What I find infuriating is less (much less) the cave in, and more the absolute refusal of the (R)'s to entertain an extension of the ACA subsidies.
Health care in this country is FUBAR beyond what I think folks living in any other developed country can fathom. The ACA, which was actually not original to Obama but was, in its fundamentals, a plan pioneered by Romney when he was governor of MA, was an attempt to get people insured. It is a half-assed program in many ways, because it tries to address the wishes of too many different constituencies, most definitely not to exclude private insurers. The requirements for what would be considered an acceptable plan were definitely ambitious for the US context, but would be mediocre pretty much anywhere else.
It's a weird convoluted complicated mess, but it's better than what we had. Believe it or not. And it cut the number of uninsured people in half.
We pay twice as much on average than any similar nation. We do not have twice the level of coverage, or twice the quality of outcomes. On the contrary.
People literally die here, literally go bankrupt here, as a result of the general shittiness of how we go about things.
Trump has an extreme personal animus toward Obama, so anything Obama did must be destroyed. Whether Obama actually did it or not, just the association of his name with the program is enough to make Trump determined to destroy it.
And Trump has nothing to replace it with. The stupid $2000 cash benefit he is talking about is (a) not gonna happen in anything like a form that will actually result in a $2000 check being cut to anybody, see also Bessent's comments about "no taxes on tips", and (b) would be laughably inadequate even if it were to materialize. $2000 is basically one ambulance ride and a couple of lab tests. For people in the private insurance market, it's something like one month of premiums.
We're extending the tax cuts, but ending the premium subsidies. And if anyone thinks the (R)'s are going to suddenly decide to extend them in December, I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
Yes to tax cuts, no to ACA subsidies, tells you everything you need to know about the state of this country right now.
While I appreciate the analysis of the possible / likely tactical scenarios leading up to the "deal", the bottom line (to me) is that a lot of people are basically fucked.
The cost of private health insurance is probably going to double, or worse, for most folks that have it.
What I personally take away from all of this - and by "all of this" I mean the last decade if not longer - is that the (R) party and the conservative movement in general no longer serves the interests of the people of this country. What I see from them is cruelty and greed.
I understand that politics is the art of the possible, and that professional politicians need to do what they can in the particular circumstances they operate in.
And I'm glad that federal employees are gonna get paid.
But in the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, one way or another this darkness has got to give.
To say that people being outraged at the prospect of millions of their neighbors facing the choice of extreme financial distress or going without health insurance is "wailing and rending of garments" is dismissive and, frankly, kind of rude. People *should* be outraged.
To address GFTNC's cite of Marshall's piece, the thrust of what he was saying as far as I can tell is that yes, this totally sucks, but it's nice to see the (D)'s at least try to use the limited levers of power available to them.
And I don't disagree with that.
And like him, I'd like to see them do even more.
The (R)'s seriously deserve to be driven from the public space. They've become a dysfunctional, toxic cancer on the body public.
I suggest you moderate conservatives being the process of building an alternative. That, or go down with the sinking ship that is the (R) party.
My point was, that extension wasn’t going to come out regardless.
You are most likely right.
The wailing and rending of garments is not going to be "on the left". It's going to be coming from all the people who are being immiserated by this catastrophe of an administration.
Wjca's point about whether Johnson will bring the House back or not is an interesting one. He's kind of between a rock and a hard place.
But overall I'm with wonkie.
What is not going to come out of all of this is any kind of extension of the ACA subsidies. Trump hates the ACA because people call it Obamacare and he hates hates hates hates hates Obama because that uppity black man made fun of him.
The "deal" is for a vote in the Senate. Which may or may not happen. There is no deal with the House. Trump has Johnson on some kind of weird short leash, which means there will not be a deal in the House.
And yes, what most people are going to take away from all of this is (a) the Dems caved and (b) my health insurance costs are going to be utterly unsustainable.
I'll also say that I find the "wailing and rending of garments on the left" line a bit offensive. This isn't some political inside baseball thing. People are going to have to choose between health insurance and other really essential things. They're gonna have to work another job, or sell their house, or not go to college. Stuff like that.
Or, just not have health insurance, cross their fingers, and hope they get lucky. Which some of them will not be, and some of those folks will die.
if you felt like giving an idea of the discussions, that would be very interesting indeed
so, not really an idea of the discussion, but just some thoughts.
Some of this is, I think, generational. Charlie was born in 1935, and was the youngest of my mom's siblings. The family had come through the Depression, somehow, and were basically, not blue collar exactly, but working class Queens folks. Not desparately poor, but... of limited means.
Folks like that can basically see serious poverty in the rear view mirror. And too far back, either. It's tangible to them in ways that it is not to people like, for instance, me. People who are more solidly and securely middle class.
For my grandparents especially, and for my mom and her siblings, there was serious shame around being "on relief". Around receiving welfare of any kind. It meant that you had failed to maintain your toehold in the respectable world.
There is also a sort of patriotic dimension to it. We had overcome the Depression, we were to go on to prevail in WWII. We would follow that up with the Marshall Plan, and then later with the international aid and "soft power" politics of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years.
All of which covers my uncle's youth and young manhood.
My grandparents and mom's siblings really did think of the US as the greatest country on earth, maybe (probably) in history. Because it arguably was, mostly, for a minute.
So there is that.
And there is a cultural dimension.
My uncle was a NY City fireman, retiring as a lieutanant. In NYC, first responders - cops, firemen - tend to be conservative. Uncle was probably more so than most - not that many FDNY folks are Birch Society chapter heads - but that was likely the common direction - the prevailing winds, if you will - of his social context.
