Roaming Charges: Time is Blind, Man is Stupid

Artwork by Ken Schubert.

Victor Hugo: “The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last. On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar. Tempus edax, homo edacior; which I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.” (Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831)

+ The Mueller Report is the political equivalent of the Comet Kohoutek, the comet that failed to catch fire…

+ Nothing defines the “seriousness of the moment” quite like MSDNC waking up Brian “Close Call” Williams at 6 AM to provide color commentary for a press conference.

+ Rod Rosenstein and the scary guy with the beard standing expressionlessly next to Barr look as if they are awaiting reanimation by the Night King.

+ Barr emphasized that it’s not a criminal offense to disperse “stolen” emails. So why is his office going after Julian Assange so ruthlessly?

+ Barr: Trump didn’t obstruct justice because a president can’t obstruct justice.

Mueller: I couldn’t prove Trump obstructed justice because Trump obstructed our investigation into obstruction of justice.

+ Barr said Trump was too emotional to be expected to follow the law on obstruction of justice. But apparently it’s just fine for him to have sole authority to launch nuclear weapons.

+ The Attorney General also explained away Trump’s outbursts against Mueller by saying he was “frustrated,” which sounds like a defense he could also deploy in the sexual assault suit filed by Summer Zervos.

+ In Bill Barr, Trump has finally found his Qyburn. Now, where’s that green fire?

+ I got up at 5:30 am Oregon time for this? No one should be forced to look too closely at Bill Barr’s face before their first cup of coffee…

+ Brian Williams: “The public will get a CD-ROM of the report.” CD-ROM? Where has this guy been for the last 10 years? Good luck finding a Mac with a CD drive.

+ Here’s the link to the pdf of the redacted Mueller Report. Of course, they somehow managed to release the pdf in a non-searchable form. (The 26-volume Warren Commission Report was released without an index.)

+ In a quick scan, I didn’t find much new in the redacted Mueller Report, but this stood out:  the investigation of George Papadopoulos started over concerns that he might be an agent of…………………ISRAEL. That probably kills the impeachment hearings, right Senator Schumer? (When the Israeli connection to Iran/contra was exposed, the steam rapidly dissipated from the Democrats desire to dig much further into the matter.)

+ About the elusive Moscow piss tape: According to a footnote, in Oct 2016, Cohen received a text from Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze that said: “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know…”

+ After a long night of drinking in St. Petersburg, this must’ve sounded like a winning strategy…”The IRA … recruited individuals to perform political acts (such as walking around New York City dressed up as Santa Claus with a Trump mask).”

+ Doesn’t this sound like something “John Miller” or “John Barron” might have done? “Throughout 2016, IRA accounts published an increasing number of materials supporting the Trump Campaign and opposing the Clinton Campaign. For example, on May 31, 2016, the operational account “Matt Skiber” began to privately message dozens of pro-Trump Facebook groups asking them to help plan a “pro-Trump rally near Trump Tower.”

+ “Unable to recall the Russian Ambassador’s name, Kushner emailed Dimitri Simes of CNI … ‘What is the name of the Russian ambassador?'”

+ If the Report was searchable, I’d search for how many times the word “fucked” appears, like on page 290: “According to notes written by Hunt, when Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.'”

+ I also wanted to search the vast sprawl of the Mueller Report for the name of our missing writer “Alice Donovan,” but Bill Barr won’t let me. (Ultimately, I located Alice hiding out inside parentheses in a footnote on page 42.)

+ Sarah Sanders sticking pretty much to the job description of WH press secretary dating back at least to Ron Zeigler…Sanders said her public comments about the FBI weren’t based in fact. Specifically, Sanders said her assertion in response to questions about FBI agents not supporting Comey wasn’t “founded on anything.”

+ After the Washington Post reported that Michael Flynn talked to the Russian ambassador the day Obama imposed sanctions, Flynn directed his deputy KT McFarland (who also kept detailed personal notes) to call the Washing Post and deny they discussed the sanctions. “McFarland made the call even though she knew she was providing false information.”

