Month: August 2023

In the third episode of the Progress Podcast, Brendan and I touch on a variety of things, including student loan relief, running marathons, and calling the staff of Sen. Kyrstem Sinema. Brendan has a take on Brent Terhune and the Oliver Anthony phenomenon, and we both discuss Ron DeSantis’s Army of the Socially Awkward. Plus, there’s a breakdown of the eight candidates who jumped out of the clown car to participate in the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee. Listen in to hear who I thought won and why.

Some other highlights include discussing Bible verses with Tim Scott, shirtless tennis and 9/11 conspiracies with VIVAKE THE FAKE Ramaswamy,  the 14th Amendment with Asa Hutchinson and college bong hits with Bill Clinton.

Please give a listen and remember to like and subscribe.

 

In 1976, a newly renovated Yankee Stadium opened and the team returned from its two-year hiatus playing in the Mets’ ballpark in Queens. It was my first year watching baseball and I was captivated. By August, the Yanks had opened a commanding lead in their division and were headed to the playoffs for the first time since 1964. They would go on to get swept in the World Series by Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine led by Sparky Anderson, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, and Johnny Bench. That broke my little elementary school heart, but on Old Timer’s Day in August, everything looked as good as it could be. Joe DiMaggio and Whitey Ford were in the dugout with my favorite players, Thurman Munson and Catfish Hunter. Mickey Mantle, who retired in 1968, the year before I was born, was happy to see the team winning again. When asked why it had taken so long to turn things around he said, “We got old together, that’s what happened to the Yankees,” Mantle said, tracing the decline and fall of the empire. “We got old at the same time, and the club got nothing back in return.”

That’s kind of what it feels like looking at our leadership here in America. Our president is old. He’s doing a really great job, but he’s definitely showing his age and its greatly concerning to the public. At least, that’s what people consistently tells pollsters.  Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein is showing signs of dementia. And Mitch McConnell has now had two very public episodes where he went into some kind of fugue state for half a minute or more, kind of like when you have the beachball of death show up on your computer screen and all functions cease for a while.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze for about 30 seconds on Wednesday while speaking with reporters after a speech in Covington, Kentucky.

The incident is similar to an episode McConnell experienced at the US Capitol late last month and is likely to raise additional questions about the fitness of the 81-year-old to lead the Senate Republican caucus.

We all get old, at least if we’re lucky. Sometimes we work or drive a little longer than we should. Sometimes friends or relatives have to gently nudge us off the stage before we hurt ourselves or others. It looks like that time may have come for McConnell.

Of course, President Biden was gracious:

“Mitch is a friend, as you know – not a joke, I know people don’t believe that’s the case. We have disagreements politically but he’s a good friend and so I’m going to try and get in touch with him later this afternoon.”

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene was not:

‘Severe aging health issues and/or mental health incompetence in our nation’s leaders MUST be addressed,’ Rep. Greene posted Wednesday along with the clip of McConnell freezing-up while speaking with the press in Kentucky.

‘Biden, McConnell, Feinstein, and Fetterman are examples of people who are not fit for office and it’s time to be serious about it,’ she added.

That’s an example of making everything political. Feinstein and McConnell are in a different category than Biden and Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania who is recovering from a stroke and related depression. They are showing no signs of incompetence or incoherence.

I do think, however, that it’s reasonable to put age limits on federal offices, including judicial offices. It’s particularly sensible for lifetime appointments, where the people have no opportunity to replace someone who is no longer functioning but refuses to retire.

Having said that, I do support a second term for Biden. I know it comes with risks, but the risks exist in equal measure for Donald Trump who will be 78 and a half on Inauguration Day in 2025. It really does feel like we all got old at the same time.

Greetings! It is mid-week somewhere!

Here’s one of Miles Davis’ masterpieces from the end of the 1960s.

The bar’s open, and the jukebox is always ready. Enjoy the rest of your week.

Cheers!

