.

  • Regina Smyth: How Alexei Navalny revolutionized opposition politics in Russia, before his apparent poisoning.

• Mali's president was elected after a coup. Another coup just removed him from power. As Jason Ditz notes: Mali coup leader a US-trained military officer, same for the 2012 coup leader.

Luke Winkie: 3 renters on getting screwed over by landlords during the Covid-19 housing crisis.

Joe Yerardi/Alexia Fernández Campbell: Fewer inspectors, more deaths: The Trump administration rolls back workplace safety inspections. Isn't this really what the Trump administration is all about? This is part of a Vox series called System Failure, a collaboration with Center for Public Integrity. Other pieces:

• Alexia Fernández Campbell: A small federal agency focused on preventing industrial disasters is on life support. Trump wants it gone.

• Dylan Matthews: Trump reduced fines for nursing homes that put residents at risk. Then Covid-19 happened..

• Ian Millhiser: The Justice Department has a powerful tool to fight police abuse. It refuses to use it.

• Dylan Scott: How Trump gave insurance companies free rein to sell bad health plans.

• Liz Essley Whyte: Trump's favorite weapon in the coronavirus fight: Deregulation.

Mairav Zonszein: How this year's primary season demonstrated the waning influence of pro-Israel hawks: At least that's true within the Democratic Party, where AIPAC efforts to purge Representatives critical of Israel have largely failed. Most Democratic politicians are as obeisant as ever to the Israel lobby, but rank-and-file voters have been drifting away for years, partly as they recognize Israel as a racist warmongerer, and partly as Netanyahu has personally aligned with the Republicans. Biden was personally able to secure a pro-Israel plank in the Party platform, but a more representative platform would have been a good deal more critical.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, August 17, 2020

August archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 33814 [33774] rated (+40), 221 [218] unrated (+3).

My wife announced that she's not going to watch any of the Democratic Convention speeches, figuring they'll just be depressing. Needless to say, I wasn't even considering the prospect. I can read up whatever it is I need (e.g., here's Vox's The 2020 Democratic National Convention's speaker lineup and how to watch). Looking at the lineup, the show will be sanctimonious, condescending, and more than a little nostalgic, reminding you of the opportunities past Democrats have squandered, and how little we have to show for it. I can see the value of inviting the occasional token Republican, and I'm glad Doug Jones gets a spotlight moment, but do we really need both Clintons to speak? And is the bench of Democratic prospects so weak Michelle Obama needs to be the keynote speaker? Barack Obama was nobody when he spoke in 2004, and it looks like the DNC is never going to let something like that happen again. While I'm sure Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will make the most of her token minute, bracketing her between John Kerry and Chuck Shumer is pretty much guaranteed to spoil the night. Then Sally Yates? On the other hand, at least they passed over Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler.

In past successful Democratic presidential campaigns -- by which I mean Clinton in 1992 and Obama in 2008 -- the candidates ran to the left until election, then made their accommodations with the established powers after they won, leaving most of their platforms with their luggage. To some extent, Gore did that in 2000, although not very convincingly, and even less Hillary tried that tack even less credibly in 2016. Biden seems determined to run through the vast open ground to his right, reassuring business, the suburbs, the shattered remnants of the middle and working classes, that he will restore a measure of normalcy and sanity after the batshit craziness of the Trump (and, if you still have any memory cells, Bush) fiascoes. And the left (including me) seem willing to let him call the tactical campaign shots however he sees best. On the other hand, the "democratic wing of the Democratic Party" has gradually accumulated a real power base in Congress, one that Biden and Harris will have to deal with to move forward -- not least because the real answers to the real problems are the ones coming from the left, but also because there no longer is a neoliberal Republican block like the one Clinton (and much less successfully Obama) tried to triangulate through. That residual power base is why the left doesn't need to get its message out during the rest of this campaign.

The other is that you can't build toward an egalitarian vision of peace and prosperity without first establishing a fundamental commitment to decency, honesty, and trust, and you won't have any of that if Donald Trump and the Republicans win in November. We may have differing ideas how to accomplish this, but the one that the Democrats have chosen was arrived at more or less democratically, and it is important to respect that process. Even if it means a week of boring, uninspiring TV. I really don't need any of these speakers to tell me who to vote for in November. But if you do need help, by all means tune in. You're the person they want to address.

One reason I'm not too terribly disappointed with the way the ticket has turned out is that I've been reading Thomas Frank's new book, The People, No! Eighty pages in, most of what he's covered so far has been the 1896 presidential election -- the one between William McKinley (R-OH) and William Jennings Bryan (D-NE) -- and the slanders against Bryan were harrowing. This doesn't have much relevance to the actual 2020 election. Trump's credentials as a populist are totally bogus, and Biden's aren't much better. Indeed, Biden will probably wind up raising more money than Trump (as Hillary did in 2016, and as Obama previously did). But if Sanders had won the nomination, he would have represented the most radical break in Democratic Party nominees since Bryan in 1896, following the ultra-conservative Grover Cleveland in 1892. The shift from 1968-1972 was comparatively miniscule: both Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern were midwestern liberals who agreed on virtually everything -- the one sticking point, and it was a big one, was the Vietnam War. Still, that was enough for many Democrats to sabotage their ticket by voting for Nixon.

It seems unlikely to me that establishment Democrats would have broken ranks as decisively as they had done in 1896 and 1972, if only because Trump is far too odious an alternative, but it is likely that the degree of vitriol directed at Sanders would have approached the levels aimed at Bryan. Of course, Republicans being the deranged scum they are, much the same will be aimed at Biden and Harris, but at least with them it's not something I have to take personally. (Not that I wouldn't be game to try, had Sanders won the nomination. At least the upside there justifies the risk.) One hopes that people will not only see through the slanders, but that they will reflect back properly on those who launched them. Also that they will be seen as evasions of responsibility for the tremendous harm caused by Trump and his party. (And, by all means, never attack Trump without also blaming his accomplices. He may be their nominal leader, but often as not he's the one being led around by the nose.)

I thought this was going to be a lax week, but ran the numbers and came up with 40 again. Started off with more Polish jazz left over from last week, plus another ZAUM album. Then Robert Christgau published his August Consumer Guide. As I noted in a tweet, I had previously graded several albums: Car Seat Headrest (A-), Dream Wife (A-), Haim (**), Lori McKenna (A-), X (*). Picked up almost all of the rest below. That leaves Birds of Prey, Deap Vally, and the Boswell Sisters -- I have Sony's That's How Rhythm Was Born (1931-34) in my database (B+); Christgau's pick isn't on Napster, but there are several alternatives. Three of this week's A- records come from Christgau, although only John Chibadura was an easy call -- City Girls and Kehlani could have gone either way, and probably would have fallen short without the encouragement and extra time.

Other suggestions came from all over. A couple were recommended in an Expert Witness Facebook post asking for items on Bandcamp. I can't say as they were particularly good, but they led indirectly to the new Mekons album, which is. I played a couple things I downloaded, and searched for a recent batch of Clean Feed releases. One I looked for but didn't find is a new WHO Trio album of Strayhorn/Ellington compositions. When I saw the Keith Ingham/Harry Allen records, I just had to check them out. When in doubt, I look at Napster's "featured" records, and decided to check out the live Stooges set. That reminded me of two albums I used to have but hadn't entered into the database. I probably should have looked and given them a fresh listen, but the memories were clear enough.

A couple other albums were suggested by working on Christgau Consumer Guides from September last year. Christgau wants to impose an eight month delay on them to give subscribers a sense of exclusivity, so I haven't been in any hurry to tackle them. Anyhow, finally started entering them into my private copy of the website last week. Still not sure what to do about enforcing the delay. I've long had code for handling timelocks on regular pages, so those are working on the CG columns, but I've never imposed delays on database fetches, so that will require new code. It seems to me that the way it should work would be to set up an account management system synched to Christgau's subscription newsletter, so that paid subscribers could also see restricted content on the website, but that would take a lot of work, and it's not clear how to keep the two sites in synch.

I should note that Steve Grossman died last week. I knew him mostly as one of a cluster of mainstream tenor saxophonists from the 1990s -- Bennie Wallace is the one I followed most closely, but I especially liked Grossman's 1991 In New York. Rather surprised to find that I only had one more of his albums in my database. I'll write up more next week. I'm especially glad that I started with his 1973 debut, Some Changes to Come. That dates from his tenure in Miles Davis's great fusion band, and builds thereupon.

It's been a trying week for me, with my brother hospitalized for what at first looked like Covid-19, but turned out to just be pneumonia. Had another scare with a friend in Massachusetts, which again turned out to be something else (but still quite serious). We continue to do virtually no socializing, and only rarely make even the most rudimentary shopping efforts. With this isolation, it's been a rare pleasure to occasionally post on Facebook a picture of some little meal I've managed to whip up. Some recent ones: ribs; dosas; carbonade; shrimp boil; Szechuan chicken wings; beef stroganoff; shells; Chinese ribs. (Looks like if you click on one, you can cycle through the rest, as you won't find many pictures there not of food. I think all the links are public. My rule is to only seek and accept friends that I have personal relationships with, and I very rarely bother Facebook with my writings -- that's what Twitter is for.) Not as satisfying as cooking for others, but in times like these we make do.

Still open for questions.

New records reviewed this week:

Aminé: Limbo (2020, Republic): Portland rapper Adam Daniel, goes by his middle name, parents from Ethiopia and Eritrea, second album, marking his adulthood from the death of Kobe Bryant, although I suspect the daughter had more to do with it. A-

Arbor Labor Union: New Petal Instants (2020, Arrowhawk): Alt/indie band from Atlanta, influenced by "DIY punk" and classic rock and Walt Whitman and Woody Guthrie. B+(**)

BROM: Dance With an Idiot (2019 [2020], Trost): Free jazz group, from Moscow, ninth album since 2008 -- Anton Ponomarev (alto sax), Dmitry Lapshin (bass guitar), and Yaroslav Kurilo (drums) appear to be long-time members, with Felix Mikensky (electronics, guitar) joining here, modulating the raw furor a bit, even making it a bit tuneful. B+(***)

City Girls: City on Lock (2020, Quality Control/Motown): Hip-hop duo from Miami, Caresha Brownlee (Yung Miami) and Jatavia Johnson (JT), both with too much street cred/scars too soon. Second album after a mixtape. Most frequent word: pussy, probably followed by N* and bitch (especially when they host a male guest). Over the top, but so are the trap beats. A-

Emily Duff: Born on the Ground (2020, Mr Mudshow Music): Singer-songwriter from Queens, couple albums but pretty low profile, has picked up a bit of drawl in her voice, giving her some appeal to country/Americans afficionados, picks up a roots-rock producer to sharpen her rockabilly edge. B+(***)

Tyler Higgins: Broken Blues (2016 [2020], Shhpuma): Guitarist, also plays organ, describes this as "experimental music that draws on folk/blues/jazz traditions," third album, short one (29:47), trio with upright bass and drums. Gospel pieces like "Yes Jesus Loves Me" are the clearest cases, turned into dense walls of sound with nothing especially improvisational about them. B+(**)

Kehlani: It Was Good Until It Wasn't (2020, Atlantic): Sometime around the turn of the century, r&b went slack, turning away from the dominant church-based wail to its opposite. While I'm not a big fan of the former (at least for lesser artists than Aretha), I've long had trouble getting into the latter. Three plays in, I'm barely with her, the bits of rap helping. Sex, too. A-

Martin Küchen & Landaeus Trio: Mind the Gap of Silence (2019 [2020], Clean Feed): Pianist Mathias Landaeus's trio, plus the saxophonist (soprano, alto, tenor). Fourth album together (counting the compilation Vinyl), mostly Küchen's songs. Some very strong passages. B+(***)

Makaya McCraven: Universal Beings E&F Sides (2017-18 [2020], International Anthem): Drummer, second generation, born in Paris, grew up in Massachusetts, 2018 album was a crossover hit, had four sides: one each recorded in New York, Chicago, London, and Los Angeles. These look and feel like outtakes from the same sessions. B+(**)

Paulette McWilliams: A Woman's Story (2020, Blujazz): Standards singer, had an album and a couple singles c. 1977, a couple more since 2001. Closes with a strong "Both Sides Now." B+(*) [cd]

Mekons: Exquisite (2020, self-released): Surprise release, pieced together following the formula of a surrealist game "cadavre exquis," with each remotely locked down member adding their bits remotely. Easily recaptures the sound and feel of Mekons albums everywhere. B+(***) [bc]

Dawn Oberg: 2020 Revision (2020, self-released, EP): San Francisco-based Singer-songwriter, plays piano, flirted with jazz, turned political with her Nothing Rhymes With Orange EP, offers 3 more songs here (8:52), including a lame takedown of "Mitch McConnell." B- [bc]

Larry Ochs/Aram Shelton Quartet: Continental Drift (2012-18 [2020], Clean Feed): Two saxophonists (tenor/sopranino and alto), plus bass (Mark Dresser on six cuts from 2012, Scott Walton on two from 2018) and drums (Kjell Nordeson). A-

The Rails: Cancel the Sun (2019, Psychonaut): English group, principally James Walbourne and Kami Thompson -- daughter of Richard and Linda, sister of Teddy Thompson, so tempting to call this folk-rock, but tries hard to escape. One song goes: "save the planet/ kill yourself/ it's the least that you could do," then flips that around to "kill the planet/ save yourself." B+(*)

Roots Magic: Take Root Among the Stars (2019 [2020], Clean Feed): Italian quartet, third album: Alberto Popolla (clarinets), Errico De Fabritiis (alto/baritone sax), bass, and drums, plus guest flute on two tracks, vibes on one. Starts off with an irresistible rhythm track, covers blues (Skip James, Charley Patton) and jazz (Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Kalaparusha, John Carter, Charles Tyler), with the occasional hot spot. B+(***)

Thumbscrew: The Anthony Braxton Project (2019 [2020], Cuneiform): Trio, fifth album, the subject a natural given that Tomas Fujiwara (drums/vibraphone) and Mary Halvorson (guitar) studied under him, and Michael Formanek (bass) played in Braxton's legendary 1980s Quartet. Braxton's compositions have always been opaque to me, leaving me with the fascination of his playing around them. Halvorson has that same effect. A- [dl]

Charles Tolliver: Connect (2019 [2020], Gearbox): Trumpet player, main period recording was 1968-88, though he returned with two 2007-09 records, and now this one. Started out on the left fringe of hard bop, and hasn't budged much. Recorded this in England with Jesse Davis (alto sax) and Keith Brown (piano), adding Binker Golding (tenor sax) for 2 (of 4) tracks. B+(***)

Matt Ulery: Pollinator (2019 [2020], Woolgathering): Chicago bassist, tenth album since 2012, plays sousaphone here, in a sextet with trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, piano, and drums. Has an upbeat party vibe, before it gets too serious. B++(**)

Otomo Yoshihide/Chris Pitsiokis: Live in Florence (2018 [2020], Astral Spirits): Prolific Japanese guitarist, also turntables here, Discogs lists 119 albums since 1989; duets with alto saxophonist, also credited with electronics. Experimental, rather ragged and harsh, but has some appeal. B+(*) [dl]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Harry Beckett: Joy Unlimited (1974 [2020], Cadillac): Trumpet player (1935-2010), originally from Barbados, moved to UK in 1954, played in a number of important British jazz bands. With Ray Russell (guitar), Brian Miller (piano), bass, and drums. Opens with tension and edge, eventually settling for groove. B+(**)

Nublu Orchestra Conducted by Butch Morris: Live in Sao Paulo (2008 [2020], Nublu): Morris (1947-2013) came up with a system of conducted improvisations (conduction), and applied it extensively in his 1988-95 10-CD box Testament. He organized this group for a stand at Nublu, a club in Manhattan's Lower East Side, and they released an album in 2007, before going on tour. Plan now is to release a dozen live albums at monthly intervals. This is the second, looks like most of the 9 musicians and 4 vocalists were picked up in Brazil. Only two horns -- Graham Haynes on cornet and Ilhan Ersahin on tenor sax -- keyboards, and double guitar-bass-drums. B+(*)

