So I'm on a mini-Chris Knox kick. He's special. This might be what you could call Beatlesque, and there will be people who will have a problem with that. Not me. "'Cause it's you that I love/And it's true that I love/It's love not given lightly." Named New Zealand's 13th best song all-time.
Chris Knox in a 1978 punk rock mohawk. The Enemy were one of the first punk rock bands from Dunedin, and for some mark the beginning of the "Dunedin sound"; New Zealand's indie rock sound documented and spread by Flying Nun Records. Very crude live recording. A guy in the band, probably Knox, complains about not being ready to play for the people who traveled a 100 miles from Christchurch to see them. Flying Nun was formed in Christchurch. Proto-NZ punk rock.
Bonus: Knox's next band, Toy Love, was definitely ready to play. A power pop songfulness pokes out of their headstrong noize.
And about the onslaught of racist and misogynistic attacks Harris will face from here on out:
"There is no question that racism and misogyny are real and rampant in this nation where women couldn’t vote until 1920 or get their own credit cards until the 1970s, and Blacks were enslaved until 1865 and legally deprived of their rights for (at least) a century-plus after that, the American people are also not fond of liars, crooks, rapists, cowards, bullies, Kremlin assets, Epstein associates, wannabe strongmen, and dictator-fluffers."
The cops are endorsing Trump, NBC
And we're not talking about endorsing him in 2016, which was dumb enough, or in 2020, by then obvious he was in fact an active threat to public safety and national security. But, now, in 2024, when we know Trump is the first convicted felon candidate for president in American history. We know he allied with Putin, a murderous dictator hostile to the US, in attempts to cheat in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, and was impeached for the second attempt. We know he instigated a violent failed coup attempt against the capitol police, injuring over a hundred police officers. We know he stole and refused to return boxes of top secret national security documents. We know his entire business empire is built on financial fraud.
And, most directly relevant to the jobs of the police, we know Trump spreads violence against government officials, judges, election workers, immigrants, BLM protesters, LGBTQ+ people, anyone who opposes him politically.
Of course the police, charged with protecting and serving public safety, should not be endorsing a violent criminal and an active threat to public safety and national security like Trump. His alliance with the police is a terrifying cliche of fascist movements since Mussolini.
Okay, so defunding the police was not a good idea. Still weird how that one bad idea has seemed to scuttle and push aside entirely any of the great push for police reform in the summer of 2020. Especially when an action like this by the police screams out how badly we still need that police reform.
We should assume that the cop who killed Sonya Massey, a cop who reportedly had worked for six different law enforcement agencies in the previous four years, and during which time he was charged twice with DUIs, was in good standing with the police union, right?
New Birth, funky Motown spinoffs. Included Marvin Gaye's buddy Harvey Fuqua. Reached number 4 on R&B chart and number 35 on Hot 100 in 1973. Readymade for the discos.
Bobby Womack's "I Can Understand It" original, 1972. Proto-jungle-stomp-disco.
“Only 35 percent of wealthy Americans support spending what is necessary to ensure good public schools,” Daniel W. Drezner notes [from The Ideas Industry], “a sharp contrast to 87-percent support from the general public.” The wealthy also support cuts to government spending and social programs much more strongly than the rest of the public—which fits with their compulsion to spend millions on trying to buy academic legitimacy for unregulated capitalism."
See The New Republic story for more:
The Rise of the Thought Leader, by David Sessions.
The Thought Leader replaces the Public Intellectual. The TL has a big platform on a major media outlet, social media, a popular substack page, etc, and, the point, is sponsored at least in part by plutocratic money that wants to propagate the ideas and values of unfettered capitalism. The Public Intellectual, in the past, was more independent, protected by academic freedoms in a university or educational settings, and/or by popular free press platforms more viable before the rise of Google and social media. Sessions might be overstating the relative independence of former PI's but the plutocratic tilt (spending supports) for ideas that protect private equity/corporate profit seeking interests and refute, or more often obfuscate, criticism of these economic arrangements is obvious and troubling.
Should have been called "No In-Between," reflecting the song's uncompromising romantic intensity. In the 1980s the Wedding Present were associated with the C86 indie rock label in the UK. David Gedge, WP's only constant member (at least 28 others have played with him), is a bonafide two-way player-- i.e., he plays guitar with ferocious speed and drone pop grandeur and matured into a master of punk rock heartache and melodramatic love songs. Gedge lived for a spell in the 1990s in Seattle but never succumbs to grunge's dinosaur rock bombast. In the long run carving his own hard jangle punk pop path proves to be Gedge's superpower. The classic sound of the Wedding Present is terse, frenetic, buzzing with thick feedback energy, and ringing with dissonance and harmony. Noise pop. (And another fundamental inspiration to 1990s shoegaze.) The backup singer echoes Gedge, as if to soothe his restless mind with her soft banter. Even if the bad romance gets old the roar of the careening guitar noise never does.