Presumably, you heard about the lunatic from Florida who walked into a Dollar General store last weekend and shot and killed three black people for no other reason than they were black. He had something in common with the lunatic from South Carolina who walked into a black church in 2015 and killed nine parishioners during Bible study. They both had Rhodesia-related schwag.

The white gunman who killed three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, over the weekend wore a Rhodesian army patch on his tactical vest…The patch — representing Rhodesia, a former white minority-ruled territory in southern Africa in the 1960s and ’70s that would become Zimbabwe — is yet another symbol of how the shooter, Ryan Palmeter, was racist and was influenced by racist ideology, investigators say.

…An admitted white supremacist who was convicted in the 2015 shooting of nine worshippers at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, appeared in an online image wearing a jacket with two patches: the green-and-white flag of Rhodesia and the flag of apartheid-era South Africa.

You can be forgiven for not knowing where Rhodesia is since it ceased to exist in 1980. It’s now called Zimbabwe. I was poking around and came across a declassified CIA report from approximately 1970, maybe 1971, on all the fun stuff that was going on in Rhodesia at that time. If you’re curious, it’s a good primer even if it doesn’t know how things turned out.

Because I was born in 1969, the Rhodesia issue wasn’t much on my radar as a kid. Whether it was Peter Gabriel’s song about Steve Biko or the student movement at Princeton University for divestiture in South Africa (which I believe involved Michelle Obama, nee Robinson), I definitely knew about apartheid and the Reagan administration’s cuddly relationship with the racist government in Pretoria and Cape Town. It was only in college that I became familiar with the broader story of decolonization in Africa, and the particularly painful example of Rhodesia.

The short story is that a bunch of Brits led by Cecil Rhodes (of Rhodes Scholar fame) arrived there in the 1890’s in search of gold. They used machine guns to subdue the native tribes and though they never found too much gold, they prospered in agriculture and mining. As a British colonial possession, the state was well organized with modern banking options and underwent rapid development, but the whites were outnumbered more than 20 to 1, and they naturally plucked up the most arable land and took control of the valuable minerals.

As the decolonization movement got going after World War Two, the white Rhodesians felt particularly threatened and they resisted making concessions. They stepped up repressive and extralegal measures, and ultimately they split with Queen Elizabeth II in 1965 and tried to go their own way as an independent nation. United Nations condemnation and economic sanctions followed, and in the United States their best friends were pro-Jim Crow southerners opposed to the black Civil Rights Movement. Jeet Here wrote about this in The New Republic back in 2015, with reference to the Charleston shooter.

Dylann Roof is not an original thinker. Based on a manifesto on the lastrhodesian.com, apparently written by the alleged Charleston killer, Roof has a shallow mind that credulously absorbed whatever he read on racist websites. But one particular strand of his thinking has roots beyond white supremacy proper, in mainstream conservatism: Roof repeatedly links his racial separatism with support for colonial regimes that once ruled large swaths of Africa. In one photo, he’s shown wearing patches bearing the flags of apartheid South Africa and white-ruled Rhodesia. The manifesto upholds apartheid as a model for how a minority of whites could dominate a black majority: “Look at South Africa, and how such a small minority held the black in apartheid for years and years.”

The idea that whites in America have a natural affinity with white colonialists in Africa did not spring from the neo-Nazi far-right, but rather the conservative movement that coalesced around National Review in the 1950s. If Roof saw himself as “the last Rhodesian,” then the magazine’s conservatives of were the first American Rhodesians.

It’s true, the intellectual creators of the National Review, William Buckley and James Burnham, were very close to the white colonialist governments in South Africa and Rhodesia, and for many of the same reasons cited by Dylann Roof.

It’s not clear that holding these beliefs in some way justifies murdering black strangers without any semblance of provocation. That requires a mental leap and moral lapse that Buckley and Burnham didn’t make. But it shows both that these racial killers aren’t far removed from influential conservative thought on race and the danger of that kind of thought when it gets the blessing of intellectuals.

So, Rhodesia succumbed the the independence movement in 1980, but the idea behind it lives on. You might have never known or simply forgotten about the country, but white nationalist conservatives know about it and they celebrate with patches on their tactical gear.