The Stooges: Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970 (1970 [2020], Third Man): A month (and a day) after their second album, Fun House, dropped, reprising all seven songs, and nothing else. Awkward, sloppy, has some cathartic moments in "Fun House," then blows up. B

Gillian Welch: Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs, Vol. 1 (2002 [2020], Acony): Folksinger, turned some heads with her 1996 album Revival (A- in my book), although Christgau was quick to pan her (B-). Boots seems to be her authorized bootleg series, begun in 2016 with outtakes from Revival. These songs were reportedly recorded to wrap up a record contract, but went lost along the way. B+(*)

Zam Groove: Music From Zambia ([2020], SWP): "2 deep trance tracks by xylophone master Crispin Mutanuka, 3 shining examples of the Barotse Guitar style by the Lipa Band and Libala Band, and 2 sparkling tracks with the kalimba and golden voice of Mufrika Edward." Adds up to 7 tracks, 34:36, collected by Zambian-born field-recordist Michael Baird, and that's all I know. B+(*) [bc]

Old music:

John Chibadura: The Best of John Chibadura ([1986], ZMC): From Zimbabwe (1957-99), original surname Nyamukokoko, nickname refers to his guitar prowess (impressive, indeed), recorded an album with Sunguru Boys in 1985, more with Tembo Brothers. Discogs has nothing before 1983, and I can't place these ten titles. Fast and catchy, more like a single slice than a career retrospective -- this appears to have been released just as his short career was starting. A-

Extra Ball: Birthday [Polish Jazz Vol. 48] (1976, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Polish fusion band, first of six albums 1976-83, led by guitarist Jaroslaw Smietana, with tenor sax, keyboards, bass, and drums. B

Steve Harris/ZAUM: A Is for Ox (2006-07 [2008], Amazon): Live tracks, group has extra guitar and piano, meanders some, takes shape with Geoff Hearn's saxophones. B+(***) [bc]

The Keith Ingham-Harry Allen Quintet: My Little Brown Book: A Celebration of Billy Strayhorn's Music, Volume One (1993 [1994], Progressive): English pianist, retro swing player from the late 1970s on, moved to New York in 1978, often starring on other folks' albums -- Marty Grosz's Unsaturated Fats (1990) is a favorite. Here with a fresh-faced tenor saxophonist, doing what they love most, with guitar (Chris Flory), bass (Denis Irwin), and drums (Chuck Riggs). A-

The Harry Allen-Keith Ingham Quintet: The Intimacy of the Blues: A Celebration of Billy Strayhorn's Music, Volume Two (1993 [1994], Progressive): Swapped the credit around, but same band, same three-day session. Caveat here is that Napster only has 7/16 tracks, but I'd be surprised if I ever find a more drop-dead gorgeous take of "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing," and I've heard plenty. Note: the focus on ballads here actually does bring Allen to the fore. B+(***)

Keith Ingham: Rockin' in Rhythm (2010 [2011], Arbors): Piano trio with Frank Tate (bass) and Steve Little (drums), nice set of standards including some bop-era jazz pieces (Powell, Lewis, Shorter, Walton). B+(*)

Krzysztof Komeda-Trzcinski: Komeda [Polish Radio Jazz Archives 04] (1957-62 [2013], Polskie Radio): Poland's most famous jazz composer, legendary long past his early death (at 37 in 1969), even known abroad for his film scores (mostly for Roman Polanski). Trzcinski was his last name, added to some credits here, mostly writing. He was also a MD, so originally used Komeda as a stage name to keep his careers distinct. These are radio shots: four sextet tracks from 1957, three live tracks with Swedish saxophonist Bernt Rosengren, four piano trio tracks from a 1962 concert. Each slice impresses. I haven't figured out why he seems so coherent, but he does. A-

Krzysztof Komeda: Ballet Etudes (1963, Metronome): Title continues: The Music of Komeda: A Jazz Message From Poland Presented by an International Quintet. Recorded in Copenhagen, with Komeda on piano, Jan Wroblewski (tenor sax), Allan Botschinsky (trumpet), Roman Dylag (bass), and Rune Carlsson (drums). The title piece(s) run 21:56. Trumpet drops out on the second side, with long takes of "Crazy Girl" and "Alea" (12:58 + 7:06). A-

Jerzy Milian Trio: Baazaar [Polish Jazz Vol. 17] (1969 [1970], Polskie Nagrania Muza): Vibraphone/marimba player (1935-2018), recorded a couple dozen albums. Trio presumably with bass and drums, but there are also some flute and vocals (Ewa Wanat). He sounds nothing like the swingers who popularized the instrument, or the tinklers who followed them, or even the later ones who edged into the avant-garde -- moody, I guess. B+(*)

Zbigniew Namyslowski: Zbigniew Namyslowski (1977, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Alto sax quartet, plus extras all the way up to orchestra, nudging them into fusion or something. Scattered, redeemed by occasional sax solos. B

Zbigniew Namyslowski: Standards (2003, Quartet): Quartet plus guest trumpet on one track, trombone on three, all standards starting with "After You've Gone." B+(***)

Zbigniew Namyslowski: Assymetry (2006, Quartet): Quintet, the leader playing soprano as well as his usual alto sax, with trombone, piano, bass, and drums, on all original material. B+(**)

Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski Quartet: Flyin' Lady [Polish Jazz Vol. 55] (1978, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Tenor saxophonist, played in Polish Jazz Quartet (1964), remained important enough to be nicknamed "the godfather of Polish Jazz." Backed by guitar, bass, and drums, hard bop with the occasional funk riff. B+(***)

Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski Sextet: Komeda: Moja Slodka Europejska Ojczyzna [Polish Jazz Vol. 80] (2013 [2018], Warner Music Poland, 2CD): Live tribute, presumably songs from Krzyzstof Komeda, the patron saint of Polish jazz, led by his former tenor saxophonist (albeit 50 years earlier). With Robert Majewski (trumpet), Henryk Miskiewicz (alto sax), Wojciech Niedziela (piano), bass, and drums. Exhaustive, although it does have sweet spots, even majestic ones. B+(**)

Added grades for remembered lps from way back when:

• Iggy and the Stooges: Metallic K.O. (1976, Skydog): B+
• Iggy Pop: TV Eye 1977 Live (1977 [1978], RCA): B-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• David Berkman: Plays Music by John Coltrane and Pete Seeger: Solo Piano (Without)
• Bruno Råberg/Jason Robinson/Bob Weiner: The Urgency of Now (Creative Nation Music)
• Eric Revis: Slipknots Through a Looking Glass (Pyroclastic) [09-11]
• Fumi Tomita: Celebrating Bird/A Tribute to Charlie Parker (Next Level) [09-25]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, August 16, 2020

After what seemed like a very long deliberation, Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate for vice president. The main takeaway is that he'll listen to whatever the left wing of the party has to say, but he's going to staff the government with people friendly with and acceptable to business interests. The New Democrat vision was to show that business is better served with Democrats in power. Clinton and Obama worked hard to make that case -- especially with trade deals like NAFTA and TTP that were injurious and opposed by critically important traditional union allies. While they were unable to convince most capitalists, they did manage to break off enough support to run well-funded campaigns. Biden fits neatly into their program -- if anything, he anticipated it, coming from a state which is famed mostly for its lax corporate laws. Against Donald Trump, he has the potential to raise a lot of big donor money -- as long as he is seen as a buffer against, rather than as a tool of, the insurgent left. The strongest VP candidate, based on her campaign skills, organizational ability, and command of the issues and policies, was Elizabeth Warren, but she's widely viewed in business circles as antagonistic to their interests. Harris is not viewed as hostile -- indeed, she's had tremendous success raising money in Silicon Valley -- making her the safe (and lucrative) bet.

Reassuring big money donors is one big thing Harris brings to the campaign. Her chuminess not only helps support Biden, it helps insulate the campaign from charges of being a vehicle for far-left radicals -- the main charge that Trump's Republicans have been making. In particular, Harris's reputation as a law-and-order hard case makes it clear that "defund the police" and "abolish ICE" are not part of the Biden agenda, quickly reducing a major thrust of Republican campaign fodder to the hysterical ravings of deranged paranoids.

Biden's primary success was based on a hunch shared by many Democrats, including some who policy-wise are more sympathetic to the left, that this year, running against this exceptionally odious president, it is important to risk as little as possible, to build a broad coalition around the single essential goal of denying Trump a second term. The early primary season turned on issues, with Sanders and Warren pulling the party to the left with their strong command of issues and policy; Buttigieg and Klobuchar countered as the most articulate candidates on the right, squeezing out potential compromisers like Harris and Booker. As Sanders emerged as the leader, the billionaires jumped in, and Michael Bloomberg spent the better part of a billion dollars to prove how virulently opposed to Sanders and Warren his class was. Bloomberg had no personal appeal, but served as a catalyst, aligning the party rank-and-file's deepest seated fears into a surge of support for Biden. Had she not dropped out, Harris might have become the middle-ground candidate that Biden turned into. But having dropped out, she returns to the campaign largely unscathed.

Biden committed to selecting a woman early on. Thus far, the only person who has found that decision controversial has been Donald Trump. There has been a good deal of discussion about race, which mostly struck me as misguided and/or irrelevant. I admit that I didn't see any advantage to Biden picking a black running mate. I figured doing so might cost him more white voters than it otherwise gained -- mostly because his own history on race and/or crime issues is rather tawdry, which may have helped him gain white votes, especially in Southern primaries. On the other hand, Harris is a brilliant solution to the question: she is the sort of black that iffy whites would find least stereotypical -- traits Obama shared, but her even more so -- yet she is black enough to provoke hideous reactions among more committed racists, who were solidly pro-Trump anyway. If anything has been made clear from first reactions, it's that Trump and his ilk are the ones trying to stir up America's race problem.

One reason Obama won was that he made it possible for many iffy whites to feel good about themselves for rising above their racist past. In picking Harris, Biden shows that he's better than that. In slandering Harris, Trump shows that he's not. That's hardly the only clear cut distinction between the two, but it sure is one of them.

Some background, referred or alluded to in the links that follow. Harris was born in 1964 in Oakland, California. Her parents were both immigrants, who came to UC Berkeley in 1960-61 as graduate students, received PhD's, and had distinguished careers. Her father is Donald J. Harris, from Jamaica, professor of economics at Stanford, now emeritus (age 81). Her mother was Shyamala Gopalan, from Tamil Nadu, India, studied endocrinology, and worked on breast cancer research in various universities and labs, including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She died in 2009 (70). They had two daughters, and divorced in 1971. The daughters lived with their mother, including several years in Montreal, Canada. Kamala graduated from high school in Quebec, then attended Howard University in DC, then UC Hastings College of Law. She was admitted to the Bar in 1990, working in the Alameda County DA office, then in San Francisco (DA and Mayor's Office). She was elected San Francisco District Attorney in 2003 and 2007, California Attorney General 2010 and 2014, and was elected to the US Senate in 2016.

Some links on the Harris pick:

• Alice Bice: Sanders defends Harris as vice presidential pick: "I think she's an asset for the Biden campaign, and I think she's going to do great things on the campaign trail." Also: "But I think there is overwhelming understanding that Donald Trump must be defeated, Biden must be elected." For some more Harris endorsements, see Kamala Harris: 'A great partner to Joe Biden,' says Elizabeth Warren.

• Aaron Blake: Trump backers' dizzying response to Kamala Harris's selection.

• Jamelle Bouie: Black like Kamala: "Republican efforts to deny Senator Harris's identity as an African-American and turn her into a noncitizen are destined to fail."

• Alexander Burns/Jonathan Martin/Katie Glueck: How Biden chose Harris: A search that forged new stars, friends and rivalries. This pegs Harris, Warren, Whitmer, and Rice as the final four, with Duckworth knocked out by her Bangkok birth -- thinking was that she's eligible, but debate on that would be a distraction.

• Nisha Chittal: The Kamala Harris identity debate shows how America still struggles to talk about multiracial people.

• Aaron Ross Coleman: Kamala Harris is a politician, not an activist. It's an awkward fit for this moment.

• Reese Erlich: Is Kamala Harris a hawk? Well, she's not the worst (that would be Susan Rice), but she's consistently gone along with US foreign policy, and occasionally "even attacked Trump from the right."

• Dana Goodyear: The fall and rise of Kamala Harris.

• Rebecca Heilweil: Why the surge in racist misinformation about Kamala Harris is so worrisome.

• Shanita Hubbard: I used to be critical of Kamala Harris. Now I am going to defend her at every turn. I wouldn't go that far. If you don't criticize her when she takes a bad position on an issue you care about, how the hell is she ever going to learn? But I've long had a certain amount of sympathy for politicians. They have a tough job, one that few people I know would envy. They are constantly being berated by the ignorant, and seduced by rich special interests. Their lives are far removed from most of their constituents, yet many of them at least try to balance off their influences and the consequences of their actions, and some on occasion learn from their mistakes. Harris strikes me as about par for Democrats these days -- and, sure, Biden is a bit below par -- but neither have parked their brains into the ideological straitjacket of Republican conservatism, and both have backgrounds which at least allow them to imagine what other people feel. Granted, most of the people they interact with are well-heeled elites, and their instincts are not to rock those boats, so I don't expect they will do anything very risky, even if that's what is needed. But if they manage not to do things that are horribly stupid, we'll come out ahead. And for now, that's about all we can ask of politicians. Still, we shouldn't be so protective of them we stop seeking better understanding and better answers. Citizenship doesn't need a fan club. It needs people to stand up for their rights, even when a Democrat gets in the way.

• Jake Johnson: With Elizabeth Warren sidestepped, Wall Street execs cheer Joe Biden's pick of Kamala Harris for VP.

• Annie Karni/Jeremy W Peters: Her voice? Her name? GOP's raw personal attacks on Kamala Harris.

  In an email on Wednesday night, the campaign sought to fund-raise off Ms. Harris's selection, calling her "the meanest, most horrible, most disrespectful, MOST LIBERAL of anyone in the U.S. Senate," saying she and Mr. Biden wanted to "DESTROY America."

  A new ad released by the campaign ran through a list of accusations against Ms. Harris, several of them false, saying she wanted to "confiscate your guns by force" and "give cop killers a pass" -- more conventional Republican attempts to stir passions on public safety and social change.

  But that flag was not being waved by the campaign's usual echo chambers. Instead, there were disparate messages. On Tuesday night, Mr. Carlson said that there were "time-share salesmen you could trust more" than Ms. Harris and "payday lenders who are more sincere," alluding to an institution long accused of exploiting poor communities of color.

  On Fox News, Mr. D'Souza said that because Ms. Harris's Jamaican father had traced his ancestry to a slave owner, her racial identity as a Black woman was in question.

  The Fox News host Sean Hannity, meanwhile, called Ms. Harris a senator with a "radical extremist record" whose selection "solidifies what's the most extreme radical far-left out-of-the-mainstream ticket of any major political party in American history."

  I really find this "destroy America" charge galling coming from Republicans. The America I grew up in was one where a middle-class standard of living was protected by labor unions, where infrastructure was either owned by the public or conscientiously regulated to protect the public interest. It wasn't perfect. Some people were excluded, and some were treated shabbily, but the country was founded in ideals that promised something better. That's been destroyed, most enthusiastically by Republicans (and sure, with help from more than a few Democrats, but rarely with the same utter lack of concern for consequences). So what exactly is it that they think Biden-Harris want to destroy? And why? It's just really hard to figure out what's left, still unscathed by the depredations of unfettered capitalism, that the Democrats may uniquely want to diminish. The best I can come up with is a tiny atavistic kernel of white male ego, but even I can't figure out why that's something to care about, let alone reason to vote for a party that doesn't seem to care a whit for the environment, for health and safety, for workers and their families, for civic and world peace.

