The Debate Sucked But Doesn't Change The Stakes or Clear Choices in the Election

I didn't watch the debate tonight; I couldn't. I've avoided Biden video for awhile because it makes me worry about how old and frail he appears. And, more generally, I can't tolerate more than small doses of TV news anymore. It's ridiculous superficiality and reductive bothsidesing, rarely amounting to more than a headline and two or three vague bullet point factoids. 

Before I gave up cable a few years back, I watched a lot of MSNBC at the beginning of the Trump era, which is dismissed by conservatives as partisan TV news for liberal left Democrats, but was rarely liberal left enough for me and way too much of a kind of outrage porn. Every week for months, even years, we were kept on the edge of our seats anticipating some course correction by Republicans, finally the moral pivot we'd been waiting for. Repubs, we desperately hoped, would finally figure out Dump was bad news and a national security threat, obviously more interested in enriching himself than building a better future for America. A pivot that would never come to pass, sadly, barely a peep of country-over-party from the fake news MAGA Repugs in congress, then as today. 

Anyway, I finally had to give cable news up; probably not long after Biden won, like everyone else hoping the fascist crisis was over and I could return to my life. Too much doom hysteria. I'm not saying I'm above the TV news, or the 24/7 media environment, but actually as susceptible to it as anybody else. 

So I'm not insensitive to the power of the image and TV performance. I'm just too squeamish to take it in unfiltered. But based on Biden's recent SOTU speech, recent snippets of Dump's dead-end Vegas act at his rallies, and the last debate in 2020, I was reasonably hopeful about the debate, even if I couldn't stand watching it live. Regardless, according to my sources-- i.e., people who did watch the debate-- the consensus is Trump appeared strong and vital and Biden weak and very weak. The live blog commentary I refreshed incessantly for the duration of the debate created a cringingly bad image: Biden standing-in-place, lost, mumbling hoarsely, stammering confusedly, while Grump ran circles around him with relentless energy; Trump's unchecked lies in full effect. 

Of course the Repugs are now jubilant, Biden has at last been exposed as old and incompetent, as they've been trying to tar him with for months, but, additionally, and more concerning, I'm seeing all kinds of Dems that watched the debate, some of my most trusted sources, that in the aftermath of the debate were like, 'OMG, Biden's toast, he must resign immediately, and be replaced at the Democratic Convention,' like Ezra Klein was suggesting back in the spring. I can't say anything otherwise about the performances of the two candidates at the debate. But I can say I don't see how their relative performances, however bad they were, really changes anything about their contrasting positions on the political issues or the stakes those stark choices represent in the upcoming election. 

I know, issues are not the way normies choose a POTUS. They have to identify with the candidate, like they were buying a box of cereal. They vote for the political charisma; the candidates' media packaged persona. I'm sure this is broadly true but in the spirit of hoping significant margins of voters actually can understand the issues, i.e., discern some qualitative differences about the cereals inside the boxes, let's review a few of the most salient political issues at stake in the election: 

Women's rights. There is no grey area between the two candidates here. If you'd rather women, the individual woman, and pregnant women have the right to decide privately with their family and doctor what to do with their pregnancy, and would rather it not be left to some anti-abortion edict from the state, one that we can already see from documented evidence endangers the health of pregnant women, then you will vote for Biden, no matter how old he appears on TV. The Repugs on SCOTUS, that Dump put there, ended a women's right to choose with the Dobb's decision. And wherever they are in power they are trying to extend those restrictions to IVF, contraception, and by criminalizing reproductive health care as we speak. Any Repug vote at this point is a vote against basic women's rights and endangers women's reproductive health care.

Immigration. Biden recently implemented some executive order that reduced asylum seeking border crossings by 40%. The Democrats and a small handful of Republicans crafted a bipartisan bill to address the border and immigration "crisis" more comprehensively this past spring, reportedly, including numerous conservative priorities, but it was shot down by Trump because he was afraid the bill's effectiveness might reduce the border's value as a campaign issue. The southern border with Mexico really isn't about the Dems wanting "open borders" and only the Repubs wanting "secure borders," as Republicans like to frame it. It's really about one party, Dems, trying to reduce illegal immigration, and the other, Grump's MAGA Repugs, bragging about how they're going to throw a bunch of immigrants into concentration camps on day one of a second Dump term; by the millions, and then flying them back in army planes to where they came from, all paid for by Mexico, of course. The Republicans don't want to solve a border crisis. They want to abuse and do violence against immigrants. Takeaways: First, Trump is a sick humanitarian crime; fascist Nazi stuff. Second, any non-white or non-English speaking or non-Christian person should recognize this as preliminary to a bigot attack on them and should, of course, vote accordingly for Biden. And, third, any shocking, Big Bang, removal of labor on the scale trumpeted at Trump's rallies would be inflationary and likely catastrophic economically.  

Climate Change is obviously a thing, a very serious thing. We see the increase in extreme weather events around us, the devastation wrought by these events. We know we have to curb carbon emissions and transition our economy to sustainable energy sources. Biden, and the Dems, even if belatedly, have done more to address climate change than any admin before. Ever. By contrast, Grump talks about eliminating all environmental regulations and "drill baby drill," again, from day one. He is so extreme he warns of the dangers of EVs, electric motors, and windmills, like he used to bad mouth masks and vaccines. A vote for Biden continues to pressure the gov to support progressive reforms that effectively address climate change. A vote for Trump isolates the US and further endangers the planet. 

Economy. Dem admins have done considerably better than Repub ones on the economy for going on half a Century now but a conviction persists that the latter are better on the economy. As a friend frames it, the Repubs in power always find some way to screw up the economy and run up deficits and the Dems in power are left to invest in economic development and clean up the mess. More generally, business people prefer the way Republicans stick to Big Biz's free-market dogma. They still insist their tax cutting and deregulating policies are economically expansionary, even though the evidence piles up over the last four decades that they are not. But if you want the gov to protect worker's rights, to promote living wages and shared prosperity, to tax the rich fairly and promote sustainable economic growth, to curb corporate monopoly and reduce the cost of living for everyday Americans, or at least try to do these things, then again, however old and frail, you will vote for Biden, because that's what he's already been doing for going on four years now. Trump's economic model, by contrast, is crony capitalism and the rich-get-richer-while-the-poor-get-poorer, and only really benefits billionaires and conmen hustlers like him. That's it. In fact, if Dump's extreme plan for trade war tariffs and labor deportation were really enacted, as he promises and already alluded to, the economic impacts would be at best counter-productive and at worst catastrophic for the economy.  

