The following YouTube videos have been important parts of my musical journey with Cameron Smith and The London School of Contemporary Piano:
- The Circle of Fifths Explained: The best explanation I've ever seen. "Moving across the circle" is the same as using the tritone substitute.
- Tom Donald: Master Transposing Fast
Zen Happiness is a book of wisdom by John J Muth. It contains beautiful watercolors with one of the following zen sayings on each page:
We are born again with each new day.
Words, both true and kind, can change the world.
Be someone you want to be around.
What we do now is what matters most.
What we think, we can become.
With our thoughts, we create the world.
When you reach the top, keep climbing.
Be kind to yourself. Whatever you do each day, let it be enough.
Three things cannot remain hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
You, as much as anyone in the world, deserve your love and respect.
From stillness, life rises.
May all beings have happy minds.
There notes were found in Richard Diebenkorn's studio after he died:
1. Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued — except as a stimulus for further moves.
3. Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.
4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
5. Don't “discover” a subject—of any kind.
6. Somehow don’t be bored—but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
7. Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position.
8. Keep thinking about Pollyanna.
9. Tolerate chaos.
10. Be careful only in a perverse way.
There’s deep turmoil at the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing “think tank” that calls itself “America’s most influential policy organization,” and is responsible for Project 2025. I’ll explain the scare quotes in a minute.
As many readers know, Tucker Carlson recently invited Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who espouses antisemitic conspiracy theories, onto his podcast. This was shocking but not surprising: It has been obvious for a long time that virulent antisemitism was a growing force within the American right, especially among young people. Last month Politico reported on the contents of private chats between a number of Young Republican leaders that include declarations that “I love Hitler,” jokes about gas chambers, and more.
So should it come as a surprise that Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s president, put out a video defending Carlson and attributing the uproar to “the globalist class,” a turn of phrase routinely used to attack Jews?
It was clearly a surprise to Roberts that his defense of Carlson provoked a widespread backlash. And displaying the complete refusal to accept responsibility we’ve come to expect from leading conservatives, Roberts now claims that he was just reading a script written by an aide, saying “I didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy.” He explained his ignorance by saying “I actually don’t have time to consume a lot of news. I consume a lot of sports.”
Yeah, right.
Why did Roberts weigh in on the Carlson-Fuentes controversy? He obviously felt he needed to express support for the right of conservatives to be conspiracy-theory antisemites -- despite the fact that Heritage itself has an antisemitism task force. Unsurprisingly, many of the task force members have now resigned.
Media reporting on this story has been excellent and revealing. However, I believe that much of the commentary misjudges the true nature of Heritage, portraying it as a genuine think tank that picked the wrong leader or was corrupted by MAGA.
Because the truth is that Heritage has always been a fraud. It has always been a propaganda mill cosplaying as a research institution – a scam that worked for a long time. Heritage’s problem now is that its original scam was designed for a different era — a Reaganesque era in which plutocrats could discreetly leverage bigotry and intolerance to elect Republicans, who then delivered deregulation and tax cuts. Heritage was an integral cog within this scheme, giving superficial respectability to policies that were in fact deeply regressive and discriminatory, and overwhelmingly to the benefit of the moneyed class.
I first began paying serious attention to Heritage early in my New York Times career, when I was writing about rising inequality. At the time Heritage was leading the charge in the campaign to eliminate the estate tax, making it easier to inherit very large fortunes.
Heritage’s position wasn’t surprising. What I did find surprising was its decision to present the estate tax as a massive burden on small businesses and farms, which was simply a lie. In 2004 only around 300 small businesses and farms owed any estate tax at all. No, I’m not missing zeroes. And the number has gone down over time. These days basically no small businesses or farms pay the tax.
So Heritage wasn’t doing research. It was just pumping out dishonest propaganda.
Another Heritage moment came in 2011, when it released widely ridiculed projections about the effects of Paul Ryan’s budget proposals. (Remember him?) Again, Heritage was in the business of producing propaganda on behalf of the 1 percent, not doing genuine economic research.
But telling lies on behalf of the wealthy isn’t enough in the MAGA era. To be a right-winger in good standing you also have to be a sexist, a racist, and an antisemite, while promoting Qanon and other conspiracy theories.
You can see the devolution of Heritage in its choices of chief economist.
Back in 2014 Heritage hired Stephen Moore, who has had a remarkable career in the right-wing universe, repeatedly landing plum jobs despite his utter incompetence. I’m not being hyperbolic here: He has repeatedly shown an almost pathological inability to get facts and numbers right. But he hasn’t, as far as I know, promoted racism and bigotry. And to his credit, he severed his connection with Heritage after the Carlson/Fuentes scandal broke.