• Natasha Korecki/Christopher Cadelago/Marc Caputo: How Kamala Harris outflanked her skeptics to become Biden's VP pick. This pegs Harris, Susan Rice, and Karen Bass as the final contenders, with Tammy Duckworth in the running late. One concern about Duckworth was that she was born in Thailand, where her father was stationed in the US Army.

• Lisa Lerer: GOPers can't find their Kamala: "The attacks from Trump's allies just don't seem to fit."

• Nancy LeTourneau: The Biden-Harris ticket is the antithesis of Trumpism.

• Annie Linskey/Chelsea Janes: Harris's wooing of Black activists paved a path to the ticket.

• German Lopez: Kamala Harris's controversial record on criminal justice, explained. "Progressives will have to weigh what Harris is saying now versus parts of her past."

• Meredith McGraw: Trump makes fear-based appeal to women after Biden picked Harris.

• Ian Millhiser/Aaron Rupar: The Trump campaign attack on Kamala Harris's citizenship is right out of the birther playbook.

• Zoë Richards: Newsweek editors finally apologize under pressure for racist birther op-ed about Kamala Harris. Also: Kushner panders to Trump's new racist birther crusade against Harris.

• Katie Rogers: Kamala Harris crystallizes Trump's view of women: They're 'nasty' or housewives.

• Jamie Ross: Trump: Biden is insulting men everywhere by picking woman as running mate. "If you're looking for a quintessential example of fragile masculinity, look no further."

• Theodore Schleifer: Kamala Harris is the choice Joe Biden needed to win over Silicon Valley.

  Harris's special touch with the ultra-rich has been integral to her political ascent in San Francisco, where she first served as district attorney before her statewide wins as attorney general and then US senator. Harris was a regular presence on the city's cocktail circuit and has been profiled in society pages ever since her 30s. Her campaigns were funded by the old-money families that predated the modern tech boom.

  When that boom did arrive, Harris capitalized and built an orbit of new-money fans that she will further bring into the Biden fold. Her biggest donors over the last two decades read like a who's who list of tech moguls: Salesforce founder Marc Benioff has told Recode that Harris is "one of the highest integrity people I have ever met." Early Facebook president Sean Parker invited Harris to his wedding. Fundraisers for her presidential bid included billionaire Democratic power brokers like Reid Hoffman and John Doerr.

  Chris Lehane, a longtime adviser to Bay Area donors, recalled Harris as a "workhorse" when it came to making fundraising calls during her first run for California attorney general in 2009.

  "She'd work the whole list," he said, "and then ask for more names."

  One particularly close bond for Harris has been with Democratic mega-donor Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire philanthropist and wife of the late Steve Jobs. When Powell Jobs was invited to speak at the annual Code Conference in 2017, she brought Harris along with her.

• Walter Shapiro: The unlikely bond between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

• Alex Shephard: Fox News is leading the attack on Kamala Harris. See the links under Media Matters below for more examples.

• Geoffrey Skelley: Biden's pledge to choose a woman for VP was popular -- and so is Harris.

• Jeffrey St Clair: Roaming charges: It had to be you: In case you want some obscure facts to go with the snark. Like Trump contributed $6,000 to Harris campaigns in 2011 and 2013, and Ivanka gave Harris $2,000 in 2014. Links to Nate Silver's 2020 Presidential forcast, which gives Trump the same 28% chance of winning he had in 2016 against Hillary Clinton. By the way, I find the "snake chart" particularly useful here for identifying the marginal battleground states, as well as providing rank orders on either side. Right now, the swing state is Pennsylvania, which is much more reassuring than Florida or Arizona (both shows as leaning Biden, but not needed to get to 270).

• Kara Voght: In her first speech on the ticket, Kamala Harris goes full prosecutor: "The case against Trump and Pence is open and shut."

• Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Kamala Harris gives new meaning to the Biden campaign.

• Alex Ward: Kamala Harris's foreign policy, explained: "It's more robust than you might think." Curious choice of word: "robust." It's as utterly conventional as you might guess, with happy talk about allies, snarling at Russia and China, routine support for "defense" spending, the usual pledge of allegiance to Netanyahu, and a token nod acknowledging that climate change is something to worry about. Her most unorthodox move was to vote to limit arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • Kamala Harris's family story is the real portrait of American greatness: "From India and Jamaica to the doors of the White house in one generation."

  • Birtherism 2.0, explained: "It's back, it's still racist, and this time it's connected to a broader assault on birthright citizensip."

• Media Matters: Some kind of nervous breakdown at Fox: Radio host Joe Pagliarulo promotes sexist attack against Kamala Harris; Diamond and Sillk: Kamala Harris "is not even Black"; Beware the double Trojan horse: Ben Shapiro calls Kamala Harris a "Trojan horse" and Joe Biden "a Trojan horse for Kamala Harris"; Fox News guest says Kamala Harris shouldn't be considered "African-American" because she "is from the legacy of" slave owners: That's Dinesh D'Souza; Laura Ingraham says Biden-Harris ticket is "too left-wing for Reverend Wright; Mark Levin kicks off his show by ranting unprompted about Kamala Harris' ethnicity; Tucker Carlson lashes out after guest corrects his pronunciation of Kamala Harris' name; Sean Hannity says choice of Kamala Harris as VP makes Democratic ticket the "most radical" in history; Fox News chief White House correspondent defends Trump campaign's lie about Harris.

Tweet of the week, from Chris Hayes:

Something I just keeping back to over and over is the tremendous continuity between the last two Republican presidents, both of whom left the country in ruins, amidst historic catastrophes. The entire party and movement are rotten to the core and unfit to govern.

To which Steve M. astutely replied:

And yet Democratic politcians never say this -- mainstream Dems don't want to insult Republican voters, while progressive Dems are so angry at mainstream Dems that they lose sight of the sheer godawfulness of Republicans.

Some scattered links this week:

Alexandra Alter: Michael Cohen releases details about his forthcoming memoir. Title is Disloyal. Publication date September 8. Annie Karni: has more: In tell-all foreword, Cohen promises sordid tales Trump 'does not want you to read': "In his memoir, Disloyal, Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's onetime lawyer and fixer, claims that he had unique access to Mr. Trump, a man with 'no true friends.'"

Kate Aronoff:

• A novel way to fund a green economy: "Instead of bailing out Exxon and other fossil fuel companies, a National Investment Authority could democratize finance and help ordinary people and their governments fight climate change."

  The government has been pretty kind to fossil fuel companies these last few months. Recent disclosures from the Federal Reserve's secondary bond-buying program show that it has now bought $17 billion worth of ExxonMobil debt and $28.5 million from Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. Private asset manager Blackrock oversees this purchasing program, among others.

  Blackrock, with friends in both parties, is on the verge of becoming a fourth branch of government. Despite its pledge in early 2020 to recalibrate investment practices with climate change in mind, so far on behalf of the Fed it has seemed to offer up nearly unlimited public funds to bail out the world's biggest polluters. These investments serve as a lifeline to a deeply troubled and increasingly unprofitable industry. Meanwhile, state and local governments -- and the millions of people who'll soon lose their unemployment insurance -- have found bailouts much harder to come by. And hopes for a green recovery (which an increasingly large swathe of the Democratic Party supports to stave off depression and climate catastrophe) look alarmingly scarce.

• We can't fight climate change without China: "The Democratic Party's 2020 platform echoes President Trump's hawkishness on China. That's a mistake."

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Co-opt & corrupt: How Trump bent and broke the GOP.

James Bruno: What are the chances Trump could actually go to jail?

Kyle Cheney: GAO finds Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli are ineligible to serve in their top DHS roles.

Colin Dickey: The helpless outrage of the anti-Trump book: "The Trump era has birthed a distinct new genre of political writing: irate, forgettable, and strangely complacent." Review of Donald W Drezner: The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us About the Modern Presidency, and Jonathan Karl: Front Row at the Trump Show, with side glances elsewhere. I'm struck by a quote from long-time ABC White House correspondent Karl (previously known for his "reputation for pitching softballs to Bush Administration officials"): "I don't believe there has ever been a more exhausting, exhilarating, dangerous, maddening, frustrating, downright bizarre, or more important time to be a White House reporter." I'm sure that dealing with Trump on a daily basis can seem to be all of those things -- except important: nothing Trump says has any bearing on the stories journalists should be telling about his administration, and detracts from their ability to do so.

Jason Ditz: US push to extend Iran arms embargo fails at UN Security Council: 2 votes for (US and Dominican Republic, of 13 needed), 2 against (Russia and China), 11 abstentions. More:

• Bob Dreyfuss: Could covert war with Iran become overt before November 3rd?. I doubt it, but the scenario I wouldn't put past Pompeo goes like this: Trump loses, but is still in office until January, and uses that period of time to launch various offenses against Iran. Iran, in turn, will be tempted to hold back until Biden takes office, hoping for restoration of US support for the nuclear agreement; Iran's failure to retalliate will be taken by Trump as license to escalate further. Note that some of the attacks could be facilitated by proxies, like the new UAE-Israel partnership.

• Mark Fitzpatrick: Pompeo set to double down on failure to extend Iran arms embargo.

Jesse Dorris: How DeForrest Brown, Jr, centers the black body in techno music: I don't usually put music links here, but have had trouble keeping track of them for Music Week. I reviewed several records by Brown last week, especially recommending his (i.e., Speaker Music's) Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry (A-).

Robert Guffey: What is QAnon? A not-so-brief introduction to the conspiracy theory that's eating America: "Do millions of Americans really believe Donald Trump is saving children from underground demons? It seems that way." I admit that I never had any interest in even finding out what QAnon referred to. Still don't, even after often reading that Trump's most fervent supporters are psyched on whatever it is. Even if it weren't nuts, I doubt it would ever have a fraction of the ill-effects of believing in Atlas Shrugged. Or, for that matter, The Road to Serfdom. The old mental illnesses are still the direst.

• David Atkins: Why the GOP can't control QAnon: The Party was already becoming a conspiracy cult.

• Igor Derysh: Trump says QAnon supporter condemned by GOP leaders for racist videos is "future Republican star".

• Amanda Marcotte: Is QAnon the new Christian right? "With evangelicals fading, a new insanity rises."

Chris Hedges: America's death march: Whoever wins, this election won't save us: "Neither [Biden nor Trump] will stop hyper-nationalism, crisis cults and other signs of an empire in terminal decline." I hate coming off as an optimist, but Hedges has turned into a useless critic of modern life, like the existentialists around the time I stopped bothering with them. There are gross malaises that Hedges may still have some insight into, but there's also a lot of nuts-and-bolts dysfunction that even Biden can figure out and do something to keep utter chaos and collapse at bay -- like keeping the Post Office delivering mail. Halting global warming and unwinding America's worldwide "empire of bases" may be a bit harder, and Biden doesn't have the best of track records, but even there the election decision will surely have some bearing.

Rebecca Heilweil: The dystopian tech that companies are selling to help schools reopen sooner.

Mark Helenowski: Billionaires have made an absolute killing during the pandemic. The number is staggering.

Patrick Iber: How the GOP became the party of resentment: Review of Rick Perlstein's book Reaganland, the fourth volume in what promises to be an immense history of American conservatism from Goldwater on. (I've read the second volume, Nixonland. Been meaning to get to the others, but I'm daunted by their length -- over 3,000 pages to date.)

Ezra Klein:

• Most candidates run to the center in the general election. Biden is moving left. Title is misleading, as the only criteria Klein is using is where the VP picks stands in relation to the Presidential candidate (Clinton-Kaine, Obama-Biden, Kerry-Edwards, Gore-Lieberman), and depend on making assumptions that may not be warranted. The first three VP's came from more centrist states, but if anything came off as more populist (especially Edwards). Lieberman came from a more liberal state, and was probably viewed as more liberal than Gore at the time, but he later discredited himself. Harris is from a more liberal state than Biden, but isn't all that liberal for California. On the other hand, the left-right spectrum has shifted this time, with Trump so extreme on the right it's nonsensical to even try to split the difference. I don't expect Biden to try to move left, but some left-aligned policies are so popular there's no reason not to go with them. If Harris looks to be a bit to his left, I don't see how that hurts him.

• What would Keynes do? Podcast/interview with Zach Carter, author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.

  For Keynes, there's always something outside of consumer preferences that they need to align with. There's always a good life and a good society that we're trying to guide society towards. He believes there are objectively good things in the world, that not everything is relative, that not everybody's preferences are equal. That is a paternalistic approach, as you note.

  The way that his successors who take him seriously as a philosopher try to resolve this -- and I think [John Kenneth] Galbraith is the most successful in this -- is to say this is what democracy is for. We don't want to have big, bad, terrible monarch telling us what to do. But in a democracy people can express their preferences politically. And using the market as an alternative to democratic politics is signing us up for a particularly bad life. . . .

  [Keynes] could never really make up his mind about where he was on the question of socialism, but it was very clear to him by the end of his life that large sections of the economy had to be socialized if we were going to realize the type of good life that he wanted realized. In the States, we think of him as this guy who legitimizes deficit spending. In the UK, he has a very different legacy: his most significant policy achievement in the UK is socializing British medicine. He's the financial architect of the National Health Service.

Sheelah Kolhatkar: Trump's incoherent policy on TikTok and China.

Robert Kuttner: Falling upward: The surprising survival of Larry Summers: "He is once again a senior economic adviser to another prospective Democratic president."

Lyz Lenz: An inland hurricane tore through Iowa. You probably didn't hear about it. Gusts of up to 112 mph did considerable damage, leaving a quarter-million without power. There is some video from Chicago showing heavy rain, but no other mention of it. I've seen completely dry wind storms in Kansas, with winds in the vicinity of 80 mph. They are very rare. I've seen hurricanes from the Gulf of Mexico dump a lot of rain in Kansas, and I've read that the 1900 Galveston hurricane still produced hurricane-force winds as far inland as Chicago, but this wasn't one of those.

Martin Longman: Trump's bizarre obsession with Mount Rushmore.

German Lopez:

• America's uniquely bad Covid-19 epidemic, explained in 18 maps and charts.

• Donald Trump's long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2020. We've seen earlier versions of this before, but periodically Trump does something so blatantly racist the piece needs an update, so it bubbles to the top of the Vox article feed.

Louisa Loveluck/Chris Mooney: Baghdad's record heat offers glimpse of world's climate change future.

Ian Millhiser:

• The Supreme Court just rejected a Republican effort to make it harder to vote: "For better and for worse, the Court tends to defer to state officials in pandemic-related cases."

• Trump admits he's stalling pandemic relief to make it harder to vote: "Trump is blocking post office funding to sabotage mail-in voting."

• The Supreme Court's enigmatic "shadow docket," explained.

• The legal questions surrounding Trump's new executive orders, answered: "Trump's actions appear largely legal. They just won't accomplish very much."

Samuel Moyn: The Never Trumpers have already won: "They're not trying to save the GOP from a demagogue. They're infiltrating the Democratic Party." Review of Robert P Saldin/Steven M Teles: Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites.

Exceptionally close to the Never Trump insurgency, Saldin and Teles take a cozy approach to their study of this movement and its central characters, faithfully drawing on their accounts of the rise of Trump. They start with the national security experts -- figures such as former National Security Council staffers Peter Feaver and Philip Zelikow. Officially, this stalwart crew feared that Trump threatened the Cold War national security consensus that had once led conservatives beyond geopolitical "isolationism." Views once safely quarantined to the libertarian or racist fringes of their party were now getting a second look, they worried.