+ Some names always seem to resurface in American political scandals, so it was no surprise to stumble across “Ledeen” on p 63 of Mueller’s Report, highlighting a scheme by Barbara Ledeen (wife of Iran/contra figure & Mike Flynn pal Michael) to track down HRC’s emails at Flynn’s request on behalf of the Trump campaign, an operation that  funded in part by a $30,000 contribution from the blood-drenched accounts of Erik Prince.

+ It’s hard to tell what the Mueller Report forecasts for Julian Assange. Most of the redacted passages come from the Wikileaks sections likely because of the pending Roger Stone trial. What’s inescapable for me, however, is the stench of Assange feeding the Seth Rich conspiracy, which was a cynical and cruel act of misdirection over the “transparency” that has always been the stated mission of Wikileaks.

+ All 446 pages of the “lightly redacted” Mueller Report…

+ “Rose Mary, do you know how to use this damn blackout machine?” (400 pages, 855 redactions.)

+ Many of the people Trump ordered to do Trumpy things simply refused. The Unitary Theory of the Impotent Executive?

+ Trump: “I have one of the greatest memories of all time.” Number times Trump said he couldn’t remember in his take home written exam from Mueller: 36.

+ I always find it instructive to start with the footnotes, then move to the text…

+ I’ve done a thorough search of the Mueller Report for evidence of Paul Manafort’s alleged “secret talks” with Julian Assange in the Ecuadoran Embassy and found none. Will the Guardian retract its much-hyped exposé? Will they reveal the source who pitched them this specious information?

+ So much for the Assignation in Prague. Will McLatchey retract, apologize and name their dubious source?

+ Kamala Harris: “Barr is acting more like Trump’s defense attorney than AG.” That’s because Kamala Harris understands better than anyone that an AG’s real job is to aggressively prosecute the parents of poor children who skip school.

+ Apparently, Sen. Richard Burr was feeding information from the Senate Intelligence Committee to the White House, which leads one to wonder: Do Burr’s cows graze in the same pasture as Devin Nunes’ cow (now being sued by Devin Nunes)?

+ When the audio book of the Mueller Report is released who will narrate? Rachel Maddow or Rudy Giuliani?

+ New York Post headlines aren’t nearly as funny as they once were, but still this news must come as something of a relief to all of the women Trump has had (per Stormy Daniels) unprotected sex with…

***

+ The last time Kimberly Willson-St Clair and I were in Paris, we strolled around Notre Dame on a very hot day, admiring in particular the incredible carvings around the doors, then crossed the Seine on the Pont de Coeurs to the Left Bank and sat at an outdoor table in a brasserie next to Shakespeare & Co. bookshop and watched the last rays of an August evening light up the face of the cathedral, while drinking a giant concoction the bar called, The Fuck You Mojito, which pretty accurately described my mood as I watched the collapse of the cathedral’s great spire…

+ For the last 18 years or so, Notre Dame has been encircled by automatic rifle carrying French security services, trying to protect the Cathedral from “terrorists,” ignorant that the real threat came from cost-cutting private contractors.

+ Recall that in Hugo’s sprawling novel (which I spent four challenging months reading and re-reading with a great professor of French literature at American University, Pierre Han), Notre Dame de Paris was a “sanctuary” from tyranny, prejudice and false piety and thus a repudiation of everything Trump represents…

+ It was during the construction of Notre Dame that the Jews were first expelled from France and some who refused to leave were burned at the stake in front of the cathedral. Then 9 years later they were recalled because the Christian debt collectors turned out to be sadists. In the Chronique metrique de Philippe le Bel, the medieval poet Geoffrey of Paris described the Christian bankers as flaying their debtors alive. If the Jews had remained, Geoffrey noted, France would have been a happier place.

+ Afshin Rattansi: “All that is solid melts into air, indeed. Notre Dame survived the English, the Jacobins, Napoleon, the 1871 Communards & Vichy..but not neoliberalism.”

+ 13,000 old-growth hardwood trees were felled to construct the roof of Notre Dame. Many of the trees milled into the rafters, beams and joists of Notre Dame were milled from 300 year-old oak trees, which was why the roof earned the nickname “The Forest.” Good luck finding replacements for those, Macron. Of course, perhaps Weyerhaeuser donate a containership load of Douglas-firs clearcut from the Oregon Coast Range and claim carbon sequestration credit at the same time.