Crime. Most absurd of all, at this point, is the claim the Republicans are the party of law and order. Their candidate is a convicted felon. He has been indicted for trying to overthrow the 2020 election by violent force. Hundreds of his followers, his disheveled Brown shirts, have already been found guilty of attacking the police and trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election. January 6, 2021 was obviously a failed attempt at "insurrection or rebellion," we all saw it on TV. If Trump were found guilty of instigating Jan 6 he would be in violation of the 14th Amd, Article 3, of the Constitution and disqualified from holding any office in the federal government. The effort of SCOTUS to delay this prosecution, rather than expedite it, or make the completion of his legal prosecution and due process verdict, a necessary prerequisite to his candidacy, is a colossal dereliction of duty and betrayal of the US Constitution. Conservatives hope instead, presumably, by delaying the legal process that he can be re-elected and thereby stop his prosecutions altogether (like Netanyahu in Israel). And more or less the same applies to Trump stealing boxes of top secret documents. Delaying his prosecution is a threat to US national security. Or his election interference in Georgia, or his fake elector scheme, or his cheating with Russia and Wikileaks in 2016. All these assaults on our free and fair elections and the failure to prosecute them constitute a Constitutional crisis. And if all this were not bad enough, the highest of high crimes, abetted by SCOTUS and corrupt elements in our legal system, MAGA Repugs promote and spread criminal violence, like nothing we've ever seen before. Trump inspires mass murderers and violent lunatics. And his MAGA minions spread domestic terrorism and death threats against public officials, public health professionals, public school officials, judges, election workers, you name it, like nothing before in American history. A vote for Trump is a vote for more criminal violence and conflict.  

And this list is leaving out or not giving due attention to foreign policy and other issues. Maybe Biden isn't doing enough to stop the violence in Gaza but Trump cheers on calls for more violence against civilian Palestinians. Of course, we want, like Biden, to ally with Europe and other democracies around the world, the United Nations, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and various peace treaties and international humanitarian law protecting human rights. Not the murderous dictators and dirty oligarchs and violent imperialists Trump pals with. And we want to protect the meager social safety net we have in this country, Social Security, Medicaid, and Obamacare, or affordable health care, that the Republicans wish to destroy. Again, I can't remember in my lifetime a starker choice between two candidates and their leadership. 

So maybe Trump looked like an activated Superhero and Biden a doddering Zombie at the debate. It doesn't really matter how strong Trump or how weak Biden appeared. A vote for Biden and the Democrats this fall is the vote for progress and a better future. A vote for Trump and the Republicans is a vote for more crime and more violence, more inequality and environmental destruction, more financial fraud, more sadistic bigotry and crony capitalist corruption. Whether Biden presides over his second term from a hospital bed or Kamala Harris has to finish his job this remains the case, the stakes, and the choices before us.  

Addendum: Well, surveying the morning-after postmortems I saw some clips of Biden on the Jon Stewart show. I can better appreciate now some of the panic responses. Biden has some frightening looking senior moments. HCR points out Biden was scoring points, evident in the transcripts, but what I heard was muffled and indecipherable. Word is Biden got stronger and Trump's lies more ragged, less poised. Some sources called the debate for Biden. Here's CNN's Daniel Dale's fact check on the debate and Heather Cox Richardson's take, making the case for Biden better than he can. 

CNN's Daniel Dale fact check's debate claims

Letters from an American, HCR

Oops, Biden's prep team, apparently, didn't get to this story from 2023 about Gish Gallop:

How To Beat Trump in a Debate? By Mehdi Hasan, The Atlantic

The NY Times Abridged Version of Recent Inflation

 As usual NY Times does a story about recent inflation without mentioning that it was global, or comparing the US inflation ride with the rest of the world's experience, and not a word about the many stories of corporations using the cover of post-pandemic supply-shock inflation (to be expected after any big disruption in global economic operations) to engage in price gouging and record making profiteering. Again, we're counting on the electorate being able to see through the fascist turn in corporate rule and the major media are NOT helping. Beware. 

Inflation's Wild Ride, NY Times

Yup-- The US Supreme Court just basically legalized bribery

Or, of course they did, since several of its members have already been taking such 'gifts' and 'gratuities', reportedly worth millions, for awhile now.  

Legalizing corruption at the Supreme Court, By Moira Donegan @ The Guardian

Russia and Conservative Economics Behind Why You Can't Buy a Car Right Now

Had to take my car in for service at a dealer the other day and found all the software systems were down and they were doing everything by pen and paper. The service guy said they'd been down for over a week and likely could be down for a few weeks more. A Russian hacker group called BlackSuit is behind the attack, apparently, it's nation wide, no doubt part of Russia's ongoing attack on our economy and elections, and also as it turns out part of the monopolizing private equity termite economics Matt Stoller has been chronicling for awhile now: 

Monopolization and vulnerabilities to hacking go together, because monopolies produce poor quality software. And that’s the story with CDK Global and Reynolds [the auto industry data software firms recently hacked and shutdown]. The whole crisis was avoidable, because there were possible entrants into the market that could have forced them to offer better software at cheaper prices. “Anybody who knows anything about the conduct of American business,” historian Richard Hofstadter noted in 1964, “knows that the managers of the large corporations do their business with one eye constantly cast over their shoulders at the antitrust division.”

That’s no longer true. And Wood and Easterbrook, dancing to the tune of Scalia, butchered antitrust law, which led to CDK Global’s investment in lawyers instead of quality assurance engineers. And so now people can’t buy cars.

Bigger backdrop to this monopolizing private equity nightmare we find ourselves in: 

Schumpeter hated antitrust law, arguing in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy that antitrust was foolish for two reasons. First, monopolists were inherently checked by the ever present potential of disruptive new technology. “A monopoly position is in general no cushion to sleep on,” he wrote, defending then-monopolist Alcoa in its ongoing antitrust litigation. “As it can be gained, so it can be retained only by alertness and energy.” And second, monopolies were the entities who delivered innovation precisely because their market power afforded them the luxury of long-term planning and investment. Big business is “the most powerful engine of progress… not only in spite of, but to a considerable extent through, this strategy which looks so restrictive when viewed in the individual case.”

The logic from Schumpeter to Trinko is direct. And yet, it’s also quite obviously wrong. From Boeing to Too Big to Fail banks, many examples, far beyond the CDK Global and Reynolds situation, where incumbents used their consolidated position to hinder innovation and lower quality, shows that Schumpeter’s thinking about commerce is both old and odd.

In other words, again, it is not the case that free markets, unfettered markets, maximize technological innovation but in fact in an effort to gain and secure market share often discourage or undermine innovation. 