Their concern here was hardly disinterested: More important than anything else for them was that Trump was breaking the taboo within the Republican Party that forbade calling the Iraq War a gross error.

That Never Trumpers were more bothered by Trump's apostasy on Iraq than by his racism, self-dealing, and ignorance of the Constitution makes sense. However, it doesn't necessarily follow that their revolt against Trump has won them much influence in the Democratic Party -- where second thoughts on Iraq, for instance, is now the norm even among those who originally voted to authorize the war. It is true that they have reinforced the view among Democratic hawks that it is safest to attack Trump over foreign policy issues, especially when they can paint him as doing favors for Russia. But that's not because they've cultured any support among rank-and-file Democrats. All they did was to sway a few centrists into thinking that they might pick up support among nominal Republicans for impeachment and such if the issues were defined strictly in national security terms. That never worked, other than to sidetrack Democrats from pressing more popular charges, like corruption and gross negligence. By the way, Saldin and Teles wrote a reply to this review: Don't blame Never Trumpers for the left's defeat. They have a point, provided you don't count Michael Bloomberg among the Never Trumpers -- although you could argue that he was the biggest one of all, especially in a world where free speech is denominated in dollars.

Olivia Nuzzi: The most tremendous reelection campaign in American history ever: "Inside the chaotic, desperate, last-minute Trump 2020 reboot." I can't read this because "You've reached your monthly article limit." But I read the Kos synopsis: Trump's campaign IS the cesspool of corruption and incompetence we thought it was.

Osita Nwanevu: Trump's "blasphemous" attacks on Biden were torn from the Republican hymnal: "The president's pearl-clutching critics have forgotten how defaming Democrats' faith is a longstanding tradition for the GOP." Still, no examples here further back than 2012 -- I expected at least a reference to the Republicans' characterization of the Democratic Party in the 1880s: "The party of rum, Romanism, and rebellion." After all, charging your opponent with antipathy to religion just exposes your own bigotry and intolerance. Nwanevu quotes Ashley Parker: "Rather than look for campaign ammunition in the former vice president's long track record of politically vulnerable votes and policy proposals, Trump has instead chosen to describe Biden as a godless Marxist bent on destroying the country with a radical agenda that would make Che Guevara blanch." At least those are charges that require no work researching, or any measure of self-reflection.

Aaron Rupar:

• Trump's new favorite talking point about US coronavirus cases is highly misleading: "Trump wants you to believe the US coronavirus outbreak is similar to Germany's and South Korea's. Don't buy it."

• How Trump's mail voting sabotage could result in an election night nightmare.

  • Zeeshan Aleem: The Postal Service says tens of millions of mail-in ballots are at risk of not being counted. Also: The White House says USPS isn't removing mail-sorting machines. Postal workers say it is. By the way, I've seen reports in the Wichita Eagle that mail-sorting machines have been removed in Kansas and Missouri. Normally, when efficiency is a concern, you install more machines, not less.

  • Jacob Bogage/Joseph Marks: House accelerates oversight of Postal Service as uproar grows, demanding top officials testify at 'urgent' hearing.

  • Summer Concepcion: Meadows gets into heated exchange as he tries defending Trump's war on mail-in voting.

  • Tim Dickinson: Trump tampers with Postal Service after months of railing against vote-by-mail.

  • Adam Clark Estes: What's wrong with the mail: "As November nears, the Postal Service is facing a crisis that could interfere with the election."

  • Amy Gardner/Josh Dawsey/Paul Kane: Trump opposes election aid for states and Postal Service bailout, threatening Nov. 3 vote.

  • Sam Levine: Postal service changes pose threat to voting, says former USPS deputy.

  • Eric Levitz: Americans must defend the Postal Service like our democracy depends on it.

  • Bill McKibben: Trump's attack on the Postal Service is a threat to democracy -- and to rural America.

  • Zach Montellaro: Trump says he opposes USPS funding in an effort to block mail-in voting.

  • Jon Queally: "Friday night massacre" at US Postal Service: Postmaster General boots top brass ahead of election.

  • Philip Rucker/Josh Dawsey/Ashley Parker: Tracing Trump's Postal Service obsession -- from 'loser' to 'scam' to 'rigged election'.

  • David Sirota/Matthew Cunningham-Cook: Trump's Postal Service chairman has led Senate GOP's $100 million Super PAC.

  • Andy Sullivan/Heather Timmons: US Postal Service reorganization sparks delays, election questions.

  • Margaret Sullivan: Trump's attacks on the Postal Service deserve sustained, red-alert coverage from the media.

  • Mark Summer: The Postal Service scandal doesn't belong only to Donald Trump. Mitch McConnell played a big role. This led me to another link reminding us that the Republican war on government doing anything useful for ordinary people has deep roots: When Reagan tried to destroy the Postal Service.

  • Bhaskar Sunkara: Conservatives are trying to destroy the US Postal Service. Instead we should expand it.

Katherine Stewart: Betsy DeVos's plot to enrich private schools amid the pandemic: "The secretary of education wants religious schools to flourish at the public system's expense; and she's doing it under the cover of the coronavirus crisis."

Matt Taibbi: Big Pharma's Covid-19 profiteers.

Alex Ward:

• How a homemaker with no political experience took on Europe's longest-serving dictator: Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, in Belarus, challenging Alexander Lukashenko. Election results gave the win to Lukashenko, with over 80% of the vote. This, in turn, has led to protests:

  • Zeeshan Aleem: Belarus's historic anti-government protests, in photos.

  • Casey Michel: Alexander Lukashenko's Belarusian dictatorship is going down in flames: "The former Soviet republic has exploded into unrest after its most recent sham election, and there may be no going back."

• Israel and the UAE just struck a historic peace deal. It's a big win for Trump. Hard to see where Trump deserves any credit here. As a practical matter, Israel has been very low on UAE's foreign policy list for quite some time, so joining Egypt and Jordan in recognizing Israel isn't much of a thing. Perhaps more importantly, this gives Netanyahu an excuse for backing away from his campaign promises to annex the West Bank -- which are disturbing especially in Europe, where BDS is increasingly popular.

  But at the heart of the agreement is a trade: As the statement lays out, Israel will "suspend declaring sovereignty over" parts of the West Bank that it had previously expressed intentions to annex. In exchange, the UAE will treat Israel as it would any other country it has friendly relations with -- making it only the third Arab country to have such open relations with Jerusalem.

  More on Israel/UAE:

  • Medea Benjamin/Ariel Gold: Don't be hoodwinked by Trump's UAE-Israel 'peace deal'.

  • Jason Ditz: Experts expect US arms sales to UAE to soar after Israel deal.

  • Rami G Khouri: From little Sparta to Trojan horse: Beware the US-Israel-UAE strategic agenda for the Arab region.

  • Mitchell Plitnick: The Israel-UAE deal won't bring stability or peace while further sidelining the Palestinians.

  • Annelle Sheline: Trump's win is a loss for the Middle East.

  • Jonah Shepp: Why the Israel-UAE deal is more about Iran than peace.

  • Henry Siegman: Israel will have to reckon with the occupation one way or another.

  • Robin Wright: Israel's new peace deal transforms the Middle East. Like Ward, she sees this deal as some kind of breakthrough, but I can't see why. She should know better: she's written a major book on Iran, and also filed this report on Lebanon: Lebanon's entire government has resigned after a weekend of violent protests.

Li Zhou: Why Democrats are holding out for more comprehensive stimulus: "They don't think Trump's executive actions come close to covering what's needed -- and they have the leverage to push for more." Besides: "Republicans are set to bear more of the political backlash, for now."

• David Dayen: The Fed can still save state and local governments.

• Alex Henderson: McConnell's refusal to provide states the help they need could cost more than 4 million jobs.

• Sheelah Kolhatkar: What's happening to all the CARES Act money?

• Alex Pareene: A government too broke to write $600 checks.

• Jim Tankersley: Trump's go-it-alone stimulus won't do much to lift the recovery.

PS: Robert Christgau forwarded this string of tweets from John Ganz (@lionel_trolling). I couldn't follow it as presented, so wondered if copying it down might help. Christgau's comment:

Read the five-part thread, reread a few of your political tweets, and ask yourself whether he nailed you or not. If you find that question discomfiting, please try to err on the side of not being contrarian till the election is over.

Ganz's thread:

• There's also a kind of anti-respectability politics, which views everything that appeals to conventional people as either hopelessly naive and dowdy or thoroughly hypocritical, and sometimes as both
• Usually this attitude is fostered in bohemian milieus, where a shared commitment to 'epater les bourgeois' and cultivated anti-conformism mistakes itself for political principle, it's almost beneath mentioning that it becomes its own sort of conformism
• You get an importation of the intellectual habits of art criticism and social appraisal into politics, in some ways a welcome new perspective for political judgment to consider, but have the unfortunate result of turning everything into a question of affect or pose
• There is always a performative aspect of politics, it's a kind of theater, so the eye trained to either judge artistic or social performances is going to make very witty and sometimes penetrating observations about politics, but usually they have more wit than substance
• Politics, or rather commentary on politics, is one of the last places where people can maintain the very 19th century pretension of being simultaneously totally ensconced in a tiny elite cult of decadence while convincing themselves they understand the feelings of "the people"

There are also some comments by Ganz:

• Some of the points of the bohemian political commentators are undoubtedly correct: much of conventional society and its ruling class are hypocritical and stupid, and their vaunted norms both hide their misconduct and prevent them from thinking
• But they don't really have much of substantial position beyond seeing through these things and flaunting their own superiority to it all
• Very fond of armchair sociology, they can't raelly theorize their own sociological position vis a vis the squares and dupes and how they need them for their existence
• It's histrionic in the old sense of the word: a kind of theater of poses and attitudes, which might provide worthwhile critique of the serious world that is actually just as full of pretense, if it could drop its own pretense to self-seriousness and authenticity

Well, no, I don't think he "nailed" me. I don't even think he struck a glancing blow. Although it's hard to tell what he was aiming at, due to the total lack of specific references. I don't doubt that there are strands of socio-political analysis that reflect one clique making fun of, belittling, and/or looking askance at a broader population, scoring points with their wit. At least since I started reading critical theory, I've always been critical of trying to understand, much less practice, politics as an aesthetic concern. In fact, I'm pretty skeptical of anyone who attempts to impose an arbitrary ethics on it.

I have no idea what kind of political analysis Christgau wants to counter, but I can make a guess given his time frame: from now to the November election. On a good day, you can imagine an infinite range of political possibilities, and that's what people like me prefer to talk about. I'd like to write about why patents are always bad, or why everyone should have free access to the internet, and advertising should be banned there (except when you specifically ask for its, and even then you need to ability to challenge it). However, between now (roughly speaking) and election day in November, the political universe we live in has radically constricted to the choices on the ballots, in particular the two dominant political parties here in the US). During that time, the only practical thing you can do is to compare A and B (or, realistically, R and D) -- or, at least, that's the position of people who are totally invested in the election to the exclusion of all else. I'm not generally disposed to do that. In particular, I want to reserve the option of saying when both sides are in the wrong -- and I swear to you, I'm not being contrarian; there is always some underlying principle at stake. And those principles are grounded in serious thought; they're not just things that strike my aesthetic fancy.

Of course, politics isn't just voting. If, between now and November, cops kill yet another unarmed black teenager for no reason, I'm not going to tell you not to go march, even if I suspect doing so might reflect poorly on the election. It might even be a good idea to put a march together in Washington for funding for the USPS, unemployment, to stop evictions, etc. (a good time might be during the so-called Republican Convention, but not at wherever it's supposed to be -- not to draw attention to them but to take away from their news cycle).

And sure, take it easy on the Democrats until November. If they win, you'll have plenty of occasion to critique them in the future, but at least you'll be starting in a better place. And if they lose, you'll need them more than ever.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, August 10, 2020

August archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 33774 [33729] rated (+45), 218 [223] unrated (-5).

Most of this week's haul is tied to a question I tried to answer a couple days back. I've done a little editing on my answer since its initial post. Always good to get back and tune some more -- something I rarely manage these days. The big questions concerned British jazz from the 1960s-70s, and also Polish jazz. The question mentioned a list of British and South African musicians by name. My review counts for them are: Joe Harriott (6), Michael Garrick (2), Don Rendell (0), Ian Carr (0), Mike Osborne (2), Tony Coe (4), Harry Beckett (2), Tubby Hayes (6), Chris McGregor (4), Dudu Pukwana (5), Mongezi Feza (1), Johnny Dyani (3), Louis Moholo (6), Annie Whitehead (0), Lindsay Cooper (0). That illuminates some holes in my listening.

I thought I might come up with a reference list of British jazz musicians, but both Google and Wikipedia failed badly -- e.g., neither mentioned Evan Parker, who would certainly top my list with 48 albums. After Parker, my most reviewed British jazz musicians are: Barry Guy (32), John McLaughlin (32), John Surman (27), Dave Holland (25), Tommy Smith (19), John Butcher (17), Paul Dunmall (16), Marian McPartland (15), Billy Jenkins (14), Andy Sheppard (11), Trevor Watts (11), Derek Bailey (10), Elton Dean (9), Alexander Hawkins (9), Stan Tracey (9), Chris Barber (8), Tony Oxley (8), John Taylor (8), Keith Tippett (8). Very likely I've forgotton a few. Further down, you get important musicians like Howard Riley (6), Gordon Beck (5), Paul Rutherford (5), Iain Ballamy (3), Humphrey Lyttleton (3), Ronnie Scott (3), Alan Skidmore (3), Mike Westbrook (3), Acker Bilk (2), Spike Hughes (2), Ken Colyer (1). I've probably slighted most of them.

But rather than try to catch up with British jazz musicians I've missed, I spent much of the week with Polish ones. Mostly it was just easier: Polskie Nagrania Muza (now owned by Warner Music Poland) has a series of 80 volumes of "Polish Jazz," and that's most of what you get when you do a title search for "Polish jazz" on Napster. The immediate appeal was a couple albums I had missed by Tomasz Stanko, and a couple more by Zbigniew Namyslowski -- I've long been a fan of his 1973 album, Winobranie. Most of this week's haul comes from that series, with a few more to come next week (although my interest is finally starting to flag). I wasn't surprised to find a bunch of trad jazz titles, but was pleased to note how well done they were. Indeed, the bop groups were also pretty sophisticated. The only genre that fell short of contemporary standards was 1970s fusion -- which, you may recall, could be pretty bad everywhere.

Two other clusters in the "old music": I started the week with English folksinger Shirley Collins' latest, and thought I'd sample some of her early records (especially one with Albion Dance Band which I used to own, but couldn't find). That didn't last long. The second cluster is from English drummer Steve Harris. I was reminded of him while looking at my list of Penguin Guide crown albums, and his was the only one I hadn't heard. Turns out that both it and a bunch more have recently (2018) been released on Bandcamp. I wound up liking the 2002 ZAUM album even more.

For new music, I worked a few things off my queue -- some of which won't be released until the Fall (it's hard to pace myself with them). Also spent a fair amount of time on the fence over DeForrest Brown Jr.'s latest album, so I wound up listening to his other releases. Listening order below, not release order.

I'll try to get around to some old British jazz this week. See if anything really clicks. Would be great if I could find my old Blue Notes for Monghezi LP, still unrated. Also been looking at the Bandcamp lists, which suggested Speaker Music (also Jenna Camille and Hideto Sasaki).

Recommendation: Jason Bailey and Mike Hull (my nephew) have started to produce podcasts. Episode 1: 'Fight the Power' discusses Spike Lee's film, Do the Right Thing.

Questions queue is empty now. Please use the form.