+ As Trump insulted French firefighters for what, in fact, proved to be a remarkably courageous effort to save the superstructure of the Cathedral, the stained glass windows and its interior relics & art, let’s recall that he ordered his architect & construction crews to violate the fire codes of NYC by not installing sprinklers in Trump Tower. He himself, of course, always has a rake and “flying water tanker” on standby.

+ Predictably, Trump is weeping crocodile tears over Notre Dame, while opening the Bears Ears, the Notre Dame (or one of them) of the Four Corners region, to unrestrained looting by the fossil fuels industry.

+ Trump has already made more comments (i.e., how he would have done a much better job putting out the fire) on Notre Dame than the recent spate of arson-caused fires at black churches.

+ Almost every inch of Notre Dame has been digitally scanned. Maybe they can recreate the Cathedral with a 3-D printer…

+ Macron privatized the renovation of Notre Dame. Did cost-cutting help destroy Paris’s landmark cathedral?

+ Saint-Just, the most adorable of the French revolutionaries, was eager to burn Notre-Dame in 1793. These days it’s hard to find any kind of memorial or commemoration for the Angel of the Revolution in France, though Alex did pick up a plaster of, yes, Paris bust of him made during the bicentennial, which wa dislodged from the wall and smashed to the floor during the Petrolia earthquake.

+ A half century later, the Communards also targeted Notre Dame for sacking, as they had done to the Tuileries palace, but some of the radical artists in their ranks, notably Gustave Courbet, restrained them. Instead, they toppled the Vendome Column, an act of destruction which prompted the arrest of Courbet after the collapse of the commune.

+ The French, who are among the least religious people in the world, should give Notre Dame to the Unitarian Universalists. They’d take better care of it, redecorate it with all sorts of new gargoyles based on demons from Tibetan and Mayan mythology, freshen up the dreary interior with finger-painted murals in day-glo colors,  reprogram the organ to play Cat Stevens songs and never auction it off to corporate sponsors (except, perhaps, for the occasional Sundaes on Sundays with Ben & Jerry’s)…

+ Every time I’ve gone to a Unitarian service, it’s been a “bring your own God” kind of gathering. The point is to inspect the deities all the other congregants have brought and choose. And here’s the cool thing. It doesn’t have to be the same one each service!

+ In my experience, the great cathedrals of Paris have become almost entirely secularized & monetized, the vast naves nearly empty during mass, except for a few nuns and African immigrants. The great edifice had largely come to stand for the $8.5 euros they charged to visit the towers and crypt.

+ Nearly a billion dollars has already been pledged to repair Notre Dame and after five years Flint still can’t get $55 million to provide clean water for its kids.

 

+ Michele Bachmann on Trump: “We will, in all likelihood, never see a more godly, biblical president again in our lifetimes.”

+ As the anti-gay crusaders of the Xtian right attack Mayor Pete, what about God’s ambassador to Planet Earth? I don’t know if Donald J. Trump ever sampled the temptations of Sodom but I’m pretty sure he enjoyed an extended stay in Gomorrah…

+ Just in time for Holy Week, the scourging of Jesus, starring Mayor Pete and Satan….

+ Trump says he has no regrets about Tweeting out a vile and deceptively edited video attacking Ilhan Omar. Why would he care? His cult eats it up and his Muslim-bashing is exposing the Democrats for the cowards they are. Omar’s safety means nothing to him.

+ Even so, with each attack on her, Trump seems to be turning himself into a fundraising machine for Ilhan the Indomitable, who has raised $800,000 in the last three months.

+ The Senate just confirmed former fossil fuels lobbyist David Bernhardt as Interior Secretary. Four days later, he  already found himself embroiled in an ethics investigation.

+ When the subject of “reparations” came up at conference of the property rights movement I attended back in the 1990s, many of the panelists were all for it–as compensation for the “lost property” of the slave owners. In fact, in 1862 Lincoln himself signed a bill paying out as much as $300 for each “freed” slave. (Hopefully, Trump won’t read this.)

+ Jeet Heer: “So Demorats win a historic wave election in 2018. The upshot? Trump moves further to the right and Nancy Pelosi steers Dems towards the center. In effect, the leadership of both parties moves to the right. Cool, cool.”