Today, Heritage’s chief economist is E.J. Antoni, whom Donald Trump tried to install as head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after firing the previous head because he didn’t like a weak jobs report. Antoni is, if anything, even less competent than Moore. But he still might have gotten the job if Wired and CNN hadn’t uncovered his since-deleted Twitter account. As CNN put it,
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics operated a since-deleted Twitter account that featured sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump … The account posted at least five sexually suggestive tweets implying that then Sen. Kamala Harris had advanced her career through sexual favors.
Incidentally, when I first read the CNN report, I somehow missed this passage:
He also repeatedly tweeted that liberal economist Paul Krugman was a pedophile, a smear for which there is no evidence – and one he also hurled at former President Joe Biden and former FBI director James Comey. [Emphasis added]
As they say, every accusation by the modern right is really a confession.
Antoni didn’t get the BLS job, but Heritage still lists him as its chief economist. What this tells us is that under Roberts Heritage was already becoming Groyperized, that is, taken over by the racist and antisemitic movement Fuentes represents. What Roberts did in that video wasn’t out of character, either for him or for the institution he runs. His only mistake was pulling back the curtain too soon.
Again, it’s important to get the story of Heritage correct, because it is also the story of the modern right as a whole. Heritage was never a respectable institution doing honest research. It was always in the business of telling lies on behalf of its wealthy supporters. But now it’s trying to turn itself into a MAGA/Groyper institution, less focused on telling economic lies and more focused on bigotry and conspiracy theories.
And if this shocks and surprises you, well, you just weren’t paying attention.
From The Atlantic:
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge. I was 38 years old. At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest of my life. However, I resigned Friday, relinquishing that lifetime appointment and giving up the opportunity for public service that I have loved.
My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom. President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment. This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.
When I accepted the nomination to serve on the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, I took pride in becoming part of a federal judiciary that works to make our country’s ideal of equal justice under law a reality. A judiciary that helps protect our democracy. That has the authority and responsibility to hold elected officials to the limits of the power delegated to them by the people. That strives to ensure that the rights of minority groups, no matter how they are viewed by others, are not violated. That can serve as a check on corruption to prevent public officials from unlawfully enriching themselves. Becoming a federal judge was an ideal opportunity to extend a noble tradition that I had been educated by experience to treasure.
My public service began in 1974, near the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency, at a time of dishonor for the Department of Justice. Nixon’s first attorney general, John Mitchell, who had also been the president’s campaign manager, later went to prison for his role in the break-in at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex and for perjury in attempting to cover up that crime. His successor, Richard Kleindienst, was convicted of contempt of Congress for lying about the fact that, as instructed by the president, he’d ended an antitrust investigation of a major company after it pledged to make a $400,000 contribution to the Republican National Convention. The Justice Department was also discredited by revelations that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had obtained and disseminated derogatory information about political adversaries, including Martin Luther King Jr.
I joined the Department of Justice as a special assistant to the honest and able Deputy Attorney General Laurence Silberman. Soon after, in 1975, President Gerald Ford named Edward Levi as attorney general to restore confidence in the integrity of the department. Levi, then the president of the University of Chicago, had a well-deserved reputation for brilliance, honesty, and nonpartisanship. Ford told Levi that he wanted the attorney general to “protect the rights of American citizens, not the President who appointed him.”
I organized Levi’s induction ceremony and was there when he declared that “nothing can more weaken the quality of life or more imperil the realization of the goals we all hold dear than our failure to make clear by word and deed that our law is not an instrument of partisan purpose.” For the next two years I served as one of Levi’s special assistants, working closely with a man who was always faithful to this principle.
With Levi as my model, in 1981 I became the deputy United States attorney and chief federal prosecutor of public corruption in Massachusetts. In about four years, my assistants and I won more than 40 consecutive corruption cases. Many convictions were of defendants close to the powerful mayor of Boston at the time. As a result, I received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award and was appointed a federal judge.
Some of the cases over which I presided as judge involved corruption and were highly publicized. Most notable was the prosecution of the notorious Boston mobsters James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “the Rifleman” Flemmi. Both, it turned out, were also FBI informants. Agents in the bureau, I discovered, were involved in crimes and egregious misconduct, including murders committed by Bulger and Flemmi. I wrote a 661-page decision detailing my findings. This led to orders that the government pay more than $100 million to the families of people murdered by informants whom the FBI had improperly protected. Their FBI handler was convicted twice and sentenced to serve a total of 50 years in prison.