A Conservative SCOTUS is why you can't buy a car right now, @ Big by Matt Stoller 

The Right Response to China's EV Subsidies

According to Gernot Wagner and Shang-Jin Wei, Economists at the Columbia Business School: 

Some of the Chinese government’s EV subsidies are justified, both on the supply and the demand sides. They can represent the best option for internalizing positive learning-by-doing and scale externalities, and for helping producers climb the learning curve and slide down the cost curve beyond what the market would deliver on its own. That is especially true for batteries, a key input in the EV supply chain. The patent system provides crucial incentives for private innovation, but it does so highly imperfectly. Research and development has positive social spillovers, making it deserving of taxpayers’ support. Targeted demand subsidies are similarly justified, because they speed up EV adoption, helped by positive learning-by-doing and network externalities. The latter calls for direct support for an increase in the number of charging stations, itself deserving of direct subsidies (though over time, policymakers should phase down subsidies and instead increase gasoline taxes). While the success of Chinese EVs has spooked Western car manufacturers, some of the pain is self-inflicted. Having bet on massive gas-guzzlers for too long, they delayed the all-but-inevitable switch to EVs. But that’s not all: Chinese EVs are cheaper for the same reason that most everything manufactured in China tends to be cheaper than American or European products. Introducing EV tariffs in response to intense lobbying by Western car manufacturers might make for good election-year politics. After all, taxing one’s own citizens – including via carbon taxes – is politically difficult, while “taxing” others is sometimes viewed more favorably, especially by those with lower trust in government. But while some tariffs, like Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), are eminently justifiable, because they specifically address the negative carbon externality, those aimed at Chinese EVs or other products such as solar panels, which are crucial for the global green transition, are not. A much better idea is to subsidize domestic manufacturing, an approach reflected in the US Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and in targeted EU subsidies. Some of these subsidies can be justified simply as a politically feasible, second-best alternative to carbon pricing, including as a stepping stone toward pricing policies.

The Right Response to China's EV Subsidies, Project Syndicate

Reggie Jackson on Playing Baseball in Alabama in the 1960s

Last Thursday, June 20, MLB held a game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, billed as the oldest professional ballpark in the US, between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals. The game was played to honor the recent passing of baseball great Willie Mays and the Negro League baseball that was once played at Rickwood. Reggie Jackson, along with other old baseball greats, spoke to the Fox Sports crew to honor Willie and the occasion. But Reggie, in his remarks, lingered on what a racist and cruelly segregated place Rickwood and Birmingham were when he played there in the 1960s and thanked his white teammates, and friends, who helped him through it. It's primary source history racists would prefer was glossed over and forgotten and an old but still flinty Jackson telling it like is. All respect for Mr. October. 

The Murdochian Takeover of The Washington Post

Rupert Murdoch is a billionaire business magnate and media mogul. He owns hundreds of news outlets, print and TV, first in Australia and New Zealand, and now in UK and the US and all around the world. 

In particular, he owns Fox News, which, so far, has been fined three-quarters of a billion dollars for falsely reporting election interference by Dominion Voting Systems, thereby horrifically bolstering the Big Lie with a conservative audience (who in large numbers still believe this QAnon-like crackpot conspiracy crap). And while, in fact, the Republican candidate himself had already been exposed several times for schemes to cheat the US election system, both in the '20 and 2016. 

Jeff Bezos, another billionaire, and one we might have hoped was reliably hostile to Grump's political corruption (in particular because he has been the target of that corruption in the past), has now hired a team of Murdoch news hacks to revive the supposedly failing Washington Post (lost 77 million last year, sources say).

And is doing so in the final run-up to the 2024 election, when the convicted felon running for POTUS is desperately trying to work conservative elements in the legal system and government and big business, like the Murdochs, to evade being prosecuted for a failed violent coup attempt, cheating the democratic process with fake electors, trying to change vote totals, and for stealing boxes of top secret national security documents, that he likely shares with his murderous dictator friends around the world. For a price, of course.  

Meanwhile, the New York Times has decided to largely ignore Dump's criminality and treason, or downplay it as somehow hopelessly entangled in partisan campaign attacks by Democrats. And the Wall Street Journal, the other national newspaper of record, also owned by Murdoch, fosters the idea that Biden and the Democrats are a greater threat to the economy (for potentially taxing and regulating the rich, presumably) than the convicted felon is a threat to democracy and the rule of law and humanity. And this is not to mention how this corrosive ethno-nationalist bigotry is reinforced and embellished by Sinclair Broadcasting, who owns hundreds of local news outlets around the country. 

You really couldn't make up shit so crazy backwards and upside down. I repeat: Grump's election this fall, should the American electorate prove to be that stupid and doomy self-destructive, will NOT nurture peace and economic prosperity at home and will NOT strengthen US standing in the world. It will hasten US decline and isolation and increase violent conflict. This is so obvious that the Murdochian makeover of WaPo might represent one of the biggest media gaslighting projects in history. Democracy Dies in Darkness, indeed-- greased by Big $ and a bunch of insider trading fueled by idiotic elite panic. 

WaPo CEO Supresses Corrupt Past, NY Times

Beware the Conservative Takeover of WaPo, Press Watch

Tolstoy on Political Economy in 19th Century Russian Agriculture

Excerpt from Part 7, Chapter 3, of Anna Karenina:  

"Yes, here he’s written almost a book on the natural conditions of the laborer in relation to the land," said Katavasov; "I’m not a specialist, but I, as a natural science man, was pleased at his not taking mankind as something outside biological laws; but, on the contrary, seeing his dependence on his surroundings, and in that dependence seeking the laws of his development."

"That’s very interesting," said Metrov.

"What I began precisely was to write a book on agriculture; but studying the chief instrument of agriculture, the laborer," said Levin, reddening, "I could not help coming to quite unexpected results."

And Levin began carefully, as it were, feeling his ground, to expound his views. He knew Metrov had written an article against the generally accepted theory of political economy, but to what extent he could reckon on his sympathy with his own new views he did not know and could not guess from the clever and serene face of the learned man.

"But in what do you see the special characteristics of the Russian laborer?" said Metrov; "in his biological characteristics, so to speak, or in the condition in which he is placed?"

Levin saw that there was an idea underlying this question with which he did not agree. But he went on explaining his own idea that the Russian laborer has a quite special view of the land, different from that of other people; and to support this proposition he made haste to add that in his opinion this attitude of the Russian peasant was due to the consciousness of his vocation to people in the vast unoccupied expanses in the East.

"One may easily be led into error in basing any conclusion on the general vocation of a people," said Metrov, interrupting Levin. "The condition of the laborer will always depend on his relation to the land and to capital."

And without letting Levin finish explaining his idea, Metrov began expounding to him the special point of his own theory.

In what the point of his theory lay, Levin did not understand, because he did not take the trouble to understand. He saw that Metrov, like other people, in spite of his own article, in which he had attacked the current theory of political economy, looked at the position of the Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages, and rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the eastern—much the larger—part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for nine-tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian peasants wages took the form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does not so far exist except in the form of the most primitive tools. Yet it was only from that point of view that he considered every laborer, though in many points he differed from the economists and had his own theory of the wage-fund, which he expounded to Levin.