He was also a founder and elder in a relatively conservative church. Which was a chosen social context, of course, but also one that would be likely to reinforce his own conservative instincts.
And I would add, perhaps somewhat oddly, Charlie was a New Yorker. New Yorkers tend to be chauvinistic - tend to think in "we are the best" terms.
Sure, a bad imitation is distinguishable. But a good one?
A really good simulacrum of a highly formulaic or stylistically mannered performance could be convincing. Because the "real thing" is already sort of artificial.
What you do need, however, is some life experience to connect it with.
I’m not so sure about that. Certainly it can help. But actors can play parts, with authentic appearing emotions, even about experiences they have never personally had
What is required is empathy. Which machines do not have.
They can imitate. They cannot empathize. Those are different things.
Shorter me - show me the AI music generator that will come up with a line like "Looks a lot like Che Guevara / he drove a diesel van".
It's simultaneously tongue-in-cheek hip and hilarious and ironic and allusive in about 10 different directions. Totally obvious and common place chord changes, but the snarkiest lyric ever.
I don't think AI is capable of that. In fact, I'm curious to know if AI can make a good joke, at all.
the Monkees were a made-for-TV group but the songs were written by some of the best pop song writers of the day, and the music was performed by real live A list studio cats.
plus, at least one of the guys (Mike Nesmith) was actually a competent musician and songwriter.
net/net, not at all like AI generated music.
A lot of musical styles, especially commercial pop styles, are highly formulaic, so it wouldn't be that hard to have AI crank it out.
And what you would get would be highly formulaic pop music. Which a lot of people really like, and would be a perfectly fine commodity and lifestyle accessory. It may sound like I'm being dismissive when I say that, but I'm not - that is what a lot of music is made for, and how a lot of music is used.
It's like the art prints at your doctor's office waiting room. They aren't Rembrandt, or even Andy Warhol. But they are pleasant to look at, and don't clash with the color scheme.
Again, not being dismissive. It's nice to have pleasant, undemanding stuff to look at (and even ignore) when you're waiting for an appointment.
What you will not get from AI is a Leonard Cohen, or a Tom Waits, or a David Bowie, or a Paul Simon. To cite some better-known examples. You might get a Beatles of the quality of "I Want To Hold Your Hand", but not an "Eleanor Rigby".
If you fed an AI music generator a diet of any or all of those guys, you might get a simulacrum of their work. But it will be missing the special ingredient that actually makes you sit up and take notice when you hear their stuff - the human insight, the unusual chord change, the frisson that comes from the unexpected use of language in the lyric.
AI is inherently derivative. Derivative work can be useful, and has its place, but it isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know.
What makes the folks I named here artists, rather than simply entertainers, is the way in which they subvert the stylistic formulas they work in to discover meaning beneath the surface of the style.
Maybe someday some kind of AGI gizmo will be capable of that. If so, it probably will not be in a direction that resonates with humans.
But I am skeptical that AGI will ever actually be a thing.
The thing is, Trump is an asshole and he's making a lot of people's lives more difficult than they need to be. And (R)'s are basically in thrall to the guy.
Last November, enough people were pissed at Biden for any of a variety of reasons, some of them legitimate, and so were willing to give Trump another shot at it.
And now they see Trump without the moderating influences of the people who more or less kept him in the ballpark of legitimate governance.
And they think it sucks.
All of that, plus it's not uncommon for off year and mid-term elections to favor the party not in power, with exceptions for wartime and cases where the party in power is actually nailing it.
I couldn’t help wondering whether, at some stage of your young to later manhood, you ever tried to find out how such an otherwise lovely person conceptualised his political opinions
Never had that conversation. We talked about family stuff, or the heirloom fruit trees he had planted in his yard, or odd old songs he had discovered somewhere. And we played games.
Are you in contact with your Apache and Hopi cousins?
I'm in touch with my cousing Peter - the Apache - on Facebook. After Charlie retired from FDNY he painted houses, and Peter basically apprenticed with him and continues to work as a house painter and general handyman. He had some bumpy times, but is all good now. Peter has the best family pictures and has become kind of the family archivist.
My cousin Tara - the Hopi - grew away from the family a bit at some point, although she and her daughter Kateri are still in touch with Charlie's kids.
Charlie and his wife (and the rest of them) sound like wonderful people.
They were a pretty remarkable crew.
FWIW, the younger guy on the left, sitting in front of my grandfather (older Archie Bunker looking guy in the white shirt) was Eddie Gonzales. Not a brother by birth, but basically unofficially adopted into the family.
Eddie's father abandoned him, and his mother was an alcoholic. Eddie himself was gay, which nobody ever talked about but everyone knew, and nobody really cared about one way or the other. He was good friends with the brothers, so he came and lived with them and my grandfolks raised him along with the rest of the gang.
Eddie was at every family gathering and was just part of the family, full stop. Just a part of the larger Richmond Hill crew.
So yes, this weird dilemma of people who are personally beautiful - kind and outgoing and generous - but aligned with social and political movements that are... not.
I think a part of all of this for my mom's folks was coming up through the Depression, and then WWII. The brothers were too young to serve in the war, but my father (guy in front of the Christmas tree holding the baby - you can only see the top of his head) did, and they all dealt with rationing etc.
They were basically poor - not desperately, but poor enough to have to watch every nickel and do without a lot of things. Like everyone around them was. Tucky - the brother in the middle with the big smile - was offered a full basketball scholarship to Columbia, and wasn't able to go, because the family needed him to work and bring money into the house.
My sense is that all of those experiences - the anxiety of having just barely enough, the sacrifices around wartime - gave them an ethic that you pull together and help out whoever needs help.
But lots of folks came through all of that and were not quite as open-hearted.
