Month: March 2023

It’s no secret, as the New York Times has reported, that billionaire George Soros has put a lot of money behind electing reform-minded prosecutors like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner and Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg. He doesn’t do this directly, but rather through donating to organizations that do field work like Color for Change. In this, he’s not different from many right-wing billionaires who are lavish in their financial support of right-wing organizations, issues and candidates. When critics of Alvin Bragg say that he is backed by Soros, it is superficially the same as when critics say Republican politicians are backed by the Koch Brothers. Back in 2004, when I was a county coordinator for ACORN, you could have said I was Soros-backed since he had donated to the organization that actually paid me. In other words, it means something, but it doesn’t mean much. I wasn’t aware that Soros helped cut my check until after I’d left the job, and it wouldn’t have changed a thing about how I did my job if I had known at the time. Did Alvin Bragg know he was getting indirect support form Soros? I honestly don’t know.

Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner is right about one thing.

The political spending of Charles Koch, Sheldon Adelson, Peter Thiel, and other billionaires has been the focus of millions of words of the mainstream press, and for a good reason: Politicians are influenced by their donors in ways not immediately obvious to the public, but relevant to the public’s consideration of their politicians.

But when a mainstream reporter or a progressive critic makes a big deal about a Koch, Adelson or Thiel-backed candidate, the point is pretty plainly about oil, gas, gambling or the weird contrarian impulses and libertarianism of Thiel. The idea is that the politicians are beholden to big corporate interests which are usually pretty obvious. In some cases, the cause may be more social, like promoting religious education or opposing gay marriage, but you know why you are concerned about the billionaire’s influence.

Mention of George Soros feels different than this. The reason for opposing him is rarely spelled out, even in the case of his support for reform-minded prosecutors. You get more general descriptions, like he’s a “globalist.” It’s far from clear that most of the people using Soros’s name as an epithet know anything about his ideology at all.

Of course, Soros is Jewish, and charges that rich Jews try to control the world (or globe) for their own mysterious and nefarious reasons are an old and dangerous habit of the right. Adelson was Jewish, too, and he was quite obviously a huge backer of Israel, but when the left criticized him it was generally because of the non-Jewish politicians he backed who invariably voted against Democratic and progressive interests across the whole spectrum of issues.

Billionaires having too much influence is annoying and concerning to regular people of both parties, and how they spend their money is legitimate news. But, ordinarily, so is why they spend their money. And it just seems like Soros has become a bad word to the right without a lot of expressed rationale undergirding it.

There are non-Jewish billionaires who finance progressive causes that right-wingers don’t even know about, including some who also helped fund Color for Change’s program to elect reform-minded prosecutors, but it’s Soros name that gets mentioned every single time.

Now, Carney is complaining that people are trying to stifle any mention of Soros’s influence by suggesting that these references are anti-Semitic. The problem is that Carney doesn’t explain what else there might be about Soros that is so uniquely objectionable. Yes, he indirectly and intentionally funded prosecutors like Bragg, but what is Bragg doing that we wouldn’t have done anyway? How is Soros pulling Bragg’s strings? And why is Soros in more control than other major donors?

I think it’s worth mentioning that Bragg received backing from Soros, but it’s more interesting for what it says about Soros than what it says about Bragg. It tells us what kind of prosecutor Soros likes, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about why Bragg makes his decisions. There’s really no indication that Bragg is bucking popular opinion to do the bidding of a billionaire, but I don’t think you can say the same about a lot of NRA-backed politicians who will ignore popular opinion to do the bidding of the gun industry. If the idea is that Bragg is prosecuting Trump because Soros told him to do it, there’s simply no evidence for that at all.

This is why is seems like the real argument is that Soros is Jewish and part of a global Jewish cabal that is out to destroy America or the political right. And every time conservative politicians use Soros’s name as shorthand without explaining with any specificity what’s wrong with him, that impression is strengthened.

Does that mean it’s automatically anti-Semitic to mention Soros or point to who or what he supports?

No, of course not. But if you want to avoid that charge, you’ve got to explain why we’re supposed to care about Soros in the first place.