One of the more interesting pieces of punditry I heard this week was an effort to explain why Donald Trump’s clear legal peril isn’t hurting him too much with Republican voters. The basic argument was that this is mainly an electability argument, and Republicans have been subjected to so much anti-Biden propaganda that portrays the president as a doddering and senile fool that they think ANYONE can beat him.

In other words, Republicans don’t draw any negative conclusions about Trump from all the lawsuits and indictments. They shrug all that off as partisan law enforcement and the DEEP STATE trying to destroy Trump’s political movement. But, even though they might be convinced to abandon Trump if they perceived him as fatally damaged goods in a general election, they believe Trump will easily beat Biden in 2024, just any sentient Republican would.

I actually buy this. It makes sense to me. And it should be tested out.

What it means, if true, is that Trump is actually quite vulnerable to collapse if his perceived electability is damaged. For example, being convicted of felonies would probably accomplish this. But only if Biden’s perceived electability improves. So, if I were advising Ron DeSanits or Nikki Haley or Tim Scott, I’d tell them to talk incessantly about how formidable Biden is as a candidate and how difficult it will be to unseat an incumbent president. I most definitely would not continue to feed into the right-wing memes about the president drooling over his porridge. The more they build Biden up, the less suitable Trump will seem as an opponent.

They could even start telling the Republican voters about some of the things Biden has done that are popular. They can point out the low unemployment rate, all the jobs that have been created, the student loan relief, etc. And then they might say that Republicans’ banning abortion made Biden’s job of getting reelected much easier. The basic point being here that beating Biden is going to be very difficult instead of the easiest thing in the world.

Admittedly, it might seem like a foolish strategy for a Republican candidate to spend a lot of time saying positive things about Joe Biden, but I think it might be the ONLY strategy with a chance to eat into Trump’s lead.

We are going to hear more and more about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment because it will be used in an effort to keep Donald Trump off the ballot in the 2024 election. ABC News has a good primer on the issue, if you’re interested. Here are the basics. The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, in response to the unsuccessful Confederate rebellion against the United States of America. It’s primary purpose was to grant full citizenship and rights to blacks, but it also dealt with some cleanup from the Civil War. In particular, Section 4 dealt with honoring the debts we had incurred, which is relevant to defaulting on our debt today, and Section 3 set forth a ban on allowing certain Confederates to hold public office.

Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Later on, the rules were relaxed through an amnesty, but the language is still on the books and still part of our Constitution. If you ever held public office and later engaged in an insurrection or rebellion against the United States, you may not hold any future civil or military office. It has already been enforced once, in New Mexico, where Couy Griffin was removed by a judge as county commissioner for District 2 of Otero County because he participated in the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. His participation was relatively minor. He scaled a barrier and entered a restricted area but he did not enter the Capitol building. He was eventually convicted of trespassing and acquitted of disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to “14 days in jail (that was satisfied by time served), a $3000 fine, 60 days of community service, and supervised release for a duration of one year.” Yet, this was enough under the 14th Amendment to cost him his job as a county commissioner and bar him from future service.

But that doesn’t end the debate. Florida Atlantic University political science professor Kevin Wagner explained the issue to ABC News:

“The challenge here is that the 14th Amendment isn’t necessarily self-executing. In other words, it doesn’t just automatically happen and there is some question about what it means to be engaged in insurrection or rebellion and how that is defined. The challenge for us is that historically, it hasn’t been well-defined,” Wagner, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, said.

“The question is about what is “participating in a rebellion or an insurrection.” There is dispute and people feel strongly what happened was essentially an insurrection — and it’s often referred to that way fairly regularly — but others have suggested that this was a protest that may have gotten out of hand — and may have even become criminal — but didn’t rise to a level of a rebellion or an insurrection. And the provision of the 14th Amendment really turns on how it is that we assess what happened,” he said.