New records reviewed this week:

Max Bessesen: Trouble (2020, Ropeadope): Alto saxophonist, originally from Denver, based in Chicago, records in both places for his debut album, adding Colorado-based trumpet player Ron Miles for the Denver set. With Eric Krouse on piano, plus bass and drums. Nice postbop. B+(**) [09-04]

Jenna Camille: The Time Is NOW (2020, self-released): Singer-songwriter, plays keyboards, born in Atlanta, based in DC, last name may be Henderson, self-released an album in 2014, sixth release per Bandcamp. Politics first, experimentation always, finally settling into ambient groove. B+(*) [bc]

Shirley Collins: Heart's Ease (2020, Domino): English folk singer, 85, MBE, I remember her from Albion Dance Band in the 1970s but didn't get anything into the database. Her debut was actually 1959, and she retired in 1980, but came back with a very solid album in 2016 (Lodestar, high B+). Voice is worn, gravity helps. B+(**)

Duotrio: In the Bright and Deep (2020, Blujazz): "A modular chamber music ensemble" led by trumpeter Daniel Nissenbaum, configured as two bands, neither trios: one based in Holland (quintet), the other in Philadelphia (quartet plus strings/orchestra, vocals on one piece, guitar on another). Sounds semi-classical to me, not to my taste. B- [cd]

Gato Libre: Koneko (2019 [2020], Libra): Japanese trumpeter Natsuki Tamura's group, a trio with Yasuko Kaneko on trombone and wife Satoko Fujii on accordion. Eighth group album, with 2006's Nomad my favorite (by far). Interesting enough, but seems a bit slow. B+(**) [cd]

John Hollenbeck: Songs You Like a Lot (2019 [2020], Flexatonic): Drummer, mastermind bnehind the Claudia Project, Large Ensemble impressario, presents his third album of likable songs, with Theo Bleckmann and Kate McGarry singing, Gary Versace on piano, and the Frankfurt Radio Big Band. Mostly songs I don't much like, but he also manages to spoil "God Only Knows" -- and not just by twisting it into "Only God Knows." B- [08-14]

Camden Joy: American Love (2020, self-released): Tom Adelman, a novelist before singer-songwriter, follows up his EP with a full-length album, 14 songs, lots of historical figures from the suffragists and William Jennings Bryan to Johnny Paycheck: "A lot of famous dead Amerians collide with a lot of dying American musical styles." Musically, reminds me a bit of Thomas Anderson, with less twang. B+(**)

Kenny Kotwitz & the LA Jazz Quintet: When Lights Are Low (2020, PMRecords): Leader plays accordion and celeste. Rest of the quintet adds guitar (John Chiodini), vibraphone, bass, and drums. All standards, the title cut from Benny Carter, reprised at the end. Not as schmaltzy as one might expect, but a little. B+(*) [cd]

Simon Moullier: Spirit Song (2017-20 [2020], Outside In Music): Vibraphone player (also credited with "balafon, percussions, synths"), first record, recorded over four sessions, with bass (Luca Alemano) and drums (Jongkuk Kim), most tracks adding piano and/or sax (Dayna Stephens or Morgan Guerin). I particularly like the balafon closer. B+(***) [10-09]

Jose Rizo's Mongorama: Mariposas Cantan (2018-19 [2020], Saungu): Rizo is a DJ, songwriter, and (here) bandleader, based in Los Angeles. This, obviously, is a tribute band to Mongo Santamaria, reprising his songbook, with typical flair. B+(**) [09-16]

Lawrence Sieberth Quartet: An Evening in Paris (2020, Musik Blöc): Pianist, based in New Orleans, handful of albums going back to the 1980s. Recorded this one in Paris, with Stephane Guillaume (sax), Michel Benita (bass), and Jeff Boudreaux (drums). B+(**) [cd] [09-24]

Speaker Music: Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry (2020, Planet Mu): DeForrest Brown Jr., "a New York-based theorist, journalist, and curator . . . a representative of the Make Techno Black Again campaign." Maia Sanaa's opening testimony of powerful and touching. A second tract is more pragmatic and less inspired. The beats hold up on their own, at least until the final track rattles my nerves. It's called "It is the Negro Who Represents the Revolutionary Struggles for a Classless Society." Comes with a 45 page PDF, which I haven't seen. A-

Speaker Music: Of Desire, Longing (2019, Planet Mu): DeForrest Brown Jr., raised in the deep South, moved to New York 7 years ago, first album, two 23-minute pieces, "With Empathy," and "Without Excess." B+(**) [bc]

Speaker Music: Processing Intimacy (2019-20 [2020], Planet Mu): A "reassessment" of material from Of Desire, Longing, five parts squeezed into a single 45:51 track. Bits of industrial warble, scales up nicely. B+(***) [bc]

Speaker Music: Percussive Therapy (2020, Planet Mu, EP): Four tracks, 17:50. Starts with more focus on the drums (or whatever they are), but ends up in the electronic ether. B+(**) [bc]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Hideto Sasaki-Toshiyuki Sekine Quartet Plus 1: Stop Over (1976 [2020], BBE): Japanese group, leaders play trumpet and piano, accompanied by alto sax (Noriyasu Watanabe), bass, and drums. Hard bop with a lush overgrowth, comparison given is to Kenny Dorham. B+(**) [bc]

Old music:

Ewa Bem With Swing Session: Be a Man [Polish Jazz Vol. 65] (1981 [1982], Polskie Nagrania Muza): Singer, backed by trumpeter Henryk Majewski's swing band. First side in English, starting with a six-song medley and adding four more standards from "Misty" to "Groovin' High." She's very good at this. Second side is in Polish, no less swinging. B+(**)

Shirley Collins: Sweet England (1959, Argo): English folksinger, sings and plays banjo, first album, Alan Lomax produced. High, lonesome voice, pretty basic guitar and banjo, still comes back to haunt you. B+(**)

Shirley Collins: False True Lovers (1959, Folkways): Cover text: "A collection of British love songs about love, adapted and sung by Shirley Elizabeth Collins of Sussex, England, with guitar and five-string banjo accompaniment by John Halsted, Ralph Rinzler, Guy Carawan and Miss Collins. With notes by Alan Lomax." B+(*)

Shirley Collins/Davy Graham: Folk Roots, New Routes (1964, Decca): Graham plays guitar -- indeed, his first (1963) album was called The Guitar Player. More elegant, but I rather miss the banjo. B+(*)

Ducks Deluxe: Side Tracks & Smokers (1973-2009 [2010], Jungle): Six "rough mixes" from the eponymous debut sessions, sound great not least because they're looser than the final takes; two b-sides; eight live tracks from the Sean Tyla-Martin Belmont reunion band -- two Dylans I'd drop, three more bar band covers, two basic Tylas, a 9:19 "Teenage Head." B+(**)

Hagaw: Do You Love Hagaw? [Polish Jazz Vol. 12] (1967, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Polish trad jazz band led by banjo player Gregorz Brudko, with trumpet, trombone, sax, violin, bass, and drums, tilts the balance toward the strings. Asocjacja Hagaw recorded ten albums through 1986. B+(**)

Steve Harris: ZAUM (2002, Slam): British drummer (1948-2008), played in a rock band in the late 1960s (Woody Kern), a jazz-funk outfit from 1987 on (Pinski Zoo), formed this group in 2001, named after a Russian Futurist concept. With Cathy Stevens (six string violectra, viola), Geoff Hearn (tenor, soprano sax), Karen Wimhurst (clarinet, bass clarinet), Udo Dzierzanowski (guitar). "Instant compositions" -- works in large part because the group is so intricately balanced. A-

Steve Harris/ZAUM: Above Our Heads the Sky Splits Open (2004 [2007], Amazon): This record was awarded a Penguin Guide crown in their 8th edition, and may be the only crown album I never picked up. Sax, clarinet, two guitars, a sampler, a bunch of strings. The simplest rhythmic-focused tracks are terrific (e.g., "Trouble at house-for-one"), but the strings lack such immediate appeal -- at least until the 19:43 closer ("White pass ink black moon") puts it all together. A- [bc]

Steve Harris/ZAUM: The Little Flash of Letting Go (2004-05 [2005], Spitz Live): Band is stripped down a bit here: one horn (Geoff Hearn on tenor sax), two guitars, the strings reduced to Cathy Stevens (viola, electric violin). Also sampler on two tracks. Again, best track comes last. B+(***) [bc]

High Society: High Society [Polish Jazz Vol. 18] (1969 [1970], Polskie Nagrania Muza): Trad jazz group from Gliwice, septet, seems to be their only album, not much about the musicians, although Witold Wertel (soprano sax) and Leszek Furman (piano) are the only ones with writing/arranging credits, and the banjo (Jan Piecha) is strong throughout. B+(***)

Jazz Band Ball Orchestra: Jazz Band Ball Orchestra [Polish Jazz Vol. 8] (1966, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Trad jazz septet led by pianist Jan Boba, who wrote nearly half of the pieces. The other main composer was Zbigniew Raj, not in the band, otherwise best known for soundtracks. Bright, strong group. B+(***)

Mieczyslaw Kosz: Reminiscence [Polish Jazz Vol. 25] (1971 [1972], Polskie Nagrania Muza): Pianist, died young (age 29 in 1973), only recorded a couple more albums. Backed here by Bronislaw Suchanek (bass) and Janusz Stefanski (drums). Two originals, one from Suchanek, covers from Borodin, Chopin, Liszt, and Lennon/McCartney. Nice, thoughtful touch. Bet he loved Bill Evans. B+(*)

Andrzej Kurylewicz Quintet: Go Right (1963, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Trumpet player (1932-2007), leading a quintet with Jan Ptaszyn Wróblewski (tenor sax/flute), Wojciech Karolak (piano), bass, and drums -- songs from the leader and first two. Contemporary bop, strong performances, especially the saxophonist. B+(***)

Andrzej Kurylewicz: Polish Radio Big Band [Polish Jazz Vol. 2] (1964 [1965], Polskie Nagrania Muza): Plays valve trombone here, piano elsewhere, leading a 19-piece big band, mostly wrote "serious music" after 1970, shows some knack for arranging here, with nice charts and solos. B+(**)

Adam Makowicz: Live Embers [Polish Jazz Vol. 43] (1975, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Pianist, born Andrzej Matyszkowicz, clasically trained but more impressed by Art Tatum. Moved to New York in 1978, and wound up in Toronto, so he's relatively well known here. Solo piano, two Scott Joplin tunes, two Coltrane, rest originals. B+(*)

Mieczyslaw Mazur: Rag Swing Time [Polish Jazz Vol. 27] (1971, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Pianist, seems to be his only album, but he also appeared in Ragtime Jazz Band and Old Timers. Delivers on his title, especially with the solo rags to open and close. Adds banjo, guitar, bass, and drums for most cuts. B+(**)

The Wlodzimierz Nahorny Trio: Heart [Polish Jazz Vol. 15] (1967 [1968], Polskie Nagrania Muza): Leader plays alto sax and piano, most distinctly the former, has had a pretty substantial career, which as far as I can tell starts here. Avant, backed by bass and drums, makes a strong impression. B+(***)

Zbigniew Namyslowski: Zbigniew Namyslowski Quartet [Polish Jazz Vol. 6] (1966, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Alto saxophonist, in the 1965 group that recorded Krzysztof Komeda's masterpiece Astigmatic, a prominent Polish jazz figure ever since -- best known to me for his 1973 album Winobranie. Quartet with the future Adam Makowicz on piano, plus bass and drums. A-

Zbigniew Namyslowski Quintet: Kujaviak Goes Funky [Polish Jazz Vol. 46] (1975, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Adds a second saxophonist, Tomasz Szukalski (soprano/tenor), and electric piano (Wojciech Karolak) and lots of bass to go funky. A-

Zbigniew Namyslowski Quintet: Polish Jazz - Yes! [Polish Jazz Vol. 77] (2016, Warner Music Poland): Plays soprano as well as tenor sax, with piano, two guitars, and trombone. B+(**)

NOVI: Bossa Nova [Polish Jazz Vol. 13] (1967, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Vocal group, three male and one female, acronym for New Original Vocal Instruments, also known as NOVI Singers. First of ten albums through 1981. Inspiration may be Brazilian, hinted at in the rhythm, but all original credits, mostly scat blending into choral, with piano-guitar-bass-drums, or sometimes strings. B

Polish Jazz Quartet: Polish Jazz Quartet [Polish Jazz Vol. 3] (1964 [1965], Polskie Nagrania Muza): Polish names are notoriously difficult for English speakers, which has led some to shorten Polish names, or simply to punt, e.g., Polish Notation (PN) for the scheme worked out by Jan Lukasiewicz. Not sure if that's at play here, but here are the names: Jan "Ptaszyn" Wroblewski (tenor sax), Wojciech Karolak (piano), Juliusz Sandecki (bass), and Andrzej Dabrowski (drums). The bassist produced little after this, but the others went on to substantial careers, with Wroblewski touted as "the godfather of Polish jazz." Contemporary bop, well done. B+(**)

The Ragtime Jazz Band: The Ragtime Jazz Band [Polish Jazz Vol. 7] (1966, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Closer to what I think of as trad jazz than to ragtime. Octet, led by cornet player Wladyslaw Dobrowolski, with trumpet, trombone, tuba, clarinet, banjo, piano, and drums. All titles in Polish, credited to band members. B+(**)

Tomasz Stanko Quintet: Music for K (1970 [2004], Polskie Nagrania Muza): Polish trumpeter, had played in Krzysztof Komeda's group in the 1960s, and Globe Unity Orchestra in 1970. This was his first album as leader, a quintet with two saxes, bass, and drums. Free jazz, pretty sharp all around, especially trumpet. Presumably K was Komeda, who died the year before, at 38. A-

Tomasz Stanko: Music 81 [Polish Jazz Vol. 69] (1982 [1984], Polskie Nazrania Muza): Trumpet player, leads an impressive quartet with piano-bass-drums. B+(***)

Andrzej Trzaskowski: The Andrzej Trzaskowski Quintet [Polish Jazz Vol. 4] (1965, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Pianist (1933-98), backed by bass and drums, with Tomasz Stanko (trumpet) and Janusz Muniak (alto/soprano sax). Contemporary bop, starts strong, both on piano and trumpet. B+(**)

Michal Urbaniak's Group: Live Recording [Polish Jazz Vol. 24] (1971, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Violinist, also plays soprano/tenor/baritone saxes. Started in a Dixieland band, played with Komeda and Namyslowski in the 1960s. Moved to New York in 1973, adopted the group name Fusion, but ranges widely. Quartet with Adam Makowicz on piano, starting with the riotous 21:12 "Suite - Jazz Jamboree 70," followed by covers of Komeda's "Crazy Girl" and "Body and Soul." B+(***)

Warsaw Stompers: New Olreans Stompers [Polish Jazz Vol. 1] (1959-64 [1965], Polskie Nagrania Muza): Polish jazz was first noticed in the West through Krzysztof Komeda's soundtracks and Tomasz Stanko joining avant-jazz groups like Globe Unity Orchestra, but it always made sense that there would be some trad jazz bands in the background -- Europe's first introduction to jazz was when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band toured England, and trad jazz remained the dominant form there through the 1950s, spreading elsewhere in Europe wherever you looked. I took a blind chance on a later album by trumpeter Henryk Majewski, clearly out of this tradition, and one of the stars here. This was assembled from six sessions over five years with various lineups -- the only constants are Majewski and Bogdan Ignatowski (banjo). As bright as anything out of London (or New Orleans) at the time. A-

Janusz Zabieglinski: Janusz Zabieglinski and His Swinget [Polish Jazz Vol. 9] (1967, Polskie Nagrania Muza): Leader plays clarinet and alto sax, only other album I can find of his is Tribute to Duke (1997), but he was part of the long-running Old Timers group. Sextet, with guitar, piano, bass, drums, and (most distinctively) vibraphone. B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• John Finbury: American Nocturnes (Green Flash Music)
• Somi With Frankfurt Radio Big Band: Holy Room: Live at Alte Oper (Salon Africana)
• South Florida Jazz Orchestra: Cheap Thrills: The Music of Rick Margitza (Summit) [08-28]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, August 9, 2020

One thing I've noticed here but don't have the time or patience to try to unpack is that a significant share of the articles below look ahead to after the November election -- usually assuming that Trump will be defeated, some allowing for the possibility that Trump will cheat massively and produce a disputed result. This was bound to happen sooner or later, but this soon is a bit surprising. Maybe it's because the whole year is something we can't wait to get over with?