My dad turned me on to Miles Davis when I was very young. He was more of a “Kind of Blue” or “Sketches of Spain” fan, but electric Miles struck a chord with me. I especially love his early and mid-1970s recordings. The influences of James Brown, Stockhausen, and Sun Ra along with idea that we should just hook any instrument possible to a wah-wah peddle made for some intense listening. Here’s a 1973 concert:

I slightly exaggerate Miles hooking up practically instrument to wah-wah peddles, but he certainly figured out how to hook up his trumpet to one. The sounds he was producing at the time were almost otherworldly. Oh, and he was starting to experiment with electronic keyboards a bit, if memory serves. The music fit the times – dark, jaded, with the world seemingly in a downward spiral. Wait – that could be today as well.

Enjoy the gig. I’ve found plenty of live bootlegs from his 1970s septet era over the years. Sometimes I’d play pieces off those on my radio show, back when college radio was still a thing.

Cheers!

As I was reading through the Washington Post/Ipsos survey results on AR-15’s, I wasn’t finding much that was surprising. Men are more likely to own them than women. Middle-aged men are the most likely owners. Whites are overrepresented. Ownership is more common in rural areas, the South, and in states that voted for Trump. But then I came to something that did give me a shock.

Taken together, the polls find that 6 percent of Americans own an AR-15, about 1 in 20.

The data suggests that with a U.S. population of 260.8 million adults, about 16 million Americans own an AR-15.

I wasn’t prepared for 16 million AR-15 owners in the United States of America. That’s a sobering number. On the plus side, that demonstrates how many people own the weapon and don’t use it to shoot up concerts, elementary schools, college campuses, shopping malls, gay night clubs, black churches, Sikh temples and synagogues. On the minus side, that’s an absurd amount of firepower in the hands of people, most of whom have little legitimate use for it.

A strong plurality (33 percent) of respondents to the survey said they owned an AR-15 for self-defense but only three percent said it was to protect against government tyranny or societal “chaos.” Twelve percent said they use it for hunting and another 15 percent for fun, sport and recreation.

I’m not sure what percent own them for the basic purposes of firearms on a western ranch, like controlling predators and pests. If you live somewhere with bears and cougars, you might want a powerful gun just in case. There are legitimate uses for semiautomatic rifles, but I’ll just say this. I looked several times at the link to the Washington Post’s story on what the AR-15 does to the human body without having the courage to click on it and read it.  When I finally opened the article, here is what greeted me:

The AR-15 fires bullets at such a high velocity — often in a barrage of 30 or even 100 in rapid succession — that it can eviscerate multiple people in seconds. A single bullet lands with a shock wave intense enough to blow apart a skull and demolish vital organs. The impact is even more acute on the compact body of a small child.

“It literally can pulverize bones, it can shatter your liver and it can provide this blast effect,” said Joseph Sakran, a gunshot survivor who advocates for gun violence prevention and a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

“During surgery on people shot with high-velocity rounds, he said, body tissue “literally just crumbled into your hands.”

This kind of force might be necessary if your house is being attacked by a squad of ninjas, but otherwise it’s the dictionary definition of overkill. It must be fun to fire this weapon and 9 percent of survey respondents (an estimated 1.5 million Americans)  said they owned the AR-15 because “they like how it looks.” I have to ask, though, how many of them like what it does to a 9-year old student’s body?

Despite being in the prime demographic for AR-15 ownership (white male in my fifties), I can’t understand why so many Americans possess the weapon. Maybe that’s because I’m from the Northeast where only 10 percent of AR-15 owners reside despite having 17 percent of the country’s population. Maybe it’s because I’m a Democrat. Democrats make up 27 percent of the population but only 10 percent of AR-15 owners. Maybe it’s because I live in a low crime area with virtually no apex predators.

Still, I would argue that there are precious few people whose need for a weapon can’t be satisfied by something less lethal than an AR-15. I really have no sympathy for the argument that you need one because you like how it looks. I was actually surprised that so few people cited potential societal breakdown or governmental tyranny, because those are the only reasons I might consider owning one myself. If people are suddenly unable to secure food or other basic necessities and law and order breaks down, we could face something akin to a zombie apocalypse movie, and then you might very well wish you had an armory to protect yourself, your property and your family. Or, I can imagine a situation where something like Donald Trump’s coup attempt succeeds and it’s necessary to fight to restore our representative democracy. Maybe it’s too late at that point to go to the gun store.

Having been through the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and January 6, I don’t scoff at end-timers the way I used to. The aggression we’ve seen from Russia, and now possibly China, gives me great pause about the potential for nuclear war. The coming disruptions from climate change add to my concern. But only 3 percent of AR-15 owners directly cite these types of reasons as rationales.