One thing that is certain is that every Secretary of State or top state election official in the country will be petitioned to keep Trump off the ballot on the basis of Section Three. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has already prepared a campaign for this purpose, and they’ll be joined by others including Free Speech For People, and even ordinary citizens. An interesting example comes from New Hampshire:

On Tuesday, Bryant “Corky” Messner, a lawyer who lives in New Hampshire, became the first person to announce concrete plans to [challenge Trump’s ballot access].

Messner was endorsed by Donald Trump when he ran for a New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate seat in 2020. Now, he says that as a veteran and a graduate of West Point, his civic duty compels him to try to keep Trump off the ballot.

“I really don’t view myself as turning on Trump, as odd as that sounds,” he told ABC News. “I love this country. I’ve served this country. I’ve taken an oath to this country. My sons are serving right now and I believe someone’s got to step up to defend the Constitution.”

At the first Republican debate in Milwaukee, which Trump did not attend, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson said he would not support anyone who had been convicted of a “serious felony or who is disqualified under our Constitution,” referring to the 14th Amendment. Hutchinson was relying on an academic article recently published in the Pennsylvania Law Review (abstract here) written by Federalist Society members Profs. William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School and Michael Stokes Paulsen of University of St. Thomas School of Law. The professors conclude:

First, Section Three remains an enforceable part of the Constitution, not limited to the Civil War, and not effectively repealed by nineteenth century amnesty legislation. Second, Section Three is self-executing, operating as an immediate disqualification from office, without the need for additional action by Congress. It can and should be enforced by every official, state or federal, who judges qualifications. Third, to the extent of any conflict with prior constitutional rules, Section Three repeals, supersedes, or simply satisfies them. This includes the rules against bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, the Due Process Clause, and even the free speech principles of the First Amendment. Fourth, Section Three covers a broad range of conduct against the authority of the constitutional order, including many instances of indirect participation or support as “aid or comfort.” It covers a broad range of former offices, including the Presidency. And in particular, it disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.

Now, if you are a hypothetical top state election official considering a ballot challenge to Trump on this basis, you can simply accept the reasoning and strike him from the ballot. Perhaps you can also seek guidance from your state Attorney General or state courts. It’s certain that if Trump is the Republican nominee, he will be kicked off at least some states’ ballots and have to appeal.

It would seem that the Supreme Court is likely to rule in Trump’s favor since he appointed three of its members and it has a 6-3 conservative majority, but I can’t think of a 2020 election-related case that Trump has won at the Supreme Court. It really will come down to two factors. First, can we consider the January 6 riot (or Trump’s general effort to remain in power despite losing) to be a rebellion or insurrection, and second, can we say that Trump at least gave aid and comfort to that rebellion?

The government has already attained multiple convictions on seditious conspiracy. Trump may soon be convicted in Atlanta of racketeering in an effort to steal an Electoral College victory. He could also be convicted in federal court of corruptly impeding and obstructing Congress and the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. There seems to be plenty of ammunition to argue both that a rebellion or insurrection occurred and that Trump was deeply involved. As the Georgia case demonstrates, the rebellion wasn’t restricted to the January 6 riot because it was just one part of a much larger multi-state months-long coup attempt. But even in a strict January 6 sense, Trump assembled the mob, whipped it into a frenzy, sent it to the Capitol and refused to call them off as they attacked, forcing Congress into hiding and causing death and massive property damage.

It’s pretty hard to maintain that this was all just a protest that got out of hand.

Am I predicting that there will be a majority on the Supreme Court to keep Trump off the ballot? No. I’m not even ready to predict that Trump will be the nominee.

But I wouldn’t completely rule out that the Supreme Court, if a time comes for them to decide, could see the merits in keeping Trump off the ballot. The case is strong and really up to their discretion. And Trump may not seem like an attractive option to Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas after they get a look at some post-conviction general election polls.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the northern Arizona scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 6×6 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

For this week’s cycle I have heavily revised the sky.

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.