Helado Negro Makes Latinx Roots Disco

Roberto Carlos Lange. Stage name: Helado Negro. Born in 1980. Raised in South Florida a child of Ecuadoran immigrants. Wikipedia calls his music: Latin, folk, experimental, and electronic. I'm calling it Latinx Roots Disco. He makes soft dreamy electro music with an indelible pastel voice. I'm usually indifferent or hostile to music videos but Helado Negro went to art school and these are sweet and fun or at least interesting to look at. Wallpaper music maybe but well-designed wallpaper music. 

"Outside the Outside." (2021) House party disco. 

"Gemini and Leo." (2021) Psychedelic disco. 

  "Pais Nublado." (2019) After hours disco. 

TGIDF 

Anne Applebaum: how my old friends paved the way for Trump and Brexit

“Given the right conditions any society can turn against democracy,” Applebaum says, and explains why better than any modern writer I know. To the political consequences of offended vanity – Why am I not more important? Why does the BBC never call? – a sense of despair is vital. If you believe, like the American right, that godless enemies want to destroy your Christian country...or think...that English culture and history is being thrown in the bin, and you are being chucked away with it, or agree with the supporters of the new tyrants of eastern Europe that a liberal elite is plotting to extinguish your culture by importing Muslim immigrants, and proving its contempt for all that is decent by laughing at you, then any swine [Grump, Johnson, Orban, etc] will do as long as the swine can stop it. You will pay any price and abandon any principle in the struggle against a demonic enemy [like liberal multiculturalism].

Paving the way for Trump and Brexit, The Guardian 

"Christian Nationalism," Anti-Flag (2019)

This one never gets old, unfortunately. More pop punk, so maybe I like more of it than I thought. Straight up radical leftist Antifa on Fox News. As an updating edit, I'm apt to change "you're no better than the rest" to "you're the worst of the worst" but Antiflag nails it with appropriate Swiftian sneer: "We all know who you are." Christian Nationalism is the paranoid style as religious community. It's tough guy Christianity, which means violent, intolerant, and militantly fascist on principles. American Nazis, basically. They're really not pro-life so much as they're in fact anti-women's rights, which we hope is another big reason they lose at the ballot box this fall but there are Billionaires out there more afraid of democratic reforms (or women's rights, apparently) than violent fascist dictatorship. (Again, not unlike with the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s.) So maybe it can happen here after all?! Anyway, Antiflag are from Pittsburgh. They've put out over a dozen albums since 1996, with titles like A New Kind of Army and The General Strike. Maybe the best leftist pop-punk band? 

"Because we destroy illusions, we are accused of endangering ideals"

Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis, By George Makari (2008):

They are still alive, but in a world he changed

simply by looking back with no false regrets;

     all he did was to remember

   like the old and be honest like children.

                                        --W. H. Auden

Psychoanalytic therapy--

"Psychoanalytic technique was built to allow the past to first become manifest and then be transformed into conscious memory so as to be laid to rest." p353

The goal of psychoanalytic training: "The didactic analysis opened them to the mysteries of the unconscious, after which the seeker would gaze upon the inner forces of the Oedipal Complex, infantile sexuality, and human ambivalence." p373

"If radicals like...[like Brown, Reich, Gross, etc] envisioned a world without repression, Freud envisioned a world where repression would be of little value, and where conscious choice would hold sway. It was a liberal's dream: increasing rational control over unreason and furthering individual emancipation. And it called for nothing more than the practice of psychoanalysis: it would be a revolution from the couch." p245

Psychoanalytic theories--

Oedipus complex: "Psychoanalysis already had a tragic vision of love. For Freud, the child longed for the unattainable parent and lived the rest of their life in search of someone that might dimly resemble that lost and impossible love. Looking for love was a search for ghosts."  p435

The Dynamics of Transference: "The objects of transference were fluid and changeable, but their roots were not. Love and hate were based on the templates laid down with the important figures from childhood. Evidence of unconscious templates could be found in emotional ties forged in adulthood, for we come to expect love in the forms in which we first knew it. These "stereotypical plates" were "prototypes" projected into the world. 

Forget transference to the dog, the apartment, and the butler. Think: Mother, Father, Sister, Brother. These first relationships were the deep structures of transference.

By interpreting these transferences and bringing them to awareness, the analyst gradually made these ghosts lose their grip. 

Freud had pushed aside the complex hermeneutics of dream interpretation and replaced it with the analysis of transference." p332

Beyond the Pleasure Principle: "In this new theory, Freud returned...to...a theory of trauma. Trauma represented an overwhelming of the psyche. The mind attempted to return to an inner state of constancy through repetition, no matter how painful. The war veteran replayed the shock of a shell exploding in fantasies and dreams, not out of pleasure per se, but rather in an attempt to stabilize his inner experience. The mind liked cliches, it liked conventions, it liked predictability. In hope of regaining that equilibrium, painful traumas were repeated again and again." p317

What begins in infantile sexuality as wish fulfillment gets twisted by trauma. The drive is no longer expressed as creativity, productivity, or Eros, the life-force, like a plant growing towards sunlight, but instead as an obsessive effort turned inward, struggling for a return to some peaceful past, before the fall, so to speak, before the traumatic event. 

Freud called the latter instinctual drive Thanatos or the Death Drive, and posited it as a force always in conflict with Eros, even if its mutated creation. The conflict is what Norman O. Brown would later coin Life Against Death. It's a neat structural theory, almost quaint in its Enlightenment preoccupation with the dialectic and binary dualisms and liberation but also maybe a little melodramatic and overwrought. 

Is life or death really the best model for the way our drives adapt day in day out to lived experience? Why not Dionysian passion vs Apollonian order, after all Nietzsche was a likely inspiration for Freud's idea anyway, or simply action vs rest? Why such an extreme life or death either/or for a conflict that is if anything ongoing, episodic, and repeated many times over in a human life? Partly, Freud's trying to get at the dramatic stakes these drives play in childhood development, where in childhood dreams they can appear as monsterish acts of castration or cannibalism, but I'm not sure Freud might not have eventually softened his Eros vs Thanatos binary the way he had eventually let up on some of his more extreme positions in the past. 

Legacies of Psychoanalysis--

"Again and again, over the coming years, Sigmund Freud would employ the same strategy: when opposed, he would fight bitterly to hold his ground, and then after rebuffing a foe, he would quietly incorporate those aspects of the challenge he most admired into his ever expanding models." p160

"In penning this fantasy of civilization's origins [Totem and Taboo], Freud acutely described his own tragedy. As a father of a movement, he had created a community in which he was repeatedly accused of being tyrannical. Now he would either have to let himself be symbolically murdered to allow the community to mature from a frightened, savage horde into a civilized brother clan or retard the civilizing process by refusing to cede his authority." p288

Psychoanalysis began in Vienna [and notably upon Freud's return from a research sabbatical in France] and spread to Zurich, Budapest, Berlin, London and finally New York City. By 1945 the Nazis had wiped out Jewry and psychoanalysis everywhere in Europe but Britain. As a consequence after the world wars over half the psychoanalysts in the world lived in the US. And were led by one of Freud's trusted proteges Heinz Hartmann. 