This crew and their kids were my people, really - my father's family were all in Georgia, and I did not see them as often, many of them I never even met. They were a joy to know, and I miss them.
I have a long time friend, Kile Smith, who is actually a living breathing composer. He heard a recording of the Brahms Requiem when he was a teenager and decided, without much other background or context other than playing some bass and singing in his high school chorus, that that was what he wanted to do.
I met Kile when we both attended Bible College in the mid 70's. Long story for another time. Suffice it to say we became good friends, went our separate ways for a while, and then reconnected a few years ago courtesy of Facebook. For which I'm grateful, Kile is a good person to know.
Most serious arts have a sort of "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" aspect to them. They require a lot of time - hours and hours and hours - of hard work, often time spent alone, with no particular guarantee that you are going to get anywhere. Composing has the additional complication that, to actually realize your work, you have to get someone to perform it. Which introduces a kind of chicken-and-egg thing - if you don't really have a reputation yet, how do you persuade someone to invest in performing your stuff? But if nobody ever performs your stuff, how do you build a reputation?
It's a challenge.
Kile is my age - 69 and counting - and his work is now performed and recorded a lot, by ensembles with real national and international reputations. But it took decades of hard lonely work to make that happen. If you ask him, he will tell you that his secret is having an "iron butt" - he made himself sit in a chair for hours, day after day, to do the work. He's an extremely humble guy, makes no great claims about his talents, but he also knows his work is good.
And it is good.
Most of his work is sacred choral stuff. He's also done some orchestral work, and has set texts by folks as various as Seneca, Robert Lax, Tagore, and Stephen Foster.
Here is Kile talking about his process in composing an Agnus Del.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMoL-y_vjIY
One of the movements from his setting of texts by Seneca, "The Waking Sun".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0J1pgCAx3g
"The stars shine", from his "Consolation of Apollo", a setting of a text from Boethius.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZIe8d5StCw
"Three Spirituals for Piano Trio", an instrumental piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq6cjnOxW00
Kile almost died this year. He had been feeling ill for a while, with weird and non-specific symptoms. Doctors gave him a bewildering variety of diagnoses, none of which led to a useful treatment plan. He finally got an accurate diagnosis of multiple myolema and has spent the last couple of months in the oncology ward at University of Pennsylvania Hospital. He's doing better - still a long road ahead, but improving, with good prospects for managing things and having lots of years to go.
While in isolation, he finished a piece that had been commissioned. I suggested to him (via Facebook IM, it was a no-visitors situation and talking on the phone was too tiring) that he might want to take his condition as an opportunity to rest for a bit, but apparently he wasn't having it.
Let us work while we have the light.
Thank you for this opportunity to share my good friend with you all.
Is there anyone in the US who has a stronger work ethic than immigrants?
Maybe it's just me, but every time I see someone who looks "immigrant-ish" - which usually means cafe au lait skin tone and an accent - they are working their asses off.
You know those "how many X does it take to do Y" jokes? Here is mine.
How many immigrants does it take to... oh wait, never mind, they're done.
The “rugged individualist” myth has been the source of more suffering in America than almost anything else.
And Grok cites Locke to support the claim that it's a "core American value".
You can persuade me that Locke argues for fundamental human rights, belonging to each individual.
I am... less than persuaded that Locke argued for "rugged individualism". If anything, Locke argued for a social contract, where we all agree to surrender some personal liberties in order to live in society, as opposed to in a state of nature.
Grok needs to read the Second Treatise on Government. Also the preamble to the Massachusetts Constitution, which preceded and was a model for the US Constitution.
The US has consistently swung back and forth between more or less open door immigration policies, to highly restrictive ones. And we tend to swing back to restrictive policies when the number of immigrants in the US reaches about 15% of the overall population.
See here: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time
So, for example, in the later 19th C. we wanted folks to come because we wanted their labor. That's how my Italian great-grandparents come - great-grandpa was recruited to come dig holes for the NYC subway system.
Beginning at the turn of the 20th Century, folks began freaking out about it all, and by the 20's that resulted in the Immigration Act of 1924, which basically said no more immigrants from Asia at all, and far fewer from Eastern and Southern Europe. No more slant-eyes or swarthy garlic-eating weirdos. Right? Sound familiar?
So now we're back at around 15% and everybody is freaking out, like we always do. And Trump et al are riding that train.
Next, a question.
What "American culture" do we expect people to "assimilate" into? There are probably a couple dozen "American cultures" in play. I won't try to enumerate them, because we don't have all day here, but suffice it to say that there are *very many* places in this country where people speak different languages, practice different religions or no religion at all, listen to different kinds of music, eat different food, have different family structures.
It would appear from Vance's speech that what he would like is for everyone to speak primarily or exclusively English, be Christian (and preferably Catholic or evangelical Christian), and belong to a two-parent nuclear family with a male and female parent. I guess this is based on the idea that "English language", "Christian", and the "Leave it to Beaver" nuclear family are somehow "more American".
About 1 in 5 people in this country speak a language other than English at home. Are they "unassimilated"?
About 62% of people here identify as "Christian", but only about 3 in 10 people here attend church once a week or most weeks. About 28% of us identify as "religiously unaffiliated". The remaining 10% or so encompass all of the other faiths.
Are just that 3 in 10 "assimilated"?
Almost a quarter of American children live in single-parent households. Which is very high when compared to the rest of the world, but is not function of our rate of immigration. Are all of those families "assimilated"?
What is this "American culture" Vance et al are on about? What does it mean to be "assimilated" into that culture, whatever it is? Which of the variety of cultures that exist here get to be officially sanctions "American" ones?
The rebuilding at home will be, by comparison with the destruction of trust, be quick and easy.