+ While Biden dithers, we finally spotted evidence of some real “Joementum,” Stalin’s approval rating among Russians has now topped 70%, a new record…

+ By the time Biden actually enters the race, he’ll be down in single digits the way he was last time and the time before that.

+ Ahoy, there goes DNC down the mainstream, right over the falls…

Nancy Pelosi: “By and large whatever orientation they came to Congress with, they know we have to hold the center. We have to go down the mainstream.”

60 Minutes: “You have these wings. @AOC and her group on one side…”

Pelosi: “That’s like five people.”

+ Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population, with the aristocracy still at the top of the heap. Where’s Wat Tyler when you need him?

+ Radley Balko: “In Kentucky, the average starting salary for a public defender is under $40,000. Average salary for an assistant PD in Louisville is $55,000. In many states, the average PD makes a small enough salary that if they were arrested, they’d qualify for a PD.”

It hardly balances the equities between defense and prosecution, but the state of Kentucky doesn’t pay its prosecutors that much better. The average base salary of a staff attorney is only $43.5k a year

+ Eric Draitser conducted an interview with a feisty Ralph Nader this week on the CounterPunch Radio podcast. (Listen to it for free here.) And once again the emails started pouring in condemning Nader for being a “spoiler” in the 2000 elections, something that has been disproven over and over again. I’ve always contended that Nader should have taken credit for defeating Gore, who probably would have nuked Baghdad 15 minutes after 9/11. Gore was so smug that he even refused to support the Congressional Black Caucus’ challenge of the election results.

+ Trump’s veto of the Yemen resolution on Tuesday night is disgusting, but not surprising. Congress has only itself to blame for surrendering its power to declare war & to finance wars the president pursues without authorization. How many voted against the original AUMF, from which all recent military actions flow? One & it wasn’t Bernard Sanders.

+ One of Bernard’s first votes as the Independent socialist rep from Vermont was to bomb the independent socialist Republic of Serbia. Now as a Democratic Socialist he is targeting the democratic socialist nation of Venezuela.

“I asked Sanders whether he saw Maduro as part of the axis of corrupt authoritarianism. “Yeah,” he said. “It is a failed regime. From all of the recent evidence, it appears that the election was fraudulent. And, despite his ideology, what we need to see is democracy established in Venezuela.”‘

+ Watch Hillary give advice to the 2020 Democrats? I’d rather gouge out my eyes like Oedipus…

+ 25% of Hillary 2008 voters cast a ballot for John McCain and Sarah Palin. Yet, Obama stupidly invited her to become his Secretary of State and run his belligerent foreign policy for four years. He started out on Lieberman, but soon hit the harder stuff. When Cockburn and I wrote our first piece on Lieberman being Obama’s mentor in the senate, we got an irate call from one of Obama’s staffers saying “Lieberman was forced on him!” But it turns out BO settled on Lieberman over Russell Feingold and down the drain they went.

+ A Goldman Sachs report concludes that Trump has a narrow path to victory in 2020. Looking more and more likely every day.

+ The US’s expanding presence in Africa: 44 military bases, 36 “named” operations.

+ From Mikal Gilmore’s terrific interview for Rolling Stone with Game of Thrones author George RR Martin:

Gilmore: In 1966, you entered Northwestern, in Evanston, Illinois. I know that in the years that followed you underwent some serious moral and political changes due to your opposition to the Vietnam War.

Martin: I was, like many kids of my generation, a hawk. I accepted that America was the good guys, we had to be there. When I got into college, the more I learned about our involvement in Vietnam, the more it seemed wrong to me. Of course, the draft was happening, and I decided to ask for the conscientious-objector status. I wasn’t a complete pacifist; I couldn’t claim to be that. I was what they called an objector to a particular war. I would have been glad to fight in World War II. But Vietnam was the only war on the menu. So I applied for conscientious-objector status in full belief that I would be rejected, and that I would have a further decision to make: Army, jail or Canada. I don’t know what I would’ve done. Those were desperately hard decisions, and every kid had to make them for himself. To my surprise, they gave me the status. I was later told – I have no way to prove this – that I was granted the status because our conservative draft board felt that anyone who applied for CO status should be granted it, because that would be punishment enough: Then it would be part of their permanent record, and everybody would know that they were a Commie sympathizer, and it would ruin their lives.