Ironically, Freud had always been skeptical about America, and discouraged early expansion thusly, "I also think that once they discover the sexual core of our psychological theories they will drop us." p234 

They didn't but Americanizing psychoanalysis did mean medicalizing it. Which meant driving out the "wild analysts"/sexual liberationists and the political revolutionaries and historians of civilization and its discontents, in short, driving out thinkers like Freud.  

"Triangle of Love," Kreem (1986)

Early edition Belleville Three: Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May. Detroit techno produced Chicago House. Ja'nine Barker vocal is ghostly, gothic, even pitiful, overwhelmed by the galloping electro pump and a swirling, strobing chatter of hypnotizing beat accents. Echoes of New Order's "Blue Monday" morph into Kraftwerk Afrofuturism. TGIDF. 

"Blue Monday" (1983)

And--who knew?-- doing this to Blue Monday is a viral thing on TikTok right now or maybe yesterday, semi-recently anyway: 

Why The US Sports Media Is Ignoring the Biggest Story on Earth?

"That is why it is illuminating that sports media in the United States is so quiet in the face of the biggest story in the world: Israel’s war on the civilians of Gaza. It is not like there is a shortage of sports angles. We have an organization, Athletes for a Ceasefire, whose members will give interviews and talk about what’s happening. We have Israel killing top-level Palestinian players and Olympic coaches. We have the push to ban Israel from the Olympics and World Cup. We have the Palestinian National Women’s Soccer Team traveling to Ireland, where they were feted as heroes. We have Palestinian teams playing amid unimaginable hardship and carnage. The stories are there for those who want to tell them. Instead the most recent article on Gaza on ESPN’s website is from five months ago, and it’s just a reprint of an Associated Press story about an Israeli soccer player who was “investigated” by Turkish authorities for trying to raise awareness about the hostages while on the pitch. That’s it." 

Dave Zirin on Sports, The Nation 

    One reason media ignore the story is because reporters, academics, people are getting canceled for supporting the civilians of Gaza or criticizing Israel. Zirin knows this. He's Jewish, which adds to his perspective. Some rightwing pol in Israel yesterday called Jewish street protesters against the Netanyahu gov part of "Hamas." For crying out loud, Greil Marcus was calling college protesters in the US agents of Hamas. Needless to say, speaking up for Gazans or speaking out against Israel's war, on any kind of sizable platform (social media, etc), takes courage. 

Henry George on Political-Economy

Give labor a free field and its full earnings; take for the benefit of the whole community that fund which the growth of the community creates, and want and the fear of want would be gone. 

Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings. For Liberty means Justice, and Justice is the natural law-- the law of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation. 

In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we have made them his bondsman in a degree which increases as material progress goes on. This is the subtle alchemy

that in ways they do not realize is extracting from the masses in every civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in place of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing political despotism out of political freedom, and must soon transmute democratic institutions into anarchy. 

Political Economy has been called the dismal science, and as currently taught, is hopeless and despairing. But this, as we have seen, is solely because she has been degraded and shackled; her truths dislocated; her
harmonies ignored; the word she would utter gagged in her mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an endorsement of injustice. Freed, as I have tried to free her-- in her own proper symmetry, Political Economy is radiant with hope. 

Excerpts from Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and Increase of Want with the Increase of Wealth: The Remedy, Henry George, 1879

Sinclair Floods Local News Sites with Disinformation about President Biden

"This month, Sinclair Broadcast Group has flooded a vast network of local news websites with misleading articles suggesting that President Biden is mentally unfit for office. The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which are then repackaged to resemble news reports. The thinly disguised political attacks are then syndicated to dozens of local news websites owned by Sinclair, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS." 

Sinclair Disinfo War on Public, Judd Legum, Popular Information

MAGA Repugs own Sinclair, which owns more local news outlets than anyone else. Hitler had a newspaper magnet Alfred Hugenberg as well, but Hugenberg resisted the Furor's takeover more than Sinclair resists Grump's criminality and treason. BTW, the Sinclair station to avoid in Seattle is KOMO (channel 4) and KATU (channel 2) in Portland. More relevant commentary, 

The Republicans Feeding You Cheapfakes Think You're Stupid, Brian Buetler at Off Message 

The Harvey Weinstein of Antitrust

Weinstein of Antitrust, Matt Stoller

Okay, so both sexual predators, very bad, but as I recall Weinstein's Miramax did actually make some good movies: Pulp Fiction, No Country for Old Men, City of God, etc. This guy, Joshua Wright, on the Federal Trade Commission, Head of Antitrust at George Mason University, is actually a power broker paid millions to thwart any antitrust reforms or prosecutions that might be directed at his clients, some of the biggest corporations in the world. 

In other words, he's an antitrust guy who defends and encourages monopoly. This is not how it is supposed to work. 

Also, surprise, more vivid evidence of the really-existing rot in the so-called Deep State: conservative business corruption. Government captured by industry lobbying. The parts of the Deep State that stopped or are still trying to stop TFG's lawless financial corruption, violence, treason, and insurrection are the best parts of the Deep State, deserving of our gratitude. Guys like Wright our scorn. 

Monopoly or oligopolistic collusion, price fixing, etc, promote economies of scale growth up to a point and then act like a kind of glorified hoarding, bottlenecking wider diffusion of spending, production, and wealth. 

After reading this story I can't now look at this picture without thinking Wright is probably sexually harassing the woman swearing him in. Sorry. 

Economic Development and Technological Innovation Need Government Support

"The United States government has subsidized and protected the new technologies that have dominated each phase of its economic development. In the 19th century, it protected railroad investors from losses, and relied on hefty import duties to protect northern factories. In the 20th century, the American government aided automobile makers by subsidizing oil production and road-building, supplemented for many years by different tariffs."

Biden's Tariffs Are a Good Idea, Zachary D. Carter, Slate  

Alexander Hamilton writes an often overlooked (I hadn't heard of it anyway) report in 1791 opposing Laissez-faire political economy and initiating a school of thought in American history known as Infant Industry Theory. IIT maintains that transformative technologies require active and ongoing government support in order to survive against a status quo that is inevitably stacked against them; primarily stacked in defense of already existing markets and market positions. Sounds kind of obvious when stated plainly but to free market fundamentalists this is sacrilegious talk. Also, conservative libertarians (other side of the market fundamentalist coin) are probably not surprised to be hearing such radical statism coming from Hamilton. They've never forgiven him for National banks. 