I also presided over a six-week trial of a former speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. After he was convicted of demanding and accepting bribes, I sentenced him to serve eight years in prison.
I decided all of my cases based on the facts and the law, without regard to politics, popularity, or my personal preferences. That is how justice is supposed to be administered—equally for everyone, without fear or favor. This is the opposite of what is happening now.
As I watched in dismay and disgust from my position on the bench, I came to feel deeply uncomfortable operating under the necessary ethical rules that muzzle judges’ public statements and restrict their activities. Day after day, I observed in silence as President Trump, his aides, and his allies dismantled so much of what I dedicated my life to.
When I became a senior judge in 2013, my successor was appointed, so my resignation will not create a vacancy to be filled by the president. My colleagues on the United States District Court in Massachusetts and judges on the lower federal courts throughout the country are admirably deciding a variety of cases generated by Trump’s many executive orders and other unprecedented actions. However, the Supreme Court has repeatedly removed the temporary restraints imposed on those actions by lower courts in deciding emergency motions on its “shadow docket” with little, if any, explanation. I doubt that if I remained a judge I would fare any better than my colleagues.
Others who have held positions of authority, including former federal judges and ambassadors, have been opposing this government’s efforts to undermine the principled, impartial administration of justice and distort the free and fair functioning of American democracy. They have urged me to work with them. As much as I have treasured being a judge, I can now think of nothing more important than joining them, and doing everything in my power to combat today’s existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.
What Nixon did episodically and covertly, knowing it was illegal or improper, Trump now does routinely and overtly. Prosecutorial decisions during this administration are a prime example. Because even a prosecution that ends in an acquittal can have devastating consequences for the defendant, as a matter of fairness Justice Department guidelines instruct prosecutors not to seek an indictment unless they believe there is sufficient admissible evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Trump has utterly ignored this principle. In a social-media post, he instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek indictments against three political adversaries even though the officials in charge of the investigations at the time saw no proper basis for doing so. It has been reported that New York Attorney General Letitia James was prosecuted for mortgage fraud after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, one of Donald Trump’s former criminal-defense lawyers, questioned the legal viability of bringing charges against James. Former FBI Director James Comey was charged after the interim U.S. attorney who had been appointed by Trump refused to seek an indictment and was forced to resign. Senator Adam Schiff, the third target of Trump’s social-media post, has yet to be charged.
Trump is also dismantling the offices that could and should investigate possible corruption by him and those in his orbit. Soon after he was inaugurated, Trump fired, possibly unlawfully, 18 inspectors general who were responsible for detecting and deterring fraud and misconduct in major federal agencies. The FBI’s public-corruption squad also has been eliminated. The Department of Justice’s public-integrity section has been eviscerated, reduced from 30 lawyers to only five, and its authority to investigate election fraud has been revoked.
The Department of Justice has evidently chosen to ignore matters it would in the past have likely investigated. Some directly involve the president. It has been reported that at a lavish April 2024 dinner at Mar-a-Lago, after executives from major oil companies complained about how the Biden administration’s environmental regulations were hurting their businesses, Trump said that if they raised $1 billion for his campaign he would promptly reverse those rules and policies. The executives raised the money, and Trump delivered on his promise. The law may be unclear concerning whether Trump himself could have been charged with conspiracy to bribe a public official or honest-services fraud. In addition, Trump himself may have immunity from prosecution if similar payments for his benefit continued after he became president. However, the companies that made the payments, and the individuals acting for them, could possibly be prosecuted. There is no public indication that this matter has been investigated by Trump’s Department of Justice.
As a prosecutor and judge I dealt seriously with the unlawful influence of money on official decisions. However, Trump and his administration evidently do not share this approach. After Trump launched his own cryptocurrency, $TRUMP, his Department of Justice disbanded its cryptocurrency-enforcement unit. The top 220 buyers of Trump’s cryptocurrency were invited to a dinner with Trump. Sixty-seven of them had invested more than $1 million. The top spender, Justin Sun, who was born in China and is a foreign national, reportedly spent more than $10 million. Sun also reportedly spent $75 million on investments issued by a crypto company controlled by Trump’s family. It is illegal for people who are not U.S. citizens to donate to American political candidates, and the most that anyone can donate directly to one candidate is $3,500. Ordinarily, the Department of Justice would investigate this sort of situation. There is, however, no indication that any investigation has occurred. Rather, a few months after Sun started purchasing tokens from the Trump-family cryptocurrency company, the Securities and Exchange Commission paused its fraud suit against Sun and his companies pending the outcome of settlement negotiations. (Sun and his companies have denied any wrongdoing.)