Some of the future articles imagine a chance for the Republican Party to reform itself after the Trump debacle, but I don't see that happening any time soon -- in large part thanks to the speed with which the Party recovered after the 2008 debacle. In many ways, Democrats will find it harder to function after winning than Republicans will -- especially if their victory isn't deep enough to capture both houses of Congress, allowing Republicans to obstruct their efforts, and Fox to blame those losses on the Democrats.

Finally, some pieces start to look at where the economy is headed -- not so much after the pandemic but along with it. Had I tried to speculate on that 4-6 months ago, I no doubt would have come up with little more than reassertions of what I had long been thinking. Now I'm less certain than ever.

Biden's date for announcing his VP pick is August 10. Good to get this posted before then.

Some scattered links this week:

Zeeshan Aleem: Trump falsely claims coronavirus is "disappearing" and Russia isn't meddling in the 2020 election: "Trump's surprise news conference held at his private club was packed with false claims about America's crises."

Michael Arria: Biden personally intervened to get the word 'occupation' removed from the Democratic Party platform: I don't discount the significance of one's views on Israel-Palestine as a test of political principles, but as a practical matter in a contest between Biden and Trump, and more generally between the parties, dropping it from the platform, and inserting some pablum, doesn't bother me. Biden isn't stuck in Sheldon Adelson's pocket, and he's not going to owe anything to the fundamentalist Christian apocalypse-mongers backing Trump. After the election, he'll have options based on future events, which he may or may not respond to constructively. But at this point, Israel has gone so far down its racist-militarist apartheid path that it's hard to see the US having any real influence (as if it ever has). Elsewhere, it's more important that the US disengage from its own occupations and interventions. Dismantling systemic racism and militarism at home would also help, perhaps more than anything else. Israel has chosen to follow its own rogue path, but that choice has always been easier with the US as a model. Take that away, and maybe Israel will start to realize the folly of its path. In the long run, all nations have to change of their own accord -- even the ones the US is so obsessed with bending to its will, like North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and China.

Joshua A Barocas/Jennifer E Lacy: The pandemic is an extraordinary opportunity to reform US education: "We should allow kids to take a gap year and waive standardized testing before it's too late."

If anything, there is a sense that many in the Trump administration and its allies across the country want public education to fail. For example, Kansas City Metropolitan charter and private schools received between $19.9 million and $55.9 million from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), program whereas Kansas City Public Schools received nothing.

Isaac Chotiner: Why Stuart Stevens wants to defeat Donald Trump: Interview with Stevens, who worked in the GW Bush presidential campaigns and was Mitt Romney's top strategist in 2012. More recently, he wrote It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, and is an adviser to the Lincoln Project. Still a lot of delusions here for past Republicans, especially Romney. Also a strong belief that the president's number one job is opposing Putin. For another interview with Stevens, see David Corn: The Republican Party is racist and soulless. Just ask this veteran GOP strategist.

Patrick Cockburn:

• The cynical forces behind America's Forever Wars: Long-time Middle East correspondent, interviewed by Robert Scheer. Cockburn has a new book: War in the Age of Trump: The Defeat of ISIS, the Fall of the Kurds, the Conflict With Iran.

• My pandemics.

Chas Danner: Yes, Trump actually did want to be added to Mount Rushmore: "A White House aide reportedly looked into the process for adding another president's face to the monument." Filed under "Delusions of grandeur."

Wade Davis: The unraveling of America: "Anthropologist Wade Davis on how Covid-19 signals the end of the American era."

Jason Ditz: Superhawk Elliott Abrams named Special Envoy on Iran: Most recently, he's been Special Envoy for Venezuela, a job he's made a total mess of. Disasters are nothing new for Abrams. Ever since he got out of jail for his role in Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, he's using his foreign policy clout to make things worse -- especially his tenure as GW Bush's top dog on Israel-Palestine. More on Abrams:

• Daniel Larison: Trump names neocon regime changer as Iran envoy.

• James North: New Iran envoy Elliott Abrams raises the risk that Israel will provoke Trump into conflict with Teheran.

• Tom O'Connor: Elliott Abrams failed Trump's mission to overthrow Venezuela -- now he will take on Iran.

Tom Engelhardt: The unexpected past, the unknown future: It could have been different: Nostalgia for the bad old days, just following 9/11, when the Bushies thought all they had to do to rule the world was "to take the gloves off." Engelhardt resisted that idea from its inception, and if he's ever been wrong, it was to underestimate how bad it might get.

Amy Gardner/Josh Dawsey: As Trump leans into attacks on mail voting, GOP officials confront signs of Republican turnout crisis: It's real hard to anticipate how turnout is going to break, but this is one part of the question. This was the first of several articles linked to in As Trump attacks mail voting, GOP officials confront signs of Republican turnout crisis. Another is Pema Levy: Democracy depends on the postal service more than ever. Republicans won't help fix it. Some more pieces on Trump, voting, and mail:

• Adam Clark Estes: What's wrong with the mail: "As November nears, the Postal Service is facing a crisis that could interfere with the election."

• Matt Ford: The Republicans' crimes against democracy: "Some politicos are fretting about post-election chaos. What about the pre-election chaos that Trump and his allies are creating right now?"

• Anita Kumar: Trump aides exploring executive actions to curb voting by mail.

• Dmitri Melhorn: How to steal an election. I hate citing anything from Bill Kristol's outfit, but this is a pretty substantial list. Link from Steve M: Tell me why I shouldn't believe Trump will succeed in stealing this election.

• Ian Millhiser: Trump's radical lawsuit against Nevada's vote-by-mail law, explained.

• Zoë Richards: Dems accuse Trump-allied postmaster of 'sabotage' amid election mail delay.

• Laurence H Tribe/Jennifer Taub/Joshua A Geltzer: Trump has launched a three-pronged attack on the election: "And it starts with undermining the US Postal Service."

• Libby Watson: The anti-election party: "Trump's threat to delay the election over mail-in ballots is consistent with decades of anti-voter campaigns by the GOP."

Shirin Ghaffary:

• Facebook took down a Trump post for the first time. Trump claimed that "children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease [Covid-19]." Not true, and dangerously so, but Trump got to play the victim, as one of his flacks put it: "Another day, another display of Silicon Valley's flagrant bias against this President, where the rule are only enforced in one direction."

  For years, Trump has made false claims on Facebook; in recent months, he has made incorrect statements about topics such as mail-in voting and former Vice President Joe Biden's platform on policing. Independent fact-checkers that are part of Facebook's fact-checking network have flagged these posts as incorrect on their own sites, but Facebook has not labeled them as such on its platform because its rules exempt politicians from being fact-checked. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that he does not want his company to be an "arbiter of truth" and that the company does not fact-check political speech.

• Trump issued an executive order effectively banning TikTok if it doesn't sell in the next 45 days. Also:

  • Jay Greene: The real reason Microsoft wants to buy TikTok.

  • Rebecca Leber: Could Trump have another reason for banning TikTok?: "Hundreds of TikTok teens pranked the campaign by registering for the free tickets to his Tulsa rally with no intention of showing up."

  • Branko Marcetic: Silicon Valley's vast data collection should worry you more than TikTok. "We should be finding ways to protect privacy and free speech from governments and corporations everywhere -- including our own."

  • Harold Meyerson: Trump and TikTok: Where's my cut?

  • Terry Schwadron: What in the world is Trump trying to do with TikTok?

Susan B Glasser: "Mr President, what are your priorities?" is not a tough question: "Trump is running for reëlection, but, unlike four years ago, he can't even say why." Reduced to red hat slogans, he wants to keep America as great as it became the moment he was elected and inaugurated in 2017, which by definition will cover four more years. Why can't people grasp that? I mean, aside from the fact that none of the people are Donald J Trump?

Trump's vapid answer is more than a reflection of a political-messaging dilemma -- it's a sign of decline, both in terms of the President's ability to respond cogently to a simple query and as a warning for American democracy, given that such a large segment of the electorate apparently finds it acceptable to support a leader whose only campaign selling point is himself. Is Trump's inability to come up with something to say about the next four years a reflection of the fact that even he thinks he is going to lose? Perhaps, but it's also a measure of how far Trump has descended into full "l'état, c'est moi"-ism. Running for reëlection without offering even a hint of a program is a sure indicator of at least aspirational authoritarianism.

John F Harris: Donald Trump has the sole authority to blow up the world. It is madness to let him keep it. Madness to give any president solo authority, much less one who seems incapable of understanding what nuclear weapons can do, yet who seems fascinated with finding out. Thought about filing this under Hiroshima (below), but decided this is a current issue, not history. One thing that keeps is current is how completely Trump has dismantled arms limitation treaties with Russia. Also how he's approved the plan to spend a trillion dollars rebuilding America's nuclear arsenal. I sometimes wonder what else Trump can do to destroy the country before leaving office, and this is high on the list.

Kaleem Hawa: Present absences: Review of Rashid Khalidi's new book, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, selecting the Balfour Declaration as his arbitrary starting point, no doubt cognizant that the "war" isn't over at a mere century.

Jacob Heilbrunn: Why the United States invaded Iraq: Review of Robert Draper's new book, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq. Seems like there should be more here on Afghanistan, but for Bush, Cheney, et al., war with Iraq was predetermined, and if anything Afghanistan just slowed them down a bit. One thing here I previously missed was the 1998 "Rumsfeld Commission," where Congress gave "Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other hawks . . . a high-profile platform" to fantasize about and play up the Iraqi threat. Draper also "presents the former CIA director George Tenet in a particularly unflattering light, suggesting that he made up for his frustrations with Bill Clinton by excess ("slam dunk") enthusiasm for GW Bush.

If Draper expertly dissects the ferocious turf battles that took place within the administration over the war, he does not really seek to set it in a wider context other than to note rather benignly that "the story I aim to tell is very much a human narrative of patriotic men and women who, in the wake of a nightmare, pursued that most elusive of dreams: finding peace through war." But there was more to it than that. Thanks to Donald Trump's bungling, Bush may be benefiting from a wave of nostalgia for his presidency. But he was criminally culpable in his naïveté and incuriosity about the costs and consequences of war. At the same time, Cheney and Rumsfeld were inveterate schemers whose cynicism about going to war was exceeded only by their ineptitude in conducting it.

Sean Illing:

• Masha Gessen on American politics after the death of "truth": Interview with the author of Surviving Autocracy, a Russian expat who's written a lot on Vladimir Putin and Russia's "Mafia state."

• How Trump should change the way journalists understand "objectivity": Interview with Tom Rosenstiel.

Alex Isenstadt: Trump antagonizes GOP megadonor Adelson in heated phone call.

Derrick Johnson: Voter suppression is back, 55 years after the Voting Rights Act.

Fred Kaplan:

• Trump's latest move at the Pentagon is brazenly unlawful: Giving Anthony Tata the job of Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (you remember, the job in 2003 filled by "dumbest fucking person on earth" Douglas Feith), without getting Senate approval..

• Trump's troop tantrum: "There's no strategy behind the decision to withdraw US troops from Germany. It's about the president's anger and ego."

Roge Karma: How cities can tackle violent crime without relying on police: Interview with Patrick Sharkey, author of Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence.

Isabel Kershner/Pam Belluck: When Covid subsided, Israel reopened its schools. It didn't go well.

Ezra Klein: How inequality is changing the Republican Party -- and breaking American politics. Review of Jacob S Hacker/Paul Pierson: Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Economic Inequality. I read the book recently, and recommend it. More on this book:

• Henry Farrell: Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson - Let Them Eat Tweets.

Hiroki Kobayashi: The elusive horror of Hiroshima: It's the 75th anniversary of our rude awakening to the atomic age. This refers back to John Hersey's early reporting of the bomb's devastation -- you can read Hersey's classic report here. I previously wrote about Hiroshima and Nagasaki on their 70th anniversary: Thinking about the unthinkable. I also wrote an earlier piece in the August 6, 2005 notebook. Some more on Hiroshima:

• Gar Alperovitz: The war was won before Hiroshima -- and the generals who dropped the bomb knew it. Article from 2015, no less timely now. Alperovitz first wrote about this in his 1965 book: Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation With Soviet Power. More recently, Alperovitz and Martin Sherman wrote: Dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary.

• Andrew J Bacevich: 75 years after Hiroshima, time to give Dr. Strangelove his walking papers: "Even if the bombing was not a criminal act, the modernization of the US nuclear arsenal qualifies as madness."

• Jack Gilroy: Hiroshma and Nagasaki as collateral damage.

• Fred Kaplan: Sleepwalking into the atomic age: "The decision to bomb Hiroshima wasn't a decision at all." Basically what I think, although I haven't had time to read this closely. It's interesting that some scientists do actually seem to have understood what they were opening up, but no way someone like Harry Truman did. His "decision" was driven by inertia, and rationalized well after the fact. Of course, his rationalizations weren't very good, or very helpful.

• Peter Kuznick: Truman's 'human sacrifice' to subdue Moscow. This is one of a dozen articles collectively titled Atomic Bombings at 75.

• Ralph Raico: Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Excerpt from Raico's essay on Harry Truman in John V Denson, ed: Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom.

• Richard J Samuels: Why the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan: This piece doesn't even try to answer that question, but in reviewing Marc Gallicchio's book, Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II, it suggests that even before the end of the US-Soviet alliance in WWII the Cold War was developing in Washington, largely fueled by Republicans who saw red baiting as a way to battle back against New Deal reforms. The book no doubt has more on the internal discussions on surrender. In the end, the US backed away from its unconditional surrender demand and allowed Emperor Hirohito to be spared. Had that allowance been communicated earlier, it's possible that the war could have ended before the atom bombs were dropped, and before the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and fatefully invaded Manchuria and Korea, but no one was operating with a clear understanding of the other. That's usually the case in war.

• Elaine Scarry: Memorial days: The racial underpinnings of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

• Brett Wilkins: Nuclear war or invasion: The false dichotomy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Zack Kopplin: How Mike Pompeo built a blood-for-oil pipeline: "The State Department, a conservative-connected shell company, and a key Kurdish crime family team up to siphon Syrian oil for US investors."

Josh Kovensky: NRA looted its Foundation to cover cash hemorrhage, DC AG alleges.

Michael Krimmage/Matthew Rojansky: The problem with Putinology: "We need a new kind of writing about Russia." Primarily a review of Catherine Belton's Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West, which exemplifies the "old kind of writing," which trades in paranoia over Russia's evil designs to cripple and dominate the West -- easy enough to sell in America given the legacy and continuing hegemony of Cold War propaganda. The authors counter some of this, but don't go very far -- they certainly don't want to be dismissed as pro-Putin. It's easy for us to be critical of Putin, but we forget what a disaster Russia faced in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin. With the old regime discredited, Yeltsin turned state-owned enterprises over to a set of underworld figures who emerged as more-or-less criminal oligarchs. Putin's principal task was the bring the oligarchs back from anarchy, which he did in classic Mafia manner by becoming capo di tutti capi. He wrapped his move by playing up nationalism, but he's more often been a limit against the ultra-nationalist opposition, which really does want to restore Russia's imperial greatness by recovering the periphery lost in 1991. He's also embraced the usual center-right power bases, like the church and the military. And he hasn't always respected the tenets of liberal democracy, but that's partly because they've never really taken root in Russia, and also because the left has never been able to form a credible opposition to Putin (remnants of the Communist Party are so wrapped up in nostalgia that they often wind up to Putin's right). Of course, America doesn't really care about Putin strong-arming his opponents -- even the tiny slice devoted to America's vision of neoliberalism. Rather, they cannot abide Russia doing business with countries on America's shit list, like Syria, Iran, and Venezuela. The fact is that Russia has few opportunities to form bonds abroad, and standing up to American bullying is still a popular stance in Russia. This situation only gets worse as American foreign policy gets ever more self-centered and myopic -- a trend that Trump has added a few new twists to but has been the rule since GW Bush decided to lead his Global War on Terror. The art to diplomacy is the ability to see what's important to the other side, and compromises which deliver more than half a loaf to both sides. Simply demanding that the other side bow over and submit has never worked very well (or for very long), and is even more ridiculous given America's declining stature with the rest of the world. A positive step here would be to start showing some respect for Putin, which doesn't necessarily mean glossing over his crimes, just putting them in context.