Carter expects the EV tariffs combined with the Inflation Reduction Act will spur green innovation and development in the domestic automobile industry. Hope so but I fear the tariffs might enable more industry foot-dragging, trying to max out fossil fuel profit returns before transitioning to the slimmer margins available producing EVs. 

That China can now produce an EV that costs about $10,000 and another that can go 1300 miles on one charge is a Big Fail, and should be a humiliating embarrassment, for Tesla and the domestic automobile industry. But most coverage in the mainstream media I see is about how China "unfairly" subsidizes their EV industry. The meaning of "unfairly" here is pure free market myth bullshit. Perhaps US subsidies that go to fossil fuel industries ought to instead be going to EV production and infrastructure or that'd be "unfairly" too?!

Laissez-faire, Neoclassical, or free market capitalism, always rigged against workers, or labor, and all the while the envious model of economic growth in the world, is now being shown up by State capitalist China. And, as if beating us soundly in economic growth year-in-year-out for going on three decades were not bad enough, China is now blowing us off the road in technological innovation, the other thing the free marketeers are always boasting no one can do better. 

Meanwhile, corporate rule in the US actually obstructs and sabotages government efforts to address climate change. And has shown little awareness to date that this is a colossal losing strategy in a long-run that looms closer by the day. Just yesterday Grump promised, if elected, to stop immigration and "burn baby burn." Not to mention all the other horribles that will ensue if that miscreant is re-elected, this will accelerate authoritarian China's position in global affairs and will isolate and ruin America's. 

"II Most Wanted," Beyonce & Miley Cyrus (2024)

After two spins I admire Cowboy Carter more than anything. Bold Move. Like the lady says, "this isn't a country album, it's a Beyonce album." She's an unstoppable Blue Wave and looks good in a cowboy hat. And I do quite like this song, and if country radio doesn't that's maybe because they're sexist and racist but definitely because they have lousy taste. Bey and Miley's voices wind around each other, lovingly, urgently, in a sweet country-tinged duet; tinged as in "Wild Horses" or "If It Makes You Happy." Miley sounds ancient. All Stevie Nick's shawls rain from the sky, Bey and Miley dancing and singing together, they are forever and ever for each other. In the right moment tears flow. 

AI Deepfake of Pope in White Puffer Jacket and Bling at the G7

 

Ms. Meloni [Italian PM] recruited Pope Francis to speak to the [G7] leaders about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence. Francis urged them to regulate the technology, of which he was himself a victim when A.I.-generated fake images of him clad in a white puffer jacket and a jewel-encrusted crucifix went viral last year.

G7 Leaders Expand The Circle, NY Times 

Adam Smith Supported "Well-Regulated" Not "Unregulated" Markets

The Hartmann Report:  

It’s not like we weren’t warned. Back in 1776, Adam Smith wrote in his remarkable tome on economics, The Wealth of Nations, exactly how rich people following their own greed inevitably destroy the very society from which they extract profits unless that society establishes strong guardrails to protect itself from them.

He argued that in “rich” countries — where the public good is well administered and there’s a more general prosperity — profits are ample to satisfy the business owners needs, but not excessive. When the rich seize control of most of the profits and wealth, however, and thus have the power to exploit society, he said, they always drive nations into poverty and ruin:

“But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.”

This year, America saw the highest level of corporate profit in the history of this country, and perhaps in the history of capitalism in developed countries worldwide.

A few sentences later, Smith elaborates:

“The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this [wealthy] order [of men], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.

“It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”

The simple reality is that markets, like traffic, work best when they’re appropriately well-regulated. The idea of a “free market” is as absurd as the idea of “free traffic” where everybody is welcome to ignore red lights, traffic lanes, and stop signs. It’s a rhetorical device designed to make average Americans accept changes in the rules regulating capitalism that will benefit the profits of the top one percent and nobody else.

And it’s killing us.

Revolution, Fear, and Power, Thom Hatmann

"Vaporized," X-15 (1981)

 

First song on Seattle Syndrome Volume One (1981), a compilation of local bands representing an awkward post-punk moment in local history. X-15 actually formed in Bellingham, a college town a couple hours north. But they were a thing at Gorilla Gardens, an underground club in Seattle in the '80s. The collection covers punk, post-punk, New Wave, No Wave, and various electronic art party experiments. "Vaporized" sets the bar high as the opening track: Bowiesque New Wave punk rock with a crazy-wild glam-punk thespian-jock vocal. Shoulda coulda been a big chart hit, up there with The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" (1979) or the Vapors' "Turning Japanese (1980). Nonetheless, has the esteemed honor of kicking off in style a period compilation of various artists, probably hated at the time by the hardcore punk bands, but holds up well if you ask me: Nerdy, funky, funny, some proto-Goth, some New Wave noir, hot and cool. But, anyway you slice it, "Vaporization" is a peak. 

PRT

The Borking of America By Robert Reich

 

Project 2025 vs American History

 "The danger for individuals in their era [late-19th/early-20th Progressive era] was not that the government would crush them, but that industrialists would. In order for the government truly to protect the people, [Teddy] Roosevelt argued, it must regulate businesses and support the ability of ordinary Americans to prosper. A true liberal government, one that protected the rights of individuals, must be big enough and strong enough to act as a referee between workers, consumers, and businessmen." 

How big and strong would that need to be today? Big enough to protect and enforce the democratic order, the rule of law, human rights, women's basic rights, the right to vote, lots of laws they aren't enforcing now, like prosecuting all the Trump era political violence, treason, and insurrection, institutionalizing free and fair elections, National holiday to vote, mail-in voting; big enough to keep the Billionaires and corporations from further impoverishing workers, killing customers with their products, and destroying the planet with carbon emissions. This is precisely how big the government needs to be or what I can come up with on such short notice. 

The Dems won't get us there but they're at least heading in the right direction. Project 2025, by contrast, is racist, ethno-nationalist, free market myth boilerplate; ultimately doomed, nightmarish, doubling-down on cowboy (plantation) capitalism when trying to bend the economy towards sustainable prosperity is obviously an all hands on deck situation that we can do but not with insane dumpster-fire backwards race war morons running stuff. Vote Blue No Matter Who!

Project 2025 vs American History, HCR

D-Day and Today

 “The struggle between a dictatorship and freedom is unending,” he [Biden] said, and he vowed that the U.S., NATO, and allied countries will not walk away from Ukraine in its fight to resist Russia’s assault. “[T]o bow down to dictators,” he said, “means we’d be forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches.”

“History tells us freedom is not free,” Biden said. “If you want to know the price of freedom, come here to Normandy…and remember: The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave."

“In their generation, in their hour of trial, the Allied forces of D-Day did their duty. Now the question for us is: In our hour of trial, will we do ours?"

“We’re living in a time when democracy is more at risk across the world than at any point…since these beaches were stormed in 1944. Now, we have to ask ourselves: Will we stand against tyranny, against evil, against crushing brutality of the iron fist?" 