I wish I shared your optimism here, but unfortunately I do not.
The problem I see is that all the people who are more than fine with what's going on now are still gonna be here. They might not be an absolute majority, but there are a lot of them, and the non-democratic aspects of our polity - the Senate, the Electoral College - give them political clout beyond what their numbers would merit.
And a lot of the people who Trump and the conservative movement in general have brought into government are still gonna be there. Especially in the judiciary, not to exclude the SCOTUS. Roberts, Alito, Thomas are all 70 or older, but Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett all have decades of time ahead of them.
To add to that, I think the Trump years are gonna make the professional civil service - the people who actually do the governmenty stuff - a much less attractive option for people who might otherwise be interested in basic public service.
If every four years you're gonna have to worry about having to explain to some 20-something techbro asshole why what you do - monitoring economic and labor data, tracking the weather, medical research, etc. - is important enough to justify your continued employment is gonna make a lot of people look elsewhere.
Some folks who have been RIF'd would probably go back, a lot will not. And I can't blame them.
"it’s something I can do without having to rely on a functioning government to sustain it"
this ^^^
I'm sure it's obvious from my comments here over the years that I'm fine with an active government.
But the government we have right now is profoundly toxic.
We need to resist all of that wherever we can, to the degree that we can, with whatever resources we can bring to that effort. But turning all of that around, for whatever meaning of "turn that around" manifests itself, will take time. And a lot of government-y stuff is going to be broken, and some it will stay broken indefinitely, perhaps forever.
So it's important to find other avenues for, as the cliche has it, making the world a better place. Which mostly amounts to helping each other and not shitting on the given world we all live in. Or, you know, trying our best to do those things.
The federal government we have right now is effectively a cabal of greedy vindictive malicious wanna-be tyrants. Most of them are deeply incompetent, and the ones that aren't we probably wish were.
Find ways to work around them. Get in their way if you can, to whatever degree of risk you can tolerate. Which might be none, which is OK. But find ways to do constructive things in spite of them.
For the last week or two I've been dealing with water infiltration and resulting black mold in the basement. Which has been, to a surprising and welcome degree, a great way to keep from feeling overwhelmed by all of the Trumpian BS.
It's a tractable problem, and I can fix it. Tear out bad sheetrock and insulation, bag it up and throw it out. Treat the remaining nasty spots. Hang new insulation and sheetrock. Tape prep and paint.
All done! All better! It's actually been kind of therapeutic.
Household chores, same. Pruning, fall cleanup. I've been putting peanuts out for the crows, who have figured out my schedule and arrive more or less on time each morning in a kind of raucous crowd. Gonna put the feeders up for the songbirds this weekend.
Listen to music, play music. Stay in touch with friends. Be mindful of my own reactions to events, emotionally physically and spiritually, and step away when it begins to overwhelm.
It will, for better or worse, still be there when you feel up to dealing with it.
I was volunteering at a local food bank, but stopped back in June when I got COVID. Now I just send them money, but it's actually much more satisfying to contribute in person. So I may go back to that once I finish getting the basement cleaned up.
There is a limit to what any one of us can absorb, and to what any one of us can do about it all. Recognize and respect your own limits. That doesn't mean put your head in the sand and pretend nothing bad is happening, it just means don't let it run you over.
You're doing all good things, wonkie. It's an inspiration to me, personally. Carry on, and take care of yourself.
Bembe is kind of the mother lode of hypnotic, trance-inducing rhythms. It embodies that polyrhythmic "is it in 2 or 3?" thing that draws you in with its ambiguity.
I have a long list of retirement projects that I hope to get to before I peg out. One of them is working through a short book of exercises based on the bembe bell pattern by Boston area drummer Jerry Leake, who has made a kind of one-man cottage industry of teaching people to work and play with multi-layered rhythms.
The pagan feminist author and teacher Miriam Simos (aka Starhawk) has said that magic is the "art of changing consciousness at will". I've found music to be one of the available vehicles for that.
Thanks for putting this up, LJ! And thanks for adding the cubanet link, it's great reading.
We were supposed to go hear these fine folks this evening, but their visas were denied or cancelled.
As an aside, this is why we can't have nice things, episode 1,832,782. :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN_iMIvPHLc
These folks are not at all traditional, more of a Cuban chamber music ensemble, if you will. But rumba is in almost everything Cuban, one way or another. Certainly everything that isn't purely or primarily European in origin. Espirales (the folks in the video) seem to bring an interesting blend of Euro and trad.
I think a way to think about rumba in Cuba is to compare it to blues in the US. Originally a folkloric style rising out of the people of the African diaspora, but working its way into every nook and cranny of American popular and traditional musics.
It is the demotic musical language of Cuba.
Good weekend to you all, and no worries if the videos make you dance around the room a bit. :)
hey all, how do I register with this blog? I have a Friday music post but can't login, I don't think I ever registered. I found the login information LJ sent way back in September but it doesn't seem to work
And so, I am sad. :(
Thank you!
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “When virtues become vices”
the cave-in was so infuriating and upsetting
What I find infuriating is less (much less) the cave in, and more the absolute refusal of the (R)'s to entertain an extension of the ACA subsidies.
Health care in this country is FUBAR beyond what I think folks living in any other developed country can fathom. The ACA, which was actually not original to Obama but was, in its fundamentals, a plan pioneered by Romney when he was governor of MA, was an attempt to get people insured. It is a half-assed program in many ways, because it tries to address the wishes of too many different constituencies, most definitely not to exclude private insurers. The requirements for what would be considered an acceptable plan were definitely ambitious for the US context, but would be mediocre pretty much anywhere else.