Tori Otten of The New Republic seems concerned that Sarah Palin is basically trying to instigate a civil war, and I agree with her that there’s some irresponsible rhetoric at play here, but I think it’s also kind of silly to pretend that the war hasn’t been ongoing since January 6, 2021. Now, what Palin said while talking to Eric Bolling on the Newsmax channel was in response to Donald Trump getting arrested for the fourth time in 2023.

“Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tiered system of justice, and I want to ask them, ‘What the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war?’ Because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this,” Palin told host Eric Bolling.

“And Eric, I like that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.”

The good news is that it looks, for now, as if maybe people are done arresting the disgraced ex-president. Of course, Arizona might join the party. For now, it looks like its sites are more on Rudy Giuliani, but that could change. Still, assuming that Trump will top out at four arrests, Palin won’t have to “keep putting up” him getting booked and fingerprinted.

Of course, the trials will progress, and we can’t forget he has a civil trial in New York accusing him of widespread fraud, and he has a second go-round scheduled with writer E. Jean Carroll who he sexually assaulted and defamed. So the man is going to be court as often as not, and that might be hard for Palin to take.

But her side of the aisle already started the war when they attacked the United States Capitol in an effort to keep the loser of the 2020 presidential election in power in the White House. What we’re looking at now, is our side fighting back. Call it Gettysburg, call it Vicksburg, call it whatever you want. It’s called preserving the Union by any means necessary, and we’re going to win. So it really comes down to how much kicking and screaming Palin and her lot want to do while they’re being held to account.

When I hear Palin threaten civil war, I’m not really alarmed by it. Might someone be inspired by Palin to pop off and hurt someone? We’ve already had someone break into Nancy Pelosi’s house and hit her husband in the head with a hammer. We have lunatics walking into black church and synagogues and gay night clubs and opening fire. Trump stoked this behavior and the only way to get it under control is to demonstrate who is really in charge here. Whenever I see evidence that things are proceeding as they should, I take that as a good sign not something to anxious about. These people make sure I’m always anxious, and there’s only one way I’ll even get any peace of mind.

And that’s by winning the war they started. Things are looking good.

Believe it or not, I sucked it up and watched the entirety of the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee which took place on Wednesday night. Brendan and I are going to talk about the lead-up to this debate and how it went on our next podcast, but I want to give you some brief impressions here. As you probably know, Donald Trump opted not to participate and instead, during the debate, he aired an interview he did with Tucker Carlson on the social media site formally known as Twitter. On Thursday, he flew to Atlanta to get booked for attempting a coup. It’s the fourth time he has had to surrender to authorities this summer, and we have to consider the possibility that, despite his commanding position in the polls, one of the eight people who did participate in the debate will become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.

I’m just gonna go across the stage from right to left, beginning with North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. A late entry into the race, he’s sitting at zero point five percent in the FiveThirtyEight average of polls. He barely met the requirements to be a participant, and then immediately tore his Achilles tendon playing pickup basketball with his staff. I gotta give the man mad props for showing up on that bad foot and standing without assistance for two hours. On that basis alone, you could argue he won the debate. He’s probably the most normal of all the candidates but a lot like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, he’s political interests are primarily about protecting the energy producing industries which are vital to his home state. He took some shots at China and he proved he could say many words in the one minute candidates were allotted to answer questions, but his big win was simply getting his face out there because almost no one knows who he is or what he looks like. I imagine his polling might quadruple, which would give him the support of two out every hundred Republicans.

Next to Burgum was South Carolina U.S. Senator Tim Scott, and I have him pegged as the biggest loser of the night. I just couldn’t figure out what strategy he was pursuing. I wrote about his “betting everything on Iowa” strategy on Monday, and he obliged by getting pretty churchy at times to appeal to Iowa’s evangelical base, but frankly Mike Pence is better at that smarmy and sanctimonious schtick and it showed. Scott is actually kind of a normie compared to the average Republican these days and certainly a moderate on racial issues, and he wants to push more of a optimistic Reaganesque message which really can make him stand out from the crowd. But his biggest moment came when he promised to complete Trump’s laughing stock of a border wall. I guess he wants to pick up Trump supporters with that nonsense, but it seemed pretty far off brand for what he needs to do. He came in with a 3.7 percent polling average and I’m not sure it will improve. It didn’t help that he probably got the least amount of airtime.