Anita Kumar: 'She is absolutely our No. 1 draft pick': GOP pines for Rice as Biden VP. Hoping not to do a VP cluster this week, but must reiterate that Rice would be a really poor choice. PS: Mine is not the only such opinion:

• Walker Bragman: Democratic VP candidate Susan Rice has made a lot of money on fossil fuel investment. Looks like for someone who's sole claim to fame has been a few years in civil service, she's made a lot of money period -- estimates herein "between $23.5 million and $43.5 million." Rice, by the way, is not unique. See Jonathan Guyer: How Biden's foreign-policy team got rich. Evidently there's good money in being a "strategic consultant" for the capitalist side of the still-raging Cold War.

• Bob Brigham: Susan Rice divests of Netflix stock options as vice presidential speculation swirls: Meaning that she exercised her options, and sold the stock at a tidy profit of $300,000.

• Harold Meyerson: Will Susan Rice bring even one more vote to the Biden ticket? "No." Meyerson spends much of this article comparing Rice to Karen Bass, also in the VP name pool. He wrote more about Bass in The movement activist as Vice President.

• Alexander Sammon: Susan Rice has a disclosure problem. "Rice is almost certainly richer now than she was in 2009, though we don't know where that wealth is coming from."

Daniel Larison: The Jakarta method: How the US used mass murder to beat Communism: Review of Vincent Bevins' book, The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. Aside from the brutal wars in Korea and Vietnam, and I suppose in Afghanistan and Iraq, I've long felt that Indonesia's anti-communist purge in 1965-66 was the single most reprehensible event in American foreign policy.

David Leonhardt: The unique US failure to control the virus: "Slowing the coronavirus has been especially difficult for the United States because of its tradition of prioritizing individualism and missteps by the Trump administration." Also of prioritizing business over all other aspects of human life.

Nancy LeTourneau:

• Trump's latest attack on Biden: Photoshops and cheap shots.

• David Brooks wants a nicer, more competent form of Trumpism. I for one don't care what Brooks thinks, but I will jump off from this Brooks quote:

  Bannon and Trump got the emotions right. They understood that Republican voters were no longer motivated by a sense of hope and opportunity; they were motivated by a sense of menace, resentment and fear. At base, many Republicans felt they were being purged from their own country -- by the educated elite, by multiculturalism, by militant secularism. . . . It would have been interesting if Trump had governed as a big-government populist. But he tossed Bannon out and handed power to Jared Kushner and a bunch of old men locked in the Reagan paradigm. We got bigotry, incompetence and tax cuts for the wealthy.

  Of course, Trump to offer Republican populists, beyond his own emotions as someone as hated and degraded by those elites as was his base -- yet that never came off as sympathy, only as more rage. As for the post-Trump Party, Brooks suggests building on these "core assumptions":

  1. Everything is not okay. The free market is not working well.
  2. Economic libertarianism is not the answer. Free markets alone won't solve our problems.
  3. The working class is the heart of the Republican Party.
  4. China changes everything.
  5. The managerial class betrays America.

  When I read that list, the answer is pretty simple: put workers in charge of US companies. Worker-owned companies aren't going to ship jobs overseas. Worker-owned companies aren't going to strip assets for short-term gain. Workers who own companies will support their communities, and their nation. And when workers own companies, the managerial class will work for them. Nothing else satisfies these concerns as simply and elegantly. Well, aside from China: not sure that anyone understands what that point means.

Eric Levitz: David Shor's unified theory of American politics. He's obviously a very smart guy who's been paid by Democrats to think about how to win elections for the last decade, and he's come up with insights that are uncomfortable to everyone. One thing that occurred to me in his bit on the Obama-to-Trump voters is that while he's probably right that race was the determining factor, one should consider the different ways the two candidates affected thinking on race. Obama was very conciliatory, which encouraged white voters to credit themselves for rising above the race question. Trump, on the other hand, gave white voters reason to feel good about themselves even if they were racist, which it turns out many still were. But Trump's also allowed super-racists to thrive, and maybe that's starting to make the fence-sitters a bit nervous. All through the interview, Shor is very critical of people who develop any consistent sort of ideology, which includes most Democratic politicians, their campaign staffs, and their donors (even rich ones). His advice: "you should talk about popular issues, and not talk about unpopular ones." And do the research to tell one from the other, rather than just following your instinct. Here's an interesting quote:

So I think people underestimate Democrats' openness to left-wing policies that won't cost them elections. And there are a lot of radical, left-wing policies that are genuinely very popular. Codetermination is popular. A job guarantee is popular. Large minimum-wage increases are popular and could literally end market poverty.

All these things will engender opposition from capital. But if you focus on the popular things, and manage to build positive earned media around those things, then you can convince Democrats to do them. So we should be asking ourselves, "What is the maximally radical thing that can get past Joe Manchin." And that's like a really depressing optimization problem. And it's one that most leftists don't even want to approach, but they should. There's a wide spectrum of possibilities for what could happen the next time Democrats take power, and if we don't come in with clear thinking and realistic demands, we could end up getting rolled.

Amanda Marcotte: Right-wing conspiracy theorists get (even more) unhinged as Trump's chances fade: "With QAnon on the rise, Alex Jones tells his fans to 'kill' progressives: Trump Nation is going full cuckoo."

Terrence McCoy: Last year's Amazon fires stirred international outrage. This year's dry season has started out worse.

Alexa Mikhail/Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff/Joel Jacobs: After hundreds of covid-19 deaths in state-run veterans homes, lawmakers press VA to adhere to science. I should mention again that my cousin was one of the victims in a VA facility in Oklahoma.

Nicole Narea: Trump's latest plan to use the census for political gain, explained. As they note, "more than a third of all US coronavirus cases occurred in July."

Michael T Osterholm/Neel Kashkari: Here's how to crush the virus until vaccines arrive: "To save lives, and save the economy, we need another lockdown."

JC Pan: The pandemic benefit seems so great because actual wages are insanely low.

Kim Phillips-Fein: Rethinking the solution to New York's fiscal crisis.

Wendell Potter: The health care scare: "I sold Americans a lie about Canadian medicine. Now we're paying the price."

David Roberts: How to drive fossil fuels out of the US economy, quickly.

Aaron Rupar:

• Trump still thinks schools should reopen because Covid-19 "will go away." Really.

• "They are dying. That's true. It is what it is." Trump's Axios interview was a disaster. Subheds:

  • Trump's coronavirus comments continue to be an embarrassment
  • Trump's race relations remarks pour fuel on the fire

John Quiggin: The end of interest: This is interesting:

Amid all the strange, alarming and exciting things that have happened lately, the fact that real long-term (30-year) interest rates have fallen below zero has been largely overlooked. Yet this is the end of capitalism, at least as it has traditionally been understood. Interest is the pure form of return to capital, excluding any return to monopoly power, corporate control, managerial skills or compensation for risk.

If there is no real return to capital, then then there is no capitalism. In case it isn't obvious, I'll make the point in subsequent posts that there is no reason to expect the system that replaces capitalism (I'll call it plutocracy for the moment) to be an improvement.

I have two thoughts based on this. The first is a corollary, that if capitalism is dead, the free market will no longer be able to rebuild the economy. Therefore, government must step in, providing planning and finance (and possibly even direction) for new ventures. The nations of East Asia (most dramatically China) have been able to grow above market rates thanks to central economic planning, in contrast to the relatively anemic growth in the West, especially if you discount the excess wealth generated by monopolies, corporate predation, and asset inflation (which is what happens when the rich have more money than things to spend it on). The Green New Deal is certainly one way the government could force feed the economy, and thereby prop it up, but probably isn't in itself all that will be needed. Which leads to the second point, which is that we need to come up with a better alternative than plutocracy. Indeed, we're far enough into plutocracy now that it's more properly seen as a problem, not a solution. But if Quiggin wants to scare people, sure, feel free to point out where that road heads.

William K Rashbaum/Benjamin Weiser: DA is investigating Trump and his company over fraud, filing suggests.

Jeffrey D Sachs: America's unholy crusade against China: Reaction to Mike Pompeo's big China speech -- "inflammatory anti-China rhetoric could become even more apocalyptic in the coming weeks, if only to fire up the Republican base ahead of the election" -- not sure why he focuses so much on evangelicals:

According to Pompeo, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China (CPC) harbor a "decades-long desire for global hegemony." This is ironic. Only one country -- the US -- has a defense strategy calling for it to be the "preeminent military power in the world," with "favorable regional balances of power in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere." China's defense white paper, by contrast, states that "China will never follow the beaten track of big powers in seeking hegemony," and that, "As economic globalization, the information society, and cultural diversification develop in an increasingly multi-polar world, peace, development, and win-win cooperation remain the irreversible trends of the times."

More on China (for pieces on TikTok, see Shirin Ghaffery above):

• Doug Bandow: Let's face it, China is its own worst enemy: "Much like Trump, Xi's grand ambitions are checked by his inability to make friends." Bandow is a libertarian (Cato Institute) critic of American foreign policy, so so he avoids most of the usual Washington clichés. Still, he comes up with a long list of ways Xi's instincts to fight back and bully at every slight has hurt China's business relations.

Claudia Sahm: Economics is a disgrace.

Dylan Scott:

• Covid-19 is pushing red states to finally expand Medicaid. Missouri voters passed a ballot initiative on Tuesday to do so. Oklahoma also did so earlier this year. I have no doubt such an initiative would pass in Kansas if given the chance. The Kansas legislature seemed likely to pass it earlier this year, before Susan Wagle derailed it with some procedural trickery.

• Alabama's and Mississippi's troubling Covid-19 curves, briefly explained.

Steven Shepard: Kobach and Clay go down: Takeaways from a big primary night: Primaries in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Washington, and Tennessee. In Kansas Republican Senate primary, Roger Marshall beat Kris Kobach 39.41% to 25.68%, with Bob Hamilton at 18.34% and Wichita Eagle-endorsed David Lindstrom in 4th with 6.33%. Kobach barely won the governor primary in 2018 then lost, so he's increasingly viewed as a loser as well as a lunatic. Lacy Clay (D-MO), who's always struck me as a pretty progressive Congressman, lost to Cori Bush, who promises to be even better. Another incumbent, Steve Watkins (R-KS), recently indicted, lost his primary. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) faced a well-financed opponent she had barely won over in 2018, and won 66.27% to 33.73%. The biggest piece of election news was Missouri voting in favor of Medicaid expansion. Article doesn't have any "takeaways" from Tennessee (which voted later), where Trump-endorsed Bill Hagerty appears to have won the Republican Senate nomination. Related:

• Fernanda Echavarri: Joe Arpaio loses bid for his old job, just barely.

• Nancy LeTourneau: Medicaid expansion has passed every time it's been on the ballot.

• John Nichols: 2020 is a great year for #SquadPolitics. Just ask Cori Bush and Rashida Tlaib.

Alex Shephard:

• The Washington media is starting to treat Trump like a clown. It's been a long time coming. In some cases it's still overdue.

• The problem with MSNBC isn't that it's too liberal: "It's that it's not very good."

• Hugh Hewitt has always been a hack: "The pundit was never a rational, thoughtful conservative. He just played one on TV."

Richard Silverstein: Israel bombed Beirut:

A confidential highly-informed Israeli source has told me that Israel caused the massive explosion at the Beirut port earlier today which killed over 100 and injured thousands. The bombing also virtually leveled the port itself and caused massive damage throughout the city.

Israel targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot at the port and planned to destroy it with an explosive device. Tragically, Israeli intelligence did not perform due diligence on their target. Thus they did not know (or if they did know, they didn't care) that there were 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a next door warehouse. The explosion at the arms depot ignited the next door warehouse, causing the catastrophe that resulted. More on Beirut:

Silverstein followed this initial report with Ex-CIA analyst confirms Beirut blast initiated by "military munitions," Lebanese President to examine role of "external actors"; and Senior Israeli opposition leader: Hezbollah arms cache caused Beirut explosion. I should note that I haven't seen any corroboration of Silverstein's reports elsewhere. Israel has publicly denied its involvement, although they've frequently attacked alleged Hezbollah supplies and forces in Syria, waged a brutal war against Lebanon in 2006, and invaded Lebanon in 1982, not leaving until 2000. They still occupy a small patch of Lebanon, a major bone of contention with Hezbollah. Mainstream media sources have focused on the large store of ammonium nitrate, which came from an abandoned Russian ship, while claiming that the initial fire which ignited the larger explosion had something to do with fireworks. As the articles below note, Lebanon has been struggling for some time, and there is a lot of pent-up resentment against the long-ruling cliques. There were popular demonstrations against the government over a year ago, and they have flared up again.

• Zeeshan Allem: Thousands of protesters in Beirut call for "the fall of the regime" in the wake of the blast.

• Kim Ghattas: Lebanon is no stranger to disaster -- but this is like nothing we've ever seen.

• Declan Walsh/Andrew Higgins: Blame for Beirut explosion begins with a leaky, troubled ship.

• Alex Ward: Lebanon was already in crisis. Then came the Beirut explosion.. Also: What Lebanon needs to recover from the explosion.

• Robin Wright: After twin explosions, an "apocalypse" in Lebanon.

• The Beirut explosion in photos.

Jeffrey Toobin: It really is time to get rid of the filibuster.

Lucian K Truscott IV: Let's remember that long with everything else, Donald Trump's a total pig. Pic here of a much younger Trump with his old buddy, Jeffrey Epstein.

Chris Walker: Students suspended for taking pictures of crowds in Georgia school's reopening: This is the "cancel culture" I remember from the 1950s. PS: 9 people test positive for coronavirus at Georgia school that went viral for crowded photo.

Sean Wilentz: What Tom Cotton gets so wrong about slavery and the constitution: It was the Arkansas Republican Senator to called slavery "a necessary evil upon which the union was built" -- not the founders he cites. See Bryan Armen Graham: Tom Cotton calls slavery 'necessary evil' in attack on New York Times' 1619 Project. Note that Cotton is not only asserting his own views, he's trying to suppress the views of others: specifically, historians who have attempted to document the long and disgraceful history of slavery and racism in the United States.

Matthew Yglesias:

• Trump's tweets about saving the "Suburban Lifestyle Dream," explained. Related:

  • Peter Dreier: Trump's racist appeal to the suburbs is backfiring.

• America needs a bar and restaurant bailout.

Li Zhou/Ella Nilsen: Why Republicans are dragging their feet on more stimulus. Now that the stock market has recovered, and the rich are richer than ever, their job is done. Sure, they still would like to get lawsuit immunity for businesses. But fuck everyone else. Note: The first group of pieces date from earlier in the week, before Trump punted with his executive orders. I've put them first, then reports on the executive orders and the reaction in a second block.

• Paul Krugman: Coming next: The greater recession, and The unemployed stare into the abyss. Republicans look away. "The cruelty and ignorance of Trump and his allies are creating another gratuitous disaster."