It's a weird convoluted complicated mess, but it's better than what we had. Believe it or not. And it cut the number of uninsured people in half.
We pay twice as much on average than any similar nation. We do not have twice the level of coverage, or twice the quality of outcomes. On the contrary.
People literally die here, literally go bankrupt here, as a result of the general shittiness of how we go about things.
Trump has an extreme personal animus toward Obama, so anything Obama did must be destroyed. Whether Obama actually did it or not, just the association of his name with the program is enough to make Trump determined to destroy it.
And Trump has nothing to replace it with. The stupid $2000 cash benefit he is talking about is (a) not gonna happen in anything like a form that will actually result in a $2000 check being cut to anybody, see also Bessent's comments about "no taxes on tips", and (b) would be laughably inadequate even if it were to materialize. $2000 is basically one ambulance ride and a couple of lab tests. For people in the private insurance market, it's something like one month of premiums.
We're extending the tax cuts, but ending the premium subsidies. And if anyone thinks the (R)'s are going to suddenly decide to extend them in December, I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
Yes to tax cuts, no to ACA subsidies, tells you everything you need to know about the state of this country right now.
Choices reveal character.
"
that was the plan put forward from the beginning.
Trump tax cuts were supposed to expire this year, too. At least, that was the plan from the beginning.
But, they did not. And that will add ~$4.6T to the national debt over the next 10 years.
Choices reveal character.
On “Spelunking for fun and profit”
Hey, look at the bright side. At least the Senators who were investigated for their possible involvement in J6 can sue the DOJ for up to $500K.
Silver linings, everyone.
On “When virtues become vices”
While I appreciate the analysis of the possible / likely tactical scenarios leading up to the "deal", the bottom line (to me) is that a lot of people are basically fucked.
The cost of private health insurance is probably going to double, or worse, for most folks that have it.
What I personally take away from all of this - and by "all of this" I mean the last decade if not longer - is that the (R) party and the conservative movement in general no longer serves the interests of the people of this country. What I see from them is cruelty and greed.
I understand that politics is the art of the possible, and that professional politicians need to do what they can in the particular circumstances they operate in.
And I'm glad that federal employees are gonna get paid.
But in the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, one way or another this darkness has got to give.
To say that people being outraged at the prospect of millions of their neighbors facing the choice of extreme financial distress or going without health insurance is "wailing and rending of garments" is dismissive and, frankly, kind of rude. People *should* be outraged.
To address GFTNC's cite of Marshall's piece, the thrust of what he was saying as far as I can tell is that yes, this totally sucks, but it's nice to see the (D)'s at least try to use the limited levers of power available to them.
And I don't disagree with that.
And like him, I'd like to see them do even more.
The (R)'s seriously deserve to be driven from the public space. They've become a dysfunctional, toxic cancer on the body public.
I suggest you moderate conservatives being the process of building an alternative. That, or go down with the sinking ship that is the (R) party.
It deserves to sink.
"
My point was, that extension wasn’t going to come out regardless.
You are most likely right.
The wailing and rending of garments is not going to be "on the left". It's going to be coming from all the people who are being immiserated by this catastrophe of an administration.
"
Wjca's point about whether Johnson will bring the House back or not is an interesting one. He's kind of between a rock and a hard place.
But overall I'm with wonkie.
What is not going to come out of all of this is any kind of extension of the ACA subsidies. Trump hates the ACA because people call it Obamacare and he hates hates hates hates hates Obama because that uppity black man made fun of him.
The "deal" is for a vote in the Senate. Which may or may not happen. There is no deal with the House. Trump has Johnson on some kind of weird short leash, which means there will not be a deal in the House.
And yes, what most people are going to take away from all of this is (a) the Dems caved and (b) my health insurance costs are going to be utterly unsustainable.
I'll also say that I find the "wailing and rending of garments on the left" line a bit offensive. This isn't some political inside baseball thing. People are going to have to choose between health insurance and other really essential things. They're gonna have to work another job, or sell their house, or not go to college. Stuff like that.
Or, just not have health insurance, cross their fingers, and hope they get lucky. Which some of them will not be, and some of those folks will die.
It's a fucking disaster.
On “People and poliltics”
if you felt like giving an idea of the discussions, that would be very interesting indeed
so, not really an idea of the discussion, but just some thoughts.
Some of this is, I think, generational. Charlie was born in 1935, and was the youngest of my mom's siblings. The family had come through the Depression, somehow, and were basically, not blue collar exactly, but working class Queens folks. Not desparately poor, but... of limited means.
Folks like that can basically see serious poverty in the rear view mirror. And too far back, either. It's tangible to them in ways that it is not to people like, for instance, me. People who are more solidly and securely middle class.
For my grandparents especially, and for my mom and her siblings, there was serious shame around being "on relief". Around receiving welfare of any kind. It meant that you had failed to maintain your toehold in the respectable world.
There is also a sort of patriotic dimension to it. We had overcome the Depression, we were to go on to prevail in WWII. We would follow that up with the Marshall Plan, and then later with the international aid and "soft power" politics of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years.
All of which covers my uncle's youth and young manhood.
My grandparents and mom's siblings really did think of the US as the greatest country on earth, maybe (probably) in history. Because it arguably was, mostly, for a minute.
So there is that.
And there is a cultural dimension.
My uncle was a NY City fireman, retiring as a lieutanant. In NYC, first responders - cops, firemen - tend to be conservative. Uncle was probably more so than most - not that many FDNY folks are Birch Society chapter heads - but that was likely the common direction - the prevailing winds, if you will - of his social context.
He was also a founder and elder in a relatively conservative church. Which was a chosen social context, of course, but also one that would be likely to reinforce his own conservative instincts.