What’s strange is that so many people don’t see that we’re living through a kind of apocalypse already, and it’s because we have a non-stop number of mass shootings with AR-15’s. Do people like dropping their kid off at school not knowing if they’ll ever see them again? Do they like going to a concert and having to plot their escape route? Not too long ago, we didn’t live like this.

But 16 million Americans now own an AR-15, and there doesn’t seem to be the political will to do anything about the widespread availability of this weapon.

The most egregious thing I ever saw a teacher do happened my freshman year at Princeton High School. Mr. Allegretti was a beloved English teacher who had been there for years. If I remember correctly, he taught my brother Andrew who graduated ten years before me. Loud, jovial and enthusiastic, he clearly had a passion for his job and was a favorite of many students. He had us read Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. There’s a graphic scene in the book where the protagonist is raped and impregnated by her father. Mr. Allegretti chose the prettiest girl, and had her read this scene aloud for the class. I’ll never forget either her mortification or the prurient grin and twinkling eyes he had on his face as his listened.  I still remember feeling paralyzed, like I should speak up and do something-say what was happening is wrong. But I didn’t have the self-confidence to do it. I did tell people about it. I’m pretty sure I even told my parents. But Mr. Allegretti never faced any consequences. I doubt the administration ever knew what he had done. His reputation remained intact.

I mention this because I see the Pinellas County, Florida school district banned Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” from its high schools because of a parental complaint about a rape scene. I have to say, it never occurred to me that The Color Purple should be banned. I had no problem with being assigned a book that contained a rape scene. I had a problem with my English teacher forcing a 14 year old girl to read explicitly sexual (and deviant) content aloud in front of her peers. Still, reflecting on my experience, I can understand why some parents would find the material inappropriate. There’s a continuum involved here, and not everyone will draw the line at the same place.

Having said that, I really don’t think a book (or movie) should be banned based on a single parental complaint. That opens the door for things like this:

Ruby Bridges talked in the late ’90s about the importance of Disney making a movie about how, as a first-grader, she became a civil rights icon by wading through a White mob to integrate an elementary school in the South in 1960.

“I think it’s important to look at this film to see what a 6-year-old child had to go through, what a family went through just to be able to have the same privileges as everyone else,” she told the Florida Times-Union. “… I think ideally that people will think about that and do everything they can not to pass prejudice on to their children.”

Now, more than six decades after Bridges endured that treatment, the parent of a second-grader at North Shore Elementary in St. Petersburg, Fla., filed a formal objection against the film after it was played in her child’s class as part of a Black History Month lesson, as first reported by the Weekly Challenger. In the complaint, the parent said the film isn’t appropriate for second-graders because it might teach them that “white people hate black people.”

Obviously, it’s silly to argue that learning about what some people did in the past will lead someone to conclude what all people feel in the present. When I was taught about the Civil Rights Movement in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the clear message was that we had made progress and that this was a good thing. As a white person, I didn’t conclude that I should hate black people, nor that all my all white peers hated them. I was taught that we should treat blacks as our equals, and those who had fought to make that possible were heroes who made great sacrifices and took great risks. Understanding the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow made me more understanding of the difficulties I saw in the black community and I think that education achieved what Ruby Bridges hoped, which was that I made sure not to pass prejudice on to my children.

As for my self-image, I suppose that there was some small degree of guilt. I didn’t like learning how African and Native-Americans had been treated in this country by people who looked like me. But the predominate feeling was a resolve not to repeat or perpetuate those injustices. I came to that conclusion because the lesson was clearly that people aren’t immutable. White people weren’t condemned to being vicious segregationists, and the black community wasn’t condemned to living in its present condition, which was clearly still lagging in terms of wealth, health and opportunity. Everything should and could improve if we didn’t keep repeating the mistakes of the past. So, I didn’t feel badly about myself. I felt empowered.

The idea of progress is crucial, because without it you can see nothing but flaws and limitations. The conservative movement to shut down teaching about the history of race relations suffers from this problem. It’s not about teaching how people are, but how they should not be. We teach about the Holocaust not to send a message that whites hate Jews, but that hatred can lead to atrocity. Teaching about America’s legacy of white supremacy is no different. But you have to believe we can actually be better people in the future than we were in the past or the lesson doesn’t come through.

And this is the generous view. The less generous view is that some conservatives don’t want past behavior criticized because they want to continue that behavior in the present. They’re not afraid that their child will learn that white people hate black people but that there is something wrong with hating black people. That’s really at the heart of Trumpism, and it helps explain why we’re seeing this movement to empower parents to control what is taught about race in schools.