“Will we stand for freedom? Will we defend democracy? Will we stand together?"

“My answer is yes. And it only can be yes.” 

“Let us be the generation that when history is written about our time—in 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 years from now—it will be said: When the moment came, we met the moment. We stood strong. Our alliances were made stronger. And we saved democracy in our time as well.”

D-Day, Biden, NATO, Free World, HCR

Resistance, transference, and projection in conservative politics--

A retreat into a paranoid world (Fox, Sinclair, etc) where one feels accosted by monstrous bad objects-- immigrants, women, LGBTQ+, homeless, minorities, liberals, non-Christians, "communists," city people, etc-- and increasingly threatens violence against these scapegoats like they, conservatives, are really the cornered victims ("they will not replace us," etc). This is a common enough human smokescreen Repuglicans have erected to avoid experiencing crushing guilt for their own hatreds and destructiveness: 

Guilt for backing a convicted felon, 

a hero to crooks and abusers, 

guilty of flagrant election interference, 

guilty of massive amounts of financial fraud, 

wrong on women's rights, wrong on climate change, wrong on protecting workers,

guilty for supporting the biggest traitor to the country in American history, one bent on destroying democracy for the sake of the preposterously narcissistic fantasy that he ought to be The Boss, Il Duce, America's Cheetolini! 

Conservatives are stuck in a Reality TV nightmare of their own making and now one they cannot escape. Or, in other words, the Republican party is a failed state and Trump their Warlord. And the rest of us are hoping the adults in leadership stand up before the party of sadistic bigot reaction destroys everything. 

The Coup that Launched the Second Cold War between the U.S. and Russia

Bookmark this one: A commenter who uses the nom de plume “Democracy” responded to a discussion on Diane Ravitch's blog about Putin and Russia interference in our elections. Some commenters were belittling Putin interference in our 2016 election, as they do on the Sunday morning news shows on the regular, or since Barr sabotaged and scuttled the Mueller report anyway. Democracy provides quotes and links to copious intelligence evidence of Russia's active and considerable influence. The election of Trump was obviously a major coup for Putin. Good post to share when this kind of Republican gaslighting comes up, not that many people on that side are interested in any "research" beyond nodding to the blowhards on Fox but here are links to the evidentiary backup should someone actually like to know what's what. 

BTW, Ravitch is a longtime historian of public education and has several indispensable books on the topic.

Setting the Record Straight, Part 1

Setting the Record Straight, Part 2

 

"No matter where you are, girl I will meet you there"

G. C. Cameron sang lead for the Spinners on "It's a Shame." A grand epitaph in my book. But he allegedly, in addition, has six voices. This one, "No Matter Where," is Curtis Mayfield. Wound tight and  urban. It has a formal quality that might sound like it'd be exercise but instead is fierce and exact: "No Matter Where." A piercing urgency; if you're not getting down to it on the dancefloor you're on the edge of your seat. He also, reputably, does Smokey Robinson, The Isley Brothers, and Willie Hutch, any of them half as good as his Curtis and he's legend. Oh yeah, and "No Matter Where" was on rotation in the NYC dance clubs in 1973, as I learned from Vince Aletti's Disco Files. The classic era disco desktop reference book.

Thank God It's Disco Friday. 

Secretive court system has awarded over 100bn of public money to private corporations

"The modern ISDS [Investor-State Dispute Settlement] system is widely viewed as an outcrop of efforts to prevent former colonies in the global south from appropriating or nationalising industrial concerns after independence. The Office of the US Trade Representative even lauds ISDS as a peaceful alternative to the gunboat diplomacy of the 19th century. But it has largely evolved to constrain national pushes for social and environmental regulation that could adversely affect investor ambitions.

Fabian Flues, of the PowerShift NGO, which co-compiled the analysis, said: “The injustice is glaringly obvious: countries in the global south are the main victims of ISDS, while corporations from Europe and North America benefit. It transfers public money into the hands of a few corporations and their shareholders. This has to stop. It is high time for countries everywhere to leave the treaties that include ISDS so that they can build a fair and sustainable future.”

Secretive court system thwarts green reforms, The Guardian

"Only a Fool Would Say That (Dance Video Mix), Steely Dan

 

The Velvet Underground Were Punk Rock Artists

Just watched Todd Haynes' documentary The Velvet Underground (2021). As hagiography it's very satisfying, so if you're a fan at all and haven't seen it yet you'll want to. Andy Warhol's 1960s pop art Exploding Plastic Inevitable in all its infamous demimonde glory. The origins of heroin chic and the greatest drug song in rock & roll history. The misty story of Moe Tucker's vocal on "After Hours." John Cale explains the early allure of the Velvets' sound as a combination of R&B and Wagner. Jonathan Richman, maybe their biggest fan, gushes with mysterious awe about various strange essences in the Velvet's music. And the doc is packed with images, found film footage, that many will have never seen before. 

Haynes' does have his own take, though. And I find it persuasive but not entirely convincing. 

In his story the Velvets were a Warhol art project, part of his Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Andy brought all the improbable parts together, Cale, Lou, and Nico. Set them up with his avant-garde pop art light show and took them on their first tour of the West Coast. Under Warhol's creative curation they produced a singular masterpiece, The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967). And then a proto-punk rock reaction to the Flower Power and hostility they encountered on their West Coast tour, White Light/White Heat (1968). 

Bill Graham, the big West Coast producer, hated The Velvet Underground, the doc shares. Tucker attributes this to Andy's superior light show. And clad in black the Velvets couldn't relate much to the colorful sunshine hippies of the West Coast. In this way, White Light/White Heat presages the Sex Pistols crash and burn spectacle in sonic dissolution and mayhem; making a noise fetish into an art move. It doesn't have the "songs" of their other albums but could be their most influential album sound-wise. 

But then that was it, the highly flammable ingredients of  The Velvet Undergound explode apart. Or, actually, Nico drifts away. And, basically, Lou drives everyone else away. He breaks with Andy. And shortly thereafter he gives the rest of the band an ultimatum as to whether Cale or he stays. Cale leaves and so the story of the original Velvet Underground is more or less over, in Haynes' account. 

The third album, The Velvet Underground (1969), the soft one without Cale or Nico, is glossed over. Loaded (1970) is barely mentioned, other than to point out Lou cut Moe out of that one too. A sort of addendum to the Lou broke up the band story. And VU, the lost album that ought to have come out between those two (but wasn't released until 1985) gets no mention at all, or none I can remember now. Not taking anything away from the first two albums, both classic albums, but there is a case to be made that the last three Velvets studio albums, without Nico and Cale, and in one instance even without Tucker, are as good or even better than the first two, or at least not dismissible as such. 