And I would add, perhaps somewhat oddly, Charlie was a New Yorker. New Yorkers tend to be chauvinistic - tend to think in "we are the best" terms.
That's all I got. Make of it what you will.
On “Weekend Music Thread #04 John Mackey”
Sure, a bad imitation is distinguishable. But a good one?
A really good simulacrum of a highly formulaic or stylistically mannered performance could be convincing. Because the "real thing" is already sort of artificial.
Beyond that, I don't think so.
"
What you do need, however, is some life experience to connect it with.
I’m not so sure about that. Certainly it can help. But actors can play parts, with authentic appearing emotions, even about experiences they have never personally had
What is required is empathy. Which machines do not have.
They can imitate. They cannot empathize. Those are different things.
"
Shorter me - show me the AI music generator that will come up with a line like "Looks a lot like Che Guevara / he drove a diesel van".
It's simultaneously tongue-in-cheek hip and hilarious and ironic and allusive in about 10 different directions. Totally obvious and common place chord changes, but the snarkiest lyric ever.
I don't think AI is capable of that. In fact, I'm curious to know if AI can make a good joke, at all.
"
the Monkeys
the Monkees were a made-for-TV group but the songs were written by some of the best pop song writers of the day, and the music was performed by real live A list studio cats.
plus, at least one of the guys (Mike Nesmith) was actually a competent musician and songwriter.
net/net, not at all like AI generated music.
A lot of musical styles, especially commercial pop styles, are highly formulaic, so it wouldn't be that hard to have AI crank it out.
And what you would get would be highly formulaic pop music. Which a lot of people really like, and would be a perfectly fine commodity and lifestyle accessory. It may sound like I'm being dismissive when I say that, but I'm not - that is what a lot of music is made for, and how a lot of music is used.
It's like the art prints at your doctor's office waiting room. They aren't Rembrandt, or even Andy Warhol. But they are pleasant to look at, and don't clash with the color scheme.
Again, not being dismissive. It's nice to have pleasant, undemanding stuff to look at (and even ignore) when you're waiting for an appointment.
What you will not get from AI is a Leonard Cohen, or a Tom Waits, or a David Bowie, or a Paul Simon. To cite some better-known examples. You might get a Beatles of the quality of "I Want To Hold Your Hand", but not an "Eleanor Rigby".
If you fed an AI music generator a diet of any or all of those guys, you might get a simulacrum of their work. But it will be missing the special ingredient that actually makes you sit up and take notice when you hear their stuff - the human insight, the unusual chord change, the frisson that comes from the unexpected use of language in the lyric.
AI is inherently derivative. Derivative work can be useful, and has its place, but it isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know.
What makes the folks I named here artists, rather than simply entertainers, is the way in which they subvert the stylistic formulas they work in to discover meaning beneath the surface of the style.
Maybe someday some kind of AGI gizmo will be capable of that. If so, it probably will not be in a direction that resonates with humans.
But I am skeptical that AGI will ever actually be a thing.
On “Still I Rise”
The thing is, Trump is an asshole and he's making a lot of people's lives more difficult than they need to be. And (R)'s are basically in thrall to the guy.
Last November, enough people were pissed at Biden for any of a variety of reasons, some of them legitimate, and so were willing to give Trump another shot at it.
And now they see Trump without the moderating influences of the people who more or less kept him in the ballpark of legitimate governance.
And they think it sucks.
All of that, plus it's not uncommon for off year and mid-term elections to favor the party not in power, with exceptions for wartime and cases where the party in power is actually nailing it.
That's my analysis, anyway.
On “People and poliltics”
I couldn’t help wondering whether, at some stage of your young to later manhood, you ever tried to find out how such an otherwise lovely person conceptualised his political opinions
Never had that conversation. We talked about family stuff, or the heirloom fruit trees he had planted in his yard, or odd old songs he had discovered somewhere. And we played games.
"
Are you in contact with your Apache and Hopi cousins?
I'm in touch with my cousing Peter - the Apache - on Facebook. After Charlie retired from FDNY he painted houses, and Peter basically apprenticed with him and continues to work as a house painter and general handyman. He had some bumpy times, but is all good now. Peter has the best family pictures and has become kind of the family archivist.
My cousin Tara - the Hopi - grew away from the family a bit at some point, although she and her daughter Kateri are still in touch with Charlie's kids.
"
Charlie and his wife (and the rest of them) sound like wonderful people.
They were a pretty remarkable crew.
FWIW, the younger guy on the left, sitting in front of my grandfather (older Archie Bunker looking guy in the white shirt) was Eddie Gonzales. Not a brother by birth, but basically unofficially adopted into the family.
Eddie's father abandoned him, and his mother was an alcoholic. Eddie himself was gay, which nobody ever talked about but everyone knew, and nobody really cared about one way or the other. He was good friends with the brothers, so he came and lived with them and my grandfolks raised him along with the rest of the gang.
Eddie was at every family gathering and was just part of the family, full stop. Just a part of the larger Richmond Hill crew.
So yes, this weird dilemma of people who are personally beautiful - kind and outgoing and generous - but aligned with social and political movements that are... not.
I think a part of all of this for my mom's folks was coming up through the Depression, and then WWII. The brothers were too young to serve in the war, but my father (guy in front of the Christmas tree holding the baby - you can only see the top of his head) did, and they all dealt with rationing etc.
They were basically poor - not desperately, but poor enough to have to watch every nickel and do without a lot of things. Like everyone around them was. Tucky - the brother in the middle with the big smile - was offered a full basketball scholarship to Columbia, and wasn't able to go, because the family needed him to work and bring money into the house.