I find it odd that the New York Times decided to publish an opinion piece by David French arguing against Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg’s  prosecution of Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels matter. It’s not that the Times wants to offer both sides of the issue that catches me off guard. Nor is it the strength of French’s argument, which is solid. It’s more that they allowed French to make his argument based on pure speculation about a very key detail in the case.

As French points out, this is a very unusual prosecutorial decision with a lot of moving pieces. At the heart of the controversy is that statute of limitations, which would have ordinarily expired in a misdemeanor case from 2016. However, two factors make charges still viable. The first is that the clock doesn’t run in New York when the defendant is out of state, and Trump has spent very little time in New York since he was elected president. The second is that if the misdemeanor was committed in the furtherance of a felony, then the statute of limitations is six years rather than two.

French assumes that the latter loophole will be used rather than the former. I don’t see why this assumption is justified or necessary. If the clock hasn’t run out, then the felony loophole is not necessary. However, it does seem reasonable to assume that a felony is involved for the simple reason that the whole matter would be a lot of effort for a mere misdemeanor.

French’s key assumption is that the felony will be a violation of a New York State campaign finance law. He’s not alone in this. It’s the most widespread theory out there. The idea is that Trump’s payment to Stormy Daniels was actually a campaign expense, and it wasn’t handled as a campaign expense. French’s problem with this is that this was a federal election, and it should be covered under federal law.

The prosecution may claim that state campaign finance laws apply to Trump, and his payments thus violated New York law, but remember we’re talking about a presidential election. A federal statute expressly states that the relevant campaign finance laws “supersede and pre-empt any provision of state law with respect to election to federal office.” This law represents a formidable barrier to prosecuting Trump under state campaign finance laws, and there is no obvious path around it.

My immediate question is why French assumes Bragg is bringing a case that has such an obvious barrier? Surely the Manhattan Attorney General and his team of lawyers are aware that there’s a federal statute that could spike this theory of the case. If there’s no obvious way to win such a case, isn’t a better assumption that this isn’t how they intend to proceed?

And, really, French’s argument boils down to concern that Bragg is bending the law in too many places in order to bring a prosecution that just doesn’t add up.  He’s contorting himself to keep that statute of limitations from expiring and then he’s making a state case about a federal law.

If French has all his assumptions correct, then it’s worth considering what he has to say. But precisely because a prosecution doesn’t look likely to succeed under his assumptions, maybe he’s got something badly wrong.

The grand jury proceedings are secret. We have no idea what kind of information they’ve unearthed. It seems prudent to wait to see what they produce before we write editorials critiquing their work.

Donald Trump spent the last week in a frenetic state of panic about being arrested for filing false business reports in New York.  Many would consider that a very bad week, but you might not realize it if you look at the top trending stories this weekend.

Over at Memeorandum, the “Top Items” are all about how Trump is moving further ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the polls. Nancy Cook of Bloomberg writes that DeSantis is the one who “just suffered through the kind of week a candidate for the highest office in the US would like to forget.”

Steven Shepard of Politico explains that DeSantis is inexplicably losing the key beer-drinking demographic to the teetotaling Trump, mainly because he’s behind 17 points with Republicans without a college degree.

The big story, however, comes from Dasha Burns, Jonathan Allen, Allan Smith and Henry J. Gomez of NBC News, who delve into the widespread doubt among pro-DeSantis Republicans that their would-be champion has what it takes: “NBC News spoke with more than 20 GOP strategists, politicians and donors about whether DeSantis can bounce back from adversity — some of it self-inflicted…”

They’re all concerned about the Florida governor’s “recent stumbles,” and there’s “a growing sentiment among GOP operatives that Trump may be impossible to defeat — even with a possible indictment looming over him.”

So, why all the sudden concern about DeSantis’s trajectory?

Once surging, DeSantis remains well below Trump in polls measuring the prospective GOP primary field. He was slow to respond to the possible indictment of Trump — and then sideswiped the former president once he did. DeSantis was also forced this week to clean up his position on U.S. support for Ukraine after a backlash from establishment Republicans.

Number one, there was some slippage in the polls. Number two, he wasn’t sufficiently supportive of Trump. Number three, he made some contradictory remarks about Vladimir Putin and the war effort in Ukraine.