+ Manufacturing remains flat and the future outlook dreary.

+ “College teaching, once a middle-class profession, increasingly leaves its practitioners in poverty.”

+ It turns out that the case that drove Julian Assange into the Ecuadoran Embassy in London in search of sanctuary (allegations that he had raped two Swedish woman) has big holes in it, as revealed in a 2012 Australian Broadcasting Company documentary called “Sex, Lies and Julian Assange.” The questions about the allegations begin around the 20 minute mark.

+ It’s been more than a week since Julian Assange was arrested in London and his indictment by the DoJ unsealed, auguring a grave new threat to all journalists. Still not one word from that living paragon of moral courage, political authenticity and independent thinking: Bernard Sanders.

+ The best satire yet on the Assange arrest. Of course, it’s done by the Aussies…

+ Roxanne Hernandez, a transgendered woman from Honduras, died of complications from AIDS while in the custody of ICE, after she was arrested and detained when she showed up at the border asking for asylum. ICE and Border Patrol were aware of Hernandez’ HIV status during her detention, but refused to provide her with the necessary antiretroviral drugs.”This is straight out manslaughter, isn’t it?

+ Paramilitaries roving the borderlands taking immigrants (or people they suspect to be immigrants) hostage…the US is becoming more like Colombia every day, with more firepower and fewer brain cells.

+ David Simon: “If this fearmongering, racist shitsquib of a president thinks tax-supported busloads of people trying for a better life in, say, Baltimore are somehow a threat, he’s clueless as to our many empty row houses and our need for fresh citizenry. Bring em all. We need every last soul.”

+ Democratic Presidential Candidates who have visited immigration detention centers since Trump started separating families: Harris, Warren, O’Rourke and Booker. Where are you, Bernard Sanders? (Thanks Charles Davis)

+ John Bolton after announcing harsh new sanctions against Cuba: “Today, we proudly proclaim for all to hear: the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.”

+ With ongoing combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, threats of invasion against Venezuela, tensions with North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran, and a rising suicide rate among troops, it’s been more than 300 days since a Pentagon spokesperson held an on camera press briefing. Then this week, the Pentagon decided not to declassify the number of nuclear weapons in the US stockpile, a decision that breaks with years of the United States providing nuclear transparency.

+ And you thought the war on pot was ending…Marijuana possession as a share of all arrests nationwide:

1995: 3.4%
2017: 5.7%

+ Armed bounty hunters kicked in the front door of a home in Lolo, Montana, broke into the bedroom, and pointed assault rifles and pistols Eugene Mitchell, his wife, and their four-year old daughter. All this was over a $1,670 fine and a charge of driving with a suspended license.

+ After being harangued by the Trump Administration, the ICC has pulled the plug on its investigation into war crimes by coalition forces in Afghanistan. This has been the problem with the ICC since its inception: the Court exists solely to prosecute the war crimes committed by enemies of the Empire.

+ The second conversion of Norman Podhoretz, from friend of Allen Ginsberg and Nortman Mailer to intellectual sperm donor of the neo-cons to Trump-loving paleo-con, who here commits ideological infanticide against his progeny, brutally shredding Bill Kristol …

+ The Pulitzer Prize committee awarded Aretha Franklin a special posthumous citation prize for her “for her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades”. But this Pulitzer won’t do Dead Aretha any good and she didn’t need it on her shelf anyway. It’s all about covering the Pulitzer Committee’s ass for not giving her an award while she was alive, while handing out prizes to hacks like Tom Friedman and Peggy Noonan.

+ Like most stories involving the Patriots, the sex-trafficking case involving New England owner Robert Kraft is rapidly “deflating”…

+ Eating like Zizek…

+ A Detroit couple is starting a video streaming service that will feature socialist-themed movies and TV shows. Given the amount of time FoxNews devotes to AOC, Murdoch’s network will probably be their stiffest competition for the young socialist demographic ….

+ Opposable thumbs and the proper use of spell-check are what distinguish “humanity” from the rest of the animal kingdom.