Former South Carolina governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley seemed to be the favorite of the post-debate punditry on CNN and MSNBC but I think that’s more a reflection of their thirst of a non-crazy Republican than an astute measure of her performance. She definitely made her presence known, however, and she stood out not only as the only woman on the stage but as a forceful defender of an internationalist and active foreign policy. She also posed as a moderate and reasonable vote on abortion even as she said she supported the South Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling, which came earlier in the day, in favor of a six-week ban. Still, for Republican women (and men who love women) who don’t support Dobbs, Haley made herself the clear choice. I don’t know that that wins her more votes than it loses, but it might help in contests where independents can participate.

Next to Haley was Vivek Ramaswamy, and I personally felt like he had a terrible night. His policy positions were stupid and I thought he was on losing end of several exchanges with other candidates and was just generally annoying. But on reflection, I wondered if his clown-show act was exactly the kind of thing Republican voters now crave. He was the strongest supporter of Trump on the stage and pushed an extreme form of isolationism. One post-debate focus group of Republicans I saw had Ramaswamy as the clear winner. I didn’t see it that way, but he probably will see an uptick in the polls where he was already sitting at 10.3 percent, and that’s a win.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign hyped the fact that he would be everybody’s punching bag, but that turned out to be the man he was sharing center-stage with, Ramaswamy. The post-debate consensus appeared to be that this was bad news for DeSantis because it meant he was considered irrelevant by his rivals. But that’s absurd. DeSantis came in at 14.8 percent in the average of polls, clearly in second place to Trump. It’s not a bad thing that his opponents let him off easy, Without getting into detail, I thought DeSantis had a strong debate performance. I don’t care for his message and nearly every response he gave started with “America is in decline.” But I think that message resonates with Republicans, and if they have to choose someone other than Trump, DeSantis is well positioned. A Washington Post/FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll says DeSantis won the debate, and that’s consistent with what I saw.

The only other contender for best debate performance, in my view, was former vice-president Mike Pence. Now, poll respondents had Pence in fourth place, but considering that he’s become persona non grata (4.2 percent in the average of polls) in TrumpWorld, that’s a remarkable finish. This is a guy the base wanted to hang, and he’s in the top half. Pence’s big accomplishment was getting everyone on stage to agree that he was right to recognize Biden’s victory and follow the Constitution. But he also just comes off as more presidential than the others, and he’s more confident on the stage than he used to be. He worst moments for me were probably good moments if the goal is to win over Iowa evangelicals, so I think he had made a lot of progress.

Chris Christie is always entertaining but he’s there to bash Trump, not to win. That’s admirable but he should stick to the job rather than saying he’d put Hunter Biden in jail for ten years on his gun charge. He mixed it up with Ramaswamy a bit but he was a disappointment. He came in with 3.5 percent, and only one percent named him at the debate winner.

Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is likewise there to bash Trump and he did a far better job of it because he talked about the 14th Amendment barring Trump from being on the ballot and predicted that the issue would end up at the Supreme Court where Trump might well lose. It was important to get that message across. Hutchinson barely qualified for the debate, but he kicked ass as a Never Trumper, and he’ll probably get a tiny bump and some financial encouragement to keep going. On the merits, Hutchinson might be the strongest general election candidate of the eight, but so what?

Anyway, more soon on the podcast.

Greetings!

Here is a jazz tune from the mid-1990s. Franklyn Kiermyer is a jazz drummer from Canada who has recorded off and on for quite some time. This track was recorded fairly early in his career.

The whole album is worthwhile. Having Pharoah Sanders on sax for that session was a wise choice, as the songs vary in intensity, and Pharoah Sanders really knew how to switch from mellow to high-intensity on a dime.

Cheers, everyone. See you next week.