Trump is not the only member of his administration whose conduct is apparently shielded from investigation. In September of last year, Tom Homan, who became Trump’s “border czar,” reportedly was recorded accepting $50,000 in cash in return for a promise to use his potential future public position to benefit a company seeking government contracts. The FBI had created the fictitious company as part of an undercover investigation. Typically, an investigation of that sort would have continued after Homan became a Department of Homeland Security official, with the FBI seeking any additional evidence of bribery. However, after Trump took office, the investigation was shut down, with the White House claiming there was no “credible evidence” of criminal wrongdoing. Weeks after the FBI investigation was reported, Homan denied taking $50,000 “from anybody” and has said he did “nothing criminal.” An honest investigation could reveal who is telling the truth.
There is also the matter of Trump’s executive orders. A good number are, in my opinion, unconstitutional or otherwise illegal. For example, contrary to the express language of the Fourteenth Amendment, one order declares that not everyone born in this country is a U.S. citizen. Trump’s administration also has deported undocumented immigrants without due process, in many cases to countries where they have no connections and will be in great danger. Although many federal judges have issued orders restraining the government’s effort to implement those executive orders, some appear to have been disobeyed by members of the Trump administration. Trump has responded by calling for federal judges to be impeached, even though the Constitution permits impeachment only for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” such as treason and bribery.
Trump’s angry attacks on the courts have coincided with an unprecedented number of serious threats against judges. There were nearly 200 from March to late May 2025 alone. These included credible death threats, hundreds of vitriolic phone calls, and anonymous, unsolicited pizza deliveries falsely made in the name of the son of a federal judge, who was murdered in the judge’s home in 2020 by a disgruntled lawyer.
Over the past 35 years I have spoken in many countries about the role of American judges in safeguarding democracy, protecting human rights, and combating corruption. Many of these countries—including Russia, China, and Turkey—are ruled by corrupt leaders who rank among the worst abusers of human rights. These kleptocrats jail their political opponents, suppress independent media that could expose their wrongdoing, forbid free speech, punish peaceful protests, and frustrate every effort to establish an independent, impartial judiciary that could constrain these abuses. These kleptocrats have impunity in their countries because they control the police, prosecutors, and courts.
In my work around the world, I have made many friends, young and old, who have been inspired by the example of American judges, lawyers, and citizens. They have suffered greatly for trying to make their countries more like ours. Among them are impartial judges who have been imprisoned in Turkey, a brilliant young Russian lawyer who was alleged to be a spy and forced into exile, and a Venezuelan law student who almost lost sight in one eye while protesting his country’s oppressive government. They courageously share what have historically been our nation’s convictions. These brave people inspire me.
I resigned in order to speak out, support litigation, and work with other individuals and organizations dedicated to protecting the rule of law and American democracy. I also intend to advocate for the judges who cannot speak publicly for themselves.
I cannot be confident that I will make a difference. I am reminded, however, of what Senator Robert F. Kennedy said in 1966 about ending apartheid in South Africa: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” Enough of these ripples can become a tidal wave.
And as Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney wrote, sometimes the “longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.” I want to do all that I can to make this such a time.
Paul Krugman shows just how deranged, and cruel this administration is.
They’re pathologically unwilling to help Americans in need — and Democrats should hammer this home
People who lost SNAP benefits at a food bank
Like almost all progressives, I was infuriated and disheartened by Senate Democrats’ cave on the shutdown Sunday. The party won stunning election victories Tuesday — and its leaders responded with yet another preemptive surrender? (Chuck Schumer may have voted no, but he didn’t manage, and may not even have tried, to prevent defections.)
Yet while the immediate politics displayed Democratic tactical weakness, the larger story highlighted a different kind of weakness on the part of Donald Trump and MAGA as a whole — namely, their innate cruelty. They have a visceral dislike for policies that do anything to help the less fortunate, and can’t even bring themselves to be cynical, to help Americans temporarily while they consolidate power.
Consider the grounds on which the shutdown fight took place. Democrats made it about the enhanced subsidies that have kept premiums for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act fairly reasonable for millions of Americans — Americans who are now facing huge premium hikes that will create intense financial distress and force many to go uninsured.