Truthfully, I don’t believe anything DeSantis has recently said or done has had much effect on his position. What we’ve seen is the Republican base coming back to Trump as his legal peril has come into clearer view. And ever here, it’s easy to exaggerate the movement. As the NBC News article notes, “Trump has led DeSantis in nearly every reputable national poll since the start of Joe Biden’s presidency in 2021.”

Comparing Trump-DeSantis polls from January and February to the same polls from late March, there’s consistent movement in Trump’s direction, but it’s fairly modest. What’s harder to find is the supposed surge DeSantis has squandered. It looks more like DeSantis went from being 30 points down last September to more like 20 points down in November. The picture doesn’t look that different today.

For me, I think there are really only two valid takes from DeSantis’s “recent struggles.” His uneven and uncertain approach to both Ukraine and Trump’s legal problems does give one some pause about how adroit he is as a politician, and that shouldn’t inspire confidence when projecting how he’ll do going forward. On the other hand, as long as Trump is under threat of indictment (but not actually indicted), we shouldn’t expect Republican voters to say anything negative about him to survey-takers. The mood is far too protective and defensive for that.

A similar situation happened after President Bill Clinton was impeached for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. Many progressives were deeply unhappy with Clinton’s presidency but good luck finding any of them who would disapprove of his performance in office while the Senate trial was underway. Clinton actually appeared more popular in polls, while that clearly was an illusion. Democrats were furious with him, but they weren’t going to share that with some stranger on the phone.

So, supporters of DeSantis have reason to be concerned, but I wouldn’t be panicked. The polls mean very little right now, and some what makes Trump look strong actually hides his biggest weakness, which is concern about his electability that will only be exacerbated at his legal woes begin to play out.

DeSantis is positioned very well to be the alternative to Trump, and that’s exactly where he wants and needs to be.

 

 

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting a new painting. It is the “bent pyramid” in Egypt. The photo that I’m using (A photo that I found long ago.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

I started my sketch using my usual grind, duplicating the grid I made over a copy of the photo itself. Over this I added some preliminary paint.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

The twice-impeached, disgraced ex-president is ramping up his rhetoric against Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg in the hope that he can somehow prevent an indictment in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Now he is predicting that any indictment will lead to catastrophic “death and destruction.”

Previously, Trump referred to Bragg as an “animal,” and here we see him calling Bragg “a degenerate psychopath.” He also insists that he hasn’t committed any crime, but it is “known by all” that as INDIVIDUAL-1, he is every bit as guilty as his former lawyer Michael Cohen who was convicted and did hard prison time for his role in the Daniels case.

Moreover, Cohen testified during his trial that he made false statements to Congress “to be consistent with Individual-1’s political messaging and to be loyal to Individual-1.” In other words, Cohen exercised the hush money scheme at the behest of Trump and then perjured himself to protect Trump from the political and legal consequences of their actions.

Trump was not indicted at that time because of a Justice Department policy against bringing criminal charges against a sitting president. But Trump is no longer a sitting president and there’s no reason why he should get better treatment than Cohen simply because he’s announced his intention to seek the presidency again. Simple justice demands that Trump face the same consequences that Cohen faced. There’s really no theory under which Trump should get a pass.

Trump’s threats have already had legal consequences. On Thursday, the judge in Trump’s rape case took the extreme measure of creating an anonymous jury.

The judge handling the civil lawsuit of E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump says jurors’ personal information will be kept confidential and other security measures will be taken to protect them, citing the former president’s history of attacking the legal system.

Judge Lewis Kaplan noted Trump’s most recent comments surrounding the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into alleged hush money payments adult film star Stormy Daniels as a reason to protect jurors as much as possible

“Mr. Trump’s quite recent reaction to what he perceived as an imminent threat of indictment by a grand jury sitting virtually next door to this Court was to encourage ‘protest’ and to urge people to ‘take our country back.’ That reaction reportedly has been perceived by some as incitement to violence,” Kaplan wrote in an order Thursday.

“And it bears mention that Mr. Trump repeatedly has attacked courts, judges, various law enforcement officials and other public officials, and even individual jurors in other matters,” the judge added.

That happened before Trump’s latest outburst, and also before he posted the following image at his Truth Social website where he appears to be swinging a baseball bat at the head of Bragg.

This is obviously reminiscent of 2019, when Roger Stone received a gag order after posting a threatening image including crosshairs on Instagram about the federal judge Amy Berman Jackson, who was overseeing his case.