My sense is that all of those experiences - the anxiety of having just barely enough, the sacrifices around wartime - gave them an ethic that you pull together and help out whoever needs help.
But lots of folks came through all of that and were not quite as open-hearted.
This crew and their kids were my people, really - my father's family were all in Georgia, and I did not see them as often, many of them I never even met. They were a joy to know, and I miss them.
On “Weekend Music Thread #04 John Mackey”
I have a long time friend, Kile Smith, who is actually a living breathing composer. He heard a recording of the Brahms Requiem when he was a teenager and decided, without much other background or context other than playing some bass and singing in his high school chorus, that that was what he wanted to do.
I met Kile when we both attended Bible College in the mid 70's. Long story for another time. Suffice it to say we became good friends, went our separate ways for a while, and then reconnected a few years ago courtesy of Facebook. For which I'm grateful, Kile is a good person to know.
Most serious arts have a sort of "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" aspect to them. They require a lot of time - hours and hours and hours - of hard work, often time spent alone, with no particular guarantee that you are going to get anywhere. Composing has the additional complication that, to actually realize your work, you have to get someone to perform it. Which introduces a kind of chicken-and-egg thing - if you don't really have a reputation yet, how do you persuade someone to invest in performing your stuff? But if nobody ever performs your stuff, how do you build a reputation?
It's a challenge.
Kile is my age - 69 and counting - and his work is now performed and recorded a lot, by ensembles with real national and international reputations. But it took decades of hard lonely work to make that happen. If you ask him, he will tell you that his secret is having an "iron butt" - he made himself sit in a chair for hours, day after day, to do the work. He's an extremely humble guy, makes no great claims about his talents, but he also knows his work is good.
And it is good.
Most of his work is sacred choral stuff. He's also done some orchestral work, and has set texts by folks as various as Seneca, Robert Lax, Tagore, and Stephen Foster.
Here is Kile talking about his process in composing an Agnus Del.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMoL-y_vjIY
One of the movements from his setting of texts by Seneca, "The Waking Sun".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0J1pgCAx3g
"The stars shine", from his "Consolation of Apollo", a setting of a text from Boethius.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZIe8d5StCw
"Three Spirituals for Piano Trio", an instrumental piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq6cjnOxW00
Kile almost died this year. He had been feeling ill for a while, with weird and non-specific symptoms. Doctors gave him a bewildering variety of diagnoses, none of which led to a useful treatment plan. He finally got an accurate diagnosis of multiple myolema and has spent the last couple of months in the oncology ward at University of Pennsylvania Hospital. He's doing better - still a long road ahead, but improving, with good prospects for managing things and having lots of years to go.
While in isolation, he finished a piece that had been commissioned. I suggested to him (via Facebook IM, it was a no-visitors situation and talking on the phone was too tiring) that he might want to take his condition as an opportunity to rest for a bit, but apparently he wasn't having it.
Let us work while we have the light.
Thank you for this opportunity to share my good friend with you all.
On “Horrifying stuff”
Also, as a comment on the "work ethic" thing:
Is there anyone in the US who has a stronger work ethic than immigrants?
Maybe it's just me, but every time I see someone who looks "immigrant-ish" - which usually means cafe au lait skin tone and an accent - they are working their asses off.
You know those "how many X does it take to do Y" jokes? Here is mine.
How many immigrants does it take to... oh wait, never mind, they're done.
Just saying.
"
Core Tenets of American Culture
The “rugged individualist” myth has been the source of more suffering in America than almost anything else.
And Grok cites Locke to support the claim that it's a "core American value".
You can persuade me that Locke argues for fundamental human rights, belonging to each individual.
I am... less than persuaded that Locke argued for "rugged individualism". If anything, Locke argued for a social contract, where we all agree to surrender some personal liberties in order to live in society, as opposed to in a state of nature.
Grok needs to read the Second Treatise on Government. Also the preamble to the Massachusetts Constitution, which preceded and was a model for the US Constitution.
"
So, first, an observation.
The US has consistently swung back and forth between more or less open door immigration policies, to highly restrictive ones. And we tend to swing back to restrictive policies when the number of immigrants in the US reaches about 15% of the overall population.
See here: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time
So, for example, in the later 19th C. we wanted folks to come because we wanted their labor. That's how my Italian great-grandparents come - great-grandpa was recruited to come dig holes for the NYC subway system.
Beginning at the turn of the 20th Century, folks began freaking out about it all, and by the 20's that resulted in the Immigration Act of 1924, which basically said no more immigrants from Asia at all, and far fewer from Eastern and Southern Europe. No more slant-eyes or swarthy garlic-eating weirdos. Right? Sound familiar?
So now we're back at around 15% and everybody is freaking out, like we always do. And Trump et al are riding that train.
Next, a question.
What "American culture" do we expect people to "assimilate" into? There are probably a couple dozen "American cultures" in play. I won't try to enumerate them, because we don't have all day here, but suffice it to say that there are *very many* places in this country where people speak different languages, practice different religions or no religion at all, listen to different kinds of music, eat different food, have different family structures.
It would appear from Vance's speech that what he would like is for everyone to speak primarily or exclusively English, be Christian (and preferably Catholic or evangelical Christian), and belong to a two-parent nuclear family with a male and female parent. I guess this is based on the idea that "English language", "Christian", and the "Leave it to Beaver" nuclear family are somehow "more American".
About 1 in 5 people in this country speak a language other than English at home. Are they "unassimilated"?
About 62% of people here identify as "Christian", but only about 3 in 10 people here attend church once a week or most weeks. About 28% of us identify as "religiously unaffiliated". The remaining 10% or so encompass all of the other faiths.
Are just that 3 in 10 "assimilated"?