Before the big cave, Democrats proposed a deal in which they would provide the votes to reopen the government in return for a one-year extension of those enhanced benefits. Republicans should have jumped at this deal. It’s true that Republicans are determined to destroy much of the social safety net. The One Big Beautiful Bill will impose savage cuts in Medicaid and food stamps. But these big cuts are set to happen after the midterm elections.
Drastically increasing health care costs at the beginning of 2026, causing millions to lose insurance, certainly looks like a massive political blunder. My guess is that it doesn’t reflect a considered strategy. Instead, Republicans just stumbled into this because nobody in a position of power within the party understood how the ACA works.
And polling suggests overwhelming public support for extending the enhanced subsidies: 74 percent overall, including half of Republicans:
Source: KFF
So Republicans should have been eager for a chance to postpone the pain. Instead, by rejecting Democratic proposals, Republicans have placed the onus for soaring premiums squarely on themselves.
But the thought of doing something decent, even cynically and temporarily, doesn’t seem to have crossed Republican minds. John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, immediately declared the proposed deal a “nonstarter,” insisting that his party would only negotiate about healthcare after the government is reopened — which everyone understands means that Republicans will agree to nothing.
Why reject a deal that could have protected Republicans from their own mistakes? Part of the answer is sheer ignorance. Here was Trump’s response:
Substance aside, think about the idiocy of the timing here. The health insurance crisis is happening right now, as Americans open letters from their insurers and discover that they are facing huge increases — more than 100 percent on average, much more in many cases — in the cost of coverage beginning in just a few weeks. This is not exactly the time to propose immediately scrapping our existing health care system, replacing it with … something.
And a vague promise to deal with an immediate crisis by totally revamping healthcare is especially lacking in credibility coming from a man who has been promising, and failing, to deliver a superior alternative to Obamacare for around 9 years.
On the substance, Trump’s post makes it clear that after all this time he still has no idea how health care works. We’ve always known that he didn’t and doesn’t understand Obamacare, and why it’s hard to come up with a better system other than single-payer health insurance. But it’s now clear that he doesn’t even understand why healthcare relies on insurance, why we can’t pay medical expenses out of pocket. Hint: You never know if or when you’ll need extremely expensive treatment, but should the need arise, only the ultra-wealthy can come up with the necessary cash.
Oh, and it’s especially rich to see Trump take a break from boasting about his new gold-and-marble bathrooms to pretend to hate “money sucking Insurance Companies.”
Anyway, Trump’s vague ideas are, as Thune would say, a nonstarter. But why not punt, postponing the health affordability crisis by agreeing to a temporary extension of the ACA subsidies?
The answer, I believe, is that doing so would involve giving help to people who need it — and that’s something that, at a deep psychological level, MAGA can’t bring itself to do.
Health care isn’t the only area in which Trump and company’s cruelty and lack of compassion are becoming major political liabilities.
The Trump administration rushed to cut off SNAP (food stamps) as soon as the government shut down, even though there was money available to pay those benefits — and the administration both defied court orders to pay and tried to stop states from helping the hungry.
Going beyond government programs, most Americans are very unhappy about the state of the economy. They see high grocery prices and a very weak job market. Consumers’ assessment of the current state of the economy is worse now than it was at the peak of the 2021-22 inflation surge, or the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis:
The rational thing for Trump to do would be to say “I feel your pain,” while blaming the previous administration and promising that things will get better soon. But he can’t even fake empathy. Instead, he keeps insisting that things are great, in particular that “groceries are way down.”
This is factually false. More important from a political point of view, it contradicts what people — even Republican partisans — are seeing in their own lives. Here’s what Americans think about grocery inflation, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll:
Source
Has there ever been a case in which “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” was an effective political strategy? Last Tuesday’s elections clearly showed that it isn’t working now. But Trump and his minions seem unable to try anything different.
Let me add that MAGA still seems to believe that scenes of masked ICE agents beating up women and senior citizens work to their political advantage. Either that, or they just can’t help themselves.
The political moral is that the humiliating cave over the shutdown isn’t the end of the story. Democrats can and should keep hammering Trump and his party over their indifference to the suffering of ordinary Americans. They need to make sure both that Americans know who’s responsible for surging premiums now and that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will lead to savage cuts in both Medicaid and food stamps after the midterms.
MAGA can’t help being cruel. It can’t even pretend to care about other people’s suffering. And Democrats should take full advantage of this pathology.
Leo https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor/ 6.8.7 is now available on GitHub and pypi.
Leo is an IDE, outliner and PIM.
The highlights of Leo 6.8.7
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