Jackson promised to hold Stone responsible if  “his post caused others to act in threatening or harmful ways.” She mentioned house arrest and prison as possible consequences.

Truthfully, Trump’s actions here are more clearly invitations for his supporters to commit acts of violence, either against Bragg in particular or against the nation as a whole.

The various judges overseeing Trump’s civil and criminal cases will be justified in exercising prior restraint and limiting his right to speak freely about his trials. The rape case may not be the only one involving an anonymous jury.

Trump’s handling of sensitive classified material is a threat to national security, but I believe his provocations to violence are even more serious, and his scheduled rally this weekend in Waco, Texas, really drives home the point. He’s doing everything he can think of to cause catastrophic death and destruction, and the courts are reacting by treating him in the same manner they treat prominent gangsters and terrorists who are on trial.

I’d say I’m surprised that Trump is taking things this far, but it’s exactly what I expect from him.

With all the criminal liability facing Donald Trump, it’s easy to forget he’s staring down some rather serious civil liability as well. On Tuesday, a New York judge denied Trump a delay in the case Attorney General Letitia James has brought against the disgraced ex-president, his adult children and his company “alleging they duped banks and insurers by inflating the value of Trump’s real estate portfolio.” Instead, a trial date was set for October 2nd: “The issue is whether the statements were false,” [Judge Arthur] Engoron said. “This case is complex, but it is not complicated.”

There’s really not much hope for Trump in the case since the judge is already convinced that the statements were false.

The judge has already rejected several defenses, including what Engoron called the “everyone was doing it” defense.

“You don’t have to have an accounting degree,” Engoron said. “A triplex apartment is worth less money if it’s 11,000, not 30,000 square feet,” referring to an allegation in the state’s 214-page complaint that Trump overvalued his apartment in Trump Tower. Until he moved to Florida, Trump lived in an 11,000-square-foot triplex. From 2012 to 2016, Trump represented the size of the apartment to be 30,000 square feet and valued it as high as $327 million, according to the lawsuit.

That’s kind of an open-and-shut scenario. Trump lied and he can’t argue that it’s not a problem because everyone else was lying, too. He’s facing a $250 million penalty.

The lawsuit accused them of engaging in “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation in the preparation of Mr. Trump’s annual statements of financial condition” that overstated the values of nearly every major property in the Trump portfolio over at least a 10-year period.

“These acts of fraud and misrepresentation grossly inflated Mr. Trump’s personal net worth as reported in the Statements by billions of dollars and conveyed false and misleading impressions to financial counterparties about how the Statements were prepared,” the lawsuit said.

So, that’s on tap for October by which time Trump should be quite busy in other courtrooms. The first contest on the Republican presidential nomination calendar is Iowa, tentatively scheduled for January 8, 2024.

As the legal heat on Trump has ramped up, Republican voters have rallied to his side, which can be seen in how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ numbers have plummeted. This may be more a reflection of protectiveness of their former leader than genuine enthusiasm for another presidential campaign. Will Trump have actually been convicted in a courtroom before Iowa voters caucus? I think it’s quite likely, and voters by that time will be in a more practical mood. They’ll be less interested in loyalty to Trump and more interested in beating Biden.

Since this week marked the Vernal Equinox, it seemed fitting that I share Vernal Equinox by the late Jon Hassell:

This is the title track to what I think is Jon Hassell’s earliest solo LP. He’d already been an active musician well before this LP was released in the late 1970s. I got turned onto his music the way I get turned on to a lot of musicians. I had the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light LP, and when I looked at the liner notes, I saw Jon Hassell listed as playing trumpet. I’d then find out that he and Brian Eno collaborated on some music (Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics was what I found fairly quickly), and it was a matter of time before I just decided to dive in to Hassell’s solo recordings. He often got classified as “New Age”, which was unfortunate as his music was a bit too moody and nuanced to be so easily pigeonholed. He’d studied under minimalist composers and under those who had mastered Indian classical music, and he was very adept at incorporating elements of jazz, Latin, rock, funk, and electronic music into his recordings over the years. So he created some music you could meditate to, but also some that you could dance to as well, and always leave you thinking. What more could I ask for from a composer?

If there is a life lesson somewhere in my story, it’s this: if you like a piece of music, see who all had a hand in performing it. Track down their work and see what they are up to. You’ll be led into some interesting worlds well worth exploring. Some you’ll enjoy. Some perhaps not so much. But you will never get bored.

Cheers.