Adam Tooze is an economic historian. I've read his Wages of Destruction, a meticulously demystifying account of economic development in Nazi Germany from 1933 until its collapse at the end of World War 2. Tooze also puts out a newsletter, Chartbook, that I can't keep up with, nor will I pretend I entirely understand, but, nonetheless, serves up super curious economic history odds and ends now and then like this one:
The axial years in modern economics
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Add also Joan Robinson, An Essay on Marxian Economics (1943).
A little social media reading list on the "Axial Age" of modern economics. Shouldn't be missed by students of political economic history:
Right down where? Proto-disco queen. Immersed in early disco's dancefloor groove ambience and hedonistic fantasy; lots of wah-wah, strings, and sensual polyrhythmic accents. Gets over with a sexed-up personality and breathy bedroom vocals more than big diva pipes. Hung out with Warhol. Influenced Donna Summers' "Love to Love You Baby" fashion sense. And she's still going strong. Here's the whole story from The Guardian:
Paul Manafort walking onto the floor of the Republican National Convention yesterday illustrated that the Republican Party under Trump has become thoroughly corrupted into an authoritarian party aligned with foreign dictators.
There were actually preprinted signs at the convention for attendees to wave, which they did with apparent enthusiasm. The signs said: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!”
The convention has also emphasized its opposition to women’s rights. Trump, who has proudly claimed responsibility for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing abortion as a constitutional right, walked out last night to the song “It’s a Man’s World.”
Their rejection of democracy requires a strongman at the head of the government, and in Milwaukee that man is Trump, who will be the first convicted criminal nominated for president by a major party.
From the recording of Money Jungle, combining then greying eminence Duke Ellington, 60-ish, with Charlie Mingus, bass, and Max Roach, drums, both a generation younger, 40-ish. According to Roach, they met the day before the recording and Ellington told them to "Think of me as the poor man's Bud Powell." Perfect image. Sometimes I think this specific version of "Solitude" is the most beautiful, loneliest, and still somehow resolutely proud piece of American music I know. Duke composed it in 1934; "(In My) Solitude." I like Billie Holiday singing it too but there are hundreds, thousands of versions of this jazz standard, and none I've heard holding a candle to Duke's grand instrumental statement. No words. They'd only trivialize it. Mingus and Roach don't do much but, to their credit, don't get in the way either. Chromatic and block chording are musical terms I think related to this version's grand Americana charm; it's both downhome and epic, playful and sadly historical. Like elegant music massively popular in saloons its rough beauty feels immediately old and familiar. Ellington has played his song so many times, inside and out, now in a reflective mood, and in a "poor man's" style, he plays "Solitude" as a wrenchingly sentimental medley of popular blues and jazz piano styles. An American master in an intimate moment and in all his regal glory.
Keith Boykin listed the many excuses and arguments Trump enablers have made over the years. “He can’t be prosecuted in office,” Boykin wrote. “He can’t be impeached because the courts should decide. He’s immune from prosecution after office. He can’t be prosecuted by Biden’s DOJ because that’s ‘lawfare.’ And he can’t be prosecuted by a special counsel. We have created a dictator.”
Cannon slow-walked a grand jury’s meticulous indictment of the former president for criminally risking the free world’s safety by walking off with nuclear secrets and intelligence sources and methods, leaving them in places accessible to apparent foreign agents, and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. Now she has toppled the whole case by shredding the long-established structure through which successive attorneys general have appointed special counsel to investigate and prosecute crimes against the nation too sensitive for the justice department to handle in the ordinary course.
This election, our constitutional republic is at stake, along with its first principle: no one, including the most powerful, is above the law. Only We, the People, can preserve the freedom and security our laws safeguard.
Cannon takes sledgehammer to law, Professor Tribe, The Guardian
A "personal" account of the Trump rally shooting over the weekend that speaks to feelings my go-to journalistic-historical sources just cannot quite reach. It's not precisely my take but I recognize in it immediately a kindred soul, the familiarly frustrating predicament many of us share, perhaps even a 'silent majority.' We're partially shutdown by the relentless gaslighting mendacity of the Republican assault on democracy and the rule of law, and want, wish for, hope for above all else nothing more than that this Trump national nightmare finally end and we can return to our regularly scheduled-- peace loving, if mundane-- lives.