+ I learned this useful bit information about the origins of the progressive state of Oregon this morning at the Museum of the Oregon Territory: The first Black Exclusion Law in Oregon, passed in 1844, called for any black person, free or slave, who entered the state to be publicly whipped every six months until they left (or died).

+ What if Rick Perry left the Energy Department and no one missed him or even realized he was gone?

+ Yellowstone is a big place, but nearly not big enough. It’s an island, surrounded by hostile forces: timber companies, mining companies, oil companies, frackers, ranchers, ski developments, and jerks with guns eager to kill anything that moves indifferent to any collateral damage.

+ The last time carbon dioxide levels were this high, Greenland was mostly green, sea levels were 20 meters higher and trees grew on Antarctica. That was 5.3 million years ago. But, by all means, let’s see every last page of the unreacted Mueller Report…

+ Dave Willard, a researcher at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History,  measured the morphology of more 70,000 birds over 40 years. The analysis of this rich trove of data reveals that migratory birds are shrinking due to warming temps, but their wings are lengthening.

+ An extreme event like Hurricane Maria was 4.85 times more likely to happen in the climate of 2017 than in 1956, according to a new report in the journal of Geophysical Research Letters, and that change in probability can’t be explained by natural climate cycles.

+ Humans won’t like what the zombie pigs were thinking the moment they were slaughtered…

+ A new study finds that the diet of urban coyotes consists largely of “pets,” 20 percent coming from cats alone. Yet cats that are allowed outside shouldn’t be considered “pets” but “pests” that kill BILLIONS of birds a year and thus fair game for canis latrans…

+ If you want a litmus test for the moral character of a person, just observe how they behave in the presence of wolves, a foolproof way of revealing the sadist within…

+ The Forest Service is waging chemical warfare in our national forests in a toxic campaign against what it considers “noxious weeds.” In Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest alone, the Forest Service is planning on drenching as much as 40,000 acres of public land with highly poisonous Round-Up, Sulfometuron methyl and Dicamba.

+ The giant new stadium going up in the Inglewood area of Los Angeles imperils one of the last black enclaves in Southern California. Here are two basic rules for siting controversial buildings: nuclear power plants will be built near earthquake faults and sports stadiums in poor neighborhoods populated by minorities. LA has some brutal experience in this regard with the ethnic cleansing of Chavez Ravine to build Dodger Stadium. (See Mike Davis’ City of Quartz.)

+ What’s a bigger comeback than Tiger Woods winning the Masters? Chris Davis went 1 for 3 with a HR and 2 RBI, as the Orioles punished the Red Sox on Patriot’s Day at Fenway Park.

+ Lou Brock, the legendary left-fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals during the 60s and 70s, on his home state: “Arkansas billed itself as the land of opportunity and I took the first opportunity I had to get the hell out of there.”

+ So I got an email accusing me of being “against everything, but what are you for?” My answer: I’m for grizzlies and wolf packs, I’m for tearing down dams & letting the salmon run, I’m for sea ice in the Arctic and water in the Colorado River when it hits the Sea of Cortez, I’m for black holes and northern lights, spotted owls and marbled murrelets, cerulean warblers & gyrfalcons & everything they need to thrive.

This answer yielded the predictable response that I was a misanthrope. I plead guilty to having read an enjoyed Molière, but the charge isn’t true. How could it be for a new grandfather? Still what the hell do the homo-centrists have against gyrfalcons? (See Hugo quote which opens this column.)

+ Here in Oregon, the Willamette River has been at flood stage for the last week. I spent last Sunday taking a few photos from the Canby Ferry to Willamette Falls and the nearby pulp mills eight miles downstream in Oregon City.

Border Busting with Bach

Booked Up

What I’m reading this week…

The Indian World of George Washington by Colin Colloway (Oxford)

Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration by Rachel Elise Barkow (Belknap)

One Man Out: Curt Flood Versus Baseball by Robert M. Goldman (University of Kansas Press)

Sound Grammar

What I’m listening to this week…

Day After Day by Ben Monder (Sunnyside)

Streets of the Lost by Big Eyes (Greenway)

It Rains Love by Lee Fields and the Expressions (Big Crown)

Creatures in Stone

Margaret Atwood: “Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework.”

Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3