• Martin Longman: Pelosi's in the catbird seat on Covid-19 stimulus negotiations.

Then on Saturday, Trump broke off negotiations and signed his orders. They are a purely political ploy: a way to claim he's doing something without delivering much of anything. They are a "free lunch," as in "there's no such thing as a free lunch":

• Zeeshan Aleem: Trump just signed 4 executive orders providing coronavirus relief. It's not clear if they're all legal. Also: Democrats call Trump's coronavirus relief orders "paltry" and "absurdly unconstitutional".

• Summer Concepcion: Mnuchin: Dems have 'a lot of explaining to do' if they challenge Trump EOs in court. That's a pretty clear admission that the executive orders were designed as political traps. Concepcion also wrote: Navarro defends Trump sidelining relief talks: 'The Lord and founding fathers created EOs'.

• Cydney Hargis: Sunday show coverage of Covid-19 relief negotiations was again filled with false equivalency.

• Josh Marshall: Gold. Pure Gold.:

  This is terrible policy. But it's political gold for Democrats. I mean, this is a classic Trumpian gambit. I'm giving you money to help out. But actually you have to pay me back after you reelect me. And if Trump isn't reelected, what does he care? It becomes a landmine for Joe Biden who has to oversee collecting the money that workers effectively borrowed without knowing it. This is actually the kind of bait and switch Trump has been known for his whole life.

• Caitlin Oprysko/Evan Semones: Trump announces executive actions after stimulus talks broke down. The first part is his "payroll tax holiday." Not clear what right he has to do any of this, let alone where the money will come from, and doubtful any of it will hold up to a court challenge, but for Trump there is no long term past November.

  Trump laid out four actions that he said would cut taxes for workers through the end of the year, extend unemployment benefits but at a reduced rate, renew a moratorium on evictions during the pandemic, and defer student loan payments and interest until the end of the year.

  Rep. Ayanna Pressley's reaction to these executive orders:

  Don't let the occupant of the White House distract you.

  He just unilaterally cut Social Security and your unemployment benefits. In the middle of a pandemic.

  As if to underscore Pressley's point, see Tony Romm: Trump promises permanent cut to payroll tax funding Social Security and Medicare if he's reelected. Romm also wrote, with Erica Werner/Jeff Stein: Trump's executive orders spark confusion among businesses and state officials as Democrats assail them as 'unworkable'.

• Jon Queally: Warren denounces Trump's executive orders as "cruel joke" on the American people.

• Jim Tankersley: Trump's go-it-alone stimulus won't do much to lift the recovery.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

August archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 33729 [33697] rated (+32), 223 [220] unrated (+3).

After a month-plus of regularly hitting 40+ records per week, my energy and/or patience flagged last week. I started most days with something from the travel cases, or Tougher Than Tough: The Story of Jamaican Music (long out of sight, found it on a top shelf up stairs, along with Fats Waller's If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It box. Didn't unpack until Monday, and spent the rest of the day muddling through metacritic lists. After that, didn't feel like writing anything, so put that off a day. Still don't, but will try to touch a few bases.

As I noted in the intro to Weekend Roundup, my cousin Duan Stiner caught Covid-19 and died last week, three days shy of 93. He had been living in a VA facility northeast of Tulsa for two years. Although "locked down" in March, the disease got in and decimated the population. Last time I visited was shortly after he moved there. I can't say as I was particularly pleased with the place, but his daughters were upbeat, and visited him virtually every day (until March). It was a sad end to a long life of hard work and good humor. I've been missing him for a while already.

Duan was just one of several older relatives who have faced a lot of hardship this year. Another cousin, Chloe McCandlis, died in February. Others are ill or struggling, and even those who are getting by are finding 2020 to be an especially difficult year to be old in. I haven't traveled since my trip to see Duan in Oklahoma, and I'm not likely to for the foreseeable future, so I'm feeling especially helpless and useless these days.

A friend here in Wichita, Don Bass, also died, and we just heard that another is in the hospital.

In music, I should mention that Sean Tyla (73) died. He was the leader of the seminal pub rock band Ducks Deluxe, which recorded two albums 1974-75. Both records were personal favorites, with the second (Taxi to the Terminal Zone) the namesake for the short-lived magazine Don Malcolm and I published in 1977. Worth noting that I much preferred the UK version of their eponymous debut: there were two jazzy pieces that made much more sense in context than moved to weaken the second side of RCA's US release. They exemplified everything I loved in rock & roll. For the moment, I harbored the idea that the past of rock & roll might be its future. Of course, a couple years later the future did arrive, and it was something else.

When Ducks Deluxe broke up, Tyla carried on as the Tyla Gang, while other band members joined the Motors and the Rumour (Graham Parker's backup band, but they also recorded without Parker). I enjoyed his first title (Yachtless), but nothing else he did made much of an impression.

Best source for new records this week has been Bandcamp Daily, but I also tried picking off some of the higher ranking metacritic titles (link above). Also scanned Phil Overeem's July list, slimmed down and slightly annotated. The grade change came after receiving a CD, which certainly helped.

One question in the queue. Feel free to ask more.

New records reviewed this week:

The 1975: Notes on a Conditional Form (2020, Dirty Hit): British group, fourth album since 2013, eponymous debut opened at number one on UK charts, other three albums also cracked top five in US. Starts with soft electronics framing a Greta Thunberg message ("Either we prevent a 1.5 degree of warming, or we don't/ Either we avoid setting off that irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, or we don't/ Either we choose to go on as a civilization, or we don't"), then the band breaks out like the Clash ("Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!"). Of course, they aren't the Clash, so the remaining 73 minutes is filled with their usual postmodern pop, though not without occasional interest. B+(***)

Arca: @@@@@ (2020, XL): I ignored this when it came, out, seeing it flagged as a "single." Indeed, a single track, but 62 minutes, as jumbled at a typical album. B+(*)

Armand Hammer: Shrines (2020, Backwoodz Studioz): New York hip-hop duo, rapper Billy Woods and producer Elucid, fourth album. Pretty sharp. B+(***) [bc]

The Beths: Jump Rope Gazers (2020, Carpark): Alt/indie band from New Zealand, second album, harmony voices led by Elizabeth Stokes, guitar-bass-drums. B+(*)

Boldy James & the Alchemist: The Price of Tea in China (2020, ALC/Boldy James): Rapper James Jones III, born in Atlanta, grew up in Detroit, second album, both with Daniel Maman co-writing and producing. B+(***)

Lisa Cameron/Tom Carter/Ingebrigt Håker Flaten: Tau Ceti (2019 [2020], Astral Spirits): Last names only on cover, no instrument credits, but figure drums-guitar-bass, split between an "acoustic side," which feels like treading water, and an "electric side," which raises the ante. B+(*) [bc]

Crazy Doberman: Illusory Expansion (2019 [2020], Astral Spirits): Collective improv group, has recorded extensively since 2017 (or, as Doberman, 2014). This, which lists 16 musicians, is the first on a label I've heard of. Mix of industrial ambient and free jazz. B+(*) [bc]

Falkner Evans: Marbles (2019 [2020], CAP): Pianist, based in New York, handful of albums since 2001, aims big here with a sextet -- Michael Blake and Ted Nash (saxes), Ron Horton (trumpet), bass, and drums -- plus vibes (Steve Nelson) on three cuts. All originals, elegant postbop. B+(**) [cd]

John Fedchock NY Sextet: Into the Shadows (2019 [2020], Summit): Trombonist, probably best known for his big bands, scales down nicely, with Scott Wendholt (trumpet) and Walt Weiskopf (tenor sax), plus piano-bass-drums. B+(**) [cd]

Sue Anne Gershenzon: You Must Believe in Spring (2020, self-released): Standards singer, seems to be her first album, support includes Joel Frahm (tenor sax) and Ryan Keberle (trombone), a pianist-arranger hard on my eyes (Glafkos Kontemeniotis?), and occasional strings. Nice take on title track. B [cd]

Kate NV: Room for the Moon (2020, RVNG Intl): Russian singer-songwriter, Ekaterina Shilonosova, from Kazan, singer in the postpunk band Glintshake, third solo album. Electronics and voice, "conjured from unlived memories of 70s and 80s Russian and Japanese pop music and film." Pretty delightful combination. A-

Keys & Screws [Thomas Borgmann/Jan Roder/Willi Kellers]: Some More Jazz (2017 [2020], NoBusiness): Sax-bass-drums trio, leader playing tenor and soprano, also "toy-melodica." Nice, edgy free jazz, backing smartly away from the abyss. A- [cdr]

David Krakauer & Kathleeen Tagg: Breath & Hammer (2020, Table Pounding): Clarinet player (also bass clarinet), klezmer specialist (1995 debut was Klezmer Madness), duets with piano, although pieces are built up in layers to form a "piano orchestra." B+(**) [bc]

Lianne La Havas: Lianne La Havas (2020, Nonesuch): British singer-songwriter, third album, Matthew Hales shares most writing credits, the only cover song from Radiohead. B+(*)

Jessy Lanza: All the Time (2020, Hyperdub): Canadian electropop singer-songwriter, third album. B+(*)

Mako Sica/Hamid Drake: Balancing Tear (2020, Astral Spirits): Chicago group, dates from 2008 with Przemyslaw Krys Drazek (trumpet, guitar), Brent Fuscaldo (voice, electric bass, classical guitar, harmonica, percussion), and Chaetan Newell (keyboards, cello, viola, drums, ukulele, upright bass), plus the guest drummer. Group has rock roots, but vocals are atrophied, and they more properly belong in some kind of post-rock orbit. B+(*) [bc]

Protomartyr: Ultimate Success Today (2020, Domino): Detroit band, Joe Casey the singer, backed with guitar-bass-drums, plus the occasional guest -- two names that jump out at me are Jemeel Moondoc (alto sax) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello), avant-jazz guys. Fifth album, always solid. B+(**)

Jason Robinson & Eric Hofbauer: Two Hours Early, Ten Minutes Late: Duo Music of Ken Aldcroft (2018 [2020], Accretions): Aldcroft was a Toronto guitarist, died at 46 in 2016, left a pretty scattered legacy, ranging from AIMToronto to his Hat & Beard duo. I don't see a direct connection to the two Americans playing these duets -- tenor sax and guitar -- but they have a disjointed, somewhat Monkian aspect. B+(**) [cd]

Christian Rønn/Aram Shelton: Multiring (2018 [2020], Astral Spirits): Danish keyboard player, doesn't really seem to be a jazz guy -- 6 years studying church organ, with sides in electronic music, ambient drone, microtonal composition, and soundtracks -- provides an engaging counterpoint for the latter's alto sax. B+(**) [bc]

Benny Rubin Jr. Quartet: Know Say or See (2019 [2020], Benny Jr. Music): Saxophonist (tenor/alto), from Flint, MI; second album, quartet with piano-bass-drums, hard bop with harder leads. B+(***) [cdr]

Andy Shauf: The Neon Skyline (2020, Anti-): Canadian singer-songwriter, sixth album since 2006. B+(**)

Sparks: A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip (2020, BMG): Brothers Ron and Russell Mael, new wave pop band from Los Angeles, released their debut as Halfnelson in 1971, their best title in 1973 (A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing), then got picked up by Island for three albums. I was briefly infatuated with them, but quickly grew annoyed and held a long-term grudge as they've cranked out new albums every few years. This is their highest US chart since 1974's Propaganda. Still annoying. C+

Paul Weller: On Sunset (2020, Polydor): Singer-songwriter from England, led the Jam (1976-82) and the Style Council (1983-89), went solo with an eponymous album in 1992, 14 more studio albums since then -- all 15 charted in UK (debut peaked at 8, one 5, one 4, rest either 1 or 2), only one cracked the US charts (Sonik Kicks at 166 in 2012). B

Kamaal Williams: Wu Hen (2020, Black Focus): British keyboardist, second studio album under his own name, also has a DJ-Kicks mixtape, and several records as Henry Wu, something this title plays on. Saxophonist Quinn Mason lifts this out of its pop jazz groove, but without him it keeps sliding back. B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Doug Hammond/David Durrah/Charles Burnham: Reflections in the Sea of Nurnen (1975 [2020], Tribe): Drummer, sings some, first album, original cover listed eight musicians, Hammond and Durrah (keyboards) first, Burnham (violin) well down the list. B

Nkem Njoku & Ozzobia Brothers: Ozobia Special (1980s [2020], BBE): Igbo highlife, presumably from Nigeria, seems to be only album, leader sings, no one named Ozzobia (or Ozobia) in the credits. Draws on Ghanian highlife, touted as a classic album, not as slick as Lagos juju, but catchy as can be. A- [bc]

Shirley Scott: One for Me (1974 [2020], Arc): Organ player (1934-2002), known as "Queen of the Organ," 45 LPs starting with Great Scott! in 1958, slowed down after leaving Impulse! in 1967 and divorced Stanley Turrentine in 1971, recording this for Strata East. With Harold Vick (tenor sax, in fine form) and Billy Higgins (drums). B+(***) [bc]

Sleaford Mods: All That Glue (2013-20 [2020], Rough Trade): British duo, James Williamson and Andrew Fearn, spoken word over punkish strum and drums, got noticed for their working class rage, their biggest hit last year's Eton Alive. They cash in here with a compilation of odds and sods ("a collection of songs spanning the last seven years of the bands career"). Unsure of dates, but most that I can pin down were 2013-15 singles. Good to hear them angry again. B+(***)

Luiz Carlos Vinhas: O Som Psicodélico De L.C.V. (1968 [2020], Mad About): Brazilian pianist, made his mark in bossa nova from 1963, takes a stab at psychedelica here. B+(*) [bc]

Old music:

Kate NV: Binasu (2017, Orange Milk): First album, shows considerable pop sense. B+(***)

Kate NV: For (2018, RVNG Intl): Half of album title, which like all ten songs is two 3-letter words, the second all caps in English, the first presumably Russian. Symmetry is the concept. The pieces are all instrumental, pretty minimal, and work as such. B+(*)

Annie Ross: Sings a Handful of Songs (1963, Everest): Singer was British, had joined Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks for their vocalese trio 1956-62, was back in London when she recorded this splashy set of standards with Johnny Spence & His Orchestra. B

Annie Ross & Pony Poindexter: Recorded at the Tenth German Jazz Festival in Frankfurt (1966, SABA): Credit (or title) continues: "With the Berlin All Stars Feat. Carmell Jones and Leo Wright." Poindexter plays alto/soprano sax and sings, Jones trumpet, Wright alto sax and flute, and the others (piano-guitar-bass-drums) are less stellar. Opens with Poindexter leading a Louis Jordan song, closes with Ross doing "Twisted." B+(*)

Grade (or other) changes:

Luís Lopes Humanization 4tet: Believe, Believe (2018 [2020], Clean Feed): Portuguese guitarist, group name from the title of a 2008 album, although the group is unchanged, and everyone writes: Rodrigo Amado (tenor sax), Aaron Gonzalez (bass), and Stefan Gonzalez (drums). Gets a little rough in spots, but the guitar is remarkable, and I always like Amado. [was: B+(***)] A- [cd]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Rez Abbasi: Django-shift (Whirlwind) [08-28]
• Tom Guarna: Spirit Science (Destiny) [09-18]
• Bob James: Once Upon a Time: The Lost 1965 New York Studio Sessions (1965, Resonance) [08-29]
• Eva Kess: Sternschnuppen: Falling Stars (Neuklang) [08-28]
• Roberto Magris: Suite! (JMood) [08-17]
• Raphaël Pannier Quartet: Faune (French Paradox) [08-21]
• Maria Schneider: Data Lords (ArtistShare, 2CD)
• Horace Tapscott With the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: Ancestral Echoes: The Covina Sessions, 1976 (Dark Tree)
• Matt Wilson Quartet: Hug! (Palmetto) [08-28]

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