Anyway, some choice excerpts to give you the flavor. Find the whole piece at the hyperlink.
Do you remember what Trump said at CPAC two years ago, about the horrific plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan that the FBI foiled? He said: “It was a fake deal. Fake. It was a fake deal. Gretchen Whitmer was in less danger than the people sitting in this room right now, it seems to me.”
Donald Trump was in less danger on Saturday night than the people sitting in the stands right then, it seems to me. Two of them are in the hospital. One of them is dead. Trump was on the golf course the next day.
That, too, was a lie [his claim in 2016 that he would stop the "American carnage"]. The carnage did not stop. Trump saw to that personally. And in a second term, as Project 2025 makes clear, it will only get worse. Donald could snap his tiny fingers right now and have the Senate approve one of the gun control bills—but he won’t. He is an arsonist who lives to throw gasoline on fires. And his whoremaster Vladimir Putin would rather we keep shooting each other, because it makes the United States an international embarrassment.
But we were asked on Saturday night to ignore all of this and show sympathy for this monster—to keep him in our own thoughts and prayers—even though he is, as both the head of the Republican party and a recidivist instigator of violence, a primary author of this persistent but preventable American carnage.
On January 6, 2021, remember, Trump “expressed support” for his army of MAGA besiegers hanging his own vice president, Mike Pence. Read that last sentence again, because the media has completely normalized putting a hit out on a VP.
No one has done more to ratchet up the anger and hatred in the United States than Donald Trump—in the 21st century for sure, and probably in my lifetime. He foments violence. He cultivates it. He cheers it. He lusts for blood.
The most irksome part of the rally shooting is that it forced us all to once again pay attention to this bloated orange bag of venom. Like all dictators, Trump demands all of our attention all the time. There is no let-up, no relent. No safe spaces. It is the sick mentality of a serial rapist, which Trump also happens to be.
The rally shooting reminded us of what an unpleasant experience life during the Trump years was. It’s not going to win him the election, as his fanboys have proclaimed. Quite the opposite.
Despite what MAGA might think, we don’t want Trump killed. We just want him to go away and leave us in peace.
Notes on Trump Rally Shooting, By Greg Olear
More on the history of republican violence:
Repubs at RNC use violent rhetoric, won't stop, Popular Information
But then you hear the song again, in a moment like this one. Someone shooting at Trump, his heroic survivor image, fist in the air, and all the violence he has wrought since 2016 flash before the eyes: separating immigrant families, opposing Covid mitigation measures, his assault on the last election Jan 6, 2021, viral death threats against judges, public officials, election workers, extremist bigot hate crimes in Pittsburgh and El Paso and Buffalo, a stunning scale of political violence rarely seen before.
"War, children, it's just a shot away." And the dust hasn't settled from more violence, perpetrated by a military weapon Biden has tried to ban, and leading republicans are blaming Dems for the violence; specifically, for warning that Trump is a threat to the rule of law, national security, and democracy. (He is.) Such finger-pointing will only provoke more partisan violence, almost all of which to date in fact has come from Trump's fascist minions. Just last week a MAGA republican candidate for governor in North Carolina was preaching that "some people need killing."
Or like Biden and the Dems we can condemn all political violence and and insist that all political violence or threats of political violence be stopped and prosecuted. All political violence.
A vote for Trump this fall remains a vote for more political violence. A vote for Biden, or whatever Dem candidate they come up with, is a vote for less political violence and more peace. "Oh, a storm is threatening," "gimme shelter." "I tell you love, sister. It's just a kiss away."
Trump is the accelerant of political violence, Vox
Trump is inciting violence as another election approaches, Mother Jones
ABC News finds 54 cases invoking Trump with violence while potus
Salsoul Latin disco take on Nigerian percussionist Babetunde Olatunji's "Jin-go-lo-ba," meaning in Yoruba, "do not worry." All bongo fury and boogie fever. Keep on dancing and dancing, in a rush, a frenzy, stretching out to the hot groove until the dancefloor lifts off, the disco ball unspools, and dancers spin in circles shooting off sparks of light. Rodriguez was on a short list of top NYC DJs during the classic disco era.
Here's Olatunji's original from 1959:
And also a more guitar heavy, classic rock, version appears on Santana's first album, 1970:
"An extraordinary effort to use the courts to set up a Trump dictatorship appears largely to have been hidden under the horse race.
And now that this scaffolding is in place, Trump’s team has begun to try to make him look more moderate than he is. On July 5, Trump claimed not to know anything about the extremist Project 2025, which calls for an authoritarian leader to impose Christian nationalism on the United States, despite the fact that his own appointees wrote it, his own political action committee advertised it as his plan, and his name appears in it 312 times."