Not to Haynes's story, though. The more puzzling question for me is why Lou was never able to match in his solo career the greatness of even the last three Lou-centric Velvets' albums? And which maybe shows that the greatness of the Velvets five studio albums goes beyond Andy, Cale, Nico, Tucker, or even Lou. Something else that Richman and 1000s of bands since have tried to tap into and reproduce. 

Anyway, seeing the doc reminded me how important White Heat/White Light was to punk rock class of '77 and subsequent noise rock. The Velvets patent a version of art punk based on bleak beauty, violent negation, and rock & roll dissipation; a perfect mean of amateurish racket and avant-garde noise.  

"I Heard Her Call My Name" (1968)

 "Sister Ray" (1968)

"Guess I'm Falling In Love (Instrumental Version)" (1968)

Punk Rock Tuesday.

All the arguments against Don the Con's convictions, debunked

"The jury was hopelessly biased against Trump"--

Actually,

"There is evidence suggesting that one or more of the jurors was politically conservative. According to the court questionnaires, one of the jurors who was selected said they relied on Truth Social, Trump's own social network, and X, which has taken a sharp rightward turn under Elon Musk, for news. Another juror reported regularly watching Fox News and MSNBC. And according to reporting, one juror said that "he believed Mr. Trump had done some good for the country." Another juror found himself "agreeing with some Trump administration policies and disagreeing with others." A third juror said she appreciated that "President Trump speaks his mind.

To avoid conviction, Trump's legal team needed only to convince a single juror. All of the jurors voted to convict Trump on all 34 counts."  

Popular Information is a Public Service

Mother of Jan. 6 police officer Fanone swatted after he called Cheetolini 'authoritarian'

NBC News, Police Officer's Mom Swatted, Ryan J. Reilly

Swatting: a criminal harassment act of deceiving an emergency service into sending a police or emergency service response team to another person's address.

Again, political violence and lawless disorder instigated by Trump's Republican party base.  

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Sweet Reflections on His Relationship with Bill Walton

 "We both found basketball to be a haven for our social awkwardness. The difference is that through the years Bill was able to overcome his reserve and become outgoing and gregarious in social settings while I remained reticent. Whenever we were together at a gathering, he bloomed. His enthusiastic personality and sincere concern for others inspired everyone around him. I marveled that he was never afraid to express his unapologetic love of people. He had wanted to be more like me on the court, I wanted to be more like him off the court."

Bill Walton was My Rival, My Brother, and My Close Friend

Slog AM at The Stranger: Grump's No Good Day, Etc.

Slog AM: Grump's No Good Day, Etc, The Stranger

My go-to source for a local news perspective, at least since 2018 when the Seattle Times endorsed bigot homophobe Dino Rossi. (During the Trump era, no less!) The Times judgement has always been cowed by corporate rule and a stodgy conservatism, and an obstacle to liberal progress in Seattle. Not my first time giving up on them in frustration. And this isn't to suggest The Stranger doesn't have some annoying tics and limitations of its own. Dan Savage's snark and fondness for curse words are pervasive elements of style at the weekly paper and at times wearying and distracting. And I wish The Stranger could call out the hypocrisies and elite bias in Seattle's ruling institutions without the petty name-calling, even if the police and big business often resort to the same or even start it.  

And so another hot take from Okay Boomer, I know. Anyway, their Stranger Election Control Board reports are not to be missed.

And The Stranger's morning newsletter, Slog AM, works for me. They can be funny, if a little hit and miss, based on the flow of breaking news that day and the mood of the reporter. But this one, Friday, 5/31, Nathalie Graham on the beat, is a doozie and as good as any to share. Highlights: 

• First POTUS to be convicted as felon in American history: "Mother Theresa couldn't beat these charges," exclaims a punchdrunk and notably disheveled Trump. 
• SPD cop that ran over pedestrian in 2023 was previously fired by the Tucson, AZ police department after five internal investigations. 
• SPS is set to close 20 schools but doesn't appear to have a very clear idea why or how they propose to do it. Note: In the middle '00s the District came to a similar conclusion. They needed to shutdown and sell-off a bunch of school buildings because of declining enrollment but then reversed the decision and were expanding again by 2010. If nothing else, let's just say maybe SPS needs better long-term number-crunching planners? 
• Dave Reichert, Repug candidate for Gov, showed up to an interview with the Seattle Times wearing a gun on his hip. He said he was packing because he doesn't like the Seattle Times. I don't either but this is a crazy violent fascist stunt and I hope most people, the electorate, have enough common sense to know this is NOT the way we want to go. Please don't bring your guns to town!
• Includes video of 12 year-old Spelling Bee champ spelling 29 hilariously obscure and un-pronounceable words in 90 seconds. More impressive than AI!

And there's more. Check it out. 

"Every 1's A Winner," Hot Chocolate (1978)

 

"Every 1's a Winner," especially after yesterday's jury verdict: 34 counts, trial by a jury of his "peer" Americans, unanimously concluding former POTUS not above the law, including some juror that gets all their news from Truth Social (wouldn't recommend it): all counts, all GUILTY. Finally, some law and order. Add cheating in the 2016 election to his conviction for rape and financial fraud and NY is doing their part, finally. (After all, they ought to be doing something for launching this sadistic clown Frankenstein of corporate rule and culture war violence on the world.) Besides, there's still his failed coup attempt and stealing top secret documents from the government (that he's likely already traded with his murderous dictator besties around the world?!). How can Grump be a candidate for office with such charges and indictments unresolved!? SCOTUS and the legal system delaying the prosecution of a failed coup attempt and potential treason is a colossal democratic fail and a Constitutional crisis, and yes this will be on the test come this fall. But convicting Cheetolini for his crimes, any of them, trying to keep voters from learning he was bonking prostitutes while his wife was at home with their baby right before the 2016 election, any crimes, are always wins. Face it, the biggest threat to election integrity in America is Trump and his Republican party. Takeaway: "Every 1's a Winner" whenever Trump loses.  

And disco at another cheesy peak. Hot Chocolate. 1978. Actually, they had at least one song on the singles chart in Britain every year between 1970 and 1984. Errol Brown, the leader, was of West Indian ancestry, eventually a Thatcherite conservative, and something of a metrosexual (see video). Obvious influence on Roland Gift and the Fine Young Cannibals in the 1980s. I like "You Sexy Thing" and "Brother Louie" fine, also, but especially go for this one. The swagger in the raunchy fat bass, the fuzzy, buzzy guitar riffing: soul meets Abba-esque Euro rock & roll. In the video the group comes-off like a professional garage band. "Every 1's a Winner, babe, that's no lie, you never fail to satisfy." Culminating with another big female chorus gushing "Satisfy." The goofy sensual charm is winning, or wins me over anyway. 

Also, family resemblance with the Miami disco sound of TK Records; or more disco sounds with West Indian influences, at any rate. Thank God It's Disco Friday.