Almost a quarter of American children live in single-parent households. Which is very high when compared to the rest of the world, but is not function of our rate of immigration. Are all of those families "assimilated"?
What is this "American culture" Vance et al are on about? What does it mean to be "assimilated" into that culture, whatever it is? Which of the variety of cultures that exist here get to be officially sanctions "American" ones?
What is "American culture"? Who gets to decide?
On “I got depressed so I bought hydrangeas”
The rebuilding at home will be, by comparison with the destruction of trust, be quick and easy.
I wish I shared your optimism here, but unfortunately I do not.
The problem I see is that all the people who are more than fine with what's going on now are still gonna be here. They might not be an absolute majority, but there are a lot of them, and the non-democratic aspects of our polity - the Senate, the Electoral College - give them political clout beyond what their numbers would merit.
And a lot of the people who Trump and the conservative movement in general have brought into government are still gonna be there. Especially in the judiciary, not to exclude the SCOTUS. Roberts, Alito, Thomas are all 70 or older, but Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett all have decades of time ahead of them.
To add to that, I think the Trump years are gonna make the professional civil service - the people who actually do the governmenty stuff - a much less attractive option for people who might otherwise be interested in basic public service.
If every four years you're gonna have to worry about having to explain to some 20-something techbro asshole why what you do - monitoring economic and labor data, tracking the weather, medical research, etc. - is important enough to justify your continued employment is gonna make a lot of people look elsewhere.
Some folks who have been RIF'd would probably go back, a lot will not. And I can't blame them.
"
"it’s something I can do without having to rely on a functioning government to sustain it"
this ^^^
I'm sure it's obvious from my comments here over the years that I'm fine with an active government.
But the government we have right now is profoundly toxic.
We need to resist all of that wherever we can, to the degree that we can, with whatever resources we can bring to that effort. But turning all of that around, for whatever meaning of "turn that around" manifests itself, will take time. And a lot of government-y stuff is going to be broken, and some it will stay broken indefinitely, perhaps forever.
So it's important to find other avenues for, as the cliche has it, making the world a better place. Which mostly amounts to helping each other and not shitting on the given world we all live in. Or, you know, trying our best to do those things.
The federal government we have right now is effectively a cabal of greedy vindictive malicious wanna-be tyrants. Most of them are deeply incompetent, and the ones that aren't we probably wish were.
Find ways to work around them. Get in their way if you can, to whatever degree of risk you can tolerate. Which might be none, which is OK. But find ways to do constructive things in spite of them.
That's how we get through.
"
For the last week or two I've been dealing with water infiltration and resulting black mold in the basement. Which has been, to a surprising and welcome degree, a great way to keep from feeling overwhelmed by all of the Trumpian BS.
It's a tractable problem, and I can fix it. Tear out bad sheetrock and insulation, bag it up and throw it out. Treat the remaining nasty spots. Hang new insulation and sheetrock. Tape prep and paint.
All done! All better! It's actually been kind of therapeutic.
Household chores, same. Pruning, fall cleanup. I've been putting peanuts out for the crows, who have figured out my schedule and arrive more or less on time each morning in a kind of raucous crowd. Gonna put the feeders up for the songbirds this weekend.
Listen to music, play music. Stay in touch with friends. Be mindful of my own reactions to events, emotionally physically and spiritually, and step away when it begins to overwhelm.
It will, for better or worse, still be there when you feel up to dealing with it.
I was volunteering at a local food bank, but stopped back in June when I got COVID. Now I just send them money, but it's actually much more satisfying to contribute in person. So I may go back to that once I finish getting the basement cleaned up.
There is a limit to what any one of us can absorb, and to what any one of us can do about it all. Recognize and respect your own limits. That doesn't mean put your head in the sand and pretend nothing bad is happening, it just means don't let it run you over.
You're doing all good things, wonkie. It's an inspiration to me, personally. Carry on, and take care of yourself.
On “Weekend music thread #03 Rhumba and the clave”
OK, now I gotta check Opeth!
Bembe is kind of the mother lode of hypnotic, trance-inducing rhythms. It embodies that polyrhythmic "is it in 2 or 3?" thing that draws you in with its ambiguity.
I have a long list of retirement projects that I hope to get to before I peg out. One of them is working through a short book of exercises based on the bembe bell pattern by Boston area drummer Jerry Leake, who has made a kind of one-man cottage industry of teaching people to work and play with multi-layered rhythms.
Here's Jerry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G0qZsW481g
The pagan feminist author and teacher Miriam Simos (aka Starhawk) has said that magic is the "art of changing consciousness at will". I've found music to be one of the available vehicles for that.
"
Thanks for putting this up, LJ! And thanks for adding the cubanet link, it's great reading.
We were supposed to go hear these fine folks this evening, but their visas were denied or cancelled.
As an aside, this is why we can't have nice things, episode 1,832,782. :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN_iMIvPHLc
These folks are not at all traditional, more of a Cuban chamber music ensemble, if you will. But rumba is in almost everything Cuban, one way or another. Certainly everything that isn't purely or primarily European in origin. Espirales (the folks in the video) seem to bring an interesting blend of Euro and trad.
I think a way to think about rumba in Cuba is to compare it to blues in the US. Originally a folkloric style rising out of the people of the African diaspora, but working its way into every nook and cranny of American popular and traditional musics.
It is the demotic musical language of Cuba.
Good weekend to you all, and no worries if the videos make you dance around the room a bit. :)
On “Something Different”
hey all, how do I register with this blog? I have a Friday music post but can't login, I don't think I ever registered. I found the login information LJ sent way back in September but it doesn't seem to work
And so, I am sad. :(
Thank you!
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.