THE DECLARATION HEARD AROUND THE WORLD, By Louis Menand
Over 100 countries have documented their own independence in the language of the US Declaration. Mostly as a justification for the use of force to overthrow the yoke of colonial tyranny. The Declaration, much to the chagrin of conservatives, has been a great inspiration to anti-colonial and anti-imperialist global movements since the 18th century. Equality is scoffed at by elites but, naturally, is very popular with people who experience a lot of the hardships of inequality.
"And so fascism spreads and settles in our minds during this, the crucial period between Trump’s first coup attempt and his second. The Biden administration is being held to standards, while the previous Trump administration is not; and Biden personally is being held to standards, while Trump as a person is not. This helps to generate a fascist aura. There must be something special about Trump such that he is different from others: a Leader beyond criticism rather than just an indebted hack or a felon from Queens or a client of a Russian dictator.
It should seem odd that media calls to step down were not first directed to Trump. If we are calling for Biden to step aside because someone must stop Trump from bringing down the republic, then surely it would have made more sense to first call for Trump to step aside? (The Philadelphia Inquirer did). I know the counter-arguments: his people wouldn’t have cared, and he wouldn’t have listened. The first misses an important point. There are quite a few Americans who have not made up their minds. The second amounts to obeying in advance. If you accept that a fascist is beyond your reach, you have normalized your submission."
Fascism and Fear and The Election, Timothy Snyder
The habit reminds me of this anecdote about the early years at Creem magazine. Several summers, pivoting around 1970, some staff members shack up outside the city of Detroit. Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, and, the publisher, Barry Kramer, were the regulars, I think, but at any rate the house they were sharing was owned by Kramer. Bangs and Marsh were there possibly to escape the city heat in summer but definitely to save on rent. They get along okay but all cooped up like that for weeks on end they need some escape and downtime. Bangs said he found his solace by regularly retreating to his small room, closing the door, and blasting Black Sabbath at full volume.
I was doing something like that with this Ramones song. I remember at least one time when a student walked into the room on afternoon when I had this song on and the volume turned up to eleven. Initially there was incredulous shock at how loud I was playing the music. But I turned it down quickly, although not off, and helped them. The song continues to play in the background, like a runaway subway train, if now muted, the student, a nerdy boy, into video games, standing around while I find some paper they need. Finally, the student exclaims almost quizzically, "beat on the brat with a baseball bat"?!
"Of course, I would never," I chuckled nervously.
Two seminal forms of pre-'77 punk anger: The Stooges were angry punk and dangerous; and The Ramones were angry punk and funny. Unsuspecting students were lucky I didn't play "Search and Destroy"!
Sixteen Nobel prize–winning economists have warned that Trump’s economic plans will spike inflation and hurt the global economy.
"While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies,” the economists wrote, “we all agree that Joe Biden's economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump.”
“Rising corporate profits were the largest contributor to Europe’s inflation over the past two years as companies increased prices by more than the spiking costs of imported energy,” says the International Monetary Fund. Forty percent of Europe's inflation was attributable to corporate price gouging, reports the IMF.
"We should recognize the recourse to higher interest rates for what it is: a strategy to dump the costs of inflation on to labor (by suppressing wages), on to social programs (through austerity), and on to future generations (by discouraging investment)," counters economist Isabella M. Weber.
If inflation was first post-pandemic supply shocks, inevitable, and inescapable after any global disruption in normal economic operations like a global pandemic, then the remedy was government supports for getting supply chains back on line and up to speed. I'm sure they were doing some of this. Think of gov efforts to help unsnarl the container ship flow in and out of ports in the US. And the solution for greedflation is strategic gov price controls or government procurements to stabilize prices, to reduce the impact of price gouging monopolists/oligopolists on inelastic demand markets. Again, some of this was done in the US, countering Russia and Saudi Arabia's move to drive up gas prices in '22, by releasing oil from US strategic reserves.
But raising interest rates penalizes labor, wage workers, most, again, and lets corporate bad actors off the hook, again, and this gets no attention in the mainstream media in the US, NY Times or WaPo, and is ignored or scorned by the corporate toadies at Fox and on the right.
Taking Aim at Seller's Inflation
Also, here's the story Weber wrote for the Guardian in 2021, first calling for strategic price controls to fight inflation. Krugman called her ideas "stupid," again belying the class war bias and free market dogma pervasive in mainstream economics in the US.
Could strategic price controls help fight inflation?
And another thing, Weber has a book, How China Escaped Shock Therapy? (2019). Fascinating economic history behind the fastest growing economy in the world for the last thirty years. I'll try to write more about it soon.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote [in Trump vs US] that because of the majority’s decision, "[t]he relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law."
“Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy,” she wrote, “I dissent.”
Letter from an American Historian, Heather Cox Richardson
This is a rightwing minority rule SCOTUS attempting to grant immunity to Trump for Jan 6, his fake elector scheme, trying to change votes in Georgia, stealing boxes of top secret documents, everything. Still remains hard for me to believe a popular majority of people vote for this. There may be some people that don't think Trump ought to be jailed but I'm reasonably confident none of the above infractions are popular. People don't want more Jan 6s; if possible, they'd rather something like that never happen again.
But now, after this profoundly anti-American SCOTUS decision, and in addition to other horrendous consequences, now a vote for Trump or the republicans in the '24 election is a vote for more Jan 6s. Sorry, but I don't believe that is a winning campaign pitch.
Still, the Electoral College and all the red state fuckery going on is bound to come out in the election and that is a scarier and closer proposition. And then there is the corporate filter on mainstream media that wants to normalize the fascist takeover; wants people not to notice the dire stakes of Trump's re-election. And, again, now we know SCOTUS and the courts cannot be counted on to uphold the law and protect the Constitution. Shouldn't that be at least part of the definition of a Constitutional crisis?
Anyway, this is NOT a populist or popular movement. It is a revolt of the elites, demagoging violent bigot deplorables to their cause. And it threatens America's and the world's future. Be wary and take note of anyone belittling the potential consequences of a Republican admin after this decision.
"I Can't Get Enough of Myself," Santigold. (2016) Discofabulous!
"Disparate Youth" (2012) Santigold peaked in Europe with this one. Big indie music spirit, always bad mouthed anymore by friends, but in the best Semipop multicult way: New Wave, electronic, dancey. And I'm betting great music in a small club; this is live for a radio station. Yay Santigold!
Unless Congress acts quickly to overturn this obscene 6-3 decision — which won’t happen so long as Republicans control the House — democracy in America has been wounded, perhaps fatally, and the president has been made into a dictator, should he or she choose to behave that way.
When we have a president (Biden) who respects the fundamental law, history, and traditions of America, we’ll be safe — for now. On the other hand, if Trump or any other fascist Republican becomes president, he can pretty much do anything he wants.
The imperial presidency is now officially here, not just rhetorically but in actuality. The six Republicans on the Supreme Court today did massive, perhaps irreparable, violence to our republic.
Rightwing SCOTUS's Imperial Presidency, The Hartmann Report
Translation: To the best of my understanding, I'm just a poor retired school teacher without a degree in law, SCOTUS, 6-3 (meaning: all the authoritarian right wingers, three of them placed there by the illegitimate POTUS in question, vs three liberals), decided POTUS is immune from all prosecution for "official acts," so now the indictments against Trump for his failed coup attempt go back to the lower court, where they will reportedly take a year or more to decide whether Trump ordering his insurrectionary mob to march to the capital to "fight like hell" to stop the peaceful transfer of power to President Biden on Jan 6, 2021, or arranging his fake elector scheme, were "official acts," by which time the hope is, obviously, the worst candidate for POTUS in American history, already a convicted felon, a massive financial fraudster, rapist, and special friend (think "Manchurian Candidate") to murderous dictators (and known enemies to our national independence) is re-elected and all the prosecutions are dropped before any such legal decisions are made. The fascist corruption in this decision is so blatant it takes one's breath away.
Post-colonial Sri Lankan/Global South, immigrant as global refugee, dancefloor toaster with swagger and lots of sauciness: "Where is my mind?" Pioneer in world beat electronic music genre. That her electronics sound like cheap home electronics adds to the rock & roll energy. She's more DIY hiphop than DIY punk.
And maybe most punk rock contrarian-libertarian of all she's now come out against vaccines, which goes with '77 punk's wearing Swastikas for sheer stupid "I wanna destroy the passerby" punk-rock-ness. I mean, if you have a bad experience with a vaccine by all means speak out about it. But your misfortune, terrible as it may be, isn't a credible argument against vaccines; it can't negate the millions of lives saved by vaccines. The health care where I live tries to screen for bad reactions to vaccines. Sounds like a lot of people close to M.I.A. missed such screening measures. Anyway, what I especially don't like about M.I.A.'s latest punk move is how it feels like she's trolling for the conspiracy theory fake news audience. Which actually does endanger public health. So, annoying and disappointing.
But, alas, M.I.A., Bad Girl to the bone, again, again, and again, rocks, always has. "Y.A.L.A."! One thing I believe for sure